96: The Shoulders Apple was Built Upon and the Complications of Tim Cook

- Welcome to In the News for April the 28th, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from appsandlaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey Brett.

- Good to see you again, Jeff, as always.

And a little bit of a history lesson this week in your blog post.

But I love it.

I love it when we talk about, you know, some of the, like everybody knows where Apple is today.

Everybody's familiar with a lot of the devices that we talk about that are modern devices, but those ideas came from somewhere, or there's always a history, there's always the shoulders that you stand on.

And I love a couple of stories that you referenced this morning.

It was just great.

- Yeah, the first one was from the BBC who had interviewed Marty Cooper, who used to work for Motorola and was the first person to test a mobile phone.

What I thought was interesting is that it's been 50 years.

And so that puts it in the 1970s.

If you had asked me when was the first mobile phone, I actually would have guessed the 1980s, but I guess it takes a while before like you have your initial tests and then the products you're ready to use.

But it was in 1973 that he stood on sixth Avenue.

And I think it's a hilarious story.

- Great story.

- Called one of his competitors at Bell Labs just to sort of say, "Ha ha, I'm on a mobile phone.

" - Just to rub it in.

- Na na na na na na.

- It's also interesting that he described that Motorola was looking to develop something that you could walk around with.

Whereas Bell Labs at the time was looking to develop a car phone.

And you can understand that because obviously there's better battery, you know, if the battery life issue, having me in a car would be better.

But, you know, and of course there certainly were car phones in the 1980s, we were, you know, those of us that were around remember them.

But something that's truly portable, you know, really makes a lot more sense.

But I thought it was funny in that article in the BBC, if anyone looks at it, there's a picture that has like a couple of different cell phones lined up of the early Motorola cell phones.

And the second one that they have in that list, which is this huge sort of, you know, off-white thing with this big antenna.

That's totally what my dad had.

I think they said it went on sale in 1984, or something like that.

And the article says that in today's dollars, it costs like $11,000.

I had no idea my dad spent so much money on it.

But you know, he totally used it.

And it was very productive that he could be out and about and calling people because his job is an architect.

He's still an architect today, but you know, he would go out to a job site or a house and he could get in touch with contractors.

And that was just completely changed everything.

And I don't have to tell you or anyone else how the iPhone and cell phones today change everything, that you can conduct business, whether you're practicing law or anything else from anywhere.

But it's interesting that it all came from, and so the Motorola folks, I think, had the right idea, that what people really want is true mobility, that you can be anywhere.

So that story I thought was really interesting.

- Yeah, I thought he said something in here, and I can't really find it, but on the mobility side, he's like, "It made sense to put it in a car, But then it's like instead of people getting locked, you know, staying in their house in a room, it's like that idea was just you're going to stay inside a car, right.

To have a phone call like they wanted the true mobility on there.

And actually, I just noticed on this on the story that you linked to.

There's a picture of Mr.

Cooper here with holding the original phone.

And if I'm not mistaken, I believe that's an Apple watch on his wrist.

That is so it almost maybe it's not.

I can't really tell.

There's so many that look like today on there.

But it's just kind of funny that I see, you know, it comes it comes full circle.

And what.

He's 94 years old, right.

Yeah.

April 1973 is when he stood on the corner.

So that's the first one.

If if it wasn't for Mr.

Cooper and thank you, Mr.

Cooper, we would not have the iPhone today.

But but there's there's more history to come, Jeff.

Yeah.

The other story was that, you know, these are anyone who looks at Apple history and you know, we just a week or two ago, we talked about how there was a book released by the Steve Jobs Foundation.

Is that what it's called.

Yeah.

Right.

Whatever it is, it's the friends of Steve Jobs, his wife and Tim Cook.

And it's a, it's a book and it's a book composed of things that Steve Jobs said over the years, some famous speeches, but he talks about the early days of Apple and when, you know, of course, Apple became famous with the Apple too, but he got an invitation and he negotiated it with Xerox to be able to see the things that they were working on in the research lab, Xerox mark and saw early, early versions of a graphical interface that you could drag things and have a mouse and stuff like that.

And when you look at the Xerox, what they were using today, it seems so simplistic.

But I mean, everybody at Apple says that was the inspiration for the graphical user interface.

And it's not just the, the, the GUI.

It was the, the idea that, you know, the Apple two was a groundbreaking computer, but much like the IBM and the other one, it was still just, you know, text on a screen and stuff, and you can have graphics, but graphical user interfaces were important, not just because they were GUIs, but because it was the idea of making technology more approachable.

And I think that's been Apple's mantra ever since, you know, they want the iPad and the iPhone to be intuitive.

And that's something that's a deep part of Apple's history.

And it all goes back to the things that they saw at Xerox PARC.

So then the other thing that was in the story is that Xerox PARC, Xerox decided to donate PARC 'cause they weren't using it as much to this organization called SRI, which originally stand for the Stanford Research Institute.

- Right.

- And it was founded, and I wanna say the '50s or something.

And one of its original things that official intelligence research for funded by, if people remember that stuff, which also funded the origins of the internet.

And so SRI over the years was one of the early researchers into AI.

And you fast forward to the, what was it.

The 2000s and they had came up with an app that I remember using, I'm sure you did too.

It was the SRI app called Siri, you know, just SRI.

- It was a separate app, right.

- It was a separate app and it was a primitive version of what Siri is today.

In some ways it was more powerful because it could do it in some ways, at least a lot more than what Siri initially did, but Apple was so intrigued by it.

And it was so far ahead of what Apple itself had that they just acquired it from SRI, kept the name the same, and that's the origin of what Siri is today.

So it was interesting that these two companies, Xerox PARC and SRI, which have such an important role in Apple, both way back when and more recently, are now together combined.

And I'm sure they will continue to research all sorts of forward-looking technologies that seem very futuristic to us.

And who knows what the next thing is that will trickle down to something that you and I are holding in our hands and using.

So it's a history lesson, but it's also relevant today.

It's so interesting.

- It just made me remember, I remembered it correctly.

It was an app that had a black background and Syrian and white, and then a little green swirl.

And sure enough, I found it.

That's the old Siri.

Like it was a completely separate app.

And then, wow, man, talk about the history and how that's come full circle.

And it's just that you can get access to that right now on your phone.

And it's just amazing to see how Apple, if we look back and see some of these origins, it's just incredible that Apple will purchase a technology, they'll implement it or integrate it completely into the operating system so that it's like, you feel like it's been there forever.

Well, from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook, let's talk about Tim Cook.

What an interesting story you link to today, Jeff.

It's like, I've often heard of this, It's like I know Tim Cook and all the Apple executives have their own iPhones.

I'm sure they have Apple watches and it's good to know that point, but then it's like, wait, I want to know what apps you have on your phone.

I want to know what complications, you know, what watch face are you using.

And now, at least thanks to the story you linked to today, we know exactly what Tim Cook's watch Apple watch face looks like.

And thanks to Mr.

Griffin Jones here from a cult of Mac.

We can even download the Apple watch face that Tim Cook uses.

Thank you very much.

That's right.

When Tim Cook was in India last week, there was just one pose of him holding up his Apple watch and you could totally see his watch face and all the complex, which perhaps more interesting of all the complications in it.

Right.

And so they did a good job of this article of going through each of the complications and it's things like, uh, yeah, you can pull it up there.

It's things like the, um, you know, one was a link to his, uh, to, I want to say the workout app, uh, scroll down a little bit, it's right there.

And then one was the link to, I'm trying to think what it was.

Oh, there we go.

It's the, the, the, the stocks, the stocks up, the temperature, you know, a lot of this is, you know, your schedule.

Um, it was interesting that one of his things was a direct link to blood oxygen and one was a direct link to ECG, which, you know, that's fine.

You know, it's a good thing to check your blood oxygen and your ECG.

Would I use those so often that they would be a complication on my Apple watch face.

Maybe not, but you know, that's Tim Cook's prerogative, you know, do what you want to do.

Um, I thought it was interesting that one of his links is to the home app because there's a link that you go through a couple of levels, but, um, years ago, uh, and it was back in 2017.

So this was five years ago.

Tim cook was talking about how his house was very, I'm sure it still is today.

Was very much of home kit enabled.

And he had this part.

I'm just going to read this sentence to you.

If he says, you know, now when I say good morning, uh, my house lights come on and my coffee starts brewing.

When I go to the living room to relax in the evening, I use Siri to adjust the lighting and turn on the fireplace.

And then when I leave the house, a simple tap of my iPhone turns the lights off, adjusts the thermostat down and locks the door.

When I returned to my house in the evening, the house prepares itself for arrival automatically using a simple gesture.

So, you know, five years ago, he had a very HomeKit enabled, Siri enabled house, and I'm sure it's even more so today.

So of course he's using that complication on his Apple Watch to jump right into there.

So anyway, I thought it was interesting to sort of see what Tim Cook is using on his Apple Watch.

- I love it, you know, just quickly going back to the blood oxygen and the ECG, it's like, you know, we could really start a rumor here.

Right.

It's like, you know, even the author says, "I know that Tim Cook is in his 60s, but how often does he really need to take an ECG.

" It's like, is there something going on that we don't know about.

Like we're snooping out on your Apple Watch there.

- But you know, the flip side is everybody says that Tim Cook is incredibly health conscious.

I mean, he works out in the morning and I know he's serious about it.

So if you're really into your body and health, there's a certain degree of, and this is sort of what I like about some of the circles on the watch, it's like sort of the gamification and it's the quantification of health.

And so if you're really into it, maybe you do wanna frequently see what your EKG or ECG, whatever you call it is.

And maybe you do frequently wanna see your blood oxygen level.

So maybe he's just really into the numbers, which I totally understand.

- And HomeKit automation, which is really nice too.

You link to an app from one of our favorite app developers that have been around for a long time, Readdle.

And we often talk about PDF Expert.

We've talked about several other apps that they have, the Documents app, lots of other great apps.

But one of the apps that I think has kind of flown under the radar for a long time for them is simply called Calendars.

It is a calendars app.

Now, obviously you already have a calendar app, on your Mac and your iPhone and your iPad.

It works great.

We have also talked though, Jeff, often about Fantastical, which I just recently, maybe a few months ago, subscribed to.

Very happy with Fantastical.

And I got a family service so that everybody in my family is able to use it too.

And it's been really, really neat to take advantage of some of those, I think kind of like, it's almost like Calendar Plus.

It's like there's a basic calendar, but then Fantastical just adds on so many layers on this.

But a listener, thank you Steve, reached out a few weeks ago and mentioned that the annual subscription for Fantastical just went up.

I think it was like $60 and now it's gonna be $79, somewhere around there.

It's gonna go up maybe about $10 or so, something like that.

I still personally think it's a good investment, but I can imagine that some people may not, Jeff.

And so I'm glad that you linked to this story today.

So Riedel just overhauled their calendars app.

They now have access to watch faces, which by the way, I think it's really cool that they offer some additional watch faces.

So you can get Tim Cook's Apple watch face.

You can get some additional watch faces from Riedel that you can download on this as well.

But the calendars app is another great alternative.

If you don't wanna do fantastic calendar, you want something maybe just a little bit more than just the basic calendars app, we definitely recommend something from Riedel anytime.

- And I think you can get, unlike all the features for like 20 bucks a year or something, so, you know, really not that expensive.

- That's right, yeah, it is free to download.

Sure, thank you.

I meant to mention that, it is free to download.

And then if you want the pro version, which like you said, I think just unblocks some additional features, $20 a month is the pro.

We've talked many times about spatial audio for Apple Music.

I gotta tell you, I continue to become a big fan of it.

And I have done something every once in a while, which I'm glad you leaked to this story.

Sometimes I'll pull up the same album on Apple Music and on Spotify, 'cause I subscribe to both.

I love having access to all the music.

And I like to compare what they sound, they're like, which one sounds better.

Now I am no, you know, audio, audiophile scientific by any stretch there, but I'm glad that you linked to this story from Tyler Hayes, a practical guide for why spatial audio music is great.

And I really enjoyed the way he described it here, more so from a depth to the music, Jeff.

I agree.

There are some, uh, Apple music itself has some made for spatial audio playlist.

Which is great because it features some of the songs that really sound the best, but he did a nice job, nice job of identifying some specific songs where you can really hear it.

Um, and like you, Brett, sometimes I will just out of curiosity, compare sometimes you can find different versions of the same song on Apple music, one of which will be the spatial audio, you know, Dolby Atmos version.

And one of which is not.

And if you go back and forth, it's interesting because I'll give you an example, there's one that he linked here, which is Michael Jackson's famous song Thriller.

And there's a many versions of Thriller, but the long version of Thriller begins with, you know, it's sort of like spooky sounds of the graveyard and there's some wolves and stuff like that.

- It's like the wolves, yeah, they're howling, right.

- You know, exactly.

And if you listen to the stereo version of that song, you can hear that the wolves are in one ear and then the other ear, you know, they try to make a richer musical landscape, but then if you listen to the spatial audio version, it's just a lot fuller.

It's, you know, it almost seems more around you.

It's, it's, it's hard to describe spatial music because a lot of it is more of the way you feel than the way it's down.

Oh, that's good.

That's good.

It just feels more.

And so I thought it was interesting for him to pick out that one particular song because you can find both, both versions in Apple music to listen to it.

So, and then he has some other things that he picks in here.

So if you're just looking to sort of, you know, sort of play around with the gimmickry, the gimmicks of it, in addition to the songs that Apple selects, uh, tracks in here that, that take advantage of spatial audio in ways that he describes and it's just sort of fun to play around and listen to it.

If you're looking for something else to listen to, I was thrilled with your post, Jeff, from this past week because some people may not know it is Jazz Fest in New Orleans, which is wonderful.

But you had a leak from, I guess, a friend of the blog, another lawyer that put together amazing Jazz Fest playlist for Apple Music.

And I love to click through whenever somebody like offers a playlist.

I'm a sucker, Jeff.

I like I'm like, OK, I want to know what you're listening to.

You know, it's great.

I got to tell you, I clicked through this morning and I had it on the entire morning.

It was great.

In fact, one of the songs.

What was her name.

Jermaine Basile.

I had no idea.

I had not known about her.

She's a New Orleans native.

But in this playlist and thank you, it is.

This is Bill Kelly, right.

Thank you for putting this together.

Jermaine Basil does a version of Route 66, which is just amazing.

So thank you for putting that together and thank you for posting about that, Jeff.

Love that.

- Yeah, likewise.

There were lots of songs that I heard here, either artists that I knew, but it was a song I wasn't familiar with, or artists that I had never heard of before.

That's one of my favorite things.

I mean, this is true of any musical concert with lots of artists, but I always experience it at Jazz Fest when I go is, you know, I might be going because I really want to listen to, you know, who knows, you know, Paul Simon or some big actor, you know, you know, whatever.

But then while you're there throughout the day, you know, you might find yourself at the, what they call the Fado Do stage, which is Cajun music.

And there's a band I've never heard of from, you know, Lafayette, Louisiana.

And I'm like, this band is amazing.

And then next thing you know, you're walking past the jazz tent and you hear somebody you're like, oh my goodness, this person is so good.

I remember years ago that I was walking past the jazz tent in the morning and I listened to this guy named John Batiste who I'd never heard of before.

And of course he went on to fame and fortune on the late show with Stephen Colbert.

But that was when he was just a student in Juilliard and one of the early acts.

And I was like, wow, this guy's great.

So I love the serendipity of just finding new music.

So this, Bill Kelly, what he put together, it's truly a gem.

It's a great playlist that I encourage folks to check out because you will find some new artists that you haven't heard of.

And of course, because it's Jazz Fest, there's more New Orleans artists on the list than you might otherwise find in other playlists, but it's certainly not exclusively that.

It's all sorts of artists from all over the place.

So great playlist.

- So fun.

Something else fun.

Let's try starting a where you at segment, Jeff.

We talked about this, go ahead, you explain for us.

Where you at.

- So Brett had the idea and it was a great one.

We always have these stories about people using Apple Find My technology, whether it was to find themselves or find their air tags or whatever.

And so we said, well, since we report on these stories so often, why not have a special segment.

But instead of calling it the Find My segment, because that's sort of generic, since at least one of us is from New Orleans, let's call it the where yet.

Where yet is a phrase that's very popular in New Orleans.

If you've ever been to the city, it's people have been saying it forever.

It's where, and then W, I'm sorry, Y apostrophe, A T question mark.

And although it sounds like you're asking, where are you at.

It's really not a question about geographical location.

Where yet is sort of like, how are you doing.

What's going on.

- What's up.

- You know, maybe if you were in Hawaii, you might say aloha.

It's the same sort of idea.

So it's a very common phrase in New Orleans.

In fact, that just a simple, the second half of it, yet, people will often refer to a person as being a yacht if they speak with a New Orleans accent, which I do not have, or people will refer to, you know, sort of the yacht language so this is a big New Orleans thing.

So this is our new where yacht segment, talking about people using Apple technology to find themselves or other things.

- You got a good one to start off with too.

This is good, it's another AirTag story.

AirTag tracks down carjacked car used in a shootout.

I mean, I know we're laughing about it and some of this is not, it's not funny.

And frankly, a lot of this hopefully, you know, ends in with in a happy way.

There was a happy ending to the story.

They found the car.

But unfortunately, the car was total simply because the person, the thief that carjacked the car decided to like drive through what they drive through several yards and get involved in a shootout of some kind.

So unfortunately, the car was not drivable after this.

But because there was an air tag in the car, the police were able to track it down, which is good.

Again, that's sort of the happy ending, at least from that aspect.

- Yeah, and I find this is an interesting story 'cause I think it's sort of a cautionary tale that it's very tempting if you have an air tag hidden in a car.

In fact, originally there were two because he had one on his car keys and the thief saw that one and threw it out the window.

But then there was another one hidden in the car.

And it might be tempting to say, I can see where my car is, why don't I just go get it.

But the reason that you should call the police and not try to take matters into your own hands is that in the course of only an hour, his car was completely trashed and involved in a shootout.

So Lord, thank goodness.

He was not, and you know, this is not uncommon.

I mean, I'm not a police officer, but I often hear these stories of one of the reasons people steal cars is that they can then use the car to commit a crime, maybe try to shoot somebody or something like that, because they haven't, because the police don't know who the car belongs to.

It's not associated with them if they see the license plate.

So this is a good cautionary tale of, it's great that you can find your car, but let the police do it, not yourself.

- Another where you at story, where you at story.

This isn't so much the Find My, this is why I'm glad that we're, you know, we're expanding it to where you at a little bit.

This is the iPhone 14 emergency SOS feature, which saves some students that were stuck in a canyon in Utah.

Another amazing story here.

- And what's interesting about this story is that these college students at BYU, they had planned for this trip to a place called the squeeze.

It's sort of an area that you can hike and rappel.

And they had done the research.

I mean, they claim at least that they had done the research and they knew what they were into and they tried to pack the right stuff.

But what they weren't prepared for is that, I don't know if there, for whatever reason, there was more water there than they had anticipated and ended up in an area where they were sort of, you know, in water, you know, almost completely.

And because of the temperature, some members of their party started to experience hypothermia and could not get to a safe area.

And it was a dangerous situation.

They could not use their cell phones, but fortunately, even though they were in the canyon, there was a, you know, once every 20 minutes, the Apple satellite would come on top of them and they could send that SOS signal.

So that was key.

And it took a couple of time, a couple of rotations of the satellite coming over to get all the information out there.

But then the local authorities were able to find them and rescue them.

And again, but for this technology, you know, it's sort of scary.

What would have happened to these people.

You know, hyperthermia is serious.

I mean, you could die from that.

So, you know, this is another example, we all hope that we're not in this situation to begin with, but just in case you ever are, thank goodness, you can use the satellite feature with the newest iPhones.

- I mean, they described, yeah, they described the situation and, you know, in my mind, I'm trying to visualize, I mean, you're in a canyon, so I'm imagining like you've got walls on both sides and you're looking up in this small sliver of the sky, right.

And it's like, you're holding your, only one of the party had an iPhone 14.

And so every 20 minutes, just like you said, Jeff, apparently that satellite was visible to the iPhone in that sliver of sky.

And they were able to connect, you know, to the SOS satellite.

Now, again, this is only on iPhone 14s and 14 Pros, right.

If I'm not mistaken.

So you have to have that, like this is the only devices that have the hardware that can connect to an SOS satellite.

But wow, happy ending here all around on that.

- Yeah, that's the only model of iPhone.

Can't the newest Apple Watches do satellite.

- Wrong about that, it's just iPhones, I forget.

- I think it's just the iPhone.

- But definitely the new iPhones.

- Yeah, I don't.

- Okay.

- At least the Apple Watch Ultra, you know, I'll check on that.

I know that there is an emergency.

- I'm gonna look at that while you go on to the next topic.

- You do, yeah, very good, okay.

Well, we'll go from the satellite SOS to Apple Pay.

You know, not quite, I mean, I guess you can do where yet on that, But anyway, we're moving on from the where yet segment, but we'll continue to do that.

You know, I feel like I know a few retailers, right.

Or in this instance, the story you're linked to is a grocer that have kind of held out from doing Apple Pay.

It comes to mind even like Costco, for example, right.

Costco used to only accept American Express and they wouldn't accept anything else.

But you know, they've turned it over anyway.

In a similar vein, I believe Kroger has been refusing to accept Apple Pay because they said, "Hey, we've got Kroger Pay.

" I think that's what they called it, right.

I don't even know.

"We've got Kroger Pay and we're better.

"You should use Kroger Pay and not Apple Pay.

" But it seems like it's hard to buck the system, right.

They apparently have relented in locations in Kentucky and Ohio.

And actually, I'm in Cleveland, Ohio.

We don't have Kroger's up there, but down south in Cincinnati or so, they do.

But I might go in and just try it just because I can now.

They are now accepting Apple Pay.

So I'm glad you're getting on board there.

- Yeah.

You know, here, you know, in New Orleans we used to have both Walgreens and CVS.

We don't really have the CVS as much anymore.

We have, we have some of them but they're not as convenient to me.

But I mean, there were definitely times where I would go to Walgreens over CVS just because I could use Apple Pay and it was just more convenient to pay with my watch and stuff like that.

So speaking about the, which I don't think that the watch does have a satellite.

I was confused about that.

I think it's just iPhone 14, like you said.

But so yeah, so I mean, it, you know, I can understand At the same time, I'm sure the Kroger would love to have not only the financial, you know, not have to pay something to Apple.

I don't know how that works.

But also just from a data collecting fee, if people are using the Kroger app, they can get a lot more information about you, which is sort of the whole point.

That's the reason that I sort of like the Apple Pay is that it is anonymous and stuff like that.

So anyway, it's nice to have choice.

And I know that for some people, Kroger is the major grocery chain where they live.

So it would be nice for those folks at this expense.

- Yeah, I just have to say, I am using Apple Pay in various ways so much now, especially when I travel, Jeff, but even when I'm home.

I mean, I have all my credit cards in there in Apple Pay, and so I can select whichever one that I want to get points on someone, or if I just wanna use the Apple Card.

And I gotta tell you, it is so stinking convenient to the point where I'm like, I'm rethinking my wallet approach.

It's like, do I really need to carry the physical cards.

I get annoyed now when I have to pull out my wallet because I'm like, I don't want to do that.

I don't want to hand a physical card with physical numbers to somebody that I may or may not trust, especially if you're in a restaurant or something like that, even though I still do that.

But I'm just saying, I so much prefer to be able to use Apple Pay credit cards either from my watch or from my phone, and I don't even have to carry so many things.

I feel like I still have to have a physical card as sort of a backup, but I'm looking forward to the day where I don't even have to worry about that.

Like to me, a physical card is so less secure now, and I'm just looking for, I, you know, I, I see the progression and we're getting there and to the point where, you know, more and more places are accepting it, but I mean, this is a bigger, a bigger story where I'm referencing here, but I'm just, I'm enjoying the fact that we're kind of, we're on that way for sure.

I'll give you one more example of that.

This past Christmas, we decided to give my two teenage kids, we made them additional names on our credit card so that if they're about, about, about, you you know, we get in, they don't have enough cash with them.

They can use credit card to pay for something, which is safer.

But although they have a physical credit card, I sort of prefer for them to use Apple Pay, especially my son who has an Apple watch, because he's not taking out the Apple, he's not taking out the credit card and maybe forgetting it and stuff like that.

It just seems like there's a lot more convenience there.

And even if they're using the phone to pay, the phone is something that's so near and dear to their life that they're very careful with it and keep track of it.

And so that's the best, you know, We've encouraged our kids, if you're going to pay for something on the credit card, try to do it with your Apple Watch or your phone.

And if you have to use the physical credit card, so be it.

But they actually don't.

They don't use it very often, just every once in a while.

All right.

Well, because I carry so many credit cards on my iPhone, I continue to be fascinated watching some of these news stories about additional security or the security factors is with the iPhone.

Over the last several weeks, you and I, Jeff, have been talking about the videos coming from the Wall Street Journal about thieves being able to, if they get your Apple passcode, that they can unlock the phone, obviously the physical phone, and then they immediately go and start changing your iCloud, your Apple ID, your iCloud password, which just wreaks havoc, not just for your phone itself, but for so many other things that we're doing.

And then just last week, right, I think we talked about the recovery passcode on your iPhone.

And then you have followed up this week now with another video, which isn't quite as interactive.

You know, I always like Joanna Stern and how, you know, she's, it's kind of funny.

But it's a good little, you know, follow up and reminder again, like I don't think we can harp on this story enough, Jeff, just to make sure that everybody listening is aware and familiar with some of the additional settings maybe that you can apply onto your iPhone to continue to secure it even more.

- Yeah, this video is more of an audio back and forth with some graphics on the screen.

It's not like a true video, but having said that it's got some good information in it.

I mean, what it focuses on is the recovery key system, which was a good system.

I think the main reason it was enacted was to protect you when the bad guy was somewhere afar.

And the one that you would always hear about is that somebody would convince just through social engineering, would convince a local AT&T or Verizon store, "Hey, I really am John Doe and I lost my phone and can you give me a new one.

" And they would give them the phone that was associated with your phone number.

And then suddenly they could read your text messages and do everything else.

But in order to get into your Apple account, it's not just the SIM that you would actually, you could set up this iPhone recovery key system so that in order to change things, if you had created a recovery key, the bad guy would have to know your iPhone recovery key.

And there's no way that they would know that, even if they had gotten access to your SIM.

So it's a great, great system, but it falls apart when the bad guy has access to your physical iPhone and your passcode.

And the reason it falls apart is Apple made the system that even though you can create this very complex 20 digit iPhone recovery key on the phone, if you ever forget it, all you need to do is just type in your passcode and say, "Give me a new recovery code," which is great if you forget your own, but if you're the bad guy that wants to wipe out the rightful owner's recovery key and create your own and basically lock the owner out of his pictures and his texts and everything else, it's dangerous.

So again, this is an interesting video if you wanna go deeper on how the iPhone recovery key system works.

But as I ended the post, I mean, the moral of the story remains the same, protect your iPhone passcode.

Your iPhone might be stolen.

You can't control a pickpocketing perhaps, do what you can to avoid that, but do not type in your iPhone passcode if there's any risk of someone looking over your shoulder and seeing, if you have to type in, hopefully you can use Face ID or Touch ID, but if you have to type in your passcode and there's people around you, just wait.

I mean, maybe you can wait five minutes or maybe you can step outside, do it in a more secure place.

Although only a handful of people around the country have been victims, it is happening and it's getting in the news.

So be safe, be safe with your eyes.

- Yeah, the video was great.

And again, like you said, it's about nine minutes for anybody that just kind of wants to refresh their mind.

but at the very end, they share, I think, just a couple of tips that we even touched upon last time.

They said, number one, have a more complicated alphanumeric passcode, right.

So most people just do the six digit.

Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, Jeff.

- I'm gonna disagree on that point, Brett, and here's why.

As I understand it, if you just have a number passcode, you just type the numbers on your screen.

But when you do the alphanumeric passcode, I'm pretty sure that when you first type a letter or a number, it actually shows the letter or number on the screen just for a brief second.

Now, if someone's looking over the shoulder, it may be too quick for them to see it.

But if someone is actually sort of like using another iPhone to just video record, you know, to video record, you type it in, they're gonna have your perfect passcode.

So, I mean, I'm not saying don't use it because there's other advantages to having it, but just keep in mind that one downside of the alphanumeric passcode is it does very briefly show it when you type it in.

So just keep that in mind.

I believe a keyboard comes up on the screen, right, Jeff.

I mean, 'cause if you gotta type that in, so like you can hit the number.

So I completely agree with you.

I think the point that she made at the end of the video was simply the fact that it's longer, theoretically, right.

And so it would take longer to type it in, and then that's a lot more memory that somebody would look over your shoulder would have to do.

So you're right, I don't do it.

I mean, I stick with my six digit, and I go with your first suggestion there is I just make sure that I hide it on there.

The other thing quickly, I know we just, we don't have to go into it 'cause we talked about it last week as well, is enabling parental controls on your own phone and enabling those, there's some restrictions that you can go into where you can enable screen time so that you can block account changes and if, unless you can provide a separate passcode.

So again, I know that that's like another thing to remember but it's a completely separate passcode.

We do this 'cause we have screen time restrictions on our kids, well, on my son right now.

So in other words, you know, if we wanna make changes to that, we have to have a, we have a separate pass code, my wife and I, that we can go and change screen time restrictions, but you can do that on your own phone.

So if you really are really nervous about that, that is another way, and I know they talked about that in last week's video as well.

In the know, because it, which is, for me, is directly related to this, because we have been talking about this so much.

I am confident that I've got a good approach to security on my iPhone, Jeff, especially with all the things we've talked about.

I haven't turned on the restrictions for this specifically, 'cause again, I just make sure that I'm very, very protective when I open my phone and I cover it over when I'm typing in my passcode.

But I will tell you that I get nervous.

I was at a conference and I'm using my iPad.

I got a 12.

9 inch iPad, the Pro, which has Face ID, which really works very well, Jeff.

So well in fact that I'm sitting there and I'm like, I just barely like swipe up and I could even be, you know, up to maybe eight, 10, 12 inches away from the screen and it sees it and it opens immediately.

And I gotta tell you, one of the things that I was sitting there was thinking, whoa, like, okay, you know, there is a passcode on my iPad Pro of course, but what if quote, a bad guy, bad person grabbed it and they just swiped up and you know, just, I glanced at my screen on my iPad Pro, that might be enough to unlock it.

Because we've been talking about this, I just started getting all intimidated.

And I'm like, wait a minute, how can I better protect even my iPad from some of this.

Well, that got me thinking, something that we've talked about several times, but I tell you, every time we talk about it, I hear from somebody else, Jeff, that was like, wow, thank you, I did not know this.

On the iPhone, going back to the iPhone now, there is a way that you can temporarily disable face ID on the iPhone.

And I've known this trick for a while.

Exactly, I've known this trick for a while because it's very important.

We've talked about it even in the context of if a thief comes up and demands your phone, or if you are required by law enforcement to hand over your phone.

One of the things that you can do is as you're picking the phone up, you can click the on off button five times quickly.

click, click, click, click, click, click.

And that will temporarily disable Face ID or Touch ID, if that's what it had, and will require the passcode in order to unlock it, if that makes sense.

In other words, you're not permanently disabling Face ID, it's just for that next time.

Like in other words, it can't be unlocked unless you put the passcode.

And if we, you know, we have, there's a whole legal layer here that, you know, biometrics aren't as protected sometimes as your passcode.

And so, you know, that's a privacy aspect there, but that's what I was referencing with law enforcement.

Now, that's interesting, but another method that you can do the same thing is you can click and hold the on/off button on the right side of the phone and one of the volume buttons on the left side of the phone.

If you click and hold both of those buttons, either volume button with the side button, for about two seconds, you'll feel a little haptic feedback.

it'll be like, da-da.

And that does the same thing.

Temporarily disables the Face ID and requires the iPhone passcode in order for it to open.

Okay, so that's the iPhone.

Those are good tips to always remember because at any time, you know, even if you put your, if you're going through TSA and you put your phone in, you know, in a bag, I do that.

I temporarily disable the Face ID because I don't want somebody to open it up and, you know, point it at my face and unlock it that way.

Okay, so now back to the iPad.

I'm thinking, wait, is there a similar way that I can temporarily disable Face ID on the iPad.

Well, one of those methods does work on the iPad.

The quick five-click method does not work on the iPad.

In fact, it just kind of turns it off and on.

But if you click and hold the on/off button, which is in the top right corner if you have the iPad, right, and it's vertical, and then you hold also one of the volume buttons on the side and you hold those buttons for two seconds, you'll feel the same haptic feedback and that does the same thing.

It temporarily disables face ID on the iPad.

And so I just, I would use that because even in a conference you know, we get up for a break, right.

And I don't wanna carry my iPad with me, I'll leave it on the table.

But I don't, I just get a little nervous.

Like I don't want it to open and immediately unlock so I just quickly will hold that down.

It temporarily disables face ID.

So the next time I turn it on, I do have to put the passcode in and I make sure that I hide it so that nobody can see it.

But I just want to let everybody know that.

The iPhone, you can temporarily disable face ID or touch ID.

And maybe I should just say, there's not two ways, right.

The only way for both iPad and iPhone is click and hold the power button, the on/off button and one of the volume buttons.

Daring Fireball, John Gruber at Daring Fireball had a great link to this about, maybe almost about a year ago or so.

And I'll make sure that we put that in the show notes as well.

And it works now also for the iPad.

It always has.

It's just it's a good reminder to temporarily disable Face ID or Touch ID on both the iPhone and the iPad.

Click and hold the on/off and the volume button for about two seconds.

You'll feel a haptic feedback.

And then it requires a passcode to unlock it then from that point forward.

- There you go.

Good tip.

So my tip is we've been talking a lot about protecting your iPhone or your iPad from sort of an unknown thief, bad guy type person.

But what about if you need to do it with somebody that you know.

And this is a delicate topic.

So maybe you're, you know, have a marriage that's coming to an end or an abusive situation or that you have previously given access to things like Find My.

Like I share my Find My stuff with my family.

So my wife and my kids can figure out where I am and I can figure out where the, but if you've decided to give that to, you know, a boyfriend, girlfriend, something like that, and then things change and you want to revoke it, the safety check feature is a nice way that you can review and change that.

And it's also useful for an additional reason too, which I'll talk about in a second, but here's how you get to it.

This is something new that came out in iOS 16 last fall.

So you go into the settings app and then you go into privacy and security.

And then if you scroll down, you'll see something called safety check.

And when you tap on safety check, you'll see two buttons.

The top button basically says immediately emergency reset.

And I'll come back to that in a second, but the bottom button allows you to adjust specific settings.

And here's what you can do.

First, it will show you here is just in one location.

Here's everybody that has Find My access for your phone.

And if you want to say, you know, there's four people that have access, but I'm going to take off, you know, John, for whatever reason, that's up to you.

And then after you go through that, it will say, here are the apps that can access a whole host of things in your phone.

Here are the apps that can access location, Bluetooth, microphone, camera, photos, media library, HomeKit, calendars, reminders, contacts, health, and local network.

And so this part, even if you're not in a situation where you have a person that's no longer a friend of yours, you can use this because you just want to say, you know what, what apps, for example, did I give location services access to.

And maybe at the time you had a good reason for doing it, but maybe it's no longer an app that you use.

And you're like, gosh, I don't want that app to have access to my location anymore.

And so you could just selectively say, I want to turn off this and I don't want this app to have access to my health information.

So it's a nice way to do a sort of a quick audit.

And then finally, it shows you which devices are logged in with your Apple ID.

And you might look at that and you say, you know, there's five things listed, but one of these is the computer that I gave away a year ago.

And I don't want that have access to it.

So you can turn that off too.

Now, everything that I just described, you could do that elsewhere within settings, but you would have to go manually to a billion different areas.

The nice thing about this is this new safety check feature puts it all in one place.

And most people don't know enough about how to go through all the settings.

It's just a one quick location.

There's some interesting things about this that are specifically sort of geared for like an abusive spouse or an abusive boyfriend, girlfriend type situation.

First of all, as I said before, in the very, very beginning, instead of doing it at a granular level, there's a button at the top that's called emergency reset that just basically locks out everything.

So if you want to just say, look, I don't have time to deal with this.

I just want nobody but me, you know, whoever I've given any access to for anything, for any app, just get out of all of it.

I just want to start over.

You can tap a button and say, that's what I want to do.

Second of all, as you're going through those screens that I described, where you decide the people and the apps and all that sort of stuff, what if you're in the process of doing that.

And then the person sort of comes up to you and starts looking over your shoulder.

At the very top right, there's a button that says quick exit.

And if you tap on quick exit, it will immediately go straight to your home screen.

- Yes, I noticed that.

- But it will save your progress.

It will save your progress.

So if later on when you're private again, you could then go back and pick up exactly where you are and keep going through it.

So it's a well thought out system that Apple has.

That whether it's, like I said, whether it's a particular person or whether you just want to do an audit of what are the apps on my phone and what do they have access to it.

You can either look at it on an app basis.

So I want you to list every app and then show what it has access to, or you can tap another button and say, list a feature, like for example, location services, and give me every app that has location services access, every app that has health access, every app that has access to my photos.

And so it's a really nice interface for adjusting that.

So something that you might wanna do from time to time and something that if you're in a bad situation, you especially might wanna do.

- I saw that quick exit button and I was like, that is brilliant.

- That's fantastic, I'm so glad that they thought that through.

And thank you Jeff for bringing that up.

I know we talked about some of this and I remember Apple talking about it with iOS 16, but I have not gone in and explored that.

Like what are the capabilities.

That's really neat.

Like you said, I'm doing an audit.

Like I'm like, why am I sharing that with that person.

I haven't talked with him in several years, but it turned out it was a photos, a shared photo album, or I guess I call it a photo album, right.

And it's like, 'cause you can do either by people or you can do by information.

I'm looking at photos and I'm like, oh yeah, I took pictures at this party and I shared it with some friends that we had because it was some pictures of their kids and everything.

But I'm like, that was years ago.

Like, I don't know if they still need access.

You know, they probably downloaded it before.

That's fantastic.

Thank you for sharing that Jeff.

That's great.

Good, good stuff.

Wow, lots of security focus today.

We'll have to have a security segment.

We're just gonna come up with all other segments, but I like it.

The where you at segment, it's good stuff.

Jeff, thanks as always, man.

Great talking with you and we'll talk to you next week.

- Thanks, Brett.

.