D. Griffin Jones - page 6

StandBy is a headline iOS 17 feature that turns your iPhone into a smart display on your nightstand, at your desk or in the kitchen. It’s an attractive way to put your phone to work as a small information board or digital clock when you’re not using it.

Of course, it works best if you have a phone with an always-on display like the iPhone 14 or 15 Pro. However, it works on any iPhone with MagSafe running iOS 17. Best of all, StandBy remembers different preferences for different rooms, so you can set it up as a bedside clock in the bedroom, a digital photo frame in the living room, or a music controller in the kitchen. Here’s everything you can do with StandBy on your iPhone.

Glass is a return to the simplicity of Instagram circa 2012. It’s a social network specially tailored for looking at and posting beautiful photography. I have a thing for niche social networks, I guess.

I was an early adopter of Instagram, which initially was a picture-first social network. It’s lost focus in the years since, getting crowded with Stories, Reels, shopping and countless more half-baked features that don’t make sense. I now avoid it at all costs.

You don’t need to be a professional photographer to use it — although you do need $30/year.

How can you find a lost Apple TV remote? Whether it’s wedged between the cushions or kicked far under the couch, a handy-dandy new feature in iOS 17 and tvOS 17 lets you find the remote using your iPhone.

The mind races when one imagines how many hours of human life might have been saved if everyone had this feature 30 years ago.

Sure, you can take the L and simply use your iPhone or Apple Watch to control your Apple TV. But I like having the physical remote on hand, too. Let me show you how to find it.

You can fit two shortcuts into one small widget in iOS 17, a significant change for power users of Apple’s time-saving Shortcuts app. A lot of shortcuts I make are in pairs — and now, you can put two shortcuts of a kind in one small space on your Home Screen.

Shortcuts, if you’re not aware, let you automate the things you do most often on your iPhone, Mac, iPad or Apple Watch. For instance, you can create a shortcut that sets a Focus mode when you get to work, one that suggests easy-to-remember passwords, one for converting units — the possibilities are endless. (Read Apple’s helpful Shortcuts guide if you want to familiarize yourself with the powerful app.)

Home Screen widgets are a great way to launch the shortcuts you use every day. On the iPhone, where space is limited, fitting twice as many shortcuts without losing any icons could be a game changer for your Home Screen. Let me show you how to set it up.

What can you do with the iPhone 15 Pro’s new Action button? Lots of things, if you customize it: You can make a fart sound, or get ChatGPT to help you write an email.

Apple lets you assign the iPhone’s Action button to one of eight preassigned things — or, if you set it to Shortcuts, you can do a lot more. Shortcuts are a way for you to reach inside an app and automatically run a feature without opening it. With the Action button, you have a physical button you can press no matter where you are, adding an extra layer of convenience.

Let me show you what some power users are doing with Apple’s latest hardware innovation — and how you can trick your phone into assigning two or more Shortcuts to the single Action button.

Apple Watch Series 9 is the biggest year-over-year leap in recent years. It has not one, not two, but a whopping four new features, most powered by its updated chip. Apps load faster, voice dictation is near instant and the display gets both brighter in the sun and dimmer in darkness.

A couple of the best features I haven’t been able to test — double tap promises to make tapping the screen with your nose obsolete; improved connectivity with your phone will make it easier to find, if paired with a new iPhone. And with this release, Apple dips their toe into more sustainable manufacturing practices.

The Apple Watch Series 9 a good product. In the end, with big releases like this so few and far between, I can’t help but wonder if it’s close to reaching its potential.

Here’s how to keep track of your mental health using the new mood-tracking feature in iOS 17. Logging how you feel throughout the day, your iPhone will help you identify what’s causing you trouble or what works for you, whether it’s work, family, exercise, sleep or other things.

In order to make any kind of meaningful change, you need to understand fully what helps, what doesn’t, and what you can do. Starting your log is easy. Set it up once, and your phone will ask you every day so you don’t forget.

Let me show you how to start a log of your mental wellness in iOS 17.

How can you best save your MacBook battery life for many years of use? Your laptop’s battery is the most likely component to wear out, and one of the biggest problems is keeping it plugged in all the time. Apple offers some built-in controls, but they’re pretty basic and inflexible. Energiza Pro, on the other hand, gives you far more options, extending your MacBook’s battery life for years to come.

It’s the smart battery manager you need to keep your MacBook alive for longer.

If you’ve ever been the victim of unsolicited dick pics, or “cyberflashing,” you can now automatically hide obscene images in iOS 17. Censoring NSFW sexts can give you an extra line of defense against unwanted, creepy texts. This feature, new in iOS 17, puts suspected nude images and videos behind a blurred gray background.

Unsolicited dick pics are a widespread problem. Among adults who reported receiving nude images, 91% of respondents say they were sent without their consent, according to Indiana University research. And one shocking study published in the Journal of Sex Research found 50% of heterosexual men admitted to sending them!

This new Sensitive Content Warning feature in iOS 17 isn’t just for protecting children. A lot of people likely will find it useful.

How do you create a Contact Poster in iOS 17? Contact posters are a brand-new feature that lets you customize how your contact card looks to other people. If you call someone — and they have your contact info in their address book — your Contact Poster appears on their screen. It looks great; way better than the old thumbnail that was displayed. You set it up once, and everyone with your matching phone number and/or Apple ID will see your chosen contact picture and personalized poster.

It’s really easy to turn an ordinary picture into a gorgeous-looking contact poster. Let me show you how it works — the process might look familiar if you’ve set up a custom Lock Screen.

macOS Sonoma may not have the same buzz as iOS, but there are loads of new features this year to try out on your Mac. You can get beautiful Apple TV-style aerial screensavers, widgets on your desktop, powerful enhancements to Safari and more.

macOS Sonoma will be released at about 10 AM Pacific on Tuesday, September 26. Here are the 36 best features you can look for after you update.

How do you reset an iPhone if you’re trading it in, selling it or passing it down to another family member? There’s a right way and a wrong way. If you don’t fully reset the phone, it’ll still be locked to your Apple ID — and the phone will be effectively useless to anyone who tries to use it.

Follow along to make sure you reset your iPhone the right way.

What do the buttons on the Apple Watch do? The Apple Watch borrows a lot from the iPhone, but the biggest difference between the two devices comes down to the extra buttons. They do different things whether you click, double-click or hold them down.

In watchOS 10, Apple changed a lot of these features. The software update added a new Widgets view, assigned Control Center to the side button and changed what double-clicking the dial does. (For older devices, consult our article about what Apple Watch buttons do in watchOS 9.)

Here’s a guide to the buttons on the Apple Watch.

What’s new in iOS 17? This is a big year for iPhone and iPad. You should definitely check out the biggest new features — Contact Posters and Standby — first. But there are dozens of other great features for you to learn, explore and take advantage of, too.

iOS 17 is out now. I have all the 50 best tweaks and changes organized in this overview.

No, Apple didn’t change the Lightning connector on the iPhone 15 to make more money selling you new cables and dongles. It’s a common conspiracy theory that Apple switches the connector all the time for lining their pockets, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

First of all, Apple changes the connector very rarely; this is only the second occurrence in 16 years. Secondly, Apple is actually giving up money to make the switch happen. Not that there’s much money to be made selling Lightning cables, anyway. And all that aside, it’s out of Apple’s hands — USB-C is European Union law.

You might not have time to watch the full Wonderlust keynote, where Apple spent two hours talking iPhone 15 and Apple Watch. You may not even have time to read the highlights from our coverage. Just for you, we’ve edited down Apple’s keynote to just 90 seconds.

Should you buy the new iPhone 15, Apple Watch Series 9 (or Ultra 2) or AirPods? The new iPhones brought big changes this year. The Apple Watch and AirPods… not so much.

Now that the products are available to order, you might be wondering if it’s time to upgrade. That depends on what devices you have, so I’ve put together a buying guide with charts and a video to help you decide.

Shortly after today’s announcements, Apple pushed out the release candidates for iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and watchOS 10. These operating systems will all be available on Monday, September 18.

macOS Sonoma has a later release date of September 26 and did not receive a release candidate today. Update: The macOS Sonoma release candidate is now out.

There are two important PSAs for developers: The release candidate of Xcode 15 does not support the visionOS SDK. App submissions for the new operating systems are now open, though.

At Apple’s “Wonderlust” event today, the company released an updated version of AirPods Pro 2 and EarPods with USB-C connectors. The earbuds themselves are largely unchanged from before, but the AirPods Pro 2 charging case and wired EarPods have switched from the once-inescapable Lightning port to the universal USB-C standard. Minor improvements to the former include dust resistance and lossless audio when paired with Vision Pro.

The new earbuds were announced alongside iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, which also come with a USB-C port. Both pairs of buds are available to order today at the same price as before and will be available on September 22.

Today at Apple’s “Wonderlust” event, while people tuned in to hear about iPhone 15 and Apple Watch, Cupertino had just one piece of news to share about Vision Pro. Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the event saying the device is still “on track to ship early next year.”

iOS 17 brings with it a lot of new features to the apps you use to communicate every day: iMessage, FaceTime — and last and certainly least — Phone. If you’re trying to call someone and have a missed connection, you have many more options for leaving them a message to pick up later. Changes to iMessage bring small but impactful improvements to stickers, threaded replies and sharing your ETA.

iOS 17 is out now. If you bought a new iPhone 15, you’ve got it already. Otherwise, head over to Settings > General > Software Update to get it. Upgrading may take about 20 minutes after downloading, so make sure you don’t start it at a bad time.

You can turn multiple Live Photos shot on your iPhone into a video. Simply select a group of Live Photos taken in a burst, and you can create a single, stitched-together video that you can save to your library and share on social media.

Here’s how it’s done.

The Philips Creator Series 27E2F7901 is an expansive 27-inch desktop display for your Mac that offers a high degree of color accuracy and quality in a crisp 4K resolution.

You can find new music on the Apple Music Discovery Station, which gives you a tailored playlist to suggest new artists and jams you’ve never heard before but should like based on your personal musical tastes.

Personalized recommendations have long been a reason people cite for sticking with Spotify over Apple Music. Now, you can add the Discovery Station to my list of eight reasons you should make the switch. Apple Music offers personalized music picks, too, and the system works great.

I’ll show you where to find Apple Music’s Discovery Station and how to make the most of it.

Apple’s “Wonderlust” event invite features the Apple logo in a windswept, sandy visage. How could the artwork relate to the expected announcements of the iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Series 9 coming during the Apple event on September 12?

Here is some off-the-wall speculation — the reasonable and the ridiculous.