In the News – iPhone J.D.

As I had hoped, we are starting to see more developers take advantage of Apple’s Live Activities function so that notifications can update themselves to provide useful information.  I saw a great example the other day when I used the ParkMobile app that I reviewed in 2016.  This app lets you pay the “meter” for street parking in New Orleans and many other cities.  After I paid for parking, ParkMobile put a notification on my lock screen with a countdown timer showing me exactly how much time I had left on my parking spot, plus other information such as the number of the zone where I parked.  This meant that while I was taking care of things, I could just glance at my iPhone screen to immediately see how much time I had left, without needing to unlock the iPhone and open an app.  The feature even worked when my always-on display activated and the screen dimmed, although to preserve power, in this mode the notification only displays the number of minutes left without updating the seconds.  Bravo to ParkMobile for this incredibly useful implementation of Apple’s Live Activities feature.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• If you use Apple Music, you can now take advantage of the Apple Music Replay feature to see your favorite songs, albums, etc. from 2022.  Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories has the details.  It works great unless you let your teenager use your iMac to play video games while he listens to music via iTunes without logging out of your account, in which case you will find that all of “your” top songs from the year are songs and artists that you have never heard of.  Ahem.
• A few weeks ago, I discussed reports that certain roller coasters were triggering crash detection alerts on the iPhone 14.  As Felipe Espósito of 9to5Mac explains, this week, Apple released iOS 16.1.2 to improve the crash detection feature on the iPhone 14 models.  I’m sure that the large number of iPhone 14 models now in use has given Apple lots of data to analyze about how to improve the feature.
• Andrew Liszewski of Gizmodo reports that Belkin released an AirPods Cleaning Kit, including earwax softener, to get your AirPods (but not the AirPods Pro) looking and sounding good as new.  The kit is only $14.99.  Seems like a good stocking stuffer, and not a bad present for yourself.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac predicts that the second generation AirPods Pro (my review) ($229 on Amazon) could be the most popular gift this holiday season.  I certainly love mine.
• As a result of several statements that Elon Musk made on Twitter this week, it looks like there could be a dispute on the horizon between Apple and Twitter.  Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reports that Elon Musk met with Tim Cook on the Apple Campus this week, and hopefully they were able to iron things out.
• I consider a password manager to be critical, but developers of password manager apps need to be extra careful about the security of their own products.  Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that LastPass was breached back in August, and it was learned this week that attackers were able to access some customer data.  I’ve been using 1Password for many years, and this hasn’t happened to them.  I’m not saying that something similar couldn’t happen to 1Password tomorrow in theory, but the fact that it hasn’t happened gives me additional trust in that product.
• If you don’t have an Apple Card credit card yet, there is a promotion running right now where new customers can get 5% Daily Cash back on purchases between now and Christmas.
• This week, the App Store recognized some of the best apps of the year.  I was thrilled to see that GoodNotes was recognized as the iPad App of the Year.  GoodNotes is a fantastic app that I use in my law practice and in my personal life just about every day—a great way to use an Apple Pencil to write notes on an iPad.
• In an article for Macworld, Jason Snell discusses the incredibly useful Universal Control feature.
• In an article for Six Colors, Jason Snell reports that even if you only have access to iMessage—such as when you are on an airplane using the free Internet feature that only supports text messages—you can still receive push notifications.  As a result, apps like Flighty can give you real-time flight updates even if you are in the air.
• Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac reviews the Eve Outdoor Cam, a HomeKit-compatible camera with a floodlight.
• If you have an Apple Watch Ultra and you like to dive underwater, you’ll want to check out the new Oceanic+ dive computer app that came out this week.  The app is free, but you can pay to add special features.  The Apple website has a very in-depth look at the Oceanic+ app.
• If you have been using a small handheld device for as long as I have, then you probably used a Palm or PalmPilot years ago.  Jason Scott creates a new online emulation, available at the Internet Archive, that lets you run old Palm software again.  Playing Solitare Pack from Stand Alone, Inc. on my iPhone as it emulated a PalmPilot made me feel like I was in the late 1990s again.
• And finally, Apple released a video this week called The Greatest that shows off some great iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac accessibility features such as Door Detection, Voice Control, Sound Recognition, and Siri.  The video does a nice job of demonstrating how empowering these features can be.  Also interesting is the same video with audio descriptions.