108: Amazon CarPlay, Spatial Meetings, Tracking House Plants

(upbeat music)

- Welcome to In the News for August the 4th, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hi Brett.

- Good morning, Jeff.

Today, our podcast, it feels like it's all grown up.

Today is the first day quickly.

We are so excited to announce that we have the show

sponsored today by SaneBox.

We've got a special URL that's set up

at sanebox.com/inthenews.

We're gonna talk a little bit more about it

a little bit later on in the episode,

but we're just really grateful

and thankful to have SaneBox on.

And we'll tell you why we're so excited about this

here in a little bit.

In the meantime, if you've got any summer travel plan,

you might wanna consider Air Canada

as your airline of choice,

if you wanna catch up on all those Apple TV+ shows

that you haven't finished up.

Like if you want to binge some, anyway,

you had a leak today from Air Canada

that they are announcing that if you are in flight

for the in-flight entertainment,

they now are going to offer Apple TV+.

I think this is really cool.

- I always think it's interesting when I travel

because for me, you know,

I'm going to be watching things on my iPhone or my iPad.

Some people watch things on their computer.

I'm always amazed at the number of people

that watch things on the back of the headrest

in front of them on the plane, you know?

And I can understand it for live sports.

I mean, I've certainly been in the air when, you know, I'm flying into New

Orleans and there was an LSU game on.

So everybody in New Orleans is excited about it.

So of course, everybody's going to be watching that thanks to

the satellite and the live sports.

Um, but people watch a lot of the stuff that's on the, the in-flight stuff.

So I guess it's a good idea for Apple to say, Hey, why not let people that are not

currently inscribed, uh, subscribed to Apple TV plus to, uh, to get a taste of it.

You know, maybe watch the first episode of a show like for all mankind or something

like that and see if it appeals to them.

So, uh, so it was an interesting to see this announcement with, um, with air Canada.

I don't think it's the first time Apple has done this.

I think Apple has had other.

I'm trying to remember back.

It seems like I've seen something with them on air.

Yeah.

And one of the United States airlines, but, um, but again, they're, they're really

trying to get Apple TV plus out there.

You know, they've got the good shows like Ted Lasso, which everybody's talking about.

Right now they just want to get more exposure so that more people, um, get into it.

You know, I, I have done exactly what you just described on some flights.

You know, I've got a little bit of free time and it's like, I keep

hearing about this show, never had time to sit and watch it.

And that's exactly when I'll start something new.

Like, I just want to, you know, taste it out, you know, get a little bit

of a taste and see if I like it or not.

But like you also said, Jeff, what we're really talking about here is those screens

built into the back of the, of the, of the, uh, of the seat in front of us,

which I got to tell you, I was just on a United flight yesterday.

The screens weren't even working.

But I got to tell you, everybody was doing exactly what you describe.

It's like on their iPhone, their computer, their iPad.

And so honestly, that's where I default to.

If I want to watch something and today, most of the times, if you connect to the

wifi or they have free entertainment, it's like through the United app, right?

Or the Delta app, you can get some of that information there as well.

But I, but I think to your point, it's just more interesting of

the partnership aspects here, right?

It's just another opportunity.

I think for apple TV plus to kind of maybe get exposed to more people.

in different areas, maybe that you didn't,

that you wouldn't think about it, which I think is cool.

If you are considering this,

maybe one of the Apple TV+ shows

you may not want to consider on the flight is "Hijack."

But you wrote about this today.

You've really been enjoying the series a lot.

- This has been a great show.

It really has.

The seventh episode dropped this week

and it stars Idris Elba, who I know from "The Wire"

and many other shows he's had this.

And you know, he is such a great character in the show

where his job is he's a professional negotiator

that works on like mergers and acquisitions.

So when the person at the end

has to sort of get the deal done,

I think as an attorney,

sort of like a really good mediator,

someone that brings the parties together

and finds a ways to find common ground.

And so he uses those skills

to deal with the hijackers in the show.

And it's an exciting show.

It's one of those shows that at the end of every episode,

you absolutely want to watch the next episode.

And it's been painful for the last seven weeks

to have to wait for another week to watch the next episode.

But it's great.

But so I really enjoyed the show.

Of course, as you said, may not be the right thing to watch on a plane, much like, you

know, you don't want to watch Jaws when you're at the beach.

But it's a good example though, of just Apple continues to come up with these, with these

great shows.

And you know, it's, they've come so far from the days when it was just, you know, the service

was just starting out.

They only had a few shows.

Some of them were better than other, you know, Apple started with For All Mankind, one of

my favorite shows of all times, The Morning Show, which I enjoy, but I don't think it's,

I mean, it's quite as good as Apple wants it to be, but it's still pretty good show.

And then a show called C that I did watch with my son, but it was just sort of, okay.

So it was sort of like a good, pretty good and a whatever show was how they started.

But since then, not every show on Apple TV plus is the best show, but so many of

them are really, really good and I really enjoy them and they, they have something

there.

Um, and one of the thing, and this goes back to the air Canada thing is when Apple

TV plus started, Brett, I wasn't sure if Apple was going to take the perspective of

We want this to be a reason to buy Apple products. So to really watch Apple TV plus,

you got to have an Apple TV or an iPhone or an iPad, right? But Apple's gone the opposite direction,

sort of the way that we saw Netflix go years ago, which is no, no, no, we, this service is

something in itself. We want to make it widely available. Get Apple TV plus, no matter what

device you're using, watch it in a computer, watch it on, you know, it doesn't have to be

products that we sell, watch it on whatever you have, you know, we just want you to be a subscriber.

Um, and I know I understand the reason why, because the more you start to bring people

into the Apple ecosystem and stuff like that, hopefully they'll look at other products.

Um, I don't know if there's as much bleed over from something like Apple TV plus into buying an

iPhone, but even so it's just part of being a part of the Apple family. So the whole process

has been fascinating over the last few years to, to, to sort of step back and see what Apple's

doing. Um, but also just to someone that enjoys watching good stuff, they got great stuff.

It must be working. I just saw this story. I think this past week, Apple

we're reported some, some, some revenue or some numbers. Apple subscriptions have hit 1 billion

aid subscribers. That's incredible. I mean, now this is all the breadth of their subscriptions.

This is everything. I'm just describing to an app, the whole thing. Yeah. But it includes Apple

TV plus, and that's amazing that that number. Yeah. There are a billion people or a billion

instances, because some of these might be the same person where someone saying, you know,

I'm going to give you my credit card and you can go ahead and charge it every week,

every month for whatever this service is. So it's pretty incredible.

Well, that's good. And I might have to try hijack now based on your recommendations. You're always

so good at the recommendations, Jeff, but because I do travel quite a bit, I have refrained from

watching this because I just don't want to. And I thought, honestly, I thought it was going to be,

okay, well, this is another hijack movie, lots of guns, Air Force One, Con Air, something like that.

But until you started talking about the fact that no, he's more of a hostage negotiator,

right? He has more of negotiation skills. I'm like, okay, I might be able to look at that.

That's good. Let me just say one more thing though, on that topic, it just reminds me that

sometimes I'll be watching like my Apple TV plus or whatever show when I'm on a plane on my iPad.

And you know, every once in a while you will get to a scene where it's suddenly like, oh my gosh,

I didn't even occur to me that in this episode of game of Thrones, they were going to be showing

nudity. And so then suddenly I feel like I need to hide my iPad because you don't know what people

people behind you are seeing,

that's the danger of watching your own stuff on a plane.

I guess at least if you watch the stuff

on the, that the plane gives you,

it's gonna at least be a little bit more PG, but anyway.

- Hopefully, hopefully.

All right, well, we just talked about Apple reporting

that they hit 1 billion paid subscribers.

And then some of the other numbers that came out,

it seems like, I haven't done just a whole lot of look,

but I'm gonna about this, but the general phone market

or the smartphone market apparently is a little bit down

with some of the numbers.

Maybe this happens every summer.

I'm not really sure, but, but Apple seems to be a, the, the, a little bit of an oddity

here.

Their market share has gone up and this was a neat little quick story that you linked

to from David Sparks.

Yeah.

And he has some ideas about it.

You know, it's, you know, he says that the overall market might be down just because,

you know, people are not as interested in buying smartphones nowadays.

I guess that's possible, although it seems like we would have gotten to that point a

while before.

But the key point is that, you know, either Apple is staying in place as the market goes

down and that alone would be enough for it to increase its market share, or maybe Apple

is actually selling more.

But you know, Apple is, as David says here, I agree with them.

It's a very mature product line because there are so many different phones at so many different

price points.

And it's not just the new ones too.

I mean, Apple on its website will advertise the newest iPhones, but you go into any store

and they are more than willing to sell you the year old version or the two year old version

of the reduced price.

And as a result, if you were to sort of make like a chart of, you know, the cheapest iPhones

you can buy all the way up to the very top of the line, the Apple, you know, iPhone 14

Pro Max, uh, there's pretty much something at every price point, you know, it's just

whatever you're in the mood for, you know, maybe not the low, low, low, low, low end.

That's where the Android phones are going to have a little bit more, but you can't really

make money at that super low end.

But at, you know, at the, at the low to medium end, all the way up, there's just so many

options there.

Well, you know, most people are going to know that you and I usually go for like whatever

the latest and greatest is.

But to your point, uh, I think maybe about four or five months ago, I just got a new

phone for my wife and for my daughter and they did not care to have the latest and greatest.

And daddy did not care to pay that price for all of that, but I ended up getting them just

a regular iPhone twelves.

So to your point, Jeff, I mean, these are like two years old now and they love it.

Like it did everything that they needed to do.

And it was more than enough.

And actually I think I got them through Apple if I'm not mistaken.

Yes, I did.

So the idea was, you know, I was able to put it on my Apple card and pay over the interest

and they were brand new and they are very, they're tickle pink.

I mean, it's just great that they are enjoying it so much on that.

So yeah, it's interesting.

My daughter has an iPhone SE.

I'm pretty sure she has the second generation that came out in 2020.

The third generation came out last year, but, um, her battery was running low in

the beginning of the summer.

And so we just went to the Apple store.

She got a new battery in it.

And I mean, I even, not that I was looking to buy a new phone, but I did sort of ask

her some questions to see if she's like, Oh no, the phone's great.

I just need more battery life.

So a simple little battery upgrade was all that she needed.

So, you know, for, for what she uses her iPhone for, that was all she needed.

Depending on what model of iPhone and AirPods you have, you could

be listening to spatial audio.

We've talked about this several times.

And I usually think about spatial audio specifically

in using the Apple Music app, right?

Jeff, that's usually where it comes up,

but it is available even in FaceTime audio.

So if you're doing a FaceTime call

and it's not just Apple anymore.

This was a really interesting story, I think,

that you linked to today that you now can use spatial audio

in Microsoft Teams meetings.

That's really cool that, I mean,

I don't know if this is the same Apple spatial audio,

maybe Microsoft is just calling it their version

of spatial audio, but never, regardless,

I'm just really happy 'cause I use Microsoft Teams

on my Mac a lot, even on my phone.

And if that can come to that,

and the video here is really cool,

just being able to access that is really cool as well.

- Yeah, you know, spatial audio sort of has two incarnations,

at least in Apple products.

You have the version of spatial audio in Apple Music,

as you just said, where different instruments

are all around you and it creates this sort of

3d experience that the music seems well more rich as a result of, you know, most like the

difference between mono and stereo is that it seems more rich going from stereo to spatial

audio seems more rich. That's one version of spatial audio and it's cool. But one of the

first versions of spatial audio in the something that, for example, if you're listening to something

on your iPad and you're wearing your AirPods, as you look at your iPad, the musical scene or the

sound will seem to be right in front of you. But if you turn your head to look to the side,

it'll be as if the sound is just coming from the left side of your body where the iPad is located.

And it tricks you. It tricks you into thinking that you're actually listening to sound from

the iPad as opposed to through your ears. There have actually been times where I've been so tricked

by spatial audio that I'm like, wait a minute, am I using my headphones? And then I'm like,

Oh, can people hear me? And so I'll pull my, my air pod out and like, Oh yeah, okay. I'm actually

using my AirPods because it's so realistic. And so Microsoft has taken that version of it

and using it in teams. And again, I know that FaceTime has had this for a while,

but I don't do a ton of FaceTime calls, certainly not a multi-person FaceTime calls.

Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, Brett, as someone that works in the corporate world as an

attorney, I use Teams, I mean, all the time, I mean, every day. And so I love the idea of having

it that you can, if you've got people on the left of your screen and people on the right of the

screen, the sound will seem like it's coming from the left to the right if you're using headphones

that support that. One of the things that Microsoft said in this article, which I thought was

interesting is it's not just a gimmick. It actually makes it easier to follow the conversation and to

see who's talking. And that made sense. And they had, I don't know if you're going to find this,

you're scrolling in here, but they referred to something that I had never heard of. It was

called something like the cocktail party effect or something like that. Oh, there it is. You found

it right there. And the idea is that if you're in a cocktail party, this is something that's been

studied by scientists and there's all this noise and all this conversation, your brain is smart

smart enough to know I'm actually trying to listen to this person that's like in front

of me to the left and your brain will focus on the sound coming from that direction.

I guess that's something that we all do, but I've never really consciously thought about

it before.

And so using that same cocktail party effect that's been studied by scientists, you can

apply the same thing to Microsoft teams.

And in the demo video that they have in the post, there's a single point and the demo

is a little silly because they're obviously doing a demonstration.

It's not real.

one point where like one person is talking about a topic.

And two or three other people start to talk amongst themselves

about something different.

And it's fascinating because you're following the first person

because they were going first.

And sure enough, my brain had no trouble sort of.

Ignoring almost jumping over the side conversation, because I sort of, not

just because of the, who I saw was talking, but it sort of felt like it was coming

from a different direction and it was easy for my brain to continue listening to the

person that was at the top left because the sound was coming from there.

So again, I haven't tried this out yet.

I think this post says it's actually.

Currently implemented.

I don't know if both sides need to have it.

I don't, I haven't played around with it yet, but, um, but I look forward to it.

So they have, the post is really good and detailed in here.

They go into, in your teams settings that now, I guess you meant need to

make sure you update your teams because there is a spatial audio setting in here.

And to underscore your points,

it's only available in the gallery view, right?

Which is where we wouldn't normally have it.

So if you've got multiple people,

it's gotta be in that gallery view.

- The Brady Bunch view, yeah, exactly.

- Exactly.

I did see here one thing,

I hope this is gonna get ironed out soon.

You need a stereo capable device,

such as wired headsets or a stereo capable laptop.

Bluetooth devices are not currently supported.

- Oh, I did not see that due to protocol.

- I did, I know.

- But see, that's interesting,

'cause I use my AirPods exclusively.

Microsoft team.

So that's, I'm not going to get, yeah, they have to fix that.

They say Bluetooth devices are not supported for protocol limitation.

Well, that makes no sense because it works with FaceTime on my Apple.

I know.

So I wonder if that's a, you know, like they didn't get specific as to why,

what the limitation is, and you know, that's very generic protocol limitation,

but I'm with you.

I want that to be fixed.

Like what I found out that limitation because we, we, we need that now,

wherever we're going to go.

That's good stuff though.

though. Anyway, it's like you said, for a lot of folks, and I know a lot of listeners that we, you

know, we do team, we do zoom, but we also have a lot of teams that are happening now. And it's just

great to see that Microsoft, if nothing else, is really just continuing to innovate on on that

aspect as well. I'll say one other quick thing about Teams, Brad, just for folks that use it a

lot like I do. I was doing a presentation earlier this week from some associates in our firm,

and I had slides. And we all know that when you use Microsoft Team, you can either, you know,

show your face, or you can display the slides, and you can go through them, so everybody can see it.

But I wanted to have a situation where people could see my slides, but they could also see

me and there have been times in the past where I've used third party products like one called

that you and I talked about a few weeks ago that allow you to merge.

Have you superimposed?

Well, much like Brett, you have a green screen.

So your image on the video right now is superimposed on something else.

There is actually a feature that was added to teams recently and I used it this week

where when you go to share a slide, you can say, do I want just the slide on the screen

or do I want myself superimposed on top of the scribe, or do I want to have like a newscaster

mode where the slide is in the top left and I'm here.

And I use the one where I was superimposed at the bottom right.

And if you want, you could switch yourself to the bottom left if you're covering something

up and it worked really well.

It was the first time I tried it and it did exactly what I wanted.

My audience was able to see my slides, but they were also able to see me and my hand

expressions and everything else just sort of in the corner.

It worked really great.

make yourself bigger or smaller.

So I just wanted to throw that out there

that I didn't even know that that feature was in Teams.

And now that I see that it's built in,

the next time that like I have a client meeting

and I'm going through some documents or slides or something,

I'm gonna use this feature more and more, really cool.

- I'm gonna try that out because that is possible now,

but you have a separate like slide view

and then you've got your little video boxes up there, right?

But it sounds like this is now just all

kind of incorporated into one, maybe.

- It worked great for me.

- Yeah, I'm gonna look into that as well.

That really sounds cool.

How about some workflow apps?

No, I'm sorry.

It's not workflow any longer, it's shortcuts.

Matthew Casanelli was the original developer of workflow,

which was a great, I forgotten about it

till you linked to it today,

or you mentioned it today, Jeff,

that Apple purchased and they turned into shortcuts.

And this was really interesting that I thought,

Okay, well I don't need,

'cause I don't use a whole lot of shortcuts

to be honest with you.

But anytime there's something new,

I like to just like know that it's possible.

And now in iOS 17, at least in the betas,

there is a shortcuts for camera modes,

which bring it on.

I think this is great.

- Yeah, I think so too.

So often you wanna start taking a picture or a video,

and there are times when you wanna do it immediately.

Video is true for me.

You know, you'll start to see something happen

in the world around you.

Your kid's doing something cute or something like that,

You want to immediately start taking video, but what do you do?

You open up your app, the photos app, and then you're in the still photo mode.

And then you got to swipe over and always forget.

I have to go swipe left or swipe right to exactly, you know, and then by the time

you get there, the moment's over.

It's like, oh, so, um, so this would be cool.

Pretty cool.

That if you have a shortcut that would say, go directly into the video mode.

And then, I mean, you could either make that, you know, an icon on your

screen, or you could do it some other way.

In fact, there's a rumor that Apple this fall might be making it, that you can

actually change what the, uh, with the, um, the, the switch on the side, the, the silence,

and so you might be able to program that.

And so maybe I'm just making this up.

Maybe you could program at that.

If you flip the switch, I'll instantly jump into the, you know, take a video mode.

So we'll, we'll see how this all plays out.

You know, the proof will be in the pudding, but at least as an idea, I'm totally in favor

of this.

So I think step one is to allow shortcuts to do it and hopefully it'll be speedy, you

know, and snappy and stuff.

but let's give us this capability

and then let's figure out ways to do it.

But I can actually see this being really useful.

- You are exactly correct.

And a lot of times, one of the ways that I take a picture,

if I need something quickly like that, Jeff,

is I don't even open or unlock my phone, right?

I've got the little camera icon in the bottom right corner.

So I tap and hold on that,

but it does open directly to the camera.

But now, I mean, there are like, what,

six or seven different options in here.

If I want the photo, the video,

it always goes to video, which is great,

but you're exactly right.

I'm like, I have to sit here for, you know, five or six seconds to like,

okay, am I swiping this way?

Then do I want it, you know, with this, uh, zoom level?

I mean, there's just so much in there.

I know it doesn't sound like it takes a long time, but if I could just go

immediately to like the cinematic, uh, you know, 0.5 X zoom, you know,

the widescreen view, if I could just jump directly to something like that,

that'd be great.

Now that my, that second part may be a little bit too, uh, detailed

in what they're doing, but anyway, just great.

And I'm thrilled that Matthew is still posting about some of the things on here as well,

which I think is, which is, which is good.

His blog is a great use for, for, you know, all sorts of tips and shortcuts and stuff

like that.

You're reminding me, Brett, that there is a way, gosh, I can't do it live as we're talking

here, but there is a setting on your camera on the iPhone, and I'm just not seeing it

right now that you can make it that when you jump into, here it is, it's under, it's under

camera settings.

You can actually, there's something called preserve settings that you can preserve the

last mode that the camera was in.

So for example, if you were recently in video mode and you jump back into the camera app,

you will once again being in video mode and it's your choice as to whether you have that

turned on or off.

I think it's turned off by default and mine's turned off too.

But if you know, and again, this doesn't work for something happening just completely out

of the blue.

But for example, if you are at, you know, your kid's piano recital and you know that

you're gonna be taking video, but just not constantly.

Only when your kid gets up there,

you could say, "Okay, get myself in video mode

and turn on this preserve mode."

And that way, when I start the camera app,

I will be in that mode.

So that's another way to do it.

But again, that's gonna only bring you to the last mode.

It's not as powerful as the shortcut,

which will let you set up different shortcuts

for different modes.

But just for some people in some circumstances,

that one setting might be what you're looking for.

Just something to keep in mind.

- Oh, that is fantastic.

Thank you, sir.

Bonus tip for the day.

- Yeah, I turned it on.

You're right, it's off by default.

But hey, I'll take that for now

until we get iOS 17 on there.

Many times we talk about smart light bulbs

is what I figure we usually talk about.

How about a smart ceiling light for your home?

This is from 9to5Mac, Benjamin Mayo, you linked to.

I gotta tell you, at first I was like,

I don't need a smart ceiling light.

But after reading this, I'm like,

I think I need a smart ceiling light.

This is really needed.

He talked a little about some very detailed aspects

of it here, but it's from Phillips Hue, which HUE,

which has a very good reputation

in the smart lighting world today.

- Yeah, Phillips Hue products tend to be a little bit

more expensive, but they tend to work well.

So, you know, you pay more and you get more.

I don't think I currently own any Phillips Hue products

because at my house, I'm so invested

in the Lutron ecosystem where I control things

by the switch, not by the light bulb.

But if you're interested in doing it

at the light bulb stage, this is basically,

you said, Brad, instead of just replacing a light bulb, if you're going to replace your entire

ceiling light, it's a very low profile. I mean, it's, it's, it's a simple light that you wouldn't

even pay attention to because there's just not much to it. But, but it seems pretty cool that

it's hooked up with Phillips. You can get it in different sizes, you know, small, medium, large,

and it's it's not like a Phillips hue color light that you can go orange and purple and blue. It's

just a white light, but you do have the ability to make it more of like a, what is it like more of a

a bluer light or more of a orange or light, you know, those sorts of temperate light temperature

as they call it warmer and cooler.

So you can see, yeah, the picture that you're showing in the video right now shows that

so you can, so you can get some adjustments of the light.

And of course the intensity too, you sure you can, you know, make a, you know, 50% or

a hundred percent.

So, you know, if you, if you're putting a light fixture in a room and you want something

that's just very low profile, this might be a way to do it.

The Phillips the other thing that the article pointed out, which that was helpful is the

The author said that he's used a bunch of Phillips products and the led lights in them.

I think he said that they've, he's never had to replace them.

Like they last incredibly long.

So, you know, we're in an age now where I just saw on the news the other day that on

August 1st here in the United States, they finally implemented this thing that's been

coming for years now that you can no longer sell certain incandescent lights.

I mean, we are, we are, we are being pushed more and more into an led light future.

And so if you're going to do that, why not get some smart ones?

Make them smart.

This is called the Phillips Hue Enrave.

E N R A V E.

Interesting.

We have a daughter going off to college, Jeff, which means she needs a car.

So she's taking our second car and we're looking to get another car for my son.

But I don't want to go brand new.

I want to go used if I can find one.

I want to, I, you know, I want something that's workable, but I got to tell you

one of the things that is keeping me back from this is I am so used today.

Going into a car and using Apple CarPlay.

And I know if I go and get a car, that's what eight, 10 years old or so.

There ain't going to be no Apple CarPlay available.

And so today, will you leak to this story from cult of Mac?

This is Leander Caney, the cheapest and easiest way to add a wireless

carplay to any vehicle is actually using a cheap Amazon fire tablet.

And I just thought that was hilarious that he did this.

But once I got to the bottom of the article, I'm like, I could do this.

This, this might be an option now for whatever card that we get.

Really cool stuff here.

Yeah.

I, it's just never occurred to me that you could do that, that you

could use an Android tablet as the display for carplay and stuff, but why not?

And you're right.

I mean, even if you're going to get a used car, I would still

absolutely want to have carplay in it.

whether I was driving it or whether it was one of my, uh, one of my teenagers driving it. Yeah.

You got to have that. Absolutely. Right. Very cool stuff. Anyway, we'll link to the article and you

can read through, but he talks about using a wireless charger for, for the tablet. And then I

had to read this two or three times because he had to have an Apple CarPlay adapter that was linked

to the, you know, from the iPhone, like a Bluetooth receiver from the iPhone to the actual Amazon

tablet. Uh, and it works. He got it to where I just love the fact that you were using like

An Amazon tablet, we're using, uh, uh, cables from different manufacturers

and an iPhone, like throw it all in.

I think that's really great.

Good stuff.

Where are you at segment?

Where are you?

Oh my goodness.

You got some good ones today.

Let's start with bicycles.

How do you track a bicycle?

This is actually on CNN travel.

A gentleman.

It sounds like he was traveling from the U S to like Switzerland.

I think it's where he ended up doing like, I think he's 68 years old,

but he's done this for many years.

He takes his bicycle with him and they ride and ride and ride, but you can't ride.

If the bike doesn't make it to your destination.

And fortunately, after several days, it sounds like he was able to find it mainly because of the

Apple air tag that he put into his bicycle luggage.

Yeah.

It sounds like he had two legs of his, of his trip.

The first part of the trip, he was going to be using a bike through

Zurich and Switzerland.

And then the second part, he was going to a different part in Europe.

And unfortunately, you know, his bike got lost along the way. So he did not have it for the

first part of the trip, although he said he did for the second part. But yeah, so he was flying

through London. So he went from Virginia to London to Zurich, and then they went to a different part

of the Europe. But so, but the thing is, you know, you land and your bike's not there at any time

that you land and your luggage is not there. You always hope that maybe it's going to be coming out

soon. Hope it's coming out soon. But fortunately he was smart enough to put an air tag with his

bike. So as soon as he lands in Zurich, he can say, Oh, my bike is still in London. He throws,

he did not make, it didn't make the second flag. Now, if you read the story, I mean, it is, it's

a happy ending that he got his bike, but it wasn't a happy situation. I mean, he was bugging the

airline every single day. He was going on Twitter, try to use the social media to pressure it. And,

you know, he says it was a combination of having his air tag. So he knew where it was at all times

And using the social media he thinks may have helped, but he finally got some relief from

the airline.

But it took a while.

It was not easy.

Not that this is a solution for carrying a bike because you can't carry on a bike to

a plane, but I mean, it's stories like this that tell me, "Gosh, whenever I travel, I

always try to just carry on if you possibly can do it."

But sometimes you can't do it, and then I think it's valuable to have an air tag so

you can track your luggage.

Just real quick, I think last week we saw the price on the four pack of air tags was

It was down to like $85.

Is that right?

On Amazon?

It's gone up now, what $3?

It's $88 and 99 cents.

I think you linked to it.

Yeah, you did today in today's post.

Still an amazing bargain.

I think that's what I,

I think I paid $90 for my four pack,

which was a savings of what?

30, $40.

I forget exactly whatever, but I mean, now again,

I think I'm going to buy another four pack

because I've already used the four that I have.

And just like this, it has,

it's almost like a little bit of peace of mind

Because we've seen air tags be able to track bicycles.

We've seen air tags, track cars.

We've seen air tags, track luggage.

You can even put an air tag in your house plant.

This was a great story.

Where is this Philadelphia?

I think apparently, wow.

I didn't know there was such a rash of house plant thefts in Philadelphia,

but apparently there is.

And so one couple got a little frustrated.

The frustrated by the recent theft of their outdoor potted plants.

So they devised a scheme to track down their plants.

if they ever go missing again.

And sure enough, they were able to track down

their stolen house plant.

- I mean, you gotta imagine this is annoying

that you have a house plant in front of your house

and then it's suddenly gone.

And then it sounds like she put another one out there

and then it was gone too.

Like, what is going on?

Someone keeps stealing my plants.

This is ridiculous.

And so the article, of course,

you gotta do this for the article.

The article calls her a vigil planting.

So her vigil planting solution was to put an air tag

in the plant and so she says she walks out one day once again it was gone but she immediately

you know fired up her iphone used the air tag and saw her plant moving down the street a couple

blocks away and they find this guy that's just pulling a wagon with a whole bunch of plants in

it including hers and she said they she said she basically just took her plant and he's like oh i

didn't steal these yeah i'm sure i'm sure the plant just walked away and jumped into his his

his wagon, but they got their plan back and hopefully the, the, uh, the.

The cereal plant thief will now be deterred from stealing plants from her house.

I mean, it's a shame that we need to even think about putting an air tag in a plant,

but you know, why not?

It worked.

You know, it would be nice if apple air tag sponsored the show.

We, they could sponsor the where you at segment there, but for now we would just

be thrilled and pleased to tell you about today's sponsor of our podcast,

which is SaneBox.

Now, Jeff, I know you know about SaneBox

because you have worked with them in the past.

You have used them for a long time.

In fact, I think the first time

that I really paid attention to SaneBox

was because of your post on iPhone JD

when you were talking about it.

They sponsored the blog in the past

and it was just really amazing

to be able to work with the system.

I had never set anything up on this,

but I'll let you describe sort of the service here

and then I'll jump in and just tell you

how impressed I am already.

And, uh, I I'm, I'm going to be a lifelong user already.

Yeah.

Same box is a great service because we all use email, but you know, that

when you look in your email, you know, you may have, you know, I'm doing

another task and then I turn my attention back to my email and I see

that I've got 20 messages in there.

And I just like, Oh, I've got to go through 20 messages.

But the reality is I don't, because many times some of those messages are just

like newsletters that I do subscribe to, but I'm going to read those at night.

I don't need to look at them right now.

Some of them are sort of junk messages, you know, messages from people I don't care about that I

don't want to hear about again. Some of them are messages from, you know, if it turns out there's

not actually 20 messages, there's really only three messages that matter. And SaneBox is a

service that allows you to immediately just see the messages that matter. SaneBox can work with

any email service just about, and it just saves you all this time because what it does is you

decide what features of SaneBox you want to use. I use the ones that I just described. Take all my

newsletters because it's smart enough to artificial intelligence to know that this is, you know,

the Joanna Stern Wall Street Journal newsletter that comes out once we protect, put all of

those newsletters into one place and then take all of the things that you think are

probably, you know, maybe they're not spam or junk per se, but they're, they're, they're

sort of marketing emails, put them into another folder called sane later.

I'll get to them at a later point and then just leave in my inbox, the things that matter.

And it, it, it's great because it means that I, I save time.

So I look at my inbox and I don't waste time, but it also means that I just, I can just

focus on getting back to my other work.

I can use email for what I want it for.

Now, when I have time later on, sure, I'll go look in the folder of saying news and I'll

leave, look at all my newsletters at night.

And then at one point I'll take a look at the same later folder and say, okay, of these

30 messages that it's put in here over the last two days, maybe one or two of them I

want to keep, but some of them might just be complete junk.

Like I don't want to hear from this person ever again.

And so another feature of SainBox that I love is they have this thing

called Sane Black Hole and oh my goodness, I love this feature because it's

sort of like a psychology experiment on myself.

I love the way it makes me feel that it's like, I am so sick and tired

of hearing from this person.

It's usually not a person I know in real life, you know, usually it's like a

marketer or something like that, or somebody trying to say, you know, I'm

going to help you with your, with your iPhone JD website to save money.

I'm like, I don't want you helping me save money.

So I will take that and I will say, put this in the same black hole folder.

And because SaneBox uses artificial intelligence, it doesn't just put that message in.

It will actually say any time in the future that I get an email from this person,

put it in the same black hole folder too.

So it's almost like a spam folder type thing.

You can always take a look at it, just open it up.

You can see what's in there.

It's all still there.

Yeah.

So if you think that something might've been a mistake,

you can always just put it back into your inbox and SaneBox,

because it uses artificial intelligence, the fact that it's been moved into your inbox will teach it

not to put it insane black hole in the future, but it's nice. And then the other thing I like

about same box is the sort of the privacy aspect of it, that the way that I have it working is,

it's not reading my messages or anything like that. All it's looking at is the subject lines

and the senders. So I'm not really concerned about, it's just computers anyway, but I'm not

really concerned about the computers looking at the substances of my messages because it doesn't

need to. All it looks at is who it's from and where it comes from. Now, what I've just described

are the basic features of SaneBox. There are a million more, more advanced features that I've

talked about in the past, but just to have a way to make my email that I can jump in,

I can see what's important and I can jump out again. It makes such a huge difference.

- Well, I set up my SaneBox account, Jeff. And that was one of the first questions that I had.

It's like, I don't know if I want SaneBox looking at my professional work email, right?

Some things are confidential.

I don't want them to have access to it.

But after reading your reviews and reading this wonderful page they have on sanebox.com

about their security, I got very comfortable with this because they are not, first of all,

like you said, it's not like a human person is sitting there looking at everything.

They're not reading the entire content in the body of the emails.

They're really just looking at what we call the email header, right?

the to and the from, the subject line.

They're just very specific pieces of information

that they can make a decision, well, they,

the computer can make a decision basically,

'cause it really is AI that's working on this.

It makes the decision on what kind of message is this?

Like you said, is it a newsletter?

Is it something from a receipt, for example,

'cause that's another one of the features.

They have a sane receipts inbox, right?

Which just puts it basically into another folder,

which is what I would typically do myself

If I'm looking through my inbox without saying box,

I would go through and I would have to say,

okay, well that email needs to go over there.

This email needs to do over this.

You know, this part needs to go,

this is a newsletter that I'll get to it later.

So I'm gonna leave it unread,

but I'm gonna leave it in my inbox.

I mean, there were so many decisions that I typically make.

And I set this up on my full personal email account

that I've had for years and years and years.

And I'm like, I'm gonna try this.

I'm gonna see what it's going to do.

And even within just about an hour, Jeff,

it goes through this beautiful process

that it walks you through.

It's analyzing your inbox.

It sets up these folders for you.

I just gave it access to my email

and I continue using the email exactly the way

that I've been using it for years and years.

It's just now I have these additional folders

that I can jump to.

I gotta tell you, because of that though,

the only part that was a little disconcerting to me

when I first went to my inbox, Jeff,

The first time I do it, because I always jump to my mail

and I'm like, I have this little bubbling sense

of apprehension because I know it's going to take me

several minutes to dig through everything and triage

all the different messages, getting to something like,

is that important?

Do I have to delete that?

Do I need to move that to a different folder?

Now, when I go with SaneBox, there's like three messages.

And I'm like, oh, is something wrong

with my internet account?

Is something wrong?

Is my email host not working?

Like I was visibly upset at first.

I'm like, what's wrong?

This is not the normal, you know, 15 minutes

that I have to spend digging around in my inbox

and it's because SaneBox had already taken care of it.

And sure enough, I went down

and I looked at my different folders

and everything was set up there.

And I just, I'm really a big fan

and we'll continue to talk about it a little bit

and share a little bit more on this.

But we have a special website.

If you wanna go and check this out yourself,

we have a site set up at sanebox.com/inthenews.

and you can get a free trial for 14 days,

which is amazing, right?

Most of the time it's like seven days.

And if you decide to sign up for it,

because you're going through sanebox.com/inthenews,

you can get $25 credit toward one of their subscriptions,

which are already very reasonable,

but you can get a little bit off of that as well.

So sanebox.com/inthenews, all one word, S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com.

Thanks for writing about this, Jeff,

because like I said, I don't think I would have known

about it if it wasn't for you.

And now I'm excited to use it more and more.

Good stuff on this.

Okay, well, how about in the know?

- In the know.

- And I gotta tell you, I have a tip here

about the mail app on my phone.

And I thought it was kind of appropriate

because we just talked about using mail with SaneBox.

By the way, there is a SaneBox app, if I'm not mistaken,

right, for the iPhone, Jeff.

But you can use- - Oh, I need another.

Yep.

You can use the same box, uh, folders in the mail app, right?

Because I use the mail app on my iPhone so I can get into the folders.

So, I mean, you can use the same box app.

I downloaded it today.

Uh, but I just am accessing the folders within the mail app as well.

But what are the other things that even if I use same box on some of these,

um, I did this the other day, I had several messages that I needed to plow through.

They were from a certain individual that, you know, over the several

months I had several messages.

So what I did is I went through and I flagged, uh, I think it was maybe

about a dozen messages, right?

So I wanted to go through those,

but I only then wanted to see those 12 messages

so I could start reading from the very bottom.

Well, once I had them flagged,

I wanted to be able to do a filter on this.

And there's a very easy way in the Mail app now.

If you look in any list in the Mail app

on your iPhone or your iPad,

there's a little button at the very bottom left.

It's a circle, which looks like three little lines.

- Right. - I don't know,

it's kind of like a filter looking thing.

you'll see it, you'll recognize it really quick.

But if you tap on that, by default,

the current folder you're looking at will be filtered

by read and unread messages.

And it'll in fact, just give you a filter

of your unread messages.

That's the default.

And I knew that, and so I thought,

well, this isn't gonna help me, right?

'Cause I don't care about the unread messages.

I wanna see the ones that I flagged.

Well, once you tap on that little filter button,

at the very bottom, it says filter by unread,

and you can tap on that unread,

and then it will give you additional options to filter this.

So you can say, I only wanna see unread messages,

which I didn't, or I only wanna see the flagged messages.

And that's exactly what I did.

It worked so great.

It was already built in.

There's a couple of other options here that you can have

if you just wanna see messages addressed to you,

or CC to you, or you only wanna see mail with attachments,

or only mail that was sent today.

Those are some of the built-in filters.

I know there's other tools that you can use to filter,

but I just love the fact that this little basic filtering

mechanism is already built into the Apple Mail app

on the iPhone and on your iPad.

Good stuff on that.

- Yeah, good stuff.

When you talked about the unreaded mails,

you remind me that one of the reasons that a lot of people

keep things unread in their mail app

is that they are intending to go back to it later.

And we all know that's not really a safe way to do it

because it's so easy to automatically, you know,

tap on it and change it from unread to read.

And then you forget to go back to it later.

So having said that, I have a limit that I do it from time to time, even though it's

really not a safe thing to do.

A better way to do it though, is to actually give yourself a reminder.

And there's a feature of the mail app that if you're looking at a message and you're

like, Oh, you know, this is an important message.

I want to deal with it.

I just can't deal with it right now.

You can say if you, while you're looking at a message, if you tap the little icon that

you would tap on to reply, it's like that arrow sort of going towards the left.

If you tap on that, you'll see that there's an option about three or about, you know,

halfway down that says, remind me.

And then once you tap, remind me, you can say, I want you to remind me on a specific

day and a specific time, just like any other reminder you would set up.

And then, so let's just say, for example, I'm doing some work this morning.

I'll say, remind me about this at two o'clock in the afternoon.

So then I'm going about doing my work two o'clock in the afternoon.

I will get a reminder on my iPhone and my Apple watch and everything else.

And it'll just show that email header.

If I tap on it on my, on my phone, it'll go directly to that email.

And it's a great way to like, Oh yeah, I do want to deal with this.

Just not right now.

It's not relying upon the leaving unread or anything like that.

It's a, it's a much more surefire way to make sure that you get back to that email later.

So this is one of these things that if you don't think about it being there and because

it's sort of hidden behind the reply icon, you might not even know that it's there in

the first place, but Oh my goodness, it's so useful when you just want to say, gosh,

I'm going to deal with this one on Saturday and then get your reminder on Saturday.

Oh yeah, I need to deal with that email.

That's good.

And I've only used that rarely, but I will look at that.

Although I would have to tell you not to jump back to SaneBox, but do they not have even

in here like some reminder folders on insane box as well?

Like you can say, I, you know, they say procrastination is good, but there are snooze folders in here.

And anyway, I just wanted to explore that a little bit as well.

that I do like again, that a basic functionality

is already baked into the Apple Mail app,

such as the filtering or the remind me,

that kind of a thing.

But I'm excited to start using SaneBox a little bit more

to maybe kind of like, you know, kick it up a notch,

if you will, on there.

Anyway, we do appreciate it.

Thanks SaneBox for sponsoring us today.

And yeah, if you are interested

in learning a little bit more, sanebox.com/inthenews,

you can sign up for a free trial.

You can stop it at any time,

but at least you'll be a little bit more knowledgeable

about your SaneBox option.

I just thought if your inbox is insane, try SaneBox.

That's a freebie, SaneBox.

You can just use that.

You don't have to, no attribution necessary.

That's great.

All right, that's a lot of stuff, Jeff.

Thank you so much for being here as always.

And we'll talk with you next week.