Apple updated the operating systems on just about all of its products yesterday. There are too many changes to discuss them all, but here are the more significant changes that jumped out at me for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Also, remember that Apple always improves security with every update, so even if none of the changes seem relevant to you, you should still upgrade soon to get a safer iPhone, iPad, etc.
iPhone: iOS 16.4
If you add a website to your home screen—which lets you tap an icon to launch a website just like you would launch an app—the website can take advantage of push notifications, much like a regular app can receive notifications.
In the top right corner of the Music app, there is a circle containing a picture of your face (or a generic person icon). You can tap it to access your profile and change certain settings.
It is now easier to get information on AppleCare coverage. Go to Settings -> General -> About -> Coverage. You will see whether you have AppleCare coverage on your iPhone and other devices paired to your iPhone.
The Apple Books app reintroduced a page turning animation.
Emergency SOS via Satellite comes to Austria, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
The Wallet app now has an order tracking widget. On the main screen of the Wallet app, at the top right, there is a circle with an icon of a cardboard box. Tap that icon to see purchases that you made using ApplePay and you can track the delivery.
If you send a link to a Mastodon post, the Messages app now treats it like a link to a Twitter post because it displays a preview of the content that was shared.
Voice isolation for cellular calls. This feature, previously available for VoIP services like FaceTime, lets you cut down on background noise and boost the volume of the person speaking.
Lots of new Shortcuts actions. Juli Clover of MacRumors has a good list.
21 new Emoji characters:
iPad: iPadOS 16.4
Just about all of the new features in iOS 16.4 also come to iPadOS 16.4. In addition:
If you have the latest version of the iPad Pro introduced in late 2022—the 12.9” iPad Pro (6th generation) or the 11” iPad Pro (4th generation)—your iPad has hover support when you hover an Apple Pencil over the screen without touching the screen, as I explained in this post. Now, the feature gains tilt and azimuth support, which will mainly be useful for graphic artists. Brian Heater of TechCrunch interviewed some Apple executives and has lots of information about this new feature.
Apple Watch: watchOS 9.4
Support for the 21 new Emoji.
If you set a wake-up alarm, you cannot turn it off by covering up the face of your Apple Watch with a hand. People used to do that without realizing that they were turning off the alarm.
When Brett Burney told me that he would be in a car with his family at the time that we record this week's podcast, I thought that would mean that the recording would be a disaster. To my complete surprise, the final recording is great, and this week's podcast sounds about the same as every other episode. Kudos to Brett on all of the behind-the-scenes final editing that he did on this episode. We start this episode by talking about the new features coming to iOS 16.4, which we expect to be released this upcoming week—perhaps mid-day on Tuesday. We next talk about how frequently you should purchase a new Wi-Fi router, AirTags, a HomeKit doorbell, and what happens to your old iPhone when you trade it in for a new one.
In our In the Know segment, Brett shares a tip for two different modes of volume control on the iPhone: one for media volume, and one for ringer volume. I share a tip for grabbing the scroll bar on the iPhone or iPad to scroll through a long list more quickly.
When Apple introduced the original Macintosh in 1984, it stood out from other computers by its use of fonts. Apple has continued to pay close attention to fonts over the decades. Although Apple stopped using the Apple Garamond font about two decades ago, I still cannot help but associate that font with Apple. Apple now uses its San Francisco font—no, definitely not the same "San Francisco" font that came out with the original Macintosh—with virtually all of its products and the Apple website. I know many lawyers who pay close attention to fonts as well. I selected Times New Roman for the banner at the top of iPhone J.D. because I associate it with the law: many courts require it, and even more lawyers use it all the time. When I have a choice, I often use a different font in my briefs, such as Cambria, a nice serif font that is available to everyone who uses Microsoft Word. This week, a long-time reader of this website alerted me to an interesting article by Katie Deighton in the Wall Street Journal titled Font Wars Spread After State Department Replaces Times New Roman With Calibri. If you have any interest in fonts, I recommend that you read that article. I am opposed to using a sans-serif font like Calibri for the text of legal documents (although I do sometimes use a sans-serif font like Helvetica for headers) because I think that the lack of the serifs makes the text harder to read. But I also recognize that when it comes to fonts, some people have no preference and barely notice them whereas others have deep personal feelings about them. And now, the news of note from the past week:
If you can sense the smile on my face as I type today's post, it is because I upgraded my home computer this week, replacing my iMac 5K with an Intel 8-Core i9 with a Mac mini with an Apple M2 Pro processor and a 4 TB SSD drive, along with an Apple Studio Display and an Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and a Numeric Keypad. The new computer is much faster, which is really nice. The display is working well, and I love having Touch ID on my computer's keyboard for the first time—something that Mac laptop owners have had for a long time.
What might Apple include in the 2023 version of the iPhone, which I presume will be called the iPhone 15? Dan Moren of Six Colors offers his thoughts.
Chris Smith of BGR explains how to record a phone call on an iPhone. Remember that laws vary from state-to-state on whether you need to let the other people on the phone know that you are recording, and even in states where a statute does not require consent, the ethical rules applicable to lawyers may require consent.
If you want help from Apple when purchasing an iPhone, David Snow of Cult of Mac reports that you can now have a video call with an Apple Specialist who will assist you during the buying process. Folks who read iPhone J.D. may not need this type of assistance, but I'm sure that you know people for whom this would be perfect.
It is widely-rumored that Apple is working on some sort of a VR/AR headset. An article by Patrick McGee and Tim Bradshaw of The Financial Times made the rounds this past week because they interviewed (presumably former) members of the Apple design team who are opposed to releasing something now because it could be better if released later. John Gruber of Daring Fireball did a nice job discussing this article and the flaws with the analysis. The Apple Watch, the iPhone, the iPad, and every other Apple product has come a long way from the first version, but you still need to ship something at the beginning so that you can start to improve future generations.
I'm not a fan of iPad screen protectors that add more friction when you are writing on the screen, but I know that some people like them because it feels more like you are writing on paper. Dan Seifert of The Verge provides his arguments for using an iPad screen protector.
Earlier this year, I reviewed Camo, a great app that lets you use your iPhone as a webcam. I've been using it just about every day at work. Jason Snell reports that Camo was updated to version 2 with a ton of new features. It now works with any camera, not just the iPhone, and adds a bunch of other new features.
In an interesting case of life imitating art, Esther Marquis, a costume designer for the Apple TV+ show For All Mankind, has designed the next-generation astronaut space suit. Seth Kurkowski of Space Explored has the details.
There was a fun update to CARROT Weather this week. Thanks to the integration of ChatGPT, you can now have a text message conversation with CARROT Weather. It is funny and an impressive demo of the new AI technology that seems to be all the rage right now. Jess Weatherbed of The Verge explains what is new.
And finally, I mentioned last week that Apple released a yellow version of the iPhone 14. This week, Apple released an ad for it, and it is fun to watch, especially if you are a fan of the graphics associated with Yellow Submarine by The Beatles, and artists like Robert Crumb, Peter Max, and others from the late 1960s:
When Apple introduced the original Macintosh in 1984, it stood out from other computers by its use of fonts. Apple has continued to pay close attention to fonts over the decades. Although Apple stopped using the Apple Garamond font about two decades ago, I still cannot help but associate that font with Apple. Apple now uses its San Francisco font—no, definitely not the same "San Francisco" came out with the original Macintosh—with virtually all of its products and the Apple website. I know many lawyers who pay close attention to fonts as well. I selected Times New Roman for the banner at the top of iPhone J.D. because I associate it with the law: many courts require it, and even more lawyers use it all the time. When I have a choice, I often use a different font in my briefs, such as Cambria, a nice serif font that is available to everyone who uses Microsoft Word. This week, a long-time reader of this website alerted me to an interesting article by Katie Deighton in the Wall Street Journal titled Font Wars Spread After State Department Replaces Times New Roman With Calibri. If you have any interest in fonts, I recommend that you read that article. I am opposed to using a sans-serif font like Calibri for the text of legal documents (although I do sometimes use a sans-serif font like Helvetica for headers) because I think that the lack of the serifs makes the text harder to read. But I also recognize that when it comes to fonts, some people have no preference and barely notice them whereas others have deep personal feelings about them. And now, the news of note from the past week:
If you can sense the smile on my face as I type today's post, it is because I upgraded my home computer this week, replacing my iMac 5K with an Intel 8-Core i9 with a Mac mini with an Apple M2 Pro processor and a 4 TB SSD drive, along with an Apple Studio Display and an Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and a Numeric Keypad. The new computer is much faster, which is really nice. The display is working well, and I love having Touch ID on my computer's keyboard for the first time—something that Mac laptop owners have had for a long time.
What might Apple include in the 2023 version of the iPhone, which I presume will be called the iPhone 15? Dan Moren of Six Colors offers his thoughts.
Chris Smith of BGR explains how to record a phone call on an iPhone. Remember that laws vary from state-to-state on whether you need to let the other people on the phone know that you are recording, and even in states where a statute does not require consent, the ethical rules applicable to lawyers may require consent.
If you want help from Apple when purchasing an iPhone, David Snow of Cult of Mac reports that you can now have a video call with an Apple Specialist who will assist you during the buying process. Folks who read iPhone J.D. may not need this type of assistance, but I'm sure that you know people for whom this would be perfect.
It is widely-rumored that Apple is working on some sort of a VR/AR headset. An article by Patrick McGee and Tim Bradshaw of The Financial Times made the rounds this past week because they interviewed (presumably former) members of the Apple design team who are opposed to releasing something now because it could be better if released later. John Gruber of Daring Fireball did a nice job discussing this article and the flaws with the analysis. The Apple Watch, the iPhone, the iPad, and every other Apple product has come a long way from the first version, but you still need to ship something at the beginning so that you can start to improve future generations.
I'm not a fan of iPad screen protectors that add more friction when you are writing on the screen, but I know that some people like them because it feels more like you are writing on paper. Dan Seifert of The Verge provides his arguments for using an iPad screen protector.
Earlier this year, I reviewed Camo, a great app that lets you use your iPhone as a webcam. I've been using it just about every day at work. Jason Snell reports that Camo was updated to version 2 with a ton of new features. It now works with any camera, not just the iPhone, and adds a bunch of other new features.
In an interesting case of life imitating art, Esther Marquis, a costume designer for the Apple TV+ show For All Mankind, has designed the next-generation astronaut space suit. Seth Kurkowski of Space Explored has the details.
There was a fun update to CARROT Weather this week. Thanks to the integration of ChatGPT, you can now have a text message conversation with CARROT Weather. It is funny and an impressive demo of the new AI technology that seems to be all the rage right now. Jess Weatherbed of The Verge explains what is new.
And finally, I mentioned last week that Apple released a yellow version of the iPhone 14. This week, Apple released an ad for it, and it is fun to watch, especially if you are a fan of the graphics associated with Yellow Submarine by The Beatles, and artists like Robert Crumb, Peter Max, and others from the late 1960s:
I did not expect to have new Apple announcements to discuss this week, but here we are. First, we have Apple's announcement of the new Apple Music Classical app, coming out in a few weeks. Second, we have a new color of the iPhone 14: yellow. Third, we have new colors and styles for Apple Watch bands. Brett Burney and I start this week's episode of the In the News podcast by discussing the new news from Apple. After that, we discuss the popularity of the iPhone, using the Google Photos app on an iPhone, setting your Apple Watch ahead to make sure that you stay on time, the evolution of ringtones on the iPhone (and why we may be due for a new default ringtone), and more.
In our In the Know segment, Brett and I both discuss advanced features of the Overcast app—a popular app for listening to podcasts. Brett explains how you can share an entire podcast, or better yet, a specific part of a podcast with others. I explain how you can use the Overcast app to listen to audio that you download from just about any other source. I used it earlier this week to listen to a recording of a U.S. Fifth Circuit oral argument, and it made the listening experience far better than it would have been without the Overcast app.
A great picture of Steve Jobs has been circulating the Internet this week after it was released by The Steve Jobs Archive in a newsletter. (You can see the picture here.) It was taken in February 1984 when Steve Jobs was in New Orleans on O'Keefe Avenue, just a few blocks from my law office, and the picture shows Jobs peering into a store window to try to figure out what a woman was doing as she worked on a Macintosh computer. The Macintosh was brand new at the time. As Apple's famous Super Bowl commercial announced, it was introduced on January 24, 1984. What was Steve Jobs doing in New Orleans just weeks after the Mac was introduced? Despite all of the coverage of that photo over the past week, I haven't seen anyone else report on that, but I think I have it figured out. According to an old issue of Inc., there was a software convention at the Superdome in New Orleans on February 21-23, 1984, that featured "more than 1,000 exhibits of software products for home, school, and office computers, as well as seminars and workshops on new software techniques, emerging trends, and hot topics in the industry." And apparently, this was the first computer convention at which the Macintosh was shown off, according to a fantastic story that I located on a blog written by Tom Evslin, a pioneer in the computer industry. His short story is full of great nuggets and I don't want to spoil it for you, so instead I just encourage you to read the three-part story yourself (1, 2, and 3) to learn about how Tom and his wife Mary ended up doing work for Dow Jones on the first Macintosh. It's a fantastic read. While all of this was going on in the Superdome, I was just a few miles away, being a Ninth Grade student at the same school where my daughter is currently in Ninth Grade. And now, the news of note from the past week:
You would think that at some point during the recording of 88 episodes of a tech podcast with Brett Burney I would have learned that he has two folders on his iPhone home screen with clever icons, but no, he doesn't tell me about that, and instead Brett saves that for California attorney David Sparks, who reports on Burney's home screen in this post that is worth reading. I also see that Brett shared with that guy in California—not yours truly, who lives in New Orleans—that Brett has a nice picture of the French Quarter on his home screen, even though the picture shows the actual New Orleans French Quarter, not the pretend version in Disneyland close to where David lives.
Earlier this week, I discussed critical security issues and recommended that folks consider using 1Password. Later this week, I came across this article in PC World that picks Dashlane as the best password manager. While I still prefer 1Password, especially on the iPhone/iPad, if you are currently picking a password manager, you should look at Dashlane too to see if it seems like a better fit for you. For example, while Wirecutter picks 1Password as its favorite password manager, the authors say that Dashlane is "as polished as 1Password" so that is something.
Earlier this year, I reviewed Belkin's iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Desktops and Displays, and I really like it. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac wrote this review of the Belkin mount.
One thing I like about the Apple Watch is that it does a good job of encouraging you to be more active. While that alone is unlikely to translate into losing weight, Kristen Rogers of CNN reports on a new study that finds that 11 minutes of aerobic activity per day could lower your risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.
If you were a paying subscriber of the Tweetbot or Twitterific apps, you are about to get a partial refund because Twitter abruptly banned those apps. But most of the refund is coming not from Apple but from the small indie developers. Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories encourages you to take a simple step to show some support for all that those developers did over the years by declining the refund, and I second his recommendation.
There have been reports this week—such as this one by D. Griffin Jones of Cult of Mac—that Microsoft is coming out with a way that you can use Apple's iMessage text messaging system on a Windows computer. But the limitations are severe: no pictures, no videos, no file attachments, no group chats, and you can only see messages sent and received while special software is running on the Windows computer, so you don't see earlier messages in the conversation. Nevertheless, if you are just awaiting a notification and want to do so on a Windows computer instead of an Apple device, I guess this could work.
If you have a HomePod or HomePod mini, you know that different lights are sometimes displayed on the top of the product. Until this week, I didn't know exactly what the different lights meant, but Zac Hall of 9to5Mac wrote a great post that shows off and explains the different status lights.
Fernando Silva of 9to5Mac reviewed an interesting dock for the iPad made by Plugable. It holds your iPad in various angles, provides lots of different ports (USB-A, headphone jack, HDMI, USB-C, SD card slot, MicroSD card slot), and looks nice.
Reuters conducted an investigation of whether a program that was supposed to turn old sneakers into playgrounds was actually doing what was advertised. To do the investigation, Reuters put AirTags into sneakers and then contributed the sneakers to the recycling bin so that it could track where they ended up months later. Spoiler alert: the sneakers did not end up where they were supposed to go. It's an interesting use of AirTags to do a journalist investigation.
And finally, in less than two weeks, one of my favorite Apple TV+ shows returns: Ted Lasso. A trailer was released this week, and it looks like this season—which is likely to be the last for the series—is going to be a lot of fun.
We all know that an iPhone passcode is supposed to remain private. However, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal recently published an alarming story, and accompanying video, that highlights just how critical this is. In this post, I want to describe the problem, then discuss some steps you can take to protect yourself.
The scam
Stern’s investigation revealed that access to a short string of numbers—your iPhone passcode—can unravel your entire digital life. Criminals working in teams, around the country, have come up with ways to cause a victim to unlock their iPhone by typing in their passcodes. Perhaps someone talks to the victim in a bar and volunteers to take a picture with the victim’s iPhone, pressing the buttons on the side of the iPhone to put the iPhone in the mode where it must be unlocked with a passcode instead of FaceID or TouchID. Next, a different criminal watching over a shoulder or taking a video recording from across the room watches the victim unlock the iPhone with a passcode, thereby learning the passcode. Finally, the criminals grab the victim’s iPhone to steal it.
The consequence of having both your iPhone and your passcode stolen are more dire than you probably realized. First, a criminal with your passcode can not only change your passcode (blocking you from using it even if you recover the iPhone) but, far worse, can change your Apple ID password, even without knowing your current Apple ID password. With the new Apple ID password, the criminal can turn off Find My iPhone.
Think about that. The first thing that you would probably think to do if your iPhone was lost—track it with Find My iPhone—becomes impossible almost immediately after your iPhone is stolen.
The criminals might then use your iPhone and passcode to pay for items (using the credit cards in the wallet on your iPhone) or send money to themselves (via Apple Cash). Even worse, if you use Apple’s built-in password management tool to store passwords for things like your bank, the criminals might access your bank account online and transfer money from you to them. Joanna Stern learned of many people who had $10,000 stolen from their accounts.
A criminal with your Apple ID password can also easily delete a lot of your information—perhaps most notably, all of your pictures. And with your Apple ID password changed, this can result in you losing access to all of your photos on all of your devices—computers, iPads, etc.—as one of the victims interviewed by Stern described.
These are the highlights from this story, but I encourage you to read the story for more details. (If you hit a paywall, remember that you can read the Wall Street Journal in the Apple News app if you subscribe to Apple News+) And whether or not you read the story, I recommend that you watch the excellent video that Stern created, which I’ll embed right here:
Steps you can take to protect yourself
Stern discusses some possible solutions in her video. I have similar advice.
First, you need to keep your passcode private. We all already know this, but perhaps knowledge of this specific scam will encourage us all to be more serious about it. Anytime that you type your passcode in public, shield the screen in a way that someone looking ever your shoulder cannot see what you are typing. The scam described by Stern in her article may not work on all iPhones, and you may have other protections if your iPhone is subject to Mobile Device Management, but play it safe. Keep your passcode private, at all times.
Second, consider using a more complex passcode. The default iPhone passcode is six digits. It is possible to change that to only four digits, but you should not do so. In fact, consider doing just the opposite: more than six digits, or a combination of numbers and letters. Apple explains on this page how to use a more complex passcode. That's what I do, and I got used to it very quickly.
Third, be very careful about giving your iPhone to someone else—especially someone who you don’t know. If you do so anyway, and if they hand your iPhone back to you and suddenly you need to enter your passcode, that should be a red flag. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a criminal; it could just be that your iPhone tried to unlock with their fingerprint or their face and put itself in the mode where a passcode is required, but be safe and treat this as a sign to proceed cautiously.
Fourth, you should strongly consider using a third-party password manager instead of Apple’s built-in password manager—not only for passwords, but for other information and photos. And in light of the recent troubles at LastPass, the only one that I recommend right now is 1Password. Stern’s story notes that criminals were able to access passwords using Apple’s built-in password manager and could access pictures in the Photos app of items like social security cards, passports, driver’s licenses, and other confidential documents. A password manager can store not just passwords but also confidential information, confidential photos, confidential documents, etc. Even if a criminal has physical access to your iPhone andthe passcode, the criminal still cannot access items in your password manager because they are locked behind a different password.
Fifth, use two-factor authentication (“2FA” or “MFA” for multi-factor authentication) when you can, and avoid using a text message as the second form of authentication if you have a choice. When there is a choice, it is much better to use another app like 1Password to store the one-time passcode (one that changes every 30 seconds). I’ll be honest: this is a little complicated to set up, especially the first time you do so, but it gets easier every time. And if you have read this far into this post, I suspect that you appreciate the value of security, so the trouble is likely worth it for you. Unfortunately, some banks and other institutions don’t give you a 2FA option other than text messages, which of course offers you zero extra protection when the criminal has access to your iPhone.
It would not surprise me if Stern’s story and similar news of these scams prompts Apple to make some changes to the iPhone that make some of the steps being used by criminals either impossible or more difficult. But then again, Apple may not do so because this scam has still only impacted a very small percentage of iPhone owners, and Apple knows that almost every step taken to increase security can also make life more difficult for innocent iPhone owners in some other way. Plus, even if Apple makes changes, clever criminals may find new workarounds. Fortunately, the steps that I recommend above can help to protect you regardless of whether Apple, or the criminals, change their approaches.
