Apple’s parade of software betas started the next part of their march on Tuesday. MacRumors ran a few pieces, announcing the seeding of the third betas of iOS and iPadOS 15.4, macOS Monterey 12.3, watchOS 8.5, and tvOS 15.4 to developers. Those may be out to the public beta program by the time you read this. I don’t know. I’m not there yet. Either way, there is some newness about which to tell you.
Won’t Somebody Call Somebody?!?
On the safety side, a piece from 9 to 5 Mac says the latest iOS beta is now prompting people to designate emergency contacts in their iPhones if they don’t have any designated already. According to the report:
Right after installing the latest iOS 15.4 update on an iPhone, the Settings app shows an alert asking the user to review the settings of the Emergency SOS feature, which is used to call emergency contacts when you press and hold any volume button with the side button together.
Added with yesterday’s beta, 9 to 5 Mac says:
…it seems that it only appears for users who don’t have emergency contacts set up on their iPhone. Tapping the prompt takes the user to the Emergency SOS settings.
Podcast to the People!
If you listen to podcasts (and I suspect at least some of you do) there’s apparently a change on the way for you in the iOS beta. A report from iDownloadBlog the Apple Podcasts app is getting a couple of new features - “browsing by season and the ability to filter episodes.”
Sounds convenient, though - speaking as a daily podcaster - I say listen to everything, all the time, at normal speed, the way God intended.
But you do you.
“Control, control, you must learn control!”
It’s not just the computer in your pocket getting tweaked. So is the one your dad might actually recognize as a computer. A piece from 9 to 5 Mac says Tuesday’s macOS Monterey beta gives Universal Control options a new home. They used to be buried “in the Advanced option in the Displays pane of the System Preferences app,” according to the report. With this week’s beta, Universal Control gets “a dedicated toggle in the main interface of the Displays portion of System Preferences.”
So… yeah.
It’s kind of funny. As 9 to 5 Mac points out, the whole premise of Universal Control is “it just works.” Sometimes though, one needs even finer control. So… there you go.
Happy hunting.
