Technologies

iOS 17.1: Your iPhone Just Got These New Features

Apple’s next iOS update addresses iPhone 12 safety concerns and adds these features.

Apple released iOS 17.1 to the public on Wednesday, more than a month after the arrival of iOS 17. The update brings a few new features and bug fixes to your iPhone, but some touted features, like the Journal app, are still missing.

To download the update, go to Settings > General > Software Update, tap Install Now and follow the onscreen prompts.

Here are some of the new features and fixes iOS 17.1 brings to your iPhone.

iPhone 12 radio frequency concerns addressed

France’s National Frequency Agency said on Sept. 12 that the iPhone 12 exceeds European-specific absorption rate limits, and it appears Apple addresses those concerns with iOS 17.1.

«iOS 17.1 includes an update for iPhone 12 for users in France to accommodate this specific test protocol that requires reduced power when off-body on a static surface,» Apple posted Oct. 10. «iPhone 12 will no longer increase the allowed power when the off-body state is detected, such as while it is sitting on a table.»

New StandBy mode settings

An iPhone with its Standby screen active

StandBy mode is one of my favorite new iOS features, and in iOS 17.1, Apple gives StandBy mode more setting options. With iOS 17.1, you have the option to turn StandBy mode off after 20 seconds, never or «Automatically.» Apple writes that if you choose Automatically, the display will turn off when your iPhone is not in use and the room is dark, like when you’re sleeping at night.

However, I checked these settings on my iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone XR and only found these options on my iPhone 14 Pro. So it appears the new settings are only available on iPhones with an always-on display.

Apple Music upgrades

In iOS 17.1, Apple adds a new button in Apple Music that allows you to quickly find Favorite songs. When a song is playing and you’re looking at its card on your iPhone, there’s a star outline near the song’s title. You can tap this star to add the song to your Favorites.

There’s also a new way to find all your Favorited playlists, albums and songs. To find them, go into the corresponding category in Apple Music, tap the button in the top-right corner of your screen, and tap Favorited.

Apple Music also shows you song suggestions in iOS 17.1. To see them, go into any of your playlists and scroll to the bottom of the playlist to see a section called Song Suggestions. These are songs that the app thinks you might like, based on your musical tastes.

AirDrop using cellular data

With iOS 17, Apple upgraded AirDrop with NameDrop, which allows two devices to tap each other and exchange contact information — kind of like exchanging digital business cards. And in iOS 17.1, Apple now lets you use cellular data to send and receive information over AirDrop when two iPhones are out of range of each other.

Flashlight symbol in Live Activities

Have you ever accidentally switched on your iPhone’s flashlight and had someone point it out to you later? Some iPhone users won’t have to worry about that anymore. With iOS 17.1, when you turn on your flashlight, a little flashlight symbol appears in the Live Activities feed across the top of your screen. However, I couldn’t replicate this symbol anywhere on my iPhone XR, so this feature likely only works on Live Activity-enabled iPhones, like the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, as well as the iPhone 15 lineup.

Full release notes for iOS 17.1

Here are Apple’s full release notes for iOS 17.1, including bug fixes and other improvements:

AirDrop
• Content continues to transfer over the internet when you step out of AirDrop range.

StandBy
• New options to control when the display turns off (iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max).

Music
• Favorites expanded to include songs, albums and playlists, and you can filter to display your favorites in the library.
• New cover art collection offers designs that change colors to reflect the music in your playlist.
• Song suggestions appear at the bottom of every playlist, making it easy to add music that matches the vibe of your playlist.

This update also includes the following improvements and bug fixes:

• Option to choose a specific album to use with Photo Shuffle on the Lock Screen.
• Home key support for Matter locks.
• Improved reliability of Screen Time settings syncing across devices.
• Fixes an issue that may cause the Significant Location privacy setting to reset when transferring an Apple Watch or pairing it for the first time.
• Resolves an issue where the names of incoming callers may not appear when you are on another call.
• Addresses an issue where custom and purchased ringtones may not appear as options for your text tone.
• Fixes an issue that may cause the keyboard to be less responsive.
• Crash detection optimizations (all iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 models).
• Fixes an issue that may cause display image persistence.

Some features may not be available for all regions or on all Apple devices. For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222.

For more, check out my review of iOS 17 and our iOS 17 cheat sheet.

17 Hidden iOS 17 Features and Settings on Your iPhone

Invitation for the Apple September iPhone 15 event

Text message verification codes on iPhone

+15 more

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for April 6, #665

Find hints and answers for the New York Times’ Connections puzzle for Sunday, April 6.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections puzzle was a challenging one. The yellow and green categories were pretty easy, but I struggled with blue and purple. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: We’re not close.

Green group hint: Pay the bills.

Blue group hint: Don’t get a shock!

Purple group hint: Think 420.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Aloof.

Green group: Utilities.

Blue group: What an electrometer measures.

Purple group: ____ joint.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is aloof. The four answers are cool, distant, remote and removed.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is utilities. The four answers are cable, gas, trash and water.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is what an eletrometer measures. The four answers are charge, current, resistance and voltage.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ joint. The four answers are dovetail, hip, pizza and Spike Lee.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 6, #195

Hints and answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 195, for Sunday, April 6.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Is it just me, or is Connections: Sports Edition getting tougher each week? Or am I getting dumber? Fight fans, you might do all right today, but there was one compound word in your category (green) that I literally have never heard before. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Get out of here.

Green group hint: It happens in the octagon.

Blue group hint: They call it football.

Purple group hint: Not on…

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Part ways.

Green group: MMA terms.

Blue group: English soccer clubs.

Purple group: ____ off.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is part ways. The four answers are dismiss, fire, oust and sack.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is MMA terms. The four answers are armbar, choke, clinch and submission.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is English soccer clubs. The four answers are Burnley, Leeds, Stoke and Watford.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ off. The four answers are face, lead, tip and walk.

Technologies

Bill Gates Has Published the Original Microsoft Source Code

It’s «the coolest code I’ve ever written,» the Microsoft co-founder says.

If you want to see the original source code that started Microsoft, Bill Gates is now sharing it. On Wednesday, the Microsoft co-founder posted it on his Gates Notes blog, reminiscing about the company’s early days for its 50th anniversary. Gates has written plenty of code in those five decades but he called this «the coolest code I’ve ever written.»

Sharing a photo of himself holding a huge pile of paper showing the code, Gates wrote that he was inspired by the January 1975 copy of Popular Electronics magazine. The magazine had featured a cover photo of an Altair 8800, a groundbreaking personal computer created by a small company called MITS.

The 19-year-old Gates and his Harvard pal Paul Allen reached out to Altair’s creators and told them they had a version of the programming language BASIC for the chip that the Altair 8800 ran on. Such software would let people program the Altair.

«There was just one problem,» Gates wrote. «We didn’t.»

Micro-Soft is born

Gates said he and friends «coded day and night for two months to create the software we said already existed.» Gates and Allen then presented the code to the president of MITS, who agreed to license the software. «Altair BASIC became the first product of our new company, which we decided to call Micro-Soft,» Gates wrote. «We later dropped the hyphen.»

And the rest, as they say, is software history. You can download that 50-year-old code from Gates’s post. «Computer programming has come a long way over the last 50 years, but I’m still super proud of how it turned out,» he wrote.

Read more: Best 16 Xbox Games Right Now

Melinda Gates: new book

Also making headlines this week was Gates’s former wife, Melinda French Gates, whose new book, The Next Day, comes out April 15. As that date approaches, she’s opening up about the end of her marriage to Gates.

The couple divorced in 2021 after 27 years and three children. According to People magazine, Melinda French Gates wrote in the book that in 2019 she was «having nightmares about a beautiful house collapsing all around her — and then waking up in a panic night after night.»

She acknowledged what Bill Gates has publicly stated — that he wasn’t always faithful in the marriage — and said she was also disturbed by Gates’s meetings with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Gates has since said he regrets meeting Epstein.

Melinda French Gates said her bad dreams would eventually change into images of her family on the edge of a cliff where she «plummeted» into a void. «I knew, in that moment, that I was going to have to make a decision — and that I was going to have to make it by myself,» she wrote, according to the People article.