101: A Visionary Firehose of Future iOS Updates

(upbeat music) - Welcome to In the News for June the 9th, 2023.

Boy, Heidi, we've got even more to talk about from the Worldwide Developers Conference.

I'm Brett Burney from appsandlaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

- I feel like I'm still recovering, Jeff.

There is so much.

It was a two hour keynote presentation.

And I feel like everybody was on pins and needles for the first hour because Apple covered everything else that they wanted to talk about.

And then the second hour they called, they covered the Vision Pro.

Now we just talked about that on Tuesday, which was great.

So we invite everybody to make sure you download that if you wanna hear a little bit about that.

But since we covered everything on the Vision Pro, I've still got the Vision Pro lady beast staring behind me, but we wanted to cover everything else.

Like what are the things that we are looking forward to with iOS 17.

You had a great post that you released, I think even a few days ago, Jeff, where you're talking about what the lawyers will love about iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, but oh my goodness, there was a lot of announcements.

Maybe we should start just quickly with some of the hardware stuff.

Only because Apple kind of dispensed with this, I think within about maybe the first eight minutes or something like that, but still some stuff that are not to be put down for sure.

- Yeah, I mean, we've got the, again, a surprise.

I mean, just to back up one more second for WWDC, I frankly expected WWDC this year to be 15 minutes of the other stuff and then everything else on the Apple Vision Pro.

But to my surprise and delight, there's tons of hardware, tons of software.

I mean, they could have stopped without even mentioning the goggles and everybody would have been like, wow, that was a pretty good announcement, except that of course, everybody was anticipating the goggles.

So on the hardware, you know, we have a new version of the MacBook Air instead of just the 13 inch version.

Now you've got a 15 inch version, which is a size that have been very popular for a lot of different folks.

I think that's gonna be really, really popular.

The studio, which is the higher end Mac, has now the M2 Max and the M2 Ultra, which is, of course we all expected that to happen because it's the newest processors.

Of course, the studio is gonna have the newest processors.

And then Apple finally finished the transition from Intel to the Mac Silicon by saying no longer we have the Intel version of the Mac Pro, but now we have the Apple Silicon version of the Mac Pro.

This Mac Pro is curious to me because it's always been a product for a very small audience of people that really need the highest end power.

And one of the things that people used to love to do with the Mac Pro is put all these external GPU cards in it so that it could process more graphics.

And yet that's the one thing you can't do with Apple Silicon.

So it's gonna be a very small market that's gonna be attracted to the Mac Pro.

People that need to have like extra cards for input and output and video recording and that sort of stuff.

- Lots of slots.

- There's gonna be an audience for it, but it's gonna be a small audience.

But again, that's not, I don't mean this to be a slight on the Mac Pro.

The thing is the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio are so popular and so powerful.

- And powerful, right.

- That even high end, whether it's a prosumer or people that are, you know, true professional users, I don't know that you need the Mac Pro the way that you used to in the past.

One person that we both follow up pretty closely, Alex Lindsay, who does very, very, very high-end graphics work for huge performances, et cetera.

I know he was giddy about this.

I think I saw on a tweet from him that he maxed out the Mac Pro as much as he could.

And I think the price was $11,700 is what he said.

- Interesting, there you go.

you can get it up to 192 gigabytes of memory in this thing.

I mean, and then like you said, lots of slots, like just slots for sound cards and video cards and multiple video cards and all kinds of stuff.

And so, yeah, like you said, there's a very specific audience that's gonna be very excited about this.

But as Apple is prone to do, you don't need that.

But the MacBook Air 15 inch, lots of people are gonna love that, right.

It's bigger than the 13 inch.

I mean, really pretty much everybody just says, it's exactly the same, but just a bigger keyboard, obviously, and a bigger screen, which I think a lot of people said.

And I heard somebody else on a podcast just mentioning, you know, for like certainly college students who they may not have a separate television.

They may not have, you know, a need for a full computer monitor or an additional computer monitor, even though I know we've been talking about multiple monitors, but like this becomes the screen that they use to access everything.

And that MacBook Air 15 inch, I mean, that's really gonna be a sweet spot in there.

So yeah, good stuff.

And let's get to the software, 'cause that's what really excites me.

Let's do something else in the hardware you're like.

- I don't wanna go, I want to make sure that we emphasize this.

You already said this, but this I think is a pretty important component that this does signify the complete transition now for Apple away from Intel processors.

I don't wanna leave that not underscore because that truly is an amazing thing for those of us that have been watching Apple for a long, long time, from the IBM processors to the Intel processors.

I mean, the fact that they are complete, we all knew this was coming, right, Jeff.

But the fact that they are all in now, I mean, even I think Craig Federighi said, this, you know, it is, we are all done.

Like the transition is complete.

I think he even made a little dig, he goes, and for PC users, there's never been a better time to transition to the Apple Silicon.

So anyway, I just wanted to underscore that again, because that for all of those of us that have been following Apple for so long, that is not to be taken lightly, even though Apple didn't spend a lot of time on it.

That was a big, big deal that we are now completely separated away from Intel on that.

Okay, now on to software.

(laughing) Good stuff.

Okay, let's start with the biggie, of course, iOS 17.

I mean, there was so much that they were showing in this, which is great.

- And we could talk about iPadOS 17 too, because frankly, a lot of the stuff that comes to one goes to the other.

just Apple would emphasize one in the context of an iPhone and one in the context of an iPad, but just so many cool things.

One of the first things that I talked about in my post earlier this week was the continuity camera.

I'm a big fan of the fact that the iPhone is such a great camera for video.

Why not use that for your FaceTime calls, your Microsoft Teams calls, your Zoom.

And so I've been talking on my website for a while now about how you can either use Apple's built-in continuity camera feature, or you could use a third-party app like Camo to do it.

But I did not expect Apple to this, certainly not this soon, to be releasing basically the same technology for an Apple TV.

And so this is what a great way, gosh, we could have used this so much during the pandemic and in 2020 when people had to stay home and talk to all their loved ones over, through some sort of video conference.

All you need to do is put your iPhone right below your TV.

You can use like a little stand for that.

And then on your television set, you can see all your friends or family members or business people if it's in a office environment and your iPhone can act as your camera.

What a great idea.

I think this is a perfect and yet high-end setup.

So that's a cool thing that I'm definitely looking forward to, but I'm also looking forward to, you know, this is sort of a big thing throughout the iPhone and the iPad is widgets.

We have seen this, you know, widgets were introduced years ago and, you know, then we had widgets on our home screen and then we had widgets, you know, on lock screens and everywhere else, but Apple is really taking widgets and going to the next level on all of its platforms on iPhone, on iPad, on, on Apple watch.

And that's one of the things that I was really excited about.

I mean, they have this cool mode.

We already have this mode with your Apple watch that if you want to, you know, take your watch off your hand and put it right next to your bed, it can sort of act as a night.

It's called nightstand.

And I love it.

And when you tap it, it displays the time and you can use it as an alarm clock.

But Apple's doing the same thing for the Apple for the iPhone called standby mode.

You put your iPhone in landscape mode, and it can be an alarm clock.

If you want that.

Um, or it could be like your music player.

It could show your calendar.

It could show upcoming appointments.

It can basically, and this gets to this idea of having multiple little screens when you're getting work done.

I mean, you might have your monitor in front of you as you're working on, you know, the internet or working on a word document, but you might just have your iPhone propped up, you know, on some sort of a, like maybe a max safe, max safe device to hold it up.

And you could glance over and see the time or glance over and see your messages or glance over and see your calendar.

And that seems It was really cool to me.

I liked that a lot.

- I love this idea.

It's sound to me, I saw it and I'm like, that is so silly simple.

- Yeah.

- Why have we waited this long for something like that.

- Yeah, I didn't even know I wanted it.

And then now that it's here, I'm like, well, of course this is here.

Yeah, why shouldn't it be here.

- I wanted this 10 years ago.

Like, come on, like what has taken us so long.

But okay, I'll accept it for now with happiness.

I am thrilled about it.

They also, just quickly on this, I don't know if we ever would spend a lot of time on it, but first of all, they took away the need to say, hey, for she who shall not be named.

So you don't have to say, hey, Sally anymore.

You just say, Sally.

Now I like this because with the stand and some of the things they were showing immediately, Jeff, my mind jumped to, oh, well that's now, I almost like even a closer replacement for something like, you know, Alexa or the Google aspect on there.

And I'm like, wow, we're getting a little bit more closer to some of that, you know, for some of the things that we've been complaining about Siri for a while, that wow, if we can get even closer from a parody aspect on that, I just thought that that was pretty interesting.

- Yeah, people have often said, "I would love to have a HomePod with a screen on it.

" - Yes.

- Well, if you have an iPhone turned on its side, you can talk to it, it can display information, it can display widgets on its side, It can also display live activities now.

So if you're waiting for your door dash to arrive, you can see a progress bar as it's coming along.

You know, it's cool stuff like that.

I love what they've done with widgets on the iPhone, but it's not just the iPhone.

I mean, it's the iPad too.

You can now have more limited, no question, more limited, but you can have more limited widgets on your iPad's lock screen.

So if your iPad's just sitting next to you and you're getting some work done, you can glance over to the side and see the time and the calendar and stuff like that.

But then when you're using your iPad, you actually have these even more interactive widgets, which is great.

You know, right now widgets are just mostly a way to look and see information and don't get me wrong.

It's awesome to have that glanceable information that's so important.

But sometimes if I'm looking at like my to-do list and I've seen five items and I've just done one of them, I would wanna just be able, I mean, I can see the little box next to it.

I just wanna check it off, you know, have it go on.

But right now when I tap it, it then opens up for me, the things app.

And then you got to check it off in the things app and then go back to the home screen.

So it would be nicer to interact.

Or another one that Apple talked about is if you want to have on your iPad, for example, like a little widget which is set up for home kit to like turn a light on or off you can just tap it and the light will come on or tap it and the light will come off versus when you tap it it then opens up the home app.

And then you got to scroll down to find the light and then do all that stuff.

And so it's just glanceable is great but interactive for the things that you can do very quickly, that's even better.

And so that's why I'm saying widgets are gonna be so much, so much better.

And so that's something I'm really looking forward to.

- All right, I'm scrolling back to the top here.

Personalized contact posters.

- Yeah.

- I thought this was brilliant.

- This is really neat.

It's a way that, you know, when we already have a version of this in messages, right.

And you often see that thing, like, do you wanna share your picture with the person that you're texting with so that they can see what you look like instead of just seeing your initials in a circle.

But now you can do the same thing when you call somebody.

You can say, here's a good picture of myself.

Here's my name.

Here's the font that I want to use for my name, the color, the background.

And therefore when you call them, they can see this.

Now, I actually have some questions about how this works because I'm assuming this is gonna only work if somebody is in your contacts because you don't want random people calling you with who knows what kind of pictures might be on the front of it.

You can imagine all sorts of not so pleasant scenarios there.

But for people that you trust, maybe it's just the people in your contacts or however, Apple is so privacy focused, I'm sure they've thought of the right way to handle this appropriately.

It'll be nice that when you see, if I see that Brett's calling me, instead of just seeing your name, I can actually see the picture that you picked for yourself and the name, that's a really cool feature.

- Live voicemail.

This is really cool, I can't wait for this.

- This is cool because we've had a version of this for decades, right.

I mean, I remember back in the 1980s, I had, you know, you had the answering machine in your house and you would listen to who's calling.

And then if it starts to be somebody that you want, you pick up the phone and sometimes you'd lie and say, "Oh, I just walked in the door.

" No, of course I didn't walk in the door.

I was screening my calls.

But now you can screen your calls on the iPhone because as someone is leaving a message, it's actually typing the words, it's doing a live transcription.

And if they're speaking about a subject that's important to you, you can just press one button and pick up the phone, which makes perfect sense.

I actually think what's even more interesting is The only way that this makes sense to me, Brett, is Apple must be completely bypassing the carriers.

Um, so yeah.

Uh, yeah.

Voicemails because I think what's happening here is I think your iPhone is actually answering the phone call and just handling the phone call on its own.

It's gotta be something like that.

Right.

Right.

And then, and then storing on its own, the voicemail message and doing the transcription.

So it's sort of interesting that cut the, I'm I'm assuming that they've cut the carriers out of this to make it actually work, but it's a super useful feature that I think people are gonna want all the time.

- Right, I had that thought, but I hadn't really thought through it all the way, but I think you've gotta be absolutely right, Jeff.

Like, how are they doing that.

Now, today, when I don't wanna pick up a call, either from somebody I know or somebody that doesn't, you know, 'cause I don't have their picture on my screen yet, but I'll let it go to voicemail.

Now, the transcription in my visual voicemail on the phone is pretty good, right.

I'll go through and I'll read it because sometimes I have to wait a few seconds or so for it to come up.

But I don't know, I mean, we'll have a page in here where people can go and look at this themselves, but this comes up on your actual iPhone screen in real time.

The way they were showing it yesterday or on Monday was it was scrolling as they were talking.

So you can see usually a picture of who is calling and they're scrolling text as it goes through.

I'm pretty excited about that.

- Just irony of ironies, as I was talking to you about that feature, Brett, somebody was calling me on my phone and I did not recognize the number.

And so I'm sitting here looking at it and like, maybe they'll leave a voicemail, but like, I mean, not that I would have interrupted the recording of our podcast, but now I see that they have left a voicemail.

I'll have to see who that is calling me, but it would have been nice as while that voicemail was being read, I could just sort of glance at my screen and say, Oh, I know who that is.

But now I have no idea.

That was good timing.

Thank you.

Whoever that was, whoever that was, thank you for the live demo of what's not.

- Yeah.

- So some pretty amazing messages updates.

I'm pretty excited about a couple of things.

I think you wrote about the check-in feature now, which I think is great.

- Yeah, that's a cool one for, I mean, I think the main use case for this is gonna be you're a parent wondering whether or not your child has come home yet.

You can tell the child, please send me a message when you get home if I'm not there 'cause you're still at the office.

But of course they always forget.

Whereas you could use this feature called check-in And not only so that, you know, the child will let you know, you know, as soon as you get home, their phone can send you a message saying they got to the destination, whether it is your home or, or a neighbor's house, wherever it is.

Um, but also it goes one step beyond that, because if it notices that the person really should be there by now, but they stopped moving or something like that, um, it can actually optionally, it will, it will let that person know the child, Hey, what's going on.

You know, it looks like you sort of slow down and that person can say, Oh, well, no, I, and I stopped.

But if that person doesn't respond to the pop-up notification, then it could be, I mean, in a worst case scenario, maybe like some stranger has picked up, you know, your child or something that you wouldn't want to happen.

And so Apple has this technology built in that if you don't respond to the alert, it will, um, it will actually, you know, let the parent know, Hey, you know, they should have been home by now.

Last place we saw them was here.

Um, and maybe even say something like, you know, now their cell connection is off or something like, you know, something strange is going on.

So it's a good way.

So that's a parent-child use of it.

But I can also see other uses of it too.

Like maybe if you're going to meet somebody in a meeting and you want someone to be able to know, let me know when you get to the building, you might be able to use the same sort of thing to keep track of things.

- Yeah.

I mean, I thought immediately the parent-child thing, because even with my kids, I follow them on the Find My app, right.

I like to just see, are you still a Dairy Queen or whatever the case may be.

But what I thought interesting about this, that now I can have that check-in, but it will share not just like the location, but also the battery level of the phone and the cell service status.

So that is helpful to me because, you know, if they're lost somewhere, the iPhone is dead, then I know, okay, well, that's why they're not replying to me, you know, that kind of a thing.

And Apple does say that information is shared into an encrypted on there as well.

Couple of other things quickly, the swipe to reply, I love that, I can't wait for that.

The catch up arrow means that it'll like scroll to the top of whatever the last, you know, the newest message that you need to read as opposed to having to scroll up and down on that.

And then even search filters, which I tell you, I use the search filters on the Mac quite a bit in my Finder app, but the fact that I can do search filters now by specific people, and obviously you can do text, but I know on the Mac, a lot of times I'll do searches for a specific date.

I wanna see everything from January, that kind of a thing.

So I don't know, the messages, they really spent a couple minutes on the messages, I'm pretty excited about some of the updates there.

- Yeah, new autocorrect should be nicer because autocorrect is pretty good, but it's not perfect.

And it's supposed to be much better using on-device.

The big topic everyone's talking about nowadays is, oh, artificial intelligence and chat GPT and all those sorts of things.

Apple uses the same sorts of technologies.

They just don't sort of toot the AI horn about it.

But they did mention that they're using on-device machine learning, which is just another version of AI to make autocorrect even more accurate.

So that would be certainly nice.

- Exactly, Jeff.

I just, you know, that was one thing that I noticed.

Nobody really brought up AI a whole lot.

I mean, they may have thrown it, sprinkled it in a couple of times.

They did use machine learning a couple of times, but to your point exactly, as I saw these things scrolling through, like that's the gorilla in the room.

Like they didn't mention it or say it, but the fact that it's better autocorrect, you know, some of the things about even that transcription, I mean, all of that is based on a lot of AI, you know, certainly not the chat GPT kind of a thing, But I guess in a way it's a large language model to simply because they're going through, that's what Siri does, right.

It's like it takes the collection of education that it has from across the way.

Whew, I mean, there's so much more in here as well.

- There's so much more, again, I would have thought that there'd be five or six big announcements.

I didn't expect there to be 25 or 26 big announcements.

So, you know, there's more to come and we'll be talking about in the future, but.

- Absolutely.

- Why don't we go on to like the watchOS or some of the other ones.

I mean, there's so many other changes announced yesterday.

- Well, hang on, I'm gonna bring this up, the journal app.

Like, you know, we talked about this.

- Oh, that was interesting, yeah.

- That's a very interesting thing.

You know, if people use Day One, which is an excellent, excellent app for things like this.

I know people that just use the Notes app necessarily, like on their phone, but you know, Apple really, and we'll talk about this in the watch in just a moment, they really had a big emphasis on health and mindfulness, right, and wellbeing, and that's how they sort of couched this journal app on here as well.

Yeah, and it looks cool.

It looks like they've done it the right way.

It's not just what do you write in your journal, but it can actually automatically suggest things to include like pictures you took that day, songs that you listened to that day, which is pretty cool.

And other things like that.

So it looks like a pretty, it looks like a nice little journaling.

And it's not just the journaling app as I understand it, third-party apps like the Day One that you just named and stuff like that.

My understanding is that there's a way for them to tap into some of this stuff too, and maybe use the Apple interface to add to their own library.

I haven't gotten deep into that.

That's part of the developer stuff that's being discussed, you know, over the, frankly, over the next couple of weeks with outside developers, but Apple will have its own journaling app.

But my sense is that third-party journaling apps will actually get more powerful as well, which is great.

- Yeah, good stuff.

Okay, so a couple of add-ons, you know, a lot of all of this from iOS, you know, for the iPhone 17 really applies to the iPad, as you mentioned, but just a couple of things quickly that I know we're mentioning.

I think Craig Federighi talked about this in the context of widgets, multiple timers.

And I love the way he said, how did he phrase it here.

He said, we have multiple timers.

It's like, wow, we really are now in the age, right.

Where we have come to our own in there.

But that's neat in their interactive widgets.

PDF improvements, talk about that just a little bit.

I don't know if you hit upon that.

well, yeah, you did in your post today, right.

The fact that we already have the ability within, you know, the notes app to interact with PDFs or even on my email, I know I can do a PDF attachment and I can like, I can color it or annotate it or so, but it looks like boy, Apple is going even more into the PDF aspect here on, more specifically on the iPad.

- Yeah, it's always been really useful to have a third party app to annotate PDFs to store them and search them and stuff like that.

But Apple is making the built-in capabilities, you know, even better.

For one thing, you can now store one or more PDF files within a note in the notes app.

So that might be a nice way to sort of organize some of your thoughts and stuff like that.

Um, and then additionally, you can now, you can do even more in editing apps.

I mean, one thing that they mentioned is that if someone sends you a PDF file, that's a form.

And when I say form, you know, there's two ways you can have a PDF form.

You can have someone can use the PDF form function to say, this is a field.

This is a field and that will work.

But additionally, if I understand correctly, Apple is just looking at the document and if it sees, you know, name with a line next to it, Apple's the iPad smart enough to say, you know what, that's a field that you should type a name in and this is a field for the address.

So it will basically treat it as if it had been properly formatted as a PDF form and allow you to fill out your, you know, a form for, you know, your doctor's office right there on your iPad, fill it in and then send it off.

And you won't have to necessarily even jump into third party apps like you used to.

So I mean, PDF files are, I mean, as a lawyer, I use PDF files all day long.

And so having more powerful tools that are built in means that you can do more things just right then and there.

And it also means that the third party apps, I'm sure are going to pick up on some of the stuff and be even more powerful.

It's going to be hard for me to get rid of PDF expert from reedle.

I love using PDF Expert, Jeff.

I mean, we've used Goodreader, we've used many, many apps throughout the years on the iPad, but PDF Expert does exactly this.

Like, you can have a fillable PDF.

I talk a lot about that with lawyers.

It's like you download a PDF form from the internet and you can fill it out.

And another thing that they talked about at the keynote was that you can sign PDFs very easily, which I just, I find it interesting 'cause on my Mac, I do this all the time.

I sign a piece of paper and I hold it up to the camera on my Mac and it can insert that sign signature into a PDF.

I used to could just do that on the iPad as well, but I can even save my signature.

Anyway, just really interesting that Apple was focusing on the PDF side.

One other thing quickly on the iPad that I know you mentioned and talked about, the Health app is now available on the iPad.

Good for Apple bringing this now.

- Yeah, and this makes so much sense because my iPhone is often the place when I'm inputting information on health or maybe it's getting it from my Apple watch.

But when I'm just looking at my health information, you know, why not let me take advantage of the larger screen on my iPad to do that.

Especially if you want to look at graphs over time or trends or things like that.

So I knew it was just a matter of time before Apple did this and I'm really looking forward to being able to take advantage of the health app on the iPad.

- Okay, there's more, but let's move on to the watch.

Like you said, some pretty interesting things on watchOS 10.

that they were previewing here.

Again, this was all couched very well, I thought, in health and well-being, right.

I mean, when they cut to this segment of the keynote, he was standing in front of the Apple Fitness Center, which is, they've done this before, you know, that they can shoe on that, but really, really emphasizing here, because I think they revamped the activity app just a little bit.

They've added some improvements to the cycling recording, as well as hiking improvements, just really, really interesting stuff that they're doing with watchOS now too.

- Yeah, Apple knows how important the Apple Watch is for health activities.

And so of course, you know, this is what I expected from the Apple Watch.

I expected that the next version of the Apple Watch operating system was gonna have even better health stuff, you know, improved cycling, you know, those sorts of things.

I knew that that was coming, we just didn't know specifically what it was gonna be.

And so I was thrilled to see it, but absolutely, it's definitely there.

I know that you like hiking a little bit.

So I wanna hear you talk about the hiking stuff, but then I wanna talk about the interface stuff, which is what really jumps out at me.

But you talked about hiking next.

- I know, me too.

Love, love it.

Just the improvements here, like the Compass app.

I gotta tell you, when I've been out in some remote areas, that Compass, the Compass app on my Apple Watch Ultra has been wonderful in just helping, you know, my friends and I to make sure we put it in the right direction.

Or even in some cases, Jeff, I would use my watch, 'cause my friend had like a paper map, right.

So we're like, is that peak, you know, What peak is that.

Like, I can't tell, is it over there.

Is it over there.

But I can get very precise with my compass on my Apple watch and say, oh no, that's, you know, north at, you know, 130 or whatever the case was so that we could be very precise.

Now there's a 3D view, a three-dimensional view in the compass app.

I cannot wait.

Like, honestly, the things in the Apple watch that they were showing off, Jeff, I don't normally go for the betas of the operating system, But with these improvements and a couple of the hikes that I have coming up, I might have to jump on it.

And like, 'cause I wanna upgrade my watch and then of course I gotta upgrade the iPhone and everything as well too.

So these improvements just in the hiking thing alone and some of the stuff that they're talking about, even terrain maps now on my watch for crying out loud.

That's amazing.

So I'm excited about that.

- Talk to me about one part that you just sort of glanced over.

If I understand it correctly from what they described in the picture that you have on your screen right now shows it, you will be able to see, like I've been hiking this distance and this place, precisely 1.

6 miles ago on my path is the last place that I got a cellular connection.

And so that seems like that could be pretty useful if you're like, I need to get a cell connection again.

Oh, I know where I need to go.

So I was like, what a smart idea.

That's really cool.

- Yeah, yeah, they call these waypoints.

And so with the Apple Watch Ultra, you have the extra button, which you can customize to something else, but you can click it to set a waypoint, but now they're talking about cellular connectivity waypoints, like you said, the last point that you had a cellular connection, which is really brilliant because I gotta tell you, I was a couple of the hikes that I've done, I'm constantly pulling my phone out, to say, when can I send a text message to the wife, right, to say, I'm fine, honey, everything's fine, 'cause she hasn't heard from me in two days or something like that.

So anyway, but as you mentioned, the interface improvements, thank goodness, like the SmartStack widgets, I don't know if that's what you wanted to start with, but boy, that's what I'm excited about.

- I was really waiting for, I mean, I love my Apple watch, but the interface does feel like it's gotten a little long on the tooth.

And I was waiting for Apple to sort of rethink things.

And it looks like they finally have.

I mean, for one thing, as I understand it, all of the screens are now really taking advantage of the full screen, whether it's the really big screen like you have on your Ultra, or even just the larger screen that I've got on my watch.

And it's, you know, things are not only bigger, but they're putting little controls all the corners and stuff.

So you can use a lot more of your screen, which is great.

Second of all, Apple is realizing, again, it's part of this whole.

Which team that we've seen in the iPhone and the iPad, they're realizing that these, these little bitty, you know, snippets from apps, little alerts.

Um, it's the thing that Apple had a watch face that you can use right now called the Siri watch face.

And if you look at the Siri watch face at the very top, it's got the time.

And then right underneath that, it's got like a little snippet from your calendar, a little snippet from the health app.

But I think Apple's realized that those little snippets can be super useful.

And so now that's something that's going to be more of a central part of the Apple watch.

You can have them scroll in and out.

And because that's the way that you're going to access those frequent apps.

Um, Apple is actually changing the purpose of the button on the side of the Apple watch.

So instead of bringing up your favorite apps, like it used to, you don't need that because that's going to be on the, you can actually scroll your, um, your digital crown, or as I understand it, you can swipe up from the bottom to see those.

Now the button in the side is going to activate the control center with all the things, you know, the little, little bitty things.

So it's, it's a, it's a new, we're going to have to try it to see if it actually makes sense.

But from what Apple showed off earlier this week, I think it actually does.

And I'm so happy that Apple is trying something new.

I was saying, we've tried it this way for a couple of years, but we think we have a better way to do it.

The Apple watch's screen is so small that the, but there's so few buttons on it.

You know, So it's such a limited device by inherently, just by its nature, but making the most of what limits you have, that's what it's all about.

And it looks like this fall, we're gonna have a new approach to the Apple Watch that I really can't wait to try out.

- I can't wait either.

And Snoopy.

- Snoopy also can't wait.

- Snoopy is coming.

(laughing) Although I gotta tell you this.

So they showed off new Snoopy watch faces, which number one are animated, which made me think of, you know, originally they have the Mickey Mouse animated watch face, right.

And I think they still do in some other animations, but apparently this one, I didn't really get it, but they said they will interact with you.

Like you can throw Snoopy a Frisbee on the watch face.

(laughing) We'll see how Snoopy and Whizzalot get along on, on some of that, but, but good, good, good stuff on there.

Oh my goodness, what else.

Well, I tell you what, let's, let's do the, the two last things quickly.

we can talk about the Apple TV and the TVOS improvements.

And then what Apple kind of put on the umbrella of quote audio and home.

I mean, they actually cover the Apple TV in this as well, but even some of the improvements for the AirPods Pro.

The Apple TV continuing to get, I think a little more streamlined.

They're gonna make some improvements to the control center and the user profiles, but they're also gonna make some improvements to AirPlay, which I welcome that.

Just make it a little bit better.

AirPlay in hotels, which I don't know about that.

It's still, you know, I don't usually interact with the television at the hotel, but you know, they're at least giving you an ability to scan a QR code, for example, and jump into that as well.

And FaceTime is coming to Apple TV, all that kind of stuff.

- Yeah, we talked about before, Wes.

- Great stuff, great stuff.

- And then the AirPods Pro, what do we wanna cover on this.

- I mean, this was a surprise to me.

I did not expect AirPods Pro to be discussed earlier this week.

- Cannot wait on this.

- And when Apple said that, you know, and this is not, it's not that they're trying to sell you a new one.

they're telling you that the current, at least the higher end versions of the AirPods Pro, all models of the Apple of the AirPods Pro and the more recent models of the regular AirPods are gonna have some pretty cool new features like this adaptive audio, which is sort of in between the sound canceling mode and the transparency mode that we currently have.

It's a mode that is sort of lives in between and it's gonna allow some sounds to come through and it's gonna try to reduce harshness.

It's sort of an in-between to sort of get the best of both worlds.

I can't wait to try it and see.

But again, I did not expect to have any new features coming to my existing AirPods Pro, and yet here they come.

- I feel like the adaptive audio can either be amazing or incredibly frustrating because I love being able to swap back and forth between noise cancellation and transparency, right.

But in order to do that, Jeff, I have to go up with my fingers, hold, tap and squeeze for like a second or half a second, a couple of seconds to switch back and forth.

And I just have it switched between those two.

This apparently is going to allow you to be in noise cancellation, but when somebody is coming up to talk with you or when it recognizes that somebody's trying to talk with you, it goes into transparency mode and then it goes back into noise cancellation.

I don't know.

I really want to hear somebody talk about this.

that has tried this improvement on there.

I mean, for me, number one, airplanes.

This would be brilliant, right.

Because I wanna hear the captain if he's gotta make an announcement or the flight attendant.

But other than that, I want to completely close out all of the airplane noise and the baby's crying and everything else.

Like I don't wanna hear anything.

So I'm constantly, even on my noise cancellation on an airplane, I'm still listening.

And if I think I hear the captain making an announcement, I'm immediately jumping up and like pausing my music and going into transparency mode.

And by that time he's already half over, right.

So, you know, I have no idea if we're gonna, if we're, you know, bailing out or not.

But if this could work well, 'cause it can be frustrating, right.

It's like, if a baby's crying, I don't wanna jump out of noise cancellation mode for that.

I don't know.

It was a very cute video that Apple showed on that, but I don't know.

I really have to try this.

- I hear you.

The proof's in the pudding.

We'll see if it works as well as the demo did, but at least from the demo, It looks like they've gotten improvement, so we'll see.

- They said something else, personalized volume, Jeff.

So they think now they're gonna use AI to learn what your volume levels that you like or prefer.

- Here's what I think this is, yeah.

- That's incredible.

- If you typically listen to things at a certain level, but then when there's a certain amount of background noise, you typically turn it up a little bit higher to compensate for that.

- Right, exactly.

- I think that's what's going on.

So it's gonna automatically adjust the volume so that it's at what it thinks that you would probably prefer based upon your personal preferences.

That sounds pretty cool to me, I like that.

- Very good, okay.

In the know.

- This is so much.

- I'm looking through this website, which I'm gonna, the airdrop, we didn't even talk about the airdrop if you're watching this on here.

Very good stuff, but we will, we'll get to that.

So if you want more, here's my, I almost feel like this is a cheat tip, but I just wanna show.

So I've been showing these screens as Jeff and I have been talking about them.

Apple has done an excellent, excellent job of adding preview pages to their website.

So if you go to apple.

com and if you hover over the iPhone tab at the very top of the site, you'll see over on the right there's a page called iOS 17 Preview.

And if you click on that, it will bring up everything that Jeff and I have talked about and much more.

- It has everything on, but you know, they've done a very good job, I think, Jeff, of just giving you just a hint of what it can, you know, to expect.

And for those of us that are interested in it, I thought this was a very, very good display of just like, oh, that'll be interesting when it comes out.

Oh, that's going to be nice as well.

So there's one available for the iOS 17, which obviously covers the iPhone.

There is another page for the iPad.

So if you go to apple.

com, hover over the iPad tab, there's the iPadOS 17 preview.

There is also one for the watch OS 10 preview.

So you just go to apple.

com, hover over watch and you'll see the watch OS 10 preview.

There might be a few more, but I'll have those links in the show notes.

Those are the main ones that you're gonna wanna focus on.

'Cause Apple's releasing a lot more.

I mean, that's if you even get to this page, right.

If you go to apple.

com, the first thing you're gonna do is start getting immersed in the Vision Pro, right.

You're gonna be wanting to look all about that.

But there are some other pages here and I'll have that in the link.

Your turn, sir.

- Yeah, that's a great tip because, you know, All of this stuff's probably gonna come out September, maybe October, but probably September.

So we have a couple of months away.

Some people are gonna be running the betas, but if you wanna just sort of get ready, those are great pages to go to, to sort of see a lot more details on the stuff that's coming out in the future.

My tip of the week is to use widgets.

And the reason I say that is perhaps obvious after what we've been talking about is, Apple came out with widgets before, and I did this post that you're showing right now back on 2021 about how I've replaced the front page of my iPad with nothing but widgets, because that way when I'm working, I can just glance at my iPad and I can see certain information.

In the future, this is gonna become so much more useful with the interactive widgets that we talked about.

Things like, you know, widgets are gonna get so much better.

So if you currently are not using widgets a lot on your iPhone or on your iPad, my tip is to spend the next couple of months, you've got time 'cause this stuff's not coming out till September or maybe October, to start playing around with what widgets you like, which ones that make sense for you, because if you get yourself into more of a widget lifestyle for your iPad or your iPhone, you're gonna be that much more ready when the widgets become much more popular.

And I suspect that because some widgets this fall will take advantage of the new technologies better than others, it may be that there's some things that are currently used that are gonna go to the wayside and other developers that are really smart and on the ball, those are the ones that I'll be using.

But that's my tip is, you know, get into widgets because they're about to become much, much more important.

And I really look forward to having more use of it on the Apple watch too, but those you can't really use right now.

There's, you know, it's not quite the same, but definitely in your iPhone and your iPad, you can start to get into that now.

So that's my tip.

- I remember when you did this post in October, 2021, because you convinced me, I followed your recommendations, Jeff.

I didn't fully go all widgets on my screen, but I did multiple widgets like on the right side and on the left side.

And then in the middle, I just have two columns of individual apps or actually there's only like three or four apps and the rest are folders of multiple apps on there.

But I do a lot of training.

So I had a very specific use that I needed to go to specific apps, for example.

But I loved your suggestion on this and you're right.

I started making the, I started going to the widget life quite a few months ago because it is so much helpful.

And I think that's why you and I are so excited about some of the things we saw with the interactive widgets.

The fact that I have seen widgets grow and mature over the last couple of years.

That at first it was just like you had one size, but now you can have big sizes and different apps will allow you to have different options.

Now you can even pull widgets into your lock screen, which I don't do a whole lot, but I've been experimenting with like Fantastical, I think is great.

And then I even have Flighty now as a widget, just doing a lot of traveling, I can access that quickly as well.

I mean, I just can't wait.

I know it sounds so simple, you know, widgets, it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but you're right, get into widget life now and just get ready 'cause it's just gonna continue to get better.

- Brad, I'm curious.

- Even with apps like Widget Smith.

Yeah, go ahead.

- Yeah, on your iPad is one of the widgets that you have on your home screen, the photos widget that just sort of displays random pictures throughout the day.

- Definitely.

- Yeah, that's the one that's sort of a hidden surprise to me.

It's not part of my productivity per se, But I love that every time I glance up there, it's doing a great job of finding some picture from the past, whether it's my kids or something that's even before we had kids.

It just does an amazing job of surfacing things that I never would have found in my 50,000 plus image library.

That's just pure delight.

Of course, next thing you know, we'll be having Vision Pros on our head and we'll be looking at those old, we'll be walking through those old pictures, but that's for another day.

- It's another day.

I'm just looking, one of the widgets quickly that I have is my Spotify widget.

I know, I think Apple showed like the Apple Music widget on there, but you know, just like with your point, like if I wanna play, I can see my Spotify widget right there, but if I gotta play it, I gotta tap it, it opens up Spotify, and then I gotta go and find whatever app, like I just want it to continue playing right there, and I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful.

- This fall, this fall.

- That's what we're looking at, like the interactivity.

All right, oh my goodness, Jeff, my friend, thank you so much, as always, for talking through this.

I'm glad we're gonna get back on to schedule here.

So, man, I think we've covered everything from WWDC.

We're not done talking about it yet, of course, because over the next few months, we will definitely be covering all of this.

But hey, we'll talk with you next week.

- Sounds good, thanks, Brett.

.