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.
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:
]]>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:
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.
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:
]]>Apple issued updates for lots of its software platforms this week. Perhaps the biggest changes are reserved for those who live in Europe, where the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has forced Apple to allow for third-party app stores and third-party browser engines on the iPhone. But for those of us here in the U.S., the new software provides lots of other small updates. And in light of Apple updating its MacBook Air computers earlier this week, will next week be the time when Apple finally announces updates to its iPad line, after no new iPads at all in 2023? We'll find it soon enough. In the meantime, here is the news of note from the past week.
Brett and I begin this week’s episode of the In the News podcast by saying goodbye to the Apple Car that we never knew. We also discuss Apple’s upcoming AI announcement, the Apple Sports app, upcoming features in iOS 17.4, watching movies on an Apple Vision Pro, and more.
In our Where Y’at? segment, we discuss three tales of people who credit the Apple Watch with saving their lives, two from a land called Down Under, and one from a state that sits down under New York.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for checking to see if your AirPods are running the latest firmware. I explain how to improve the new Apple Sports app by removing the display of betting odds.
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:
]]>The biggest Apple news of the week concerned something that Apple never released and Apple never even talked about. But given the thousands of people hired by Apple over the last decades, many of them former employees of other car manufacturers, and the disclosures that Apple has to make to authorities that it was testing autonomous vehicles on roads, it was an open secret that Apple has been developing a car. As first reported by Mark Gurman of Bloomberg and then widely reported by numerous other news outlets, Apple finally decided to pull the plug on its electric car project this week. Brian X. Chen and Tripp Mickle of the New York Times wrote an extensive article about the situation based on lots of off-the-record interviews. (That's a gift link so you can read it even if you don't subscribe.) Why did Apple give up the project? This one sentence says it all: "If it ever came to market, an Apple car was likely to cost at least $100,000 and still generate razor-thin profit compared with smartphones and earbuds." In 1997 at Apple's WWDC conference for developers, Steve Jobs famously said: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." I think it made sense for Apple to explore this area, but after a decade of not getting to a shipping product that makes sense, it looks like Apple made the right decision. Some of the reported 2,000 employees working on the Apple Car will probably lose their jobs, but many are being offered positions working on AI issues for Apple, which I'm sure was a big part of making an autonomous car. If the end result is that Apple devotes more focus to products that make more sense for the company and those products are even better with more people working on integrating AI, then that will definitely be a good thing. Indeed, John Gruber of Daring Fireball floated a theory that Apple executive Kevin Lynch has spent the last few years figuring out who to use the Apple Car technologies in other Apple products. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
The Apple Vision Pro provides the very best way to watch a 3D movie. The screen can be as big as the largest movie theater. You get to sit in the perfect seat in the center. And you don’t have to wear polarized glasses that reduce the brightness of the film; instead, the image is crisp and bright in both of your eyes. When I recently watched the latest Avatar movie in 3D, widely considered to contain some of the best uses of 3D in a movie, I was astonished at how impressive a 3D movie can look. I never knew that 3D could look so good.
According to one post on Reddit, there are over 200 movies that are available to watch in 3D on the Apple Vision Pro. But perhaps the oldest one is the Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie Dial M for Murder, released 70 years ago in 1954. At the time that the movie was conceived, studios thought that 3D movies might be the next big thing as studios started to use polarized glasses instead of the prior red-and-blue glasses. Making this 3D movie was not easy. As reported by Liam Gaughan of Collider, Warner Brothers only had a single 3D camera rig that it could use for this production, and the camera rig took up nearly the entire room. This made the movie particularly difficult for Hitchcock to shoot. For example, he could not have two cameras filming two sides of a conversation, and instead he would have to move around the bulky single camera for every different shot in the film.
Despite all of this effort, as the Wikipedia article on the movie notes, by the time the movie was finally released, public interest in 3D movies had diminished. As a result, there were very few 3D showings of this movie back in 1954. Starting in the 1980s, there have been rare times when select theaters would show the 3D version, and a 3D Blu-ray version was released in 2012 ($21.05 on Amazon). But most of the people who have seen the movie over the last 70 years have seen it in 2D.
Nevertheless, a lot of people have seen this movie, and for good reason. It is a suspenseful tale of murder from Hitchcock, a master of the genre. Almost all of the movie takes place in a single room of an apartment with only a few main characters, so the movie turns on the actors being good, and they are. Grace Kelly, in particular, is amazing. The whole thing feels more like a play than a movie, which makes sense because the movie was based on a play. The American Film Institute ranks this movie #9 on its all-time list of best mystery movies, and even 70 years later, the movie holds up very well. It certainly had me on the edge of my seat. There are a few lines of dialogue that reflect the sexism of that time period (such as references to what was appropriate for a wife versus a husband in a marriage), but other than that, almost the same script could be used today for a modern adaptation. And the film has been restored rather well considering its age, with no visible scratches and good color. When Hitchcock puts Grace Kelly in a red dress early in the movie, a not-so-subtle decision that adds to the plot, the dress pops on screen and she looks great.
But again, the reason that I watched this movie this past weekend is that I was curious to see how a movie that used cutting-edge 3D technology of the 1950s would hold up today in a Vision Pro. Initially, I had hoped to rent the movie. In the Apple TV app on the Apple Vision Pro, Apple has the movie listed, says that it is in 3D, and notes that it can be rented for $3.99. However, when I went to rent the movie, things did not go well. First, I was told that there were two versions to rent, but I could never get the button to click on one of the versions. Second, the single version that I was allowed to rent gave me the 2D version of the movie. I subsequently saw others say online that the only way to get the 3D version is to buy the movie, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay $9.99 to buy the movie and then dispute the charge on the $3.99 rental using Apple’s webpage for disputing a charge. (Less than 24 hours later, Apple refunded me the $3.99, either because they were feeling nice, or perhaps because their system noticed that I also bought the movie.)
Once the movie is purchased, when you select it in the Apple TV app, you see a pop-up window asking if you want to watch the movie in 3D or 2D. Finally, what I was looking for!
I am happy to report that this movie was a complete delight to watch in 3D and the 3D makes a real difference. The 2D version of the movie looks like a restored but still somewhat grainy movie from the 1950s—exactly what I had expected for a movie from this era. In the 3D version, the film still looks somewhat grainy, but I didn’t notice it nearly as much because the 3D effect made the movie seem more immersive and modern.
Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, the way that Hitchcock filmed this movie in 3D adds greatly to the suspense of the film. Hitchcock resisted the urge to overuse the 3D, so there are virtually no gimmicky 3D shots--except for one at the height of the drama that is totally worth it. For the rest of the movie, the 3D is used to make the room in which the actors are located seem more claustrophobic, which adds to the suspense. You see a lamp in the foreground as actors are plotting in the background. Or you see one actor closer to the camera and another a little further back. The end result is that you often get the sense that you are right there in the intimate room with the characters. Imagine watching a play that takes place in a single room where you get to be sitting in that room watching the play unfold in front of you. That is the feeling that you get thanks to the effective use of 3D camera placement. This movie is already good, but it is even better when you watch it in 3D.
So we have one of the greatest mystery movies of all time, made even better by the impressive use of 3D, and yet very few people have ever had a chance to experience it the way that it was intended to be seen. But now, thanks to the Apple Vision Pro, you can watch the movie in a way that is better than anyone has ever seen it before because the Vision Pro is so amazing at showing 3D content.
When my kids were younger, I would often purchase Disney (and similar) movies on DVD because they loved to watch them over and over again. But outside of those films, the number of movies that I have purchased over the decades is rather small because it is rare for me to want to rewatch a movie. I don’t plan to purchase a lot of movies from Apple just to have the opportunity to watch the movie in 3D. Instead, I’m glad that there are some great 3D movies available as a part of my Disney+ subscription and I hope to soon see even more good 3D movie options as a part of my Apple TV+ subscription. I wish that I could have just rented the 3D version of Dial M for Murder, but I enjoyed the movie enough that I probably received $10 of value in having the opportunity to see a classic movie like Dial M for Murder in such an amazing format.
If you own an Apple Vision Pro, and if the idea of a classic mystery appeals to you, I recommend purchasing Dial M for Murder in the Apple TV app. Bringing Alfred Hitchcock 70 years into the future is rather fun.
]]>Earlier this month, Apple released the results for its 2024 fiscal first quarter (which ran from October 1, 2023, to December 30, 2023, and did not actually include any days from calendar year 2024) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. I have not yet had a chance to report on these results, and even though they came out a few weeks ago, there are a few interesting tidbits in there worth discussing. The fiscal first quarter is always Apple's best quarter of the year because it includes holiday sales. And with $119.6 billion in revenue, it was the second-best quarter in the history of the company, second only to $123.9 billion in Q1 2022 (which was based on the last three months of 2021). As always, I'm not all that interested in the financial details. What interests me is that this is one of four times a year when Apple answers questions from a bunch of analysts, so I'm always curious to see what Apple has to say about the iPhone and iPad and related technologies. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the announcement conference call on the Apple website, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors. Snell also created a number of useful charts that put Apple's financial announcements in perspective over time. Apple's official press release is here. Here are the items that stood out to me.
iPhone
iPad
Other
As of the time that I am typing these words, we still don't know the details on what caused the massive outage on AT&T's network yesterday except that it wasn't a cyber attack. Fortunately, service was restored by yesterday afternoon. It didn't affect everyone. Some cities were worse than others. Here in New Orleans, I didn't notice it on my iPhone, but my son did. Marlene Lenthang and Katherine Itoh of NBC News report that Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta had more issues than many other cities. And while it was just a minor annoyance for some, I hope that the number of critical calls that did not go through, including 911 calls, were minimal. It all serves as a good reminder that many services that we rely on and take for granted can be quite fragile. And now, the news of note from the past week: