103: Flexible Stages, Face Plants, and Name Drops

Welcome to In the News for June the 23rd, 2023.
I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.
And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.
Hi, Jeff, another day, another point update,
Hey, Brett.
(laughing)
Exactly, and you know, in my mind, there's two categories.
point one update, more specifically 16.5.1.
I think this was just released maybe a day or two ago.
Very small update, but very necessary.
We've talked about these in the past.
These are very small updates, but they are important
because they usually carry with it
a couple of security updates, if you want to call it that,
which can be very important.
They're minor updates, but important nonetheless.
(laughing)
You know, on the one hand, every update has some sort of security update.
It's just inevitable there's something, but then every once in a while you have
Right?
Right?
an update where you see a new story like this one that uses the two words that I
(laughing)
Right, yeah.
hate to see actively exploited somebody out there.
Eh, eh.
Right.
This is not some theoretical, but wouldn't it be neat if a hacker did this, this is,
Right, right.
you know, Oh, there's actually somebody out there in the real world who we believe
is actually taking advantage of this.
Right, right.
You know, flaw right now.
Now, what are they doing with the flaw?
doesn't necessarily mean they're taking over iPhones.
Yeah.
Maybe they're just making your iPhone crash or something like that.
Absolutely.
But, you know, I always like to install the updates
Right.
to get the security stuff installed.
But whenever I see that something is being actively exploited, I mean,
Like on my phone, I think it may have taken maybe eight minutes to get to the next one.
hopefully the chance of it affecting me is very small, but why take the risk?
So I go ahead and install these right away.
And I installed 16.5.1 as soon as I saw it.
And it worked great for me. I had no issues at all.
maybe eight minutes, 10 minutes.
Now I've got an iPhone 14, so it's pretty fast.
I haven't yet done it on my iPad
simply because I was using that
for another seminar I was given today.
Yeah.
But, you know, it'll just do their whole reboot
and it's very fast.
It seems like Apple has really gotten a lot more efficient
on some of these updates and how they go through,
which is nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Security updates important.
Yeah.
One other thing, you know,
Apple doesn't give a whole lot of information
and details on these updates a lot of times,
but they said it provides important security fixes
Yeah.
and fixes an issue that prevents charging
while using the lightning to USB three camera adapter.
I just caught that as like,
that's interesting and very specific on that.
But if you're using that adapter, which I do,
'cause it's a good way to be able to connect to your camera
or even connect in a USB hard drive or so,
you know, and you wanna charge at the same time,
hey, that's important.
You need to get this update,
this minor update as soon as possible.
Yeah I'm turning my head right now because I'm looking to where my, I have one of those
Yeah.
of those adapters as if it's the one that was misbehaving.
(laughing)
No, it's not that it was doing the wrong thing.
Right.
Something was exploited, you know, had an issue there,
but anyway, hopefully it'll all be good now
Yeah, yeah.
that everything is updated.
But I do think it's funny that, you know,
all eyes are towards iOS 17 right now.
And yet Apple is saying,
"Yep, we're not quite done with iOS 16.
Absolutely, and by the way,
We still got some things to worry about there."
There you go.
this is a story from Jason Cross in Macworld,
does say that if it is an older device
that can't upgrade to iOS 16,
then your latest point update is 15.7.7.
So I know that's a lot of numbers
to throw it out at you there,
but regardless, whatever device you have,
just make sure that you get it updated
with this point update.
But just like you said, Jeff,
all eyes are pointing to the next version
of the operating system.
iOS 16 is sort of the active consumer
major release right now that everybody is on for the public.
But as we knew a couple of weeks ago
at Worldwide Developers Conference,
Apple announced iOS 17.
Now we don't expect this to probably be out
maybe until September or early in the fall,
but that hasn't stopped a lot of our friends
[no audio]
from around the interwebs
from installing the beta version of iOS 17.
And it's been nice, you linked to several stories
to where people are starting to say,
hey, we didn't know this was gonna be in,
this is something new.
So here's Jason Snell at Six Colors
talking about that some of the improvements
for the, I guess the general camera app
means that other camera apps,
third-party camera apps
might be able to take advantage of some of the things
coming in iOS 17.
- Yeah, the camera app is incredibly sophisticated,
Yeah.
far more than I could ever understand all that it does.
Uh-huh.
I know we all think about it,
you press a button, it takes a picture,
but it's really not that simple.
When you press the button,
what your iPhone is actually doing
is taking a whole bunch of pictures in a range,
Right, right.
and then it's merging those pictures together
so that one of the reasons it can do high definition,
the HDR, high dynamic range,
is it can, one picture is maybe getting
the really dark stuff,
and one picture is getting the really light stuff,
It's putting it all together so that you can have a single picture, which reproduces everything
that your eye can see.
When you look at like older iPhones that don't have this technology, one part of the issue
is either too dark or it's washed out.
So there's all these incredible things that the iPhone is doing, but because it's doing
Right, right.
all of that, if you try to take a lot of pictures in succession, it used to be that the iPhone
would sort of stutter because I mean, it, it needs some time for each one of the pictures.
So as I understand what Jason's talking about here is Apple has now come, they're coming
up with little tricks so that you can be more responsive, that when you press the button,
it immediately takes the picture. One of it, for example, is that actually starts, you know,
Right, right.
even before you press the button, if you're in the camera app, it's already paying attention to
the world around you. And my understanding is that it's actually caching things so that the
time that you press the button, it has the image from like one or two seconds before you press the button that it can merge with the things that you took after you press the button. And one of the
the big changes for iOS 17 is some of this technology
has actually only been available for the built-in camera app
and now it's gonna be available to third-party apps.
Right. Really cool.
And I know that people love third-party apps
like Halide and other ones.
How I, yeah, right.
So, and there's lots of them out there.
Yes.
So, and then at the bottom,
all we want is a better camera taking experience
because the iPhone is often the best camera you have.
Yep.
Even if you have a high-end DSLR camera,
Right.
you can often get better images from the iPhone.
So, let's make it more responsive for those times
and you wanna take an action picture
or get just the right moment
when the basketball is just going into the hoop
(laughing)
or whatever it is.
You don't wanna be ready for that picture
You know, most of us pay attention obviously
and your camera's not ready yet.
That's no fun.
to the keynote address,
which is what you and I pay attention to, you know,
from Tim Cook and all the executives
from the rolling out all these things,
but that's only lasts for, well, usually an hour,
but the last time it lasted two hours
because there was a whole hour devoted to Vision Pro.
But this was great that Jason Snell dug a little bit deeper.
There's a whole week of content
that Apple is releasing
during the Worldwide Developers Conference,
mostly for developers.
Most normal users like us
aren't really paying attention to all that,
Yeah, in fact, we should just mention, I mean, there's about,
but this was specifically a session
that Jason Snell linked to here,
where it's a very closed session
specifically for developers of camera apps
that they can go in.
And I just thought it was great that he brought that out.
That's on the camera, yeah.
Apple releases about 100 of those videos during WWDC each year.
Right, right.
And you know, I've looked at some of those videos in the past and often, you know, either
Right, yeah, right. (laughs)
100% of the video or most of the video is geared towards people that write iPhone apps
or iPad apps, which is not me.
So they talk at a level that's way above my head.
Right, right, exactly.
But every once in a while, there will be like those one or two minutes of the presentation
where they'll actually show a demo of how this feature works.
And that's the part that I can understand.
So I love it when people like Jason Snell link to that, because like that's actually
the part of the presentation that I'm excited about it because it gives me something that
That's the one I wanna see.
Right.
I can understand. And then you can go back and you can talk about all of your objective C and
You're Swift programming.
Cobalt or I don't even know, you know, basic, are they still using the basic programming language?
Yeah.
(laughing)
I don't think they are, but Fortran, Pascal, whatever it is these guys are using today,
Fortran.
I'm sure it's a little Fortran.
(laughing)
guys and gals, I don't know.
Yes, it's all good.
[silence]
Well, that's the camera app.
And some of these updates in iOS 17,
we just kind of hit upon
of the last couple of sessions that we've done, Jeff.
But this was another great article you linked to
and Mac rumors about the new AirDrop features
Mm-hmm.
coming in iOS 17.
- Mm-hmm.
Notably, Apple came out with this name AirDrop,
which a lot of us use frequently throughout the day,
especially I mostly use with my family,
we're sharing things or if I'm working with a colleague
and I just need to share a quick document or so.
But a new thing that we did see is NameDrop,
which is an easy way, if you can see the screen here,
Yeah, it'll be interesting that you can simply take your iPhone and
is an easy way to share your contact information.
I don't know that a lot of people have been able
to use this yet because in order to do it,
you both have to have iOS 17,
which most people don't have yet.
But this was a nice little article here
about some of the other things coming
to the airdrop technology too.
Yeah.
put it close to somebody else's iPhone.
and you'll both see options in your screen
Right.
to share your contact information.
That's pretty cool.
Another cool AirDrop thing is like,
and I've definitely had this happen before,
where you start to send a big file to someone over AirDrop.
And I'm specifically using AirDrop
because it sends the full quality version
Yeah, right.
of the video, for example.
Yeah, right.
But if I've got like a four or five minute 4K video,
that takes a while to transfer.
And so once I start the AirDrop transfer
Nope.
under the current system,
if you move your phones too far away,
then the transfer stops.
And that's frustrating when it's like a five
Right.
or 10 minute transfer and eight minutes into the process,
Yeah.
it's lost, that's no fun.
And so I love that Apple is smart enough
to have this thing called continuing airdrop
over the internet.
So once you start the process,
(laughs)
even if your phones subsequently are in different rooms
That's brilliant, yeah.
or different cities, you can drive somewhere else,
it will continue the download process
just by using the internet as an intermediary.
So as long as you have internet access,
via wifi or your cell phone.
And I mean, that's a great, you know, in real life,
Right, exactly.
people won't understand how this works.
They will just notice that AirDrop works better
because it doesn't, you know, stop the sending the file.
That's all people will notice.
And that's all that really matters.
So I'm excited about that.
And I'm glad that Apple's doing that.
- Yeah, this is good.
[silence for the books]
I'm excited for the name drop.
I'm definitely excited for what you were
just talking about there.
And they said there's even like a new airdrop gesture.
Bring the two phones together,
initiates the transfer over airdrop.
I'm sure there'll be some settings on there.
We'll kind of see how that works
Yeah, cool.
when it comes into the wild.
But love seeing these little stories here
- Cool.
about certain things.
And the last one quickly that you linked to
is from John Gruber himself.
He reported on someone, Tim Hardwick,
using iOS 17 beta to where the QR code scanner.
Right.
So most people know,
I remember this was one of my tips a while back too,
but most people know you can open your camera,
the regular camera on your iPhone,
Right.
and you can point it at a QR code.
And as you do so, there'll be a little yellow box,
a little tiny yellow URL that'll pop up
and you can tap that.
But as John Krueger and Tim Hardwick both point out,
that yellow URL will move around, right?
You gotta be kind of quick and being able to tap it,
I didn't find that it was that big of a deal, but it is.
However, I love this.
So Tim, first of all says in iOS 17,
it's a small little change that when you scan the QR code,
the link button automatically appears at the bottom.
So it's more stationary, I guess.
But John Gruber goes on to say,
I know that again, this was a tip I used several weeks ago.
Instead of using the camera,
you can go into your control center and add,
I think it's called the code scanner
or it's the scanner app, I believe.
Yeah, Code Scanner.
And I love this because literally,
it is just sort of a sandbox thing.
It just, it beautifully, it does it beautifully, Jeff.
It just hones in, focuses on that QR code,
and it kind of like enlarges it.
And instead of looking at everything else,
it automatically jumps to that URL.
So you gotta trust it.
Some people that we know will say,
you gotta make sure you trust it.
Anyway, I love using that little
Control Center shortcut in there.
Sounds like it's gonna be a little bit easier
to do even with your regular camera.
The only thing I will say, and even John gets into this,
in that control center code scanner, it is sandboxed.
Like in other words, it'll go to a website,
but if I jump back into my email and I can't come back to it
like it's a sort of a sandbox thing
unless I open that in Safari.
So just a few things to watch out for.
But again, something simple that we're gonna see
getting tweaked in iOS 17 is this, the code scanner,
because I do see that more often
that people are using those QR codes a lot more.
- Yeah, and I'm sure it will remain the case
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Right. Right. You're and you're trying to tap tap it. I think that's
that for your best QR scanning experience,
you should use the thing that you have
to your control center.
But I have to admit, it is sort of nice
that in this convenient that people are just so used
to opening up the camera app on their phone real quick,
that it sure is nice that you can just point the camera
at a QR code and it will pull it up there.
But the thing that they're talking about
where it bounces around, I've totally seen that before.
And it's my fault.
It's because I'm holding my camera in my hand
and your hand can't stay perfectly still,
which means the QR code doesn't stay certainly skill,
(laughing)
Right, right.
which means that the yellow thing that you have to tap on
(laughing)
jumps around the screen.
And then of course, you bring your phone closer to you
to tap on the yellow thing,
Right, right, I know, it's a mess, it's a mess.
and then it's moved away because the key is blah, blah, blah.
So it's what they're doing in iOS 17
Absolutely.
is a smarter implementation.
So bravo for that.
[silence]
All right, most of those things are specifically iPhone,
although a lot of it will work on the iPad,
but one store you linked to I thought was great,
specifically is a iPadOS 17,
bringing much needed changes to Stage Manager and widgets.
First, we've talked about the widgets before
because we are very excited about the interactive widgets
that will be coming.
But I was also thrilled to read the story
about the changes and the improvements
made to Stage Manager.
I think we talked about Frederico's story
Yeah.
Yeah.
maybe last week or so,
but I'm just glad to see that Chance Miller
or somebody else is also reporting on this.
[silence]
About a year ago, Brett, when you and I were talking about iOS 16, I believe it was,
I was excited about Stage Manager because I thought it might be a more convenient way to multitask on my iPad.
Mm-hmm.
[silence]
But the reality of it is, you know, as I look back at the last year,
there have been times when I've used it, but I mostly keep it turned off.
Yeah, right. [laughs]
And there's a number of reasons for that.
But I like the idea of it, but it's just in practice, it didn't work quite as well.
(laughs)
Yeah, that's right.
And one of the things I didn't like about it is I felt like on the iPad, it was just a little
bit too limited in the different places that your different screens can be. I guess I'm just used to
Right.
Mm-hmm.
a computer where you could very precisely have overlapping screens and put things wherever you
want. And I was thrilled to read that one of the changes that's coming up on iOS 17 is it's not
(silence)
100% like a computer. You don't have complete freedom on where things overlap, but the number
Yes.
of positions that you can use
apparently has increased substantially.
(silence)
So much so that the people that have tried it out said,
Yes.
you know, if you weren't using it before
because you felt too constrained
and where you could put where you could layer things,
they say, give it a chance now.
I said, cause it's probably good enough
that you're gonna appreciate using it.
And I'm happy to see that because if they solve that
and solve some other little bitty things,
(laughing)
I actually do think that the idea of stage manager
Good.
is pretty good for those times
when you wanna be doing multiple things
at the same time on an iPad,
much like I do in the computer all the time.
So I'm cautiously optimistic that this might be the thing
that actually brings me back to stage manager.
I know we talked about this before
We'll see, we'll see, but I'm encouraged.
Oh, good.
because I'm almost the complete opposite.
I have almost embraced Sage Manager,
almost completely on the iPad and I like it.
However, I do run into those limitations.
And I guess I'm just kind of used to it now.
It's like, okay, well, that's the brick wall.
So I got to turn around and go back.
But I've embraced it to the point.
Mm-hm.
In fact, I was just doing this on a seminar earlier today.
I was showing people the split view and slide over, right?
That's the old version, which you can still jump back to,
but you can go into the control centers where I have it
and I can turn on stage manager.
And I like it.
I like having like three or four different apps
that I can tap around.
I got my music going and then I have the website
and I have a notes and a Word document or so.
So similar to a computer, I feel like that, you know,
while the iPad itself is getting closer to a laptop,
you have a stylus, you have mouse support,
you have keyboard on the hardware side,
on the software side, we're getting closer to the iPad
sort of becoming more like a laptop or a computer,
what we would consider to be a traditional
computer operating system.
And I think this is just another step in that direction too.
I'm glad to see that they're improving this.
And again, we talked about Federico's post,
which I thought was great because I know
for many people we read, he's very excited
about the improvements in stage manager.
So that's good.
All right, that was the iPad.
Let's talk about AirPods Pro.
I know that Tim Cook in the keynote
just barely addressed this.
I mean, it was just like a few little slides
about some of the things
and we've already talked about this,
but another good story that you linked to.
Very excited about adaptive audio coming out.
I love the noise cancellation versus transparency mode
Yeah, you know, I'm often conscious. I love that the AirPods Pro can put the noise cancellation
in my AirPods Pro and even my daughter's AirPods Max as well.
But now if these devices can adaptively switch
between the noise cancellation transparency for me,
I'm cautious about this as well,
but this would be kind of cool.
mode on and you sort of tune out the world around you.
Right.
Excuse me.
But sometimes I find myself like I'm torn.
Like I sort of want things quiet so that I can concentrate on my music or my podcast.
But at the same time, if somebody walks up to talk to me, I don't want to have to say,
wait, let me squeeze my thing.
Now let me get into transparency mode.
Right.
Right.
And now I can start to hear you because that's obnoxious.
And so what I usually end up doing instead, Brett, is I just take one of my AirPods and
And take it out.
take it out of my ear because that you can do really fast.
Right. Same, same.
And then you can hear the person.
Uh-huh.
And then it usually slips out of my fingers and I drop it on the ground.
And I think, oh my goodness, is this that this 99th time that I've dropped my air pod,
(laughing)
Right, that's it.
is this going to be the time that it stops working?
Yeah, right.
So it's so annoying.
So Apple is hoping to solve all of this with, you know, this sort of in-between mode that's
going to be coming in so that you can stay in a noise canceling mode.
But if someone starts to talk to you directly, then, you know, your musical, I forget if
the music dims, but I think maybe it'll, it allows the voice to come through.
I want to actually try it to see how it works.
I know.
But the idea of having an in-between mode, I'm all for it because, you know, I love noise
(silence)
Apple's even gonna give you personalized volume, Jeff.
cancellation.
I love transparency, but sometimes I sort of want the best of both and maybe this will
give it to us.
I hope so.
It would be great if it does.
This is a new feature that they say
they're using machine learning to let AirPods understand
like, you know, what volume do you normally listen to?
[silence]
And then the last thing quickly on here,
again, all of these things,
I feel like I just, I can't decide upon it
until I actually use it.
But now you can mute or unmute a phone call
where if I'm on a phone call with my AirPods,
my phone's usually sitting there.
I have to pull out my phone and then, you know,
there's the mute button on the actual phone itself.
But if you reach up and click your AirPod,
it would usually hang up the phone call.
Am I right?
Correct. Correct.
Like that's how it works right now.
But now Apple is saying that they are gonna allow you
Sure.
to mute your phone call by clicking your AirPod stem.
That's just gonna be a little bit of a muscle training
additional aspects there.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that one too.
I think it sounds good, but anyway, again,
things like this remains to be seen
and we'll just see kind of how it works out
once we get our hands on that.
Good stuff there.
too.
All right, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, now Apple Watch.
Nice little story you link to here
where it was, I think it was a German publication.
So if you read German, you can go and read the whole thing,
Yeah.
but this was a nice little summary of the Apple executives
discussing why there are no third-party watch faces
available for the watch.
I guess I really hadn't pined for that very much, Jeff,
but now that they talked about it, I'm like, yeah,
why are there not third-party watch faces available there?
And I feel like they kind of gave an okay
explanation for this.
What do you think?
It's something that I've actually wanted for a long time.
Yeah
I think that there are very creative developers out there that could come up with some really
Yeah
useful watch faces that have just the information I need.
I want to read the whole thing. Oh
And I would love to have it, but I understand it's not as simple as turning it on or off
because there's a million considerations in terms of how much battery they use and how
it works with everything.
So it's funny, when I saw this article, it says Swiss newspaper, and then it has the
name of it, publish this thing.
The first thing I did is like, well, let me just read the article.
So I clicked on the link and then I realized it was all in German.
Oh
So I was like, okay, I'm not reading this.
Right, right
So then I went back to what you're showing on the screen, which has the highlights in
English.
So like you say, they do address the issue, you know, why are there no third party, you
know, and, you know, he basically says, you know, you know, the short answer is because
we can make sure that everything is safe and works accurately if you just have the Apple
home screen.
Mm-hmm
And, you know, I'm sure to a certain degree that is true, but, you know, on the Mac, they
let you do whatever you want on the iPhone.
They give a little bit of flexibility.
You know, it does seem like part of me feels like there will finally be a day one day when
(silence)
you can actually do this.
I mean, even CarPlay where Apple is so restrictive because they, I mean, you're driving a car
for goodness sakes, they don't want you to get into a crash.
(laughs)
You know, you can, you know, developers that want to have an app in CarPlay can't just
Right?
(silence)
upload it to the app store.
They have to be specially approved by Apple and it has to be a category of app that Apple
allows in CarPlay, but they still allow it, you know?
Right.
(silence)
So if a third-party map app wants to be on the CarPlay,
Yeah.
(silence)
they can get approved and they can do it.
Yeah, I found it interesting.
And I would love it if maybe one day Apple could find a way,
even if it's just a limited number,
but to have some options for different watch faces.
But who knows, maybe it'll never happen.
They do.
One of the comments I said in here is like,
well, you know, we already do have many modes
that you can customize in Apple Watch as well.
And they do, I mean, you can, you know,
do different colors and different faces,
Mm-hmm.
you know, depending on the one,
you can add your own photo and build that.
I gotta admit, I don't spend, I don't think enough time
in my Apple Watch app on my iPhone to develop these.
I usually do that on the iPhone.
I just feel like it's a little bit easier to do that.
And then I can add that into my list.
And sometimes I feel like I'm not taking full advantage
of what is available, but I sometimes get overwhelmed too.
Like one that he uses, Apple has an app, it may be called stripes, I forget.
Like there are a lot of options there for customizing now,
but I see what you're saying.
Like I would like to have a trusted developer, you know,
create something that is just fantastic
and then I can just add that into my list.
Not yet.
(laughs)
Yes, right.
But you can control how many stripes are in the screen and
what the colors are.
And so like I have one that for my daughter's school, the colors are green and white. So I can
There you go, right.
put my green and white, I'll put it on the camera. And then I've got one that from Watergrow at times
Yes, exactly.
got the purple, green and gold. You can sort of see that on the camera. And then when it's
Yes, right.
Christmas time, I might put on my red and green. I don't know if any of these are showing up on the,
on the video version of this podcast, but you know, you can customize some things like that,
but, but what if I want to have an app that has like some workout stuff on the left side
Yes, right, right.
and some other stuff on the right side, you know, whatever else, you know, you know, that somebody
Maybe one day.
could come up with a better mouse trap if Apple just let them try. So we'll see.
All right, so we talked mostly about hardware.
Well, some of the iOS updates and everything
for the iPhone, the iPad, AirPods, the Apple Watch.
This was an excellent article that you linked to
[ Silence ]
from John Voorhees over at Mac Stories about Apple services.
I don't remember that we talked a whole lot about this
in the keynote, or I remember, you know,
maybe some of the details kind of bubbled up,
but this was a great little collection here
that John put together about,
what are we gonna see in Apple Podcast?
What are we gonna see coming up in Apple Fitness,
or Apple Music, or even, what was the other thing here?
The Apple Maps, and even maybe Crosswords.
I mean, there was just a whole lot of stuff
- Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I don't use the Apple Podcasts app
that he put in here, but it was encouraging to see
that obviously Apple is gonna put some time
into improving some of the access to their services
that they have already too.
Right, right, right.
because I use a third-party app
from when I listen to podcasts,
Right.
but Overcast, which we've mentioned before.
But I have to admit, when I look at the improvements here,
Yeah, of course.
I mean, they've got like a better directory
and they're gonna have more characterizations
and they've got more options for, you know,
putting stuff in the queues and stuff.
Apple is slowly making the Podcasts app,
you know, much better and better.
And I know that tons of people use the Apple Podcasts app.
So, I mean, I think that that's great.
Yeah, so good.
We've talked about the,
one of the improvements coming to the maps is like,
if you're going to be traveling to another country,
you can download the map before you get there.
So that way you don't have to worry about,
if you have a cell phone connection,
you can still have the maps there.
And, you know, all sorts of other things that are coming to,
there's, this is a great article
that has tons of tons of details in it.

The Apple Music is, I mean, I think John jokingly called it the karaoke-like feature by displaying
and singers on your Apple TV,
if you connect the Apple Music app

or use the Apple Music app even through your Apple TV,
not necessarily on your iPhone.
I thought that was pretty good.
At the very bottom here,
I found that this was interesting.

First of all, also quickly,
I love the Apple Fitness+ app
that is on my iPhone and iPad.
And John mentions quickly here that it is difficult.
The thing that he mentions,

that when you're done with one session,
like I gotta go all the way out,
back all the way out and find another session,
and they have different categories,
strength and core and treadmill,
and it would be great, he said,
you can create a stack now.
So you can say, I wanna do this workout
and this workout and this workout,
and it'll just automatically just kind of go to,
I mean, again, not a huge change,
[silence]
but certainly could make it a little bit nicer.
At the very bottom of his article,
he has things like Apple News will gain crossword puzzles
in a deal struck with the Puzzle Society.
Apple Books will add, make it easier to see book
from different series, for example.
I thought this was neat.
Apple Cash will let users set up recurring payments
on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
So like if you get your kid's allowance,
you know, I think you said this before, Jeff,
Yeah. One more that's mentioned in here, which I did not hear about beforehand on FitnessPlus. When you do FitnessPlus, Brett, because I know you do it sometimes, do you always do like a new program every time? Or do you have like programs that you like and you do them over and over again?
that, you know, to give your kids allowance,
instead of like setting it up
and manually doing that every week,
you could just have it automatically send an allowance
through Apple Cash, which I think is nice.
- Hmm, yeah, both.
Both.
Mostly I look for new ones
because they do such a good job putting them in,
Yeah, I.
but I have some favorites that I will go back to.
Yeah. And that's what I do too.
Yeah, right.
I usually like looking at new ones,
but every once in a while I'll have a workout.
There's like, you know what?
I just felt like that was a good workout.
And so what I'll do is I'll add it
Ooh.
to the favorite or whatever.
And so anyway, for those times when you do want to go back
and do something over and over again,
he says that there's going to be a feature
that you can choose to prioritize
either the instructor's voice over the music.
Oh, because you know it.
So it's easier to hear the instructions
or just the reverse.
you could prioritize the music over the voice.
And so, you know, his thinking is,
if you have a workout that you've done so many times
and you know how to do it,
Okay.
you're watching them on the screen,
you just want to listen to the songs and do your workout.
Right, right.
You can actually adjust.
I was like, what, I mean,
this is clearly a product that's no longer
Ooh.
at the 1.0 stage.
When you start making these sorts of changes
Yep, right, right.
to your product, you are truly just sort of, you know,
working around the edges to make it better.
If I'm not mistaken now, with iOS 16,
And so that's, I mean, I may use that feature,
but whether I use it or not,
The fact that they're now at that level of sophistication and tweaking means that, you
know, Apple's really putting a lot of time and attention into Fitness Plus.
And that's just one example of all of these different things up there.
So yeah.
you can do Apple Fitness workouts with just an iPhone,
like you don't need an Apple Watch.
However, it does work much better if you do have an Apple Watch,
whether you watch that, you know,
even on the iPhone or the iPad.

And again, I just keep, I keep coming back to this idea.
Like Apple is really putting a lot of work
into the health components here.
And yeah, it's just great to see that this is,

the fitness app is even getting some additional love there.
Well, okay, here's one non Apple story, I guess.
Even though we have Apple in it that you linked to.
(silence)
Wi-Fi 7, boy, talk about some really geek speak here.
Apple is planning to bring Wi-Fi 7 support
to the iPhone next year.
That sounds great because when I hear Wi-Fi 7,
I'm just almost thinking,
okay, it's gotta be faster, better.
But even if it's built into the iPhone,
it's only gonna really help if you can connect yourself
to a Wi-Fi 7 enabled network.
Am I right?
Yeah, so like for example, if your house doesn't have a brand new router
(laughing)
Uh-huh.
that supports Wi-Fi 7, then when you're home, you're not going to be able to take advantage of
Of course, of course.
it. But you know, one of these days, we all replace routers from time to time, or maybe
your business or the coffee shop you go to gets a new router, and then it'll take advantage of
Right.
Okay, okay.
the newest version of Wi-Fi. And so why not have the support? By the way, this is not Apple
Oh yeah.
Right.
official. I think this is still just a rumor, but we all know that at some point, the iPhone will
Right.
Okay.
support Wi-Fi 7. And you know, why is it better? Because it's fast. I mean, it's the same reason
Oh yeah.
(laughs)
that they're always better, because it does better. You know, there are some particular
Right, right.
Right, right.
the reasons that this one does better.
It allows you to simultaneously use different radio bands to put them
together so that you can maximize the speed.
Yeah.
You know, there's all these technical reasons, which I actually did enjoy
reading about in this article about why it's going to be better, but, you
know, bottom line is speeds are faster and more reliable, you know, as, as
is always the case, whenever they improve wifi and, you know, when you
Good. You're good.
think about where wifi was gosh, 15, 20 years ago, I mean, wifi today, I
mean, we're now at a point where if you have access to a wifi hotspot, you're,
you're usually completely fine.
You know, any kind of video, anything else.
It wasn't that long ago.
That wasn't the case, but why not make Wi-Fi better?
Sure.
Where yet?
One quick story for our "Where Yet?" segment. This was Cincinnati, Ohio television station

had a story about how a woman, Ms. Watkins here,
wasn't feeling very well.
She thought, well, maybe I just didn't have enough to sleep,
you know, to eat that day,
and I'm just gonna take a quick nap.
And if I understand the story,
the Apple Watch woke her up
because it detected that her heart rate was 178,
very high for over 10 minutes.
Yes.
Yeah, so she went to the hospital and sure enough, she had this very rare type of cardiac issue where she was describing like if it's in this part of your body between your heart and your lung, the survival rate is, you know, what it was a scary situation.
And so the Apple Watch was like, this is not right.
You need to get this checked out.
And it turns out it may have saved her life.
Not good.
Not good.
So thank goodness her watch gave her the encouragement to go to the doctor and have it checked out
[LAUGHTER]
Amazing.
because otherwise it could have been a very unfortunate story.
And you see these types of stories all the time.
But however, when you introduce the story, Brett, as someone who lives in Ohio, how can
Yes. Instead of, yeah, I know. I like your post. Yeah. That's okay. It was a good one.
you say WKRC in Cincinnati?
I don't know.
You just glanced over that part that I made a joke of in my post.
That's fine.
You Ohioans, I know, I know.
Go ahead, ignore my jokes. In the know.
I liked it. All right. In the know. So let's talk a little bit about some accessibility
features like I mentioned I gave a seminar earlier today Jeff where we were for whatever
reason my co-speaker and I were really digging into just some of like here are some neat
tips that you can do with the with the iPad and the iPhone and it just reminded me a lot
of times there is so much built in to the accessibility components within the iPhone
and iPad meaning that I take advantage of a lot of these some I don't even realize anymore
just because they're kind of, you know, part of my part and parcel of my use here.
But some others I realized, oh, I haven't used that in a long time.
Regardless of like your need for accessibility features,
there are just some really great things built in.
Here's the one that I came across back today.
If I have a website or an article or a document open on my screen,
whether it's the iPhone or the iPad, I will obviously can read it.
But sometimes I just want to sit back, close my eyes,
and I like to have my iPhone read the article to me.
Now I've got some other apps that I've done this before
and other people have talked about it but today
there is a way that you can just have a little tool
built into the iPhone and the iPad that will read it to you.
This is found in settings you go into accessibility
and you go to spoken content is the name of it spoken content.
And the way that I really like to use this under spoken
content is I turn on a little toggle called speak screen. Speak screen. And what that
Right, right.
means is that now when I go into an article, let's just say I'm going to bring up a website
here. Let me see. It was a story here on eDiscovery reference model. I simply take two fingers
and I slide them down from the top center of the screen. And when I do, you can probably
hear it's starting to read it to me on this. And I've got this little toolbar in the middle
of my screen now that allows me to jump to the next paragraph of the sentence. I can
pause it or I can speed it up or slow it down and also have a little finger that's on here
so that I can scroll. I can move down to a part of the page and say start reading from
right here and I can tap it and it works. And there's a little X on here. So when you're
done that little toolbar will it actually auto hide itself but you can hit the X and
then it disappears and it doesn't it stops reading for you. But I love just having that
on I I thought when I first turned it on that I would
[silence]
accidentally enable that a lot because you know the two
fingers sliding down maybe but I don't. It turns out
it's kind of hidden there and it's just available for
me when I need it. So that is the spoken content
accessibility feature and turn on speak screen and
you just use those two fingers slide down from the
top center and it's really nifty just to be able to
have that available.
Yes.
Apple's always done a great job with accessibility features,
not only because they have so, so, so many of them,
[silence]
but also because so many of them,
maybe they were specifically designed for people that have specific preferences and needs,
but all of us can take advantage of them, which is really great.
Yeah.
The one that I was noticing today was another accessibility feature,
[silence]
that if you go to settings and then accessibility and then motion,
there's a number of ways that you can reduce motion on your phone.
Maybe it just makes you feel nauseous or something like that,
if you've got too much animation or too many things moving around.
Right?
And so there's a number of things you can do to simplify that.
Oh, yeah. Right. I'm going to go ahead and get started. So, I'm going to go ahead and
But one of the features that is within this section
is you can decide whether you want to turn off having videos play automatically.
And this setting, I mean, it's specifically designed for Apple apps. So for example,
like if you're in the app store and there's, you know, some apps might have a video preview,
you know, it makes it that instead of the video just starting automatically,
you actually have to tap to say that I want the video to start playing.
And I mean, goodness knows, we all know from, you know, watching television. I mean,
(laughs)
I know, I was just gonna say that.
It drives me crazy sometimes when I'm on Netflix or Amazon that you're just trying to pick something
to watch and it's playing previews and sound and everything else. I'm like, be quiet. I just want
(laughs)
Right, right.
to look through that stuff. But if you're the ones like, you know, don't play video unless I
(laughs)
really want you to do so, you can go into settings and turn it off. Now I'll warn you, it doesn't
Yeah.
Okay, okay.
necessarily work with all third-party apps. Apple has opened this up to developers. So some
[silence]
developers will take advantage of it and respect your wishes, others, not so much. But it's at
at least a place that you can go if you know that you never ever ever want videos to play
without your preference.
Here's at least something that you can do to reduce some of them from auto playing.
And then on the flip side, if you don't mind it, you know, you can make sure it's turned
on and that way they'll just auto play.
So it's just another little example of something that, you know, maybe it's, you know, it wasn't
specifically designed for the general public in mind, but the general public can absolutely
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's under the accessibility,
take advantage of this feature if it's something that's just your personal preference.
it's settings, accessibility, and then motion, like you said.
And then motion.
I see that I've got mine turned on
because I think I remember it was several years ago now
when the App Store allowed those videos to be on.
Like it used to just be static images
Yeah.
and it still is for the most part many times,
but there are some apps that will give you
like that little preview.
And I think I had it turned on or I left it turned on,
you know, when I remembered that that came about,
but I don't know, I'm considering turning that off
because just like you, I get more frustrated.
I hope there's the setting for Apple TV.
I'm gonna go check that because I like sometimes
[LAUGH]
when they play a little bit of the trailer or something,
but I just don't need the sound all the time, right?
Like, okay, just give me an idea,
Yeah, yeah.
but I know what I'm looking for.
You just wait, you hush.
I like it.
All right, that's a good tip.
I like it, you know, just generally check, you know,
look around at the accessibility options and settings.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I mean, there's really just some really, really amazing stuff
that Apple continues to do in there.
That's wonderful.
Jeff, as always, thank you, sir.
And I think that was good for covering all the new
and updated things for this week.
Thanks, Brett.
And we'll talk to you next week.
All right, nice and quick.
Bye-bye, everybody.