Using a Series 3 Ceramic Edition Apple Watch is like driving a weekend car.
It’s like an old, weekend car you want to enjoy for a few days, but then you’re glad it’s over by Sunday afternoon because the car is nice and fun, but also a bit cumbersome, makes a few rattles, is missing many creature comforts, needs to be warmed up before you throw it around, and takes premium gas. 📓
Why your AirPods might not be working.
If you have AirPods 2, 3, or 4, you might have an issue where the sound is too low, or the sound is heard from the outside vent projecting outward instead of inward to your ears.
I recently had a relative have this problem with her AirPods 2nd gen and 3rd gen, and it was due to earwax build up.
The buildup causes the speaker facing your ear canal to be blocked, causing the sound to be diverted to the outside vent in some cases.
If you have changed nothing else in your Bluetooth or Sound settings, this is probably what’s going on.
It can be hard to see any buildup since the speaker grill is black, but you should follow Apple’s instructions for cleaning them.
You’ll be surprised by how much gunk gets stuck in there.
If you want to avoid this problem in the future, consider getting the AirPods Pro 2. The silicone tips have a mesh grille that detaches from the black speaker head. The mesh is small enough to let sound through, but no earwax can go back into the speaker grille, preventing buildup.
I’ve had my original AirPods Pro for 5 years now, and never had the earwax buildup issue.
Apple Watch Meridian Face - Unique colors you didn’t know about.
I’ve written two earlier pieces about the unique colors for the California and Chronograph Pro watch faces, but what really surprised me was the Meridian watch face. 📓
How to add the Apple logo to your Apple watch face.
Just like all watch brands that showcase their logo right below the 12 o’clock marker, you can brand your Apple Watch with a Monogram on several watch faces. 📓
WatchOS 11 gets more well deserved criticism.
First it was Zac from 9to5Mac, and now John from Daring Fireball sharing my pain with their Apple Watch frustrations.
Here’s John’s Apple Watch Report Card:
APPLE WATCH: C (LAST YEAR: B)
Series 10 watches feature a new display that supports once-per-second updates while in energy-saving always-on mode. So the seconds hand on an analog face can “tick” once per second even when the display isn’t fully on. But Apple only enabled this ticking seconds indicator on two watch faces, both new to WatchOS 11: Flux and Reflections. Setting aside the fact that I personally don’t like either of those faces (Flux in particular seems deliberately obtuse), this is ridiculous. WatchOS 11 offers, by my quick count, at least 33 different watch faces that offer a non-digital seconds hand or indicator. And only 2 of them support the new 1Hz refresh rate? That’s bullshit. And it wasn’t just a launch thing, because here we are in February, with WatchOS 11.3, and zero additional watch faces have been updated to support it. This is not how a serious watchmaker treats its watches. I will admit to caring far more about always-on seconds hands than most people, but this isn’t how a serious watchmaker deals with technical breakthroughs like this new display with a 1Hz refresh rate. Not just most, but every single watch face should have been updated to support ticking seconds. Apple Watch is turning more into a fitness tracker that happens to show the time, and away from serving as a proper watch.
Also: no Ultra 3 this year. The year-old Ultra 2 did gain a very nice black titanium color option, but that’s it. Kind of weird for a watch that starts at $800 — and that seems quite popular — to skip a year of silicon improvements.
I really hope watchOS 12 fixes all previous watch faces and complications that are compatible with the 1Hz refresh rate, if not sooner.
As for the Ultra 2, marketing wise they get an A for selling the same watch at the same price with a worse color that everyone seems to love even though it rubs off worse than Jet Black.
Adam Savage reviews the AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid.
A nice review by Adam Savage, former MythBuster. Calling it a review is doing it injustice as he really goes into his personal life and how hearing aids in general have even changed his marriage dynamics. Didn’t know he wore hearing aids, but his enthusiasm for Apple products and his real world experience really shows how useful the AirPods Pro 2 are.
Some highlights:
I think Apple turning the AirPod Pros into a substitute hearing aid is one of the best sub-features I've seen out of this consumer product in a long time. Having been a very public hearing aid wearer for 15 years, I have been sent a lot of people’s versions of earbud-hearing-aids and I’ll, I’m not naming any names but everything I have tried sucked. Everything I have tried had a very bad user experience in the calibration, in the testing, in the integration. These (the AirPods Pro 2) were really really just as advertised by Apple, straightforward, simple to understand, fast to execute, and awesome to use…
If you have people in your life who need hearing aids, this might be a great gateway drug to hearing aids, given that it is a lot less expensive and it carries a lot less of the, stigma of hearing aids. One of the rhetorical flourishes I gave people a few years ago that a lot of folks have told me worked on people in their lives, is to explain that no one who ever got hearing aids thought to themselves, “well that was a bad idea.”
Is the Series 3 Apple Watch still usable in 2025?
I’ve been using the Series 3 Apple Watch for about three weeks now. Actually, I’ve been using three different Series 3 watches, and it’s quite interesting how even after 7 generations, the Series 3 still holds up. 📓
Apple’s Watch faces are broken.
Zac Hall from 9to5Mac rants about the Always-On Display with ticking seconds hand on the Series 10:
It’s the only model that displays seconds on the watch face in always-on mode. There’s just one catch: only three watch faces support this hardware feature. Now, that number has grown — to a whopping four.
Zac’s a lot more kind that I am about this lack of consistency in hardware support, but I’m glad someone else is talking about this. I hope he’s wrong (so does he) about Apple’s strategy moving forward with the watch face support:
The good news is that Apple’s new Unity Rhythm face in watchOS 11.3 supports always-on seconds, just like Reflections.
The bad news? This sums up Apple’s watch face game plan: introduce a few new watch faces annually that feature always-on seconds, while simultaneously removing some less popular watch faces that lack this feature.
Ideally, this is incorrect, and watchOS 12 updates all watch faces to support always-on seconds. A standard analog watch face with numerals, like Utility or California, should support always-on seconds — especially if Apple isn’t going to update each face. Every watch face should support the hardware’s capabilities though.
To complicate things further (pun intended), there are a lot of Time based complications that also would benefit from the Always-On Display with ticking seconds hand, but I can live without those for now.
Apple Watch California Face - Unique colors you didn’t know about
Since the beginning of Apple Watch, Apple releases new colors for Apple Watch face customization during different seasons.
Out of the 130+ custom colors to choose from, there are only 4 colors that standout to give you a unique and more professional watch face experience…📓
The Vision Pro’s future lies in healthcare.
Wesley Hilliard from AppleInsider:
Sharp HealthCare purchased 30 Apple Vision Pros and started a Spatial Computing Center of Excellence in February 2024. One year later, they are hosting a summit to share what doctors have learned about using the headset in healthcare.
The Sharp HealthCare summit enables 300 doctors from 10 countries around the world to share how they've implemented Apple Vision Pro in their workflows. Adoption by doctors has been quite surprising, as enterprise, especially the medical field, tend to be quite slow at bringing new technologies into their work.
The Vision Pro has three main problems for mass-market appeal:
Cost
Comfort
Portability
For healthcare, the Vision Pro actually solves these problems:
As for the $3,500 price, the doctors say it pales in comparison to the $20,000 monitors used in the operating room. And the price coming down will only help drive adoption.
Comfort and portability are also huge benefits according to a surgeon interviewed by Fast Company:
“We were looking around the operating room,” he remembers. “We have a lot of monitors, a lot of clutter. We were like, ‘There’s got to be a better way to do this.’”
It wasn’t just about tidiness. ”For [a] monitor to be in the ideal position for surgery, it really should just be directly in front of your head without having to turn your neck or adjust your body,” explains Dr. Broderick. “But often in laparoscopy, you have to adjust your body, turn your neck, and be in uncomfortable positions. And with repeated use like that, it can lead to tight muscles, neck injury, back injury.”
The doctors’ frustration with this situation happened to come to a boil at an opportune time. On February 2, Apple released the Apple Vision Pro, its first headset. A major element of the device’s spatial computing experience was the ability to float multiple virtual screens of any size in real-world surroundings, unconstructed by the bulky inconvenience of physical displays. Dr. Broderick’s team got its hands on a loaner Vision Pro and worked with UCSD Health chief clinical and innovation officer Christopher Broadhurst to assemble a system capable of streaming video feeds and overlaying them on the live view of a surgery in progress, greatly reducing the need to crane necks.
In short order, the idea became a trial that involved real patients and is currently undergoing peer review. “We’ve done over 50 cases and have had great success thus far,” says Dr. Broderick.
Did Apple fix its Drug Interaction Checker for Pregnancy?
I have tried out Apple's Drug Interaction Checker once again, a year and a half since the last time I looked at it. I had 4 complaints about the Interaction Checker when I first tested it:
Two drugs in the same category that are taken together do not bring any warnings to consult your Healthcare Team, even though they can cause severe problems.
Two of the literal same drugs, with one being the brand and the other being generic, when taken together do not bring any warnings to consult your Healthcare Team, even though taking the same medication twice can cause problems.
The Medications section does not give you warnings if you are pregnant and are taking dangerous medications.
The Medications section does not give you warnings if you are pregnant and drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, or use cannabis.
Has Apple fixed these issues? 📓
CVS allows you to use your iPhone to unlock high-value items.
Ryan Christoffel from 9to5Mac:
CVS today announced the launch of a newly rebranded and updated CVS Health app (formerly called CVS Pharmacy). The iPhone app offers a variety of new features, but perhaps the most exciting is one that’s currently being piloted in select CVS stores: the ability to open locked-up product cabinets.
When it comes to retail shopping experiences, CVS can make things especially frustrating.
That’s because, depending on your local store, you may find that CVS locks up the majority of its products.
Historically, this has required hitting a button to call a CVS employee for help. The whole process is a pain for shoppers and a pain for employees.
But soon, the new CVS app could solve that.
I remember this being an issue back in my retail days, but now you won’t have to have that embarrassing conversation with your local CVS employee to, “please unlock the condoms for me.”
AirPods with “tiny cameras.”
Joe Rossignol from MacRumors:
Apple continues to explore the idea of releasing camera-equipped AirPods in the future, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman only briefly mentioned the possibility of AirPods gaining tiny cameras, as part of his Power On newsletter intro this week, focused on Apple's future wearables ambitions. He did not explain what the cameras would be used for.
The tiny cameras would not be for taking photos, but rather serve as infrared sensors.
Here’s what Ming Chi-Kuo said about these infrared cameras:
Kuo said the new AirPods with infrared cameras would provide an enhanced spatial audio experience with the Apple Vision Pro headset.
"For example, when a user is watching a video with Vision Pro and wearing this new AirPods, if users turn their heads to look in a specific direction, the sound source in that direction can be emphasized to enhance the spatial audio/computing experience," wrote Kuo.
The infrared cameras could potentially enable "in-air gesture control" as well, allowing for device interaction with hand movements.
Although enhanced Spatial Audio might be a feature, I’m sure Apple’s target with this is more health features, such as blood pressure monitoring. I’ve talked about this at length a few days ago, and it only makes sense that these infrared sensors are PPG sensors just like on the Apple Watch for measuring heart rate, oxygen saturation, pulse, etc.
Still a few years to go before it’s ready for prime time.
An Apple Watch, a MacBook, and an iPhone all for less than $300?
Saw Luke Miani’s recent video, and it is a compelling ecosystem for a young adult. I’m talking about a late tween or early teenager, especially if they’re homeschooled and their current laptop is a Chromebook that makes the original MacBook Air screen look like a Retina display.
Yes, it’s that bad.
The fact that a 5 year old watch, a 10 year old laptop, and an almost 3 year old phone can still communicate with each other just seems incredible. It shouldn’t really surprise me since I’ve been using an 11 year old laptop that communicates with the newest iPhone and Apple Watch for logging in and Apple Pay.
How Apple will probably implement their blood pressure technology.
They called it “Stereo Blood Pressure,” which just sounds awesome…📓
Siri sucks, but AirTags rock.
After seeing Siri’s failings getting miserably worse and worse from both John Gruber and Paul Kafasis, I found some hope for all you Apple fans out there. Even though Siri is still “doomed,” Apple’s AirTags are still the best trackers in the world.
Rita El Khoury from Android Authority did a comparison of AirTags versus Google’s AirTag competitors, and the AirTag was the hands-down winner of all the different tests she threw at them. Mind you this test was conducted in multiple countries, none of them being the United States, where Apple might be accused of having an unfair advantage.
Her quick summary in the beginning gives you the TLDR, but I suggest you give it a full read.
I’ve been testing Chipolo and Pebblebee’s Google-compatible trackers ever since Google first launched its Find My Device network in May 2024. For eight months now, I’ve lugged them around, plus a bunch of their competitors, on every flight, train ride, outing, and activity, hoping to find the absolute best Bluetooth tracker out there. What started as a fun exercise of, “Hey, let me see if I can track my husband through a busy area in Paris,” quickly turned into a nightmare because of the sheer logistics of testing these.
I often had at least two or three phones in my pocket — sometimes four — with a bunch of testing scenarios, features to check, and environments to test in. I also had to enlist my husband’s help very often because I had to be physically separated from the “lost” item without losing it for real. Overall, I’ve tried these trackers in the UK, France, UAE, Lebanon, Belgium, Albania, Italy, and Portugal. When all was said and done, I had to comb through over 150 screenshots and dozens of videos. I’ve also delayed this article time and again because I wanted to give Google more time to roll out its network and redeem its disappointing performance. But time’s running out, and if there’s one verdict you need to know, it’s this:
Under absolutely no circumstance should you rely on Google's Find My Device network... just yet.
Nokia’s Design Insights from Apple’s iPod.
Before the iPhone, Nokia was analyzing Apple’s iPod and how it went from a cult status to a global icon. They wanted to know what was it, that drew people to a device that really only did one thing?
They knew the formula, and they spelled it out clearly in their presentation:
• core design team
• start with an idea for an unmet customer need
• drive innovation from imagining user’s experience
• define essentials for “insanely great”
• simplify to great lengths to hide complexity
• grow user involvement through evolution
Nokia dives into each of these topics in more detail, but I wanted to highlight what they said about the user experience:
Apple’s UI is superior to the competitions because it is easy to use, and it focuses on what is essential
“The vertical integration between iTunes and the iPod has been key to Apple’s success.
Because it owns all of it, Apple can control the user-experience from beginning to end.”
Apple has created a seamless user experience from opening the iPod box to purchasing songs.
Apple always launches products with content. The content is easy to find, load and play back.
Complexity is hidden, optimizing flow, integration of key use cases so a seamless user experience happens across applications while user performs user tasks.
Apple’s vertical integration, which is getting even deeper with its own established custom silicon and future Wi-Fi and 5G modems, will only strengthen their brand and the seamless integration between their hardware and software.
I’m not sure if a lot of the material in this presentation was distinctly Nokia’s analysis, or that of Leander Kahney. They used the cover art for his book, “The Cult of iPod,” as the image for their opening slide.
Is the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra ‘Jetblack,’ really Jet Black?
No.
It’s a matte-gray finish that does injustice to the words, Jet Black…📓