95: Recovery Keys, iPad Keyboards, and Lucky iPhones

(upbeat music)- Welcome to In the News for April the 21st, 2023. I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD. Hey Brett.- Hello, Jeff. Good to talk with you again. We were off last week, but back as normal as we could possibly be. But we got to start off with a little bit of a scary story. I remember, I don't think it was two weeks ago, maybe three or four weeks ago, We talked about this interesting video that came from the Wall Street Journal, right? One of our favorite videographers.- It was in February, I think, yeah.- Yeah, February. So Joanna Stern had a video and a story about, I kind of call it like a scam. It was basically thieves coming into a bar, looking over your shoulder, getting your Apple iPhone passcode. And as soon as they did that, they would take the physical phone and then they could immediately jump in and change like your iCloud password. And that was some very scary stuff. But she's back with a follow-up story, which I don't know if this is a little bit more scary. I think it is, but hey, it's really good. I mean, like you said, I'm hearing a lot about these that people are seeing in this story. It's like, hey, you know, is Apple not secure anymore? Like, is my iPhone not secure? I'm not quite ready to go there, But as always, it's good to take a few precautions on this. Right? It's almost the opposite of it, Brad. It's almost that it's too secure. I mean, that's the problem. Good point. You know, it's not just bars. I mean, it could be an airport. I mean, any public place. The idea is that any place that you're in public and you type in your passcode, if somebody is watching or even recording so that they could later replay it and play it slower and see what you type, then they have your passcode. And if they steal your iPhone, they can do all sorts of horrible things with it. Since she posted her story in February, Many, many people wrote back and say, gosh, this happened to me too. And she named a number of cities that it's happened in. I was delighted to see that New Orleans where I live was one of those cities. But anyway the problem is, is that, so once it happens to you, when the bad guys take your phone, put in your passcode, and as you just said, they could then change your Apple ID passcode and stuff like that. Um, the next thing, you know, they can set it up and there's a way that you can set up your iPhone. And I actually have mine set up this way. Now it's a new feature. Apple came out with last year that you can make it so that everything's completely locked down and secure such that even like a backup that Apple has through, you know, iCloud backups and stuff, it's all completely locked down and even Apple can't get to it. So if some reason, some hacker was able to get into Apple's website or if, you know, some government, you know, forced Apple through a subpoena or whatever legal means to turn something over, Apple could honestly say, "We don't have the data. It's completely encrypted and we can't get into it. So it gives you incredible safety and security. But if a bad guy does it, then the good the person whose phone it is, they can't get access. And so that's what happens here. People in these stories are going to Apple and say, Apple, someone stole my iPhone, I want to get my data back, but they've locked it up behind this secure thing. Can you just flip a switch and give me all my data back? And Apple's like, I'm sorry, you can't. And the Wall Street Journal article has people saying, Look, here's my driver's license, I can prove"that I really am the real Jeff Richardson."- Right. - And Apple's like,"That's not the issue."It's not that we don't trust you."We literally cannot access the data." So it's interesting because Apple is very concerned about privacy and security, but there's always that tension between privacy and security and convenience. And some people are saying,"Well, why doesn't Apple change the phone"so that a passcode alone is not enough"to change your Apple ID password?" And they certainly could do that. They absolutely could. But the problem is the number of people that walk into an Apple store and say, I've forgotten my Apple ID password, can you help me out? I mean, that happens so frequently that Apple decided to protect those people by saying, okay, as long as you know your passcode, you can then change your password. But that's the problem. Is that anybody with your passcode? So there's not really a good answer. I mean, if you're someone who's forgotten your password, you're so happy Apple did it this way. If you're someone with a phone stolen, like the people in this week's Wall Street Journal article, you wish Apple didn't make it easy to help people out. So, you know, all we can say to people is you gotta be careful about your passcode. I mean, I'm not saying it's easy. We've all been there before. If you can use Face ID or Touch ID, great. But if you find that it's not working, you need to type in your code, you know, put your phone close to your chest, do something to, you know, watch out or wait until you're in a private area before you type your code in. It's, you know, you don't wanna be alarmist'cause it's not like it's happening to everybody, but it's happening enough that it's a real thing that happens.- You'll need to another story from tidbits here. Adam Inks, who's been around for many, many, many years. Very well-- Yeah, just to pause on that. I think they just announced that tidbits has been around for 33 years now. That's incredible. My goodness, a long time, but bravo to Adam Inks.- Much respect, absolutely. Thank you, Adam. But that's exactly one of the things that he puts in this story, which is great is pay attention to your iPhone's physical security in public. And we kind of take that for granted. Like, of course, well, you should, but I know I walk around downtown area or a park and people are just opening their phone, you know, to take a picture and stuff, you wanna get access to it. I get that, but man, there's a lot of information. I remember in this latest video from Joanna Stern and Nicole, I think also that did it. The gentleman was just like, I can't get access to my photos. Like, I can't get access to all my information. And there is so much information now that we can't carry around on these digital devices with us. And it's so true that you really just have to protect it. You know, I just remember I taught my daughter who got an ATM card, you know, from a bank account. Like when you go to an ATM, like you make sure that like I have my hand covering up my card, as silly as that may sound, it's like you have to look around, make sure that there's nobody around that could possibly be over, you know, looking over your shoulder. You know, I know that sounds trivial, but in the same way, it's like we have to protect some of this information that's on here.- Now, Jeff, real quick before we move off of this, there was one thing in the video I know that Joanna was talking about. I remember setting up, it's like a screen time passcode or password, is that right? Or is that what it's called? It used to be called restrictions, like screen restrictions or something like that, right? And I don't know if that's the same thing. I think it kind of is to where you have to have like a separate passcode, right? So that's another thing you gotta remember.- And the article that you're showing on the screen right now from Adam Inks to tidbits, it actually mentions this as well. There is a way that you can set up an additional passcode for screen time. Now screen time, you know, the purpose of screen time is it's a way that you could limit how much do I use Facebook, how much do I use Twitter, you know, those sorts of things. But as a side effect of that, you can make it so that you can lock your screen time settings or maybe if your phone is in the possession, If a phone's in the possession of like your child, you could lock your child's screen to settings. And you can put a passcode on that to prevent them from changing it. A side effect of that is the same passcode, which locks down your settings app, also means that a bad guy couldn't get into the settings app and use your passcode to change your Apple ID. So you could say, hey, here's a simple solution. Everybody just use a separate screen time passcode. But then, then Brett, every single solitary time you wanna go to settings, you gotta unlock the darn thing. And that's, I mean, I go to settings on my iPhone at least once a day. So I wouldn't wanna be, so again, convenience versus security, you know, you gotta decide what's more important. So that's the tug of war all the time. I remember, here it is. So it is in screen time now, and it's called content and privacy restrictions. I remember Jeff, that when I used to give, you know, presentations around the country, I would tell people, this is early on, right? before we really had some of these issues we're talking about today. But there was a way that it would change like location services. Like if you didn't want it, you know, certain apps to track your location. Now today we've got a lot more options on that. But I would tell people toggle that on so that it wouldn't track your location if that was something you didn't want to do. And sure enough, I've turned a lot of those restrictions off but the other thing was exactly what you were just referring to. To do that, you typically wanna do a separate additional passcode. So you've got your passcode for your phone, and now you've got a separate passcode for screen restrictions. We actually use screen time for my son, my wife and I. So we lock him down to like certain hours of the day that he can get access to certain apps, right?'Cause you got school and everything like that. But we use a separate passcode and I can never remember it. So I have to go and look it up. We actually keep it in one password just for my wife and I. But the point that I'm saying that it's a separate passcode. So that doesn't solve the issue. I mean, it solves it in one way, but it goes back to the same issue you were just saying. If people can't remember one passcode on their phone, how do we expect them to remember two passcodes now? Even though it would fix the situation, but I don't know if there's an easy answer. Just like you keep saying it. I use that exact same phrase all the time, Jeff. It's that tug of war between convenience and security. You know, we've talked about this. I remember a few weeks ago, you could set up a 26 alphanumeric password on your phone, right, instead of a four digit or six digit passcode. That's extremely secure, but it's not convenient, right? And it's like, what do you want? You got to pick one and you got to be comfortable with that as well. Interesting stuff there, but thanks for linking to that story and we'll make sure that the video is linked as well so people can go and look at that. Now, last week, I know we didn't have a podcast, We didn't record one, but there was another similar security story that I found a little funny, but it's not funny in the sense that it is serious, but I know we've talked about this before. This has come up before. I just like the phrase that they use called juice jacking. So when you're charging your phone in an airport or somewhere similar, you might want to just double check the outlet that you're using, or, you know, in some cases they don't even have like an electrical outlet, it's just a USB port, right? You can plug in your charging cord. Well, the FBI even says, maybe you should just reconsider that real quick.- Yeah. The danger is that it's possible because of electronics that can be put into charging cords and charging ports, charging, you know, anything that you put into a wall, that if you connect it to your iPhone, it could try to basically hack your iPhone. Now you, because of the iPhone built-in security measures, you will, I wish I could say always because I think it's always, but I'm not a hundred percent sure in that. Let's just say at least most of the time you should get a warning if it happens. And you've probably seen it before. The warning is something like trust this device, question mark.- Correct.- Which is something you'll see if you plug in your iPhone to a computer. So if you plug in your computer in your iPhone to something that you think is just a power outlet and it's saying, trust this device, you should be saying, no, I'm not trusting that power. I don't trust. So, you know, do not trust it. And if you say no, you can still charge your phone. You just won't have, the thing is you want to prevent the data from going back and forth. Another warning sign you'll often see is this accessory is not supported.- Exactly.- Which is frustrating if you have an accessory that you actually do want to use with your phone. But if it's something that you don't think is adding a feature to your phone, if you think you're just charging and it's telling you this accessory is not supported, you know, that should raise some red flags for you. I believe that you'll get one of those warnings. But anyway, the FBI story was saying people that just, you know, click yes to those warnings or just go past them. You know, then you're in a public area, whether it's a hotel or an airport or whatever. And if some hacker has set up a fake charging station, what is it? Jack juicing, juice jacking, whatever you call it.- Juice jacking, yes.- Then, you know, it could try to hack your phone and you wouldn't want that to happen. The safe solution, so what should you do? The safest solution is just plug into an outlet. If you see an actual outlet, like a regular, yeah, bring your own brick, bring your own cord, plug it in and you're completely safe. But if that's not an option, I will also tell you it's a little bit safer if you're just plugging a cord that you trust into a USB port, because there's even, it's as I understand it, the bad guys, the number one way that they do this is actually by using a USB cord that has electronic threads into it. So if you see just a random USB cord out there, don't stick it into your device. It's pretty good advice for life. Don't be sticking stuff into places that don't belong if you don't know what you're sticking in there. In pretty much every part of your life, that's good advice. you see some gum on the street, don't pick it up. And that's your elf, right? And so that's the only.- So, but again, this is a story that, as you say, I had, you know, sometimes tech stories come out that like only, you know, nerds see. And then there's sometimes tech stories to come out that like your mom might ask you about or something like that. It's like, this is definitely one that hit the mainstream. A lot of people got the FBI's warning. It was widely reported. And so, you know, so when you're in that airport, you gotta don't type in your passcode, watch what you plug into. There's a lot to worry about in those public areas. This came from specifically the Denver FBI office tweeted out this little warning, like, you know, carry your own charger, USB cord. I got to be honest with you. You know, I usually carry, we've talked many times about just having your own little battery charger, right? Because I don't want to have to like, I find a seat or a chair that's like right next to those. I mean, I got, obviously I know those batteries will run out at certain times, but man, just, just bring your own. And again, it's similar to, you know, I think of this just quickly, we were just talking about ATMs. I've seen stories where, I think they call them skimmers, right? So the bad guys would put some kind of little electronics in the place where you would slide in your ATM card. And in a similar vein, I think, well, okay, you know, I've seen outlets that have both electrical outlets and USB outlets, and you could easily swap those out and you could put some kind of electronics in the back. Anyway, it just comes back around to the same thing. Don't just tap, you know, trust or yes on those messages that show up on your screen. And again, like you said, Jeff, you've probably have seen this before. If you've plugged in your iPhone into your computer or even sometimes into a car or somewhere else where you're charging it up. And just, if that message comes up, don't just tap it away. Just take a moment to like, think about it. So good stuff. Okay, I think that's all for our security segment for today. Let's move on to Apple Card. This is actually something that we've, I know we have mentioned and brought up because Apple, It seems like Apple's been talking about this for at least a year, maybe a little bit more. So the Apple credit card is one thing, and then there is Apple Cash or Apple Pay, right? So I'm probably not gonna do the best job of explaining this, but if you spend money on your Apple credit card, and I do this a lot, like at Exxon, or you go to certain, I always buy all of my Apple purchases using my Apple credit card because it gives me 3% cash back. Typically that goes into my wallet in what is just known as Apple Cash, right? It's a little card. And that's great because I've been able to send money to my wife or my kids or somewhere like that and it's just been sitting there. And I know you've got a story when you wrote this up today in a similar way. You could use that Apple Cash in different areas, in different ways, but Apple now allows you to actually put that Apple Cash into a savings account, which I just think is neat. It's almost like this is becoming the Apple bank. Yeah, no, it truly is. But it's good. I'm glad to see it. Yeah, I mean, think about everything that a bank traditionally offers. It's the ability for you to put money into it easily, which you can do, take money out, which you can do, have a credit card, now having a savings account. I mean, pretty much everything that you think of for bank functions, Apple is, people don't think of Apple as a bank. It's getting there. And again, technically, Apple is working with Goldman Sachs, so Goldman Sachs is technically the bank. But as far as you're concerned, your iPhone is. If you're storing up money that you get an Apple cash, which I think is a way that a lot of people do it, you know, let that. Apple actually accumulate over time. And then, you know, next thing you know, you've got a hundred dollars, $500, who knows how much and you can put it towards something special, but wouldn't it be nicer to get some interest? And the thing is the savings account interest that they're offering, I think it's 4.15% interest. That's actually pretty good. I would have thought that Apple would offer like 2% interest, but you know, right. 4.1. I mean, there are some people that put money in the stock market and don't necessarily to make 4.15% if your investments aren't great. So, you know, 4.15% is a pretty good, you know, investment return. So it's pretty nice that you can actually get that. And again, it's just a little bit something to add up. And it's so, once you set it up, the Macworld article that you're showing does a good job of showing you step-by-step, do this and then this and then this. And the next thing you know, every time you spend money on something, and as you say, at some places like an Exxon or a Walgreens or an Apple store, you actually get 3% instead of 1%. When you get that cash back, instead of going into your Apple Cash, it just automatically goes into the Apple Savings Account and at the end of the month, you get some interest. So if you have an Apple Card, I see zero, I mean, absolutely turn this feature on. Why not? Get a little interest.- I've been a big fan of the Apple Credit Card for a while. I'm not the biggest fan of credit cards in general, but I just, I love the transparency that I get with the Apple Credit Card. All the information is right there. And this daily cash has just been sort of like the frosting on top. In fact, my wife and I, this is like our little coffee money. In other words, it just kind of keeps adding up. And I don't know, I'll have 30 or $40 in it every once in a while, but it's neat that I just go to the coffee shop and I can just use my Apple Cash card, not the credit card, the cash card, as a way to pay for the coffee and it's just nice. But some people kind of rack it up quite a bit, like my friend Jeff here.- Yeah, no, I alluded to that in my article. I mean, when I went, I forget how long I've had the Apple card, but I guess I really hadn't used that Apple Cash. And so I went and looked and I had like $700 in there. I'm like, that's real money. So I bought, you don't have to use it towards an Apple product, but when I bought the new Mac mini for my house, and I got it, I've talked about this a few episodes ago, I got a souped up version. So it was thousands of dollars that I spent, but at least I could defray 700 bucks by taking my Apple cash, you know, that helps the purchase for sure.- And you know, just one last thing quickly, I would say, I used to use my Apple cash as a way you can apply that as a payment to your Apple credit card payment, if that makes sense. So in fact, when it comes up, when you were ready to pay your Apple credit card bill, it comes up and says, hey, do you want to use your bank account? Or do you want, you've got $30 sitting in your Apple Cash, you want to apply that? So it's just really neat how easy it is. And I'm just glad to see Apple's talked about this and I'm glad to see that it came to fruition here. Here is the, I didn't know that segment of our show, Jeff. I liked how you wrote this up today. I also knew you could change the text size on your iPhone, but you mentioned you didn't know you could change the text size in individual apps. I didn't know that.- Yeah, I didn't know that because sometimes you make the text bigger and it's like, this is too big for most of my stuff. I really just want it bigger in my mail app or I really just want it bigger in my messages app. And so this post by Shelly Brisbane explains how you can do it using the accessibility settings on the phone. Again, I mean, we talk about this all the time. Features that are technically probably intended for people with a special accessibility needs but anybody could use them. And so Jason Snell had mentioned that there's a new, there's a website called The Athletic, which is a really good website that's now owned by the New York Times. In fact, because I have a New York Times subscription, I think I now have free access to The Athletic and they've got really good sports writers there, but they have a new iOS app, which is nice. You know, you could use a website, but sometimes it's nice to use an app, but he just found the text size too small in the app. So he was able to use the setting to go and just say, We're not opening up this app, make this text bigger, but keep the other texts. So it's just one of these good features that if you didn't know you could do it, now you know, and it's very useful.- This is a great post by the way, by Shelly. We'll link to it in the show notes here.'Cause obviously she talks about this text sizing on the apps, but there's a few other things in here that's like, oh, I mean, I think I knew some of these things, but it's just great that, you know, it's always good for the reminder, which is good. And another reminder you posted too, This is another story from Gadget Hacks, which I gotta tell you, I've started visiting quite often now because you keep linking to such good articles from here. Seven hidden iPhone apps you didn't know existed. A couple of these I did know about, but it's again, always good to get reminded about them.- Yeah, I like the idea that you can use Control Center as a TV remote for your Apple TV. So if you can't find your remote, you can use your iPhone to control the TV. That's a nice one to know about. And some of the little things like the code scanner, you can tap one button and it'll bring up the camera but get ready to scan a QR code or something like that. Now, some of them are linked in here a little silly. They're really just things that are like, you know, testing, it's fun to know that you could do it, but unless you're a diagnostic person doing a test on your iPhone, the fact that you can bring up that screen using some hidden commands, but you know, not nice to know that you could do it.- It's good. You know, I do like that he mentioned the print center. This is something I don't see a lot of people talking about, but when you print from your iPhone, so I have an AirPrint compatible printer here in the house, and so when anybody, you know, I just bring something up in email or a document on my iPhone and I can print there. Well, in the Windows computer or a Mac computer, you usually have like a print center or a print app, you know, that shows like how long it's taken for the print job to happen, that kind of a thing. Well, we don't really have a specific app on the iPad or the iPhone to do that, But if you do hit print and you send something to a printer from your iPhone, if you swipe up and go into your app switcher, you will see a print center, a print summary. And I do this a lot because it tells me like, how many pages is printing, did he enter the black and white versus color, that kind of a thing. But that print center only appears when you've got a print job going. Anyway, I don't see that a whole lot. So I'm glad that he mentioned there too. That's some good stuff. Let's go from the iPhone to the iPad, and specifically, how about keyboards for the iPad? Thanks for linking to this today. I think I knew most of these keyboards that he mentioned on Macworld. This is Cliff Joseph, but it's always good to see, like, is there anything new? Is there something else that I should be aware of? And he did a good job of not only mentioning keyboards that were like covers for the iPad as well, Jeff, but a few keyboards he threw in here that were like completely separate Bluetooth keyboards. I know you and I have talked about this quite a bit too.- Yeah, that's why I thought there's a good article. Anyone out there, if you're in the market for an iPad keyboard, and you know, many people are, this, it's just nice to see one central place. So it's both the built-in, you know, the options that are built into a cover, like of course, Apple's Magic Keyboard, which is super nice. But then other keyboards from Logitech that do something similar, but aren't quite as heavy, although the keyboards aren't quite as nice as Apple's Magic Keyboard, they don't have the fancy, you know, touch pad and stuff. And then the other completely different options, you and I have talked before that I use, in fact, it's in front of me right now, my MX keys keyboard, which I like,'cause I can tap a button and it works with my computer and tap another button and it works with my iPad and tap another button, works with my phone. And some portable keyboards that he describes'cause sometimes you just want something small to stick in your bag, which I use sometimes too. So yeah, it's a good list of options.- So it's good. I mean, it's funny 'cause he mentioned the fact at the very top here, I used to say this, when the iPad was introduced in 2010, I remember specifically Steve Jobs on the stage saying, You don't need a mouse. You don't need a stylus. You don't need a keyboard like it's not supposed to be a laptop. But it's just like Tim Cook said in that GQ article a couple of weeks ago. We talked about sometimes it's OK to change your mind. And it just seems like Apple has really come full circle from this on the iPad. It's like it really can be a complete laptop replacement if that's what you want. And now Apple sells keyboards. Apple sells the Apple pencil. Apple completely supports a Bluetooth mouse capability, which is which is quite fine. Yeah, this is the one that I use. I mean, I've been to before. I mean, just my little it's just an Apple Magic keyboard. It's just a small portable one. And I fold it up in this little case here. For me, I don't when I travel, I find that I don't want a keyboard all the time, so I don't want to have it's always attached. But I can stick this in my briefcase and I'm good to go. And is that does that fold into like a stand for your iPad as well? Jeff, we. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is some of these cases I've seen some of that stand. So it's a nice I use it frequently, but not all the time. I made the investment in this is the magic keyboard, right? So like the iPad is floating here, but I get it. A keyboard it is. And I thought that it would be a little too bulky for me when I first got it. But now I can't I can't stand not having it. That's awesome. You know, if I have to separate it, to your point, I do have to open up the keyboard, you know, all the way. And then I have to like separate the iPad from the back here. But, you know, it's just one of those things that I've worked around because I'm like you. Sometimes I don't want to have a keyboard. Sometimes I do just want to use the iPad as if it were like a yellow legal pad or something on there. But anyway, good options there. We'll make sure that we link to that. Something I want to hear more about what you mentioned this morning in your post, Jeff, is a smart smoke detector.- Yeah.- I guess I didn't know such a thing existed, but it doesn't surprise me that such a thing existed. It sounds like you use the Google Nest Protect. And a story that you linked to today is how the HomePod now can notify you if your smoke detector alarm goes off, interesting.- Yeah, the Nest smoke detector was one of the first, you know, sort of big popular smart home appliances that came out years and years and years ago. Google bought them a few years ago. So now it's called the Google Nest.- Okay.- I'm looking up at one in my kitchen right now. And it's nice because it's what I like about the Nest.- Oh yeah.- Is it's a smoke detector, but it's super easy to use. So it'll talk to you, it makes it very easy to set up. And if you put multiple ones throughout your house, it will tell you, for example, if smoke is detected upstairs in your daughter's bedroom, even the one down in the kitchen will say, speak out loud, smoke is detected in so-and-so's bedroom. And so you know exactly the source of the smoke detection and stuff. And it talks to you and tells you when it's time. It's just a very nice smoke detector, but it also sends notifications to the Nest app on my phone. So even if I'm away from home, if smoke is detected, I could be across the country and I'll get an alert. Now, if you're across the country, there's limited things you can do perhaps, but maybe you could call a neighbor or something like that. So, you know, but of course many people don't have a smart smoke detector, they just have the basic one that was installed in their house. And so now Apple has put an update to the HomePods. And in fact, I noticed it the other day'cause I just opened up the Home app and there was a little alert, a banner at the top saying, hey, there's this new feature, do you wanna turn it on? And when you turn it on, if your HomePod, which is always listening, 'cause it's always listening to see if you say the magic words, A dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, Siri. It's always, let's say, if it happens to hear something that sounds like a smoke alarm,'cause you know, they pretty much all sound the same, it will say, "Hey, there's a smoke alarm playing," and it will send you a notification, which is great. I mean, maybe you don't hear it for some reason. Maybe you've got headphones on in your house and you're not listening, but then you can suddenly get a notification that,"Hey, there could be a fire downstairs." So good, it's good to get those notifications. I think this is a great feature for Apple. And it's built on something that Apple had recently put in some accessibility features. Again, it goes back to things that are built for one purpose, but could be used by the masses. There's ways that you can have your iPhone and other devices, if it hears something like a baby crying or a smoke detector, if you are hard of hearing, you can make it that certain things that it senses, it will give you an alert. So this is just taking a feature that originally was created for an accessibility need, people that are hard of hearing, and it said, hey, we can actually make something very similar, more widely available for people but they could use it for another purpose. So, I see no reason not to turn on. So for me now, if I was gonna have a smoke detector go off in the future, I guess I'll be getting two alerts, my Nest one and my HomeKit.- Just in case.- But why not? I mean, for some reason one doesn't work, maybe I'll get the other one.- They're calling this HomePod sound recognition. And actually when you were just talking about that, I remember there was a video not too long ago from Apple. I can't remember exactly what the video was about, but there was one scene where there was a mother and a baby and the mother was obviously, had some disability with hearing, and the baby was crying, but she couldn't hear it, but her Apple Watch gave her a notification, I remember specifically. And I know that, you know, that's not the exact same thing we're talking about here, but I think it's similar.- It's similar, yeah.- Now this makes sense. This makes sense now, hearing you talk about this. My first thought was, okay, the HomePod is just listening for a smoke detector alarm, but you know, what if somebody just is like whistling for the dog or something like that? Like, does it recognize that? Like, how is that gonna work? But hopefully it's been trained plenty on exactly what a smoke detector alarm sounds like. And we won't have that issue. Here's the nostalgia portion of our segment today, Jeff. I saw Harry McCracken, who has been around and beloved for so many years in the technology industry. I saw that he posted something on Twitter about this, that I hadn't had a chance to read through this. It is the end of a printed era.- Computer magazines are no more now. It's, you know, I remember in the 1980s when I was a teenager and just starting to get interested, you know, magazines like Byte Magazine and Creative Computing and even Popular Electronics. I used to actually subscribe to Popular Electronics because when computers were really new, it was one of the magazines that would talk about them. And then when my first computer was a Sinclair computer and there was a magazine called SYNC, S-Y-N-C, but like computer magazines, that's how you got the information. That's how you learned about software, about hardware accessories, about programs. And so when you were in the 80s and the 90s, that was how you got your information. And then, and of course, I used to subscribe to other magazines too, like Newsweek and news magazines, but then as the internet has come along, the need for paper magazines has decreased. And especially for computer magazines, the need has gone away. So Harry McCracken, who way back when was the editor of PC World, which was one of the biggest magazines in the world.- Right.- You know, he's sort of, there's a picture of PC World right there. He's sort of lamenting that there were two of them left. There was only two left. There was one called, it was at Maximum PC.- Yeah, here it is, Maximum PC and Mac Life was the other one. - And Mac Life. Yeah, and Mac Life was, Mac Life was the second iteration of a magazine that I used to subscribe to called Mac Addict when it came out.- Oh yeah. - And Mac Addict was fun.- Wow. - Because Mac World and Mac User would be more of a little bit more serious, Mac User a little bit so the Mac World, but Mac Addict was the magazine for pure enthusiasts and they did crazy things and they put crazy wallpapers in their Mac. You know, it was the fun one. And so anyway, it's the end of an era. Those two have now stopped printing.- Oh my goodness.- And so if you wanna get a computer magazine, go look on the internet'cause you're not gonna be getting printed copies them every month anymore.- First of all, he talks about how when he was a junior high student at Harry McCracken, he had the Radio Shack TRS-80, which I just, I love that. That was my first computer, I remember, but exactly what you're talking about. I can't even remember the name of the magazine, but I had several editions of this very old magazine that just had some basic programming in the back pages, and I would just sit there and copy it.- And type it in.- Exactly, Jeff. And it's funny, on this Byte magazine, this is issue number one from September 1975, and it talks about a cassette interface, your key to inexpensive bulk memory. And you know how I stored my programs on that TRS-80? I had an audio cassette, one of those little ones, right? Where the door flips up and open and you got the little buttons there. That's how I recorded my programs, Jeff. I just, I thought that was great. And then last thing quickly, it just made me think of this picture of the computer shopper magazine. Do you remember those were like really thick and heavy?- They were huge 'cause they had so many ads in them.- Absolutely.- But I enjoyed the ads'cause that's how you would learn about things.- Absolutely. I remember fondly, this was '91, '92, I was working at a Borders Books and Music, if you can remember those, they are no more. But I remember I was working in the music department, but I would hang out around the book section and specifically the magazine section, because when they had new magazines, like the next month come in, to get rid of the old ones, they would simply rip off the cover of those old magazines. So they couldn't sell it anymore. Well, guess what? They didn't want the paper anymore. So I remember I would just, I would take as many as I could because they didn't want them anymore. They just didn't want to get rid of them. You know, they're like, well, yeah, if you want them, we're just going to go throw them in the trash. And I would just have so many computer magazines without any covers on them in my apartment because I just love looking through it. But the computer shoppers were always, you know, the biggest bang for the buck because it was just so thick and everything. But thanks for linking to this. That was a fun walk down memory lane. And today, by the way, I do remember sometimes I'll take the kids to Barnes and Noble and they still have magazine racks. And I remember the last time that we went a few months ago, I went to like the technology section and it was just so hard to find anything on the computer side. I don't know, it just, it pains me a little bit. I mean, nobody likes to change all the time, but it is the way it goes. And thank you, Harry.- But the reality is I'm not reading them anymore anyway. So what can I say? It's like say, I'm not using cassette tapes anymore. So why should I be remorseful that they don't have cassette tapes anymore?- I read iPhone JD. That's where I go for my news every day.- That's where you should go.- Okay, one more nostalgia portion before we get to our in the know. I'm so glad that you linked to this story from Marques Brownlee. He is officially known as MKBHD, right? Marques Brownlee HD. This is somebody that's been around for many years now. One of the most well-trusted technology reviewers if you don't even know him already.- Oh, he's a fantastic YouTube person, absolutely, yeah.- Well, he took a hit for the team this past week.(laughing) Specifically a $40,000 hit for the team. I thought this was just brilliant the way he set this up. I'll let you take over there on the story now.- Yeah, I mean, people have been selling at auctions these original iPhones, the one that came out in 2007 that are still shrink-wrapped, that have never been opened. And so he went and South of these, which is a very respected auction house, had one of these that they had taken a X-ray to actually confirm that there was still an iPhone inside of the box or something like that.- Right, right, right. - It had never been opened. And so he bought it before he said that he put in, the minimum bid was $32,000 and that's what he bid. And he won, I guess nobody else bid or maybe he only had to go up once or something like that. But when he added on the fees and stuff like that for the auction, it was a $40,000 purchase. So he spent $40,000 to get a first generation iPhone only to open it up. - Brand new.- Yeah, and there's a funny point in the video where he breaks open the cellophane and he says,"Okay, well this has now gone from a $40,000 thing to something substantially less."- Like $30, yeah, something.- But it was fun seeing him open up the original iPhone box. I never had this, the only iPhone that I never had was the first generation. I bought the second generation, which was the iPhone 3G. But the first generation iPhone, it included, you know, of course the old 30 pin connector back when they used to use that. And it even came with a charging dock, which I completely forgot about.- Yeah, I remember that.- I've seen so many original iPhones that are sort of beat up and stuff that it's been, I mean, forever since I've seen one that looked brand new, like this one out of the box. So it was fun just to see how it looked. I thought it was funny that, of course it was completely dead because it's been what, you know, how many years?- Right, 16.- How many years?- 16 years. - 16 years.- Yeah.- Of course the internal battery was dead. And even when he tried to charge it with the cord and the charging brick that came with it, that didn't work either because the charging brick itself had died after 16 years, which makes sense. But he was able to use the cord with another charger and get it charged up and he got it turned on. In fact, the end of the video, I mean, this is just the unboxing. It ends up with him getting to the initial setting screen. I had sort of wished that he would continue. Like I want to see him set it up.- Me too.- I want to see him use it.- I want version two. Yeah.- Painfully slow. And of course the cell wouldn't work because the original iPhone would have only used an edge connection, which networks don't even support anymore. So you wouldn't even be able to use it. You'd have to use it with wifi. But anyway, it was fun that he, like you said, took a hit for the team to show us all what it looks like this many years later to open up a new phone.- Even at the end there, like that screen you're talking about, It was the next step is that you had to connect it to a computer that has iTunes software.- Which doesn't exist anymore.- We don't have that anymore. Knowing Marques and just following him for as long as we have, I'm sure there's gonna be a follow-up video as he goes into this. Because he actually had several other, he had three other original iPhones that he had just acquired over the years for a few other videos that he had done. But none of them were brand new. But by the way, the other funny thing is, we'll link to the video obviously you can watch it. I love how it came to him. It was in this humongous wooden crate that they sent it to him. And then it was wrapped in like cellophane and then it was in a plastic box and then there was like shredded paper inside that. Like they took every single precaution to make sure that this phone got to him, you know, without a scratch or a dent. I just thought that--- Brett, are you telling me that you're not used to getting these crates whenever you buy things at auctions through Sotheby's, expensive things?- I can't--- This is not how you normally get there? your auction deliveries?- I can't remember the last time I had to open up a technology product with a drill and screws. Like he has a hand drill, a battery drill, and he's like having to unscrew the crate to get it open in there. Just great stuff. Thank you Marques for taking the hit for the team. I love it. In the know.- In the know.- I'm gonna talk about Apple Watch because this is something that has been around for a long time. It's just one of those things like I did know. I can't say that I didn't know about it, But it's like, wow, I'm really glad that I remember that.(laughs) Earlier this week, I drove home from a project that I was working on, and I got home about 11.30 at night. The kids and the wife were already in bed, but I needed to unpack a few things before I went into bed. Well, I didn't wanna turn on a light, obviously, in my bedroom with my wife asleep. And I didn't wanna carry, most time people would just say, well, hey, you got a flashlight on your phone. Just turn it on. But I needed both hands. But the other thing I had on was my Apple Watch. And if you didn't know, hopefully you do, on your Apple Watch, if you are on your face, you can swipe up from the bottom and that gets you into the control center on your Apple Watch. This is the area that you can go into do not disturb. You can check your battery life on here. You can do a few other things like go into airplane mode, but there is also a little icon in there that looks like a flashlight. I knew this was on, I'd had used this in the past, but this was an absolute lifesaver. I just flicked on that flashlight on my Apple watch and it was just enough light to let me make sure I didn't trip into the closet, didn't blind anybody else. It did blind me a couple of times. Now, one of the things that was interesting, when you turn this on, there are three modes. we can go into just a white light. So the entire face of the Apple Watch just goes white and it's basically a flashlight. If you swipe to the left, it goes into a blinking white screen, which is, I didn't even think about this. If you're out jogging late at night or on a bike or something like that, it's an excellent tool to make sure that everybody knows that you're there on the road. And then if you swipe to the left one more time, it goes into red mode. It's a red light, which is really helpful if you're out camping somewhere. I remember I used that actually when I was out camping, when I was hiking the Guadalupe Mountains, because I didn't want the bright light, right? It was way too bright, right? There was no lights around. I wasn't in a house or anywhere. So that red light was perfect for being able just to see my general area there. The only thing was when you go to that first mode and you're on the white light, if you turn your wrist so that the face, the watch face is facing you, it usually goes dim. Like it goes almost to like half brightness. And then if you flick your wrist away back to the other side it'll go to bright, the brightest mode. I couldn't figure out how to be consistent on that. And so in some cases I would flip my hand to, you know to face me and then it would blind me a little bit. I wish that what I was trying to do was I was turning the digital crown and I was like, okay surely Apple put this in, like maybe I could just set the brightness on this. Well, it didn't work. There was no option there. And I'm like, come on, that can't be that difficult. Like I would love, the only thing I would say is this was a lifesaver for me using the flashlight on the Apple watch, very easy to access. But I just wish Apple, you would just let me, let me use the digital crown or like, you know, tap it a couple of times so that I could say, only want like half dim, right? Like I don't want full brightness, only want half brightness or something along those lines. It seemed like that would be an easy thing, but you know, Apple doesn't pay me to do, to be an engineer or anything. Anyway, that's the only thing. Remember, you've got a little bit of flashlight on your Apple Watch and it really can be helpful.- I'll say one thing about your tip before I go on to mine. You mentioned scrolling from the bottom of the screen to get to the control center. If you scroll using, you can either with your finger or using the digital crown. If you go all the way to the bottom of the control center, you'll see a button that says something like edit. And that's useful because what you can then do is you can rearrange the icons so that the ones that you use the most often are at the top. So for me, I put, because the flashlight is so useful, I have it at the top and on the right. And then at the top left, I have the one that's the turn the sounds on and off because I usually have my Apple watch completely silent, but sometimes I like to turn the sounds on. So those are the two ones that I use the most, but that way you can just, the things that you use most often, put them closer to the top. So they're easier to get to. And then the ones that you use less often, you can put to the bottom. That's my little tip for that one.- Thank you. I hadn't thought about that. I just did that. I love it. Thank you, sir.- Speaking of the Apple watch, that's my tip today too, because we did not have a show last week And part of the reason for that is that I had just had an orthopedic surgery. I tore my Achilles tendon and so I, it was, I had to go through a surgery and my, my entire left leg is in a huge cast right now, which I've never had a cast on my leg before. So this was the first time that I've had to deal with crutches. I've got a knee cart right here next to me. It's a just total, I mean, number one, recovering from surgery is its own thing. I'm on pain medications and stuff like that. But aside from that, just the limitation of mobility and it's just so difficult to get around. when you are, if you are on the mend for any reason, I don't care if you're stuck in bed with a cold or you're quarantined downstairs away from your family because of COVID or whatever it is, the Apple Watch is just so incredibly useful. I have used my Apple Watch a hundred times more over the last week that I've been in this situation. And so, I mean, the thing I like about it is your Apple Watch, because it's attached to your wrist, it is literally always there with you. I like to say that my iPhone is always there with me and it's always pretty close, but sometimes I move from one room to the other and then my iPhone's in the other room and I'm on a knee cart, it's gonna take me 10 minutes to get back to it. It's like you don't have easy access to it, but my watch is always here and that's what's great about it. And there's so much you can do. You can, from your watch, you can text people, just go to the messages app, or you can even call people, you can speak just to your phone, like it's Dick Tracy or something. And so if I'm downstairs and I'm having an issue and I need help, even if it's just calling my son upstairs to say, Can you come down and help me with something? That's incredibly useful. It's sort of like the digital version of the old, you're stuck in bed and so you have a bell next to your bed that you ring the bell. If you have a smart home, like I do, you can control lights, which is useful because I can't get up and down the stairs. And so I've had to sleep downstairs in the place where we have our TV and we have a couch there. So like I'm in bed at night, in bed, I'm on a couch at night, and then I wanna turn off the lights in that room. I could just pick up my watch and say, turn off the lights or maybe dim them or something. because getting up from the couch to go six feet, I can't do that because of the cast. So that's been useful. Here's another really useful one is medications. I don't really take a lot of medications normally, but right now, Brett, I mean, I'm like a pharmacist. I mean, I'm taking so many different things. In fact, when I first started out, I was taking the serious stuff too, like the Oxy and stuff, I'm off that now. But there's so many different meds to take at different times in the day, you lose track of what you're doing. but the iPhone, and we've made this a tip of the week in the past, but you can go in and you can put each of your medications and what time of day should you take it. And then my Apple watch just tells me, okay, now it's time to take two Tylenol and it's time to take one of this pill and it's time to take one of this pill. And I don't have to think about it. It just tells me to do it. I can mark that I did it. It takes a log of what time I did it. So I can, if I need to go back and say, did I take that the right time? It handles all that for me. It's fantastic. Alarms, of course, if I want, you can set alarms on your watch, which is useful.- Love it.- Okay, here's one that I, I am not a big person to use the mindfulness app on the Apple watch, which has a function in it that used to be a standalone app. And now it's called a part of mindfulness called breathe. And it's, you know, this thing comes on your screen and encourages you to take deep breaths.- It's a pretty flower. It's nice.- And it's a pretty flower, but I will tell you Brett, during those first couple of days, when I was in serious pain, like sometimes I just needed to calm myself because the pain was intense. And I would do like, give me a three or four minute mindfulness of breathe and I would do it. And I'm not a very Zen person, but at that point of my life, you know, it got me calm.- Yay, okay.- So that was useful. So anyway, it's been totally useful. I'll give you two tips. If you find yourself, you know, using your Apple watch when you're sick or recovering or something, first of all, you're going to be wearing it 24/7 because like I wanted to have it on and I'm still wearing it at night because if something happens at three in the morning and I need help, I wanna be able to call my wife or my kids or something like that. But the battery obviously can't last 24/7, without ever charging it. And so if you have a newer model of the Apple Watch, I think it's the Series 7 and later, you can have fast charging, which is nice'cause it uses USB-C. And so like I have one set up right here where I am at my computer, which my computer is just sitting on our dining room table right now, that when I stick it on there, it gets it up to 100% really quickly because I want to do that so I can get it back on my watch, which is nice. Yeah. And the other thing I say is, although I wear my Apple watch at night, in case I need to call somebody for an emergency, um, I don't want my display on when I'm sleeping, cause it's, you know, a little too much. And so what I do is cause I have an always on watch with an always on display. So what I've been doing, there's a number of ways to do it, but I've been using theater mode, um, which is another one of those control centers thing. It's got the two little faces, like the happy and sad face theater mode. If I tap that button, what it does is it turns off the always on screen, so it's completely black. And if I did have sounds turned on on my watch, it would put it into silent mode. Again, I'm normally in silent mode anyway. Now, notifications still come through when you're in theater mode, but I actually like that because if I just need to be notified, I don't mind risking waking myself in the middle of the night from notifications. That's usually not gonna wake me up anyway from just tapping my wrist. But I just like the idea of having notifications. If you wanted to turn off notifications too, instead of using theater mode, you could use the do not disturb mode, which is the one that looks like a moon icon. Anyway, I cannot, you can hear how much I'm raving and all the different features.- No kidding, that's great.- I love my Apple watch, but when you're in the condition that I've been in, it's just been so wonderful to have. So bravo, thank you to the Apple watch.- It's just like you said, I remember we used to like have a bell or, you know, we'd start yelling and it's like, it's just so nice that you have so much control from that way. Well, my friend, hopefully you continue to use the Apple watch and continue to get well. I appreciate it. Thank you. Because that's important because we got to get back on our schedule for the podcast. I don't like this in a week. I mean, it was for good reason and that's okay, but it's like, I'm glad to talk with you again, Jeff, and we'll talk next week. Then. Sounds good.