iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

Apple Watch 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2

At Apple’s September 2023 announcement event, the tech giant revealed the capabilities of its new Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2. The yearly update to both devices improves the processor to a new S9 chip, which will include AI processing cores for the first time on an Apple Watch. These cores enhance the function of every task that relies on artificial intelligence, from processing photos, to interpreting voice commands, to more accurate typing with autocorrect. Those cores will allow Siri to process some commands on the Apple Watch, without needing to communicate with an iPhone or the cloud. The new chip also enables a whole new gesture the user performs on their watch-arm, without touching the screen. Here’s everything you need to know about Apple’s latest generation of Apple Watches.

Reminders are my favorite way to remember things I need to do or buy, and recent updates to the app make it easier than ever before. The Reminders app has historically allowed you to set a reminder to have a low, medium, or high priority, but now you can even sort reminders by their priority level! We'll show you how to set reminder priority in the Reminders app.

It’s not that I don’t like cooking, it’s that I don’t want to cook at the end of a long day. Yet I’ve felt the consequences of microwave meals and take out— my body is not a fan. So when I was asked to test out Mealime Pro ($5.99/mo), I figured this was a great excuse to get back in the kitchen. Mealime is a meal planning app with quick recipes that can be tailored to your personal eating preferences. The service offers five different menu types from Low Carb to Vegetarian and scales the amount of food you make based on your selection of 2 or 4 servings. Overall, I’ve made some incredibly yummy and healthy dishes the past couple weeks. But there’s certainly room for improvement here too.

Apple Watch bands have different purposes. The Sport band is particularly perfect for exercising, while you might want a Milanese Loop for special events, and a double tour leather strap for day-to-day wear. Once you’ve acquired multiple bands, the question becomes, “where do I store these things?” Especially since each band is in two pieces, it would be easy to lose one. I’ve seen plenty of travel kits for Apple Watch, but the Monochest ($79.99) by Monowear is the first Apple Watch band holder I’ve encountered.

It appears that Apple is in talks with Tidal to acquire the music streaming service owned by rap mogul Jay Z, reported The Wall Street Journal. The initial report came as a surprise to many, but now bloggers are making the case for why it could be the best of both worlds. Tidal and Apple Music both have exclusivity with certain artists, but Tidal has maintained higher pay-per-stream rates for Tidal artists.

Furthermore, Tidal now has 4 million paying subscribers while Apple Music has 15 million. If either plan to catch up or surpass Spotify’s 30 million paying subscribers, combining efforts could be a way to help bridge that gap.

The reminders app is my favorite way to easily remember events coming up. Often, I’ll ask Siri to set a reminder for me. When you add a time or location to your reminder, you’ll get a notification at the perfect moment. Usually to edit this information in the Reminders app, you need to tap the blue “i” next to the reminder. But with 3D Touch (only on iPhone 6s and later), you can skip all that and quickly jump into editing. Here’s how to edit reminders with 3D Touch.

Whenever we read something that inspires or excites us, it’s natural to want to share that discovery with others. Luckily, sharing a quote from apps such as Safari, Notes, or iBooks is easy to do. You can share the quote you find on Facebook or Twitter or through Mail and Messages. You can also use this tip to share quotes you find to your Notes app for safe keeping. Here’s how to share a quote from Safari, Notes, iBooks, and more.

I will be honest, I talk to my Amazon Echo’s agent, Alexa, more than I talk to Siri. In many ways, the Echo is a completely different creature than Siri. I don’t need Siri to use my iPhone. Apple hopes that Siri makes me more dependent on my phone, but there is no using the Echo without Alexa. Echo is designed primarily as the home for an intelligent assistant and little else.

Handoff can help you be more productive by making it easy to switch between iPhones, iPads, and Macs. This is especially true when you need to transfer an unfinished email to your Mac because it's getting too long to type on your iPhone, or when you have to leave your computer and need to finish your email on an iPhone or iPad. Here’s how to start an email on your iPhone and finish it on your Mac or iPad.

A little known trick of the Apple Watch is that you can use it as your shutter remote for taking pictures with your iPhone. When you open the Camera app on your Apple Watch, you’ll see whatever the iPhone’s camera can see. This is perfect for taking family photos since you can station the iPhone on a tripod, join the group, and tap the button or activate the three-second timer right from your Apple Watch. Here’s how to take iPhone photos using your Apple Watch.

Gone are the days when sharing photos and videos meant tediously transferring them from your camera to your computer via wires and SD cards. Thanks to email, AirDrop, and the ability to upload content directly to social media, sharing memories with your friends and family has become easier than ever.  Apple has taken that ease even further, allowing you to instantly send photos and videos directly from the Messaging app. Here’s how to instantly send photos in messages.

Save iPhone Battery by Changing Mail's Fetch Frequency (iOS 17)

By default, your iPhone or iPad will continually check for new mail and immediately "push" it to your device as a notification. This ensures you get new emails as soon as they arrive. However, the Push setting can also end up draining more battery since your device is checking for new emails continuously. Here's how to switch the Push setting to Fetch and save a little more battery.

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