117: Hand Warmers, Hapless USB, and Happy Tears

(upbeat music)

- Welcome to In The News for October 6th, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

- This is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD,

a little funny way you did the end there.

- I like it.

Good morning, Jeff.

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Well, Jeff, something that I just did this morning,

I don't know that if you knew

when you purchased your brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max,

that one of the side benefits

was a hand warmer for your pocket.

(laughing)

I don't know if you saw some of these stories this past week

that there was people complaining about the fact

that the new phones, the iPhone 15s were so hot

and apparently Apple wanted to address that.

Now, when I go to the official Apple information here

about iOS 17.0.3, they don't talk about hand warmers

but they do talk about something else

that you and I address maybe almost every other week now,

important security updates that is worthwhile

for you to upgrade to 17.0.3.

- Yeah, look, I didn't address the iPhone warming issue

on iPhone JD.

And the reason for it is because I never could really

get a clear story at it.

I mean, let me start by saying that my new iPhone,

I could put it right next to my face.

I'm saying it's not too hot.

It's nice and cool.

It feels really good.

- You can snuggle with it, it's great.

- I haven't experienced any issues with my own iPhone.

I will say this, that every time that you upgrade

to a major new operating system, moving up to iOS 16,

moving up to iOS 17 on either my iPad or my iPhone

for the first couple of days

because the system is re-indexing photograph,

all your photos and stuff like that.

- That's right.

- It's using the processor more

for the first couple of days.

And so you are gonna feel, I guess, a tiny bit more heat,

but it's not like a huge deal.

As I understand this current saga,

there were two things that were happening

over the last week or so.

One is there were some minor things in the iOS system

that Apple tweaked with the 17.03 this week.

And then additionally, there were a few apps like Instagram

that were coded incorrectly.

And because of the programming errors,

I think Uber was one of them too,

they were, once they started,

they got in these loops where they just went,

went, went, went, went,

and really caused the power to increase.

There was one video I saw on YouTube where,

he just turned on Instagram

and it was decreasing his battery power,

substantially and it was heating up.

So there was stuff going on again.

It looks like that they're all being fixed

and it's not an issue.

People were concerned that maybe it was something unique

about titanium and I think just the opposite.

Titanium does a better job of distributing heat

than the stainless steel.

So, you know, it was a little bit of a nothing burger

in terms of the issues.

But as for 17.0.3, you're right.

In addition to addressing whatever minor issue

that was here, there's actually some important

security updates and also updates.

If your iPhone is managed by someone else,

like for example, here at my firm,

we use mobile device management

so that there's can be centralized

so that if my phone is lost,

my firm could do something to wipe my phone remotely

and stuff.

If you do some of that sort of stuff,

there are some updates in 17.0.3.

So I mean, of course you're gonna wanna update any way

to get all the latest and greatest patches.

- Yeah. - But that's what's

going on here.

- Yeah, I just upgraded today.

Yeah, it went really quickly.

And you know, just real quick,

I wanna address that.

I didn't really think about that,

but I've heard it from a couple of people.

You're right, after the first,

after you upgrade to that major upgrade

from 16 to 17, for example,

And it's not just what you're talking about,

like going through and all the photos and everything,

but even like there's improvements to like the search

function and the search function works because it indexes

everything on your phone.

- It's incredibly important.

- It doesn't sound like it's that big of a deal,

but that is a huge processor pool.

So I'm glad that you mentioned that Jeff,

because you're right.

And I've brought this up to a couple of people

even this week and just saying that, yeah,

like your battery might take a little bit of a hit,

you know, in iOS 7, it's just the first week, right?

That we've had it or so, but it's like, yeah,

There's a lot going on that the phone is re-indexing

and rejiggering.

I mean, even just new apps that it's downloading

in the background, lots of things going on.

So good, I'm glad that you mentioned that.

And I'm glad that your phone is staying cool as a cucumber.

- Indeed.

- Because I know you've been taking a lot of pictures

over these last few weeks.

You are continuing to leak to some great stories.

This one I thought was just amazing from Sebastian DeWitt.

This is at lux.camera.

So maybe this is his own blog here.

But some of the pictures in here, Jeff, I mean, I like your pictures, but man, these

were incredible in this article.

>> Jeff: Yeah, so he is one of the developers of the incredible Halide app, which is one

of the fantastic high-end, turns your iPhone into a professional photographer.

And so he knows what he's doing with photographs.

The photographs that he shares, as you say, are beautiful.

I wish I had that eye to just...

>> Jeff: I know.

I believe frame these pictures.

There's one, when you scroll down that like, you can see the outline of a fence

and then there's a cityscape in between.

Oh, just beautiful pictures.

Yeah, there it is.

There it is.

That's so great, but it's great.

But what I also like about reading articles like this is people

that truly understand photography.

They can appreciate what works and to extent what doesn't work on the iPhone

cameras so much more than I can.

And so when they go through and say, you know, let me tell you about this

and here's why this is working here.

Why it's not.

I just find it really fascinating.

Um, now he's a little, uh, not upset, but he notes that for some of the really

cool features that you have in the new iPhones, they only work with the built

in camera app that, you know, Apple's own app.

And so people like him, they can't take advantage of all of the fancy new

modes yet, and I'm sure that Apple will change that over time.

Um, because they always do, but you know, just right out of the

gate, they don't have all that.

So he, in his own app, he's not able to take advantage of it, but he does a

great job of talking about different things.

One of the things he notes about the telephoto lens, the 5X and the iPhone Pro Max, what

are all the different names that I have?

Fifteen.

Fifteen, exactly.

All the different things about it.

That one, the big one.

I always focused on the telephoto lens as a way to just sort of see something that's

really far away.

The examples that you and I talked about of like reading something off of a ship that's

in the middle of the Mississippi River that I'm looking at in my window at work here.

But what he as a professional photographer thinks about is these longer lenses are just

a way to better frame a shot, not because it's too far away, but just because of the

way the depth of field and stuff.

And so he is talking about how a 5X camera is a very different tool.

And in a photographer's hands, it creates different types of photographs.

And he's just saying it requires a different way of thinking about things.

And you can come up with these pictures that are truly beautiful and would not have been

possible without having this fantastic lens.

And so when I read about this, I find it inspiring for me and I can sort of copy some of his

tricks that for him are just secondhand nature and try to come up with some pictures that

I personally think are pretty cool that I take.

So great article.

I really enjoyed reading it for this reason.

Yeah, this is a great article.

I'm so glad you linked to it because I don't know if I would have found it otherwise.

But like you said, he's like, he's like, I can't stop until I have shown you an inordinate

amount of comparisons between the main camera and its new long 5x telephoto counterpart.

Not only just because it's fun to see how it zooms,

but he goes, you can just see,

you can show you how differently

you have to look at the world around you

to your point that you just made.

That's a great story there.

Okay, so then I know we mostly talk on the Apple side,

iPhone and iPad, but today you link to an interesting story

I would love to hear a little bit more about.

This is on Darien Fireball,

who pretty much only talks about Apple products as well,

but he covered the Google Pixel 8 launch event.

So this is like Google's high-end phone, right?

I just don't know as much about the Android family here,

but he linked to a story on the Verge,

and wow, you were just really kind of highlighting

some of the things in here

that I think John Gruber at Daring Fireball

was kind of wondering about,

and even just from your perspective

about like what does it mean to take a picture now

if we can make so many modifications

even after we take a picture now.

Pretty amazing stuff.

- It's neat.

I was, you know, I read quite a,

this is the one I linked to,

but I read quite a few of the reviews

of the new Pixel 8.

And it's interesting to me because in the Android world,

you've got Samsung, which makes, you know,

most of the phones.

And a lot of people just get the Samsung phone.

But then a very small percentage of Android users

get the Google phones.

And because Google makes the Android operating system,

it's almost, it's closer to like the Apple, right?

You know, they are often the phones

They're going to push the envelope a little bit more and take the most advantage of it

because they are designing both the software and the hardware like Apple does.

So I'm always really intrigued to see what Google does with the pixel, even though they

don't sell very many of them, because it sort of gives you a sense of, you know, we, we

know what Apple is doing to push the smartphone forward.

It's interesting to see what Google who's, you know, got so many smart people working

for it, right.

And so, so that's why I was interested to see the new features.

But speaking of photography, as we were, Google has always been incredible with software.

I mean, obviously their search feature is incredible.

And they have decided to take AI sort of to the next level on the Pixel.

On the iPhone 15 Pro, one of the reasons it takes such great pictures is not just the

nice lenses that it has, like the 5X lens, which the Pixel 8 also has a 5X lens, but

also because of the computational photography.

Apple takes numerous pictures and splices them together.

And so that way they can get all of the highs and all of the lows.

And I think of it as doing the best job of taking what is you're actually seeing in the

real world and preserving it as well as it can with all the colors and all the details

and everything else.

Right.

Google seems to be going a different direction.

We're not taking, I mean, instead of just focusing on taking the best picture of what

you're actually seeing, what if we improve upon that and take the best picture of sort

what you want to see, even though it's not necessarily there. So they have these features

that are built into the camera app that you can have like the magic editor where we've all had a

situation where you take a picture and you don't realize it at the time, but then afterwards,

you're like, you know, I sort of wish that John was a little closer to the rest of the group,

or I wish that this rock wasn't there or whatever else. And so they have built in the features of

moving people around and moving objects around stuff that you've been able to do for years in

Photoshop. Um, if you know what you're doing, but they're just doing it right there in the camera

and they're making it super simple and the results actually look pretty good.

And then likewise, they have this feature that if you take a group,

and we've all done this before, you take a picture of five different people.

And in the first picture, Mary's closing her eyes.

And in the second picture, the little kids looking away from the camera.

And we've all been through this and you can't get a single good picture.

Google, like just from out of the box says, oh, that's not a problem.

We'll just pick the best face from all these different pictures.

And we'll just create a picture where everyone looks perfect.

And on the one hand, yeah, that's what I want.

and I will sometimes edit a picture in Photoshop or some other program to get that end result.

Sure. Right.

But I still sort of feel like that's me doing it on the back end, whereas here,

Google's saying, "We'll just do it as you take your picture."

You're doing it right on the phone.

You know, it raises, I don't know if you call it ethical questions, philosophical questions. It's

like, what's the purpose of a photograph? Are you trying to preserve what you actually saw?

Yeah.

Or are you just trying to create something that maybe isn't reality,

But it's the way that you remember reality. I mean, you certainly remember all five people smiling and having their eyes open at the same time.

Yeah, I get your point.

I don't know. It's something about it. What I want to say is it bothers me, but then again, since I sometimes do the same editing myself, I don't know. What do you think about it?

- It's just, I guess, I don't know that I've really

thought about it enough, Jeff, because I do feel like

it is kind of crossing this line, but it's a line

that we're gonna cross inevitably, right?

I mean, it's gonna happen.

It's not like we can stop it, I guess.

And so it's just about embracing.

You know, I've always kind of been that purist, I guess.

It's like, okay, exactly what you were describing earlier.

If I take a picture, like that's what I saw.

I wanna capture that moment, whatever was going on.

But here I'm watching on Google's website here

that literally there's a father and a son on a carousel.

He's looking down, you tap his face,

and then you can choose a different expression

for the father that he's looking up in the camera

and smiling as opposed to looking down.

That's just incredible.

And something irks me inside, and I think to your point,

that it's like, well, wait a minute,

that's not really what was happening.

That's not what I captured.

On the other hand, it's exactly what you've,

Jeff, I've done the same thing.

I have modified pictures.

I, you know, even on the back, like you said,

maybe it's on the bit of the back end,

not so much on the phone.

But in a way I will tell you,

and I know you're gonna talk about some of the photos now.

I just tried out that iOS 17 portrait mode

to where I took a portrait photo in iOS 17.

I can now select which object that I wanted to focus on

as opposed to the one that I focused on

when I actually took the picture.

Now that's not to me as jarring as maybe some of this,

but it's pretty amazing what it can do.

I mean, this is an age in which you can now go to chat GPT

or whatever the image generator

that is affiliated with chat GPT and say,

I want a picture of my family,

on the beaches in Hawaii or whatever.

They can create something similar to that, right?

I mean, I just feel like that it's like,

that's my attitude, I guess.

It's inevitable, but it's going to take a little bit.

It's going to take a little bit of soothing

to kind of get there.

- Yeah.

- You know, slowly but surely.

- I mean, forever, Photoshop has had the ability

to whiten your teeth.

- Sure.

- There's even a feature in Photoshop right now

that I can take a picture of one of my kids,

and if they weren't smiling enough,

Photoshop can actually create a smile

just by moving up the corners of their mouth.

And I tell you what, Brad, it looks really convincing.

And you know, part of me was like,

"Oh, finally I got the picture of my kid smiling."

But then you're like, "He never really did smile."

It's an interesting picture.

Like you say, with the chat GBT and the mid-journey of the DALI, this whole world of what is real,

of deep fakes, for example.

Just this week I heard in the news that Tom Hanks was complaining that some dentist had

a commercial where it looked like Tom Hanks was endorsing the guy and it was a deep fake.

We're getting to the point where you can't trust what you see or what you hear.

It's a brave new world, I'll tell you.

Interesting discussion.

- I think, yeah.

- Far more than we can resolve today, so.

- I'm glad you linked to it,

just because it is something, again,

it's not like anybody's gonna stop it.

Google is obviously going all in on it.

And to a certain extent,

I think Apple is doing a lot of the same stuff.

Like you said, they are taking all of these pictures

in the backend.

It's just maybe how much are they allowing,

you know, from a front end user interface

to do some of the changing.

And anyway, it would just be interesting

to continue to watch that.

You linked to a review from Jason Snell,

one that I always look forward to.

Anytime new hardware comes out,

this is the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.

Really good points that he makes

throughout the entire thing here.

I really enjoyed his take on the action button

that at first he didn't think he was gonna miss it,

but then he's come to like it.

And anyway, I think some of the same things

you were describing earlier,

that you gotta get used to it, right?

And exactly what is it eventually going to be?

What is that gonna create as an action?

And it just looks like other people

are kind of wrestling with that too.

- Yeah, it's, I mean, nothing we haven't talked about

in the past, but a great solid review

that covers all the features.

They did a great job.

It's worth looking at if you either own the new iPhone

or you're still thinking about getting one, great stuff.

- Since you have the new iPhone 15 Pro Max,

I would be interested to know what USB-C cables

that you are using now.

'Cause you've had to at least get rid

of some lightning cables here.

This is another good article in Macworld by Dan Morin,

that I know we've alluded to this before, USB-C cables.

One is not always like the other,

and boy, that just really frustrates me, Jeff.

- Yeah, for so long, people have been clamoring,

a certain portion of the population has been saying,

we don't wanna have this proprietary lightning port.

We wanna have the standard of USB-C.

And so I sort of feel like, okay, now we have it,

and it's great in some ways,

But it also means that you have the chaos of the USB-C world out there, that not every

cable does the same thing.

I personally have only purchased, well, I guess I've purchased two cables.

One is I needed to get something for my car, for CarPlay to work.

And so I had to get a cable that had USB on one side and USB-C on the other side, because

what I had been using for CarPlay was USB to Lightning, of course.

And then also I purchased an additional cord for my home computer, which is a Mac, because

I wanted to take advantage of a high speed USB-C.

And that's something that most USB-C cables,

unless you specifically purchase it to be high speed,

it's not going to be because they're more expensive.

And I think I had previously linked to the one I got.

It wasn't that expensive, maybe 25 bucks on Amazon.

But it was allowed the high speed transfers.

And again, I wanted it because sometimes

when I take videos of my daughter's basketball game,

it's lots and lots and lots of high K of 4K,

high def video that it just takes a long time

to move it over.

And so now that I have a faster connector,

I can move the video quicker

once basketball season starts in a few weeks.

So I'm excited about it,

but otherwise it is nice that you have,

a lot more compatibility with USB-C,

but it is frustrating that you could plug something in.

Like for example, I'll give you a good example

and I didn't link to it today,

but there was a video done by somebody at the Verge.

You know how one of the new features of the iPhone 15

is you can connect to an external USB drive

and you can record directly to that drive

using those very high end video formats

that really only professional folks are gonna use.

And the person created the video,

or at least thought they did,

and then afterwards realized

that they had the wrong darn cord.

And so it was saving everything in a low quality

instead of a high quality.

I'm like, come on.

That's something that never used to happen

in the world of lightning

because they were all the same.

- Right.

- Didn't have all the advantages of USBC,

but at least you didn't have the uncertainty.

So it's just something that you need to be careful about

is not all USB-C is created the same.

If just keep that in the back of your mind

and hopefully you won't get into trouble too much.

- It's almost like if you see a cable hanging

in the checkout line at 7-Eleven,

that's probably not gonna be,

nothing against 7-Eleven.

I'm just saying the point that you made earlier

is I'm realizing you've got to pay for the quality on this.

So even Dan Morin in the story, kind of similar to you, Jeff,

he talked about he wanted to use his new iPhone 15

with his CarPlay and he had a head unit there.

But he had to do the same thing.

He was using, I think a USB-A to lightning a cable

and he had to get a USB-C to USB-A, right,

to plug into his car.

But then he said it was from a respected brand,

it worked intermittently.

Like, it doesn't sound like you've experienced that,

but he's talking about the fact that the error

was on the cable, or at least he thought he found

that it was a cable 'cause when he went

and into an improved cable version here,

it seems like it solved the problem there.

Which that would have just infuriated me

'cause I don't know that I would have,

I don't know that if I would have thought about the cable,

like I would have been going, what's wrong with my phone?

Do I need to upgrade?

Do I need to upgrade the car?

- Exactly.

- I would not think about the cable

'cause I just take it for granted

that the cable should be the cable.

And I feel like this could cause some issues with some folks

and I don't know what the answer is necessarily,

but I'm sure it's not the last time

that we're gonna talk about it.

But something I do want to talk about now

is your fantastic review post that you made this week

on using standby with iOS 17.

In fact, you got me as soon as I'm reading this,

I started propping up my phone

with the charging cable plugged in.

And it was just fantastic 'cause I don't have a stand

like what you talk about in this,

but I got to get one because it is not fun

to use it with a cable anymore.

But this was your post, standby mode,

tips on using it and what stands work best with it.

I previewed this post a week ago on this podcast.

- Yes you did.

- When I was sort of thinking about these issues.

And then I took some time last weekend

just to actually start to write it all down.

And I tell you what, I spent a lot of time on this post,

but it's because it comes out of love.

It's because this is a great new mode.

You know, I really love standby mode.

It's a whole new feature that I'm using all the time.

So, you know, when I'm in my office doing something else,

like right now, for example,

you and I are recording a podcast

and I can see right in front of me,

my iPhone is in standby mode.

So I can see the time with very big numbers

that I can easily glance and see.

I can see my calendar, my upcoming entries.

I see, for example, we were just talking about Jason Snell.

I see that today is Jason Snell's birthday.

So happy birthday, Jason.

- Happy birthday, Jason.

- And so, you know, just glanceable information

that just shows up on my phone.

And if I want to change my widgets, I can flip through.

Now I've just flipped it and now I can see the temperature.

It's a lovely 78 degrees in New Orleans right now.

So I really love standby mode in my office

because it lets my iPhone be useful to me

even when I'm not using it.

I love it for putting on my bed stand at home when I'm, you know, as a night, as a clock,

basically, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I can glance and see what those big

numbers that are in red so that they're not going to wake me up.

It's a, it's a dimmed approach.

Everything about it.

I totally love, but I agree with you, Brett, although you don't need a stand to get the

best advantage of standby mode.

It's so much better with a stand.

And so I have looked at all the stands that are out there.

I've read all the reviews that I could find and the two that I picked that I recommend

in this article have really worked great.

You know, the anchor one that I have for my office and the 12 cell phone that I have at

home, they are just fabulous.

They are so good.

They work really well.

And I just can't be happier with it.

So if you haven't yet, and I will admit my first 30 minutes was standby mode.

I was a little confused.

I didn't understand all the different sub modes and I didn't understand it.

So if you haven't really gotten into it yet, I totally recommend take a look.

That's part of the reason I put this post is I wanted to have it all in one place so

that if somebody had a question I could say, yes, those are all good questions.

Here's all my answers are right here.

So just go here and you can see how to change things around and how to customize it.

But it is just such a useful mode.

And again, I can't emphasize enough.

It's like I have a whole new Apple device.

I never used to have something in my office that was a glanceable source of information,

like an echo show would be people have those in their kitchen. You know, you can look at it and

see the time and, and have timers for things you're baking. It's like a, it's a screen that

can do things for me. And I'll say one last thing too, which is that it, I love that in addition to

the regular modes, if your iPhone is doing something else, like for example a perfect

example is playing music. You can have a music interface come down. That's got the play pause

button and the volume, but yeah, you're showing it right there. It's, it's beautiful. It's big.

It's easy to see. It's like the perfect musical remote control while you're listening to music

or a podcast or something else. And those are sort of modes that app developers can create

that's on top of the standard parts of standby. It's just fabulous.

Jeff Leighton We've been talking about this for

several weeks now, and I think I am just a victim of habit, Jeff. And I don't think about propping

my phone up. If I sit at my desk, I just lay it down, right? Horizontally, like it lays on

the desk and I just, I never think about what if I turned it, you know, in a vertical fashion.

Because if I want to see the time, I mean, now I've got the Always On, right? I still am the

14 Pro. So I can just glance over there and see the time. But typically it's like I'm looking down

on it. And you completely convinced me when I told you when I was reading this, I started putting my

my phone up, but I don't have a stand yet.

I have my eye on that anchor though,

'cause it looks great.

And I gotta tell you, the reason that I was perturbed

with it, I loved having it sitting in a, you know,

propped up, but it was plugged in, 'cause like you say,

you do a good job in here, you have to have it plugged in,

it's gotta be on its side, it's gotta be being charged,

it has to be still, and it has to be in sleep mode.

But I didn't realize, I don't think, Jeff,

how often I picked up my iPhone,

I either like use the calculator or I wanted to check an app

or I got a notification that only comes on my phone,

for example, and I'm gonna check it there.

And so every time I would pick my phone up

and I'd have to unplug it

or I'd have to load the cord on there.

And it just became infuriated in the sense that like,

man, I really wish, now I really know why I need

to have a stand because I can just pluck it off.

And I know these stands you're talking about,

it's MagSafe, right?

So it just kind of clocks right on.

- Yeah, using MagSafe instead of having to plug,

take a cord in and out, in and out,

that makes a world of difference.

It really does.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I got to spend some money.

You're spending my money.

- But it's nice even before you spend that money,

like you say, Brett,

you can just take your current phone,

plug in a cord and start to get a sense of it

and say, you know,

does this seem like a mode that I'm interested in

before I spend the money on a stand?

- Oh, you will be.

- Because a stand's gonna be, you know,

anywhere from 50 bucks to the ones that I have

because they are three in one stands,

they're 150 bucks because they charge multiple devices,

but you don't have to get those high end ones.

You can get something cheaper

that is only for the phone if you want.

So, yeah.

- Okay, last question here, 'cause I saw this

and I was playing around with it.

Thank you to your directions.

How did you get this digital clock on this side?

I am guessing you mentioned Widgetsmith in there.

- Yeah, so let me tell you what you're asking.

- Yeah, please.

- Of the three modes in standby,

one of them is the widgets mode.

And in the widgets mode,

you have something on the left and something on the right.

Apple gives you a clock to put on the left or the right,

But Apple's clock is an analog clock,

which is beautiful if you want an analog clock.

- It's pretty.

- I wanted something that's a very easy to see numbers.

- Exactly, boom.

- For whatever reason in the clock mode,

where it takes over the entire screen,

Apple's got a fantastic digital clock.

But in the widgets mode, where it's half and half,

they don't have a digital clock.

- Right, right.

- So what I did, as you said,

is I used the third party app Widget Smith,

which is something that I purchased,

how many years ago did I purchase Widget Smith

for widgets on my iPhone?

And now the creator of David Smith, I think his name is.

- Yeah, yeah, that's right, exactly.

- He is continuing to update it.

And so now he's taken full advantage

of widgets and standby mode.

And you can create, I mean, just,

I can't even count the number of different types

of widgets you can create,

whether it has the time or the weather

or your to-do list or your clock item,

whatever you want.

So of all of the bajillions of different choices

in Widget Smith, I went to the clock choices.

And then I just created a clock with nice big numbers

I thought were easy to read where it's got the hours on the top and the minutes below

it.

And then once I created that widget within the standby app, I was able to say, okay,

now I want you to add a WidgetSmith widget.

I had in the app, I had already created the type of widget I wanted this particular clock.

And now it's the thing that always stays on the left side of my screen.

And I love that clock.

It's beautiful.

It is so much better than anything.

And that just, this is why the widget mode and standby is so powerful because it's limitless.

I mean, all you need is a great developer to come up with a really good idea for a widget.

And then you can use it.

And each app can have multiple different types of widgets.

So there are truly infinite choices for the widgets mode of standby, which is great.

One last question on this notifications.

So when I noticed when I had it on, you know, standing upright or propped up, the notifications

would come on like I have a calendar appointment coming up.

But because it's locked, it just said calendar.

Like I don't think that it gave me the actual information.

How are you handling notifications?

Can you turn that off in standby mode or do you just let them come?

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So what you do is in the settings phone on your iPhone in notifications, you can create

what shows up in standby mode.

And I chose, like you say, Brett, if you had, for example, a text message, you can either

get no notification.

You can get a notification that there's a text message, but it doesn't actually show

the message, or you can go to the third mode and it will actually show in a beautiful full screen,

large type, easy to read, show the text message. And I opted for the third option so that if I'm

sitting here in my office and I'm working on, I'm drafting a motion for one of my legal cases

and my wife sends me a text message, my watch will tap me because of a text message. That's

what it always does. But I can just glance down at this little screen and it will actually,

It'll show me that there's a text message

and about a second later,

it will actually show the text message on the screen

or at least the first line of it.

And chances are, I will have now seen enough

that that's all I need.

But if I want to see more,

well then I'll look at my watch

or look at my phone or whatever.

But you have to turn that on.

And of course it makes sense

because the idea is that many people

put their iPhone in standby mode

and then maybe leave the room.

And so you want to decide,

if somebody else walks in the room,

do you want them to see?

And because the way I'm using standby mode,

I'm only using it in my own office

or my best time stand, I'm not worrying about it.

But if you were putting it in your living room

or in your kitchen where the whole family's there,

you might choose for privacy reasons

not to have the full notification shown.

It's up to you.

You just make that choice.

- Good point.

I just, again, I'm just so getting excited

about all this, the photos mode.

It's just great.

I didn't know you could, you know,

it was that swipe back and forth,

you know, left and right to get into the different,

into the different scenarios, like you were saying.

but the photos was so cool.

I loved, I just loved having that on.

Like you, you call it here,

it's like a digital picture frame,

but it's got a beautiful clock on it and everything.

Okay, okay.

We'll, we'll geek out a little bit more probably

on standby mode as we go.

Couple of links that you had about the Apple Watch.

First of all,

if you're still holding on to Apple Watch first generation,

good for you,

except that it is now been labeled

officially obsolete by Apple.

I guess that really just means

that they're not going to provide any updates

or anything for it, right?

But I mean, it's been several years.

I still have my first generation,

but no one's wearing it anymore.

- Yeah. Old Apple products, they go to a stage.

I think first Apple calls them vintage,

which means that you can still get some support,

but that they no longer receive regular software updates.

And then they go to the obsolete stage,

which means you can't even order parts for them anymore.

And of course it makes sense.

I mean, there's no reason the original Apple Watch,

which came out, what, 2015,

it's so ancient by today's standards

that there's no reason for someone to still be fixing it.

And yet, you know, it's, it's bitter.

It seems weird to say bittersweet

'cause it's not like I want to wear my old Apple watch.

But I guess I do now know that if I pull it out again

and put it on and if there's a problem with that,

I can no longer get it fixed.

So be it.

- Do you know what I still have though?

- Yeah, go ahead.

- Go ahead.

- The thing that I still have is the original band.

I still have the original band that I'm using

with my Apple watch ultra first generation,

which that still just blows me away

that all these years later,

We still have that compatibility.

You go ahead.

- And compatibility is good.

The one funny thing I was gonna say is that,

you know, it was almost was a laughing stock from day one,

but the idea that Apple introduced the original Apple watch

with this 18 karat gold model

that could cost up to $17,000 for technology

that you know is going to be outdated in a year.

You know, would you ever spend $17,000 on a gold iPhone

knowing that next year it's gonna no longer be-

- Somebody did, I'm sure.

- I guess there's someone that does it every year,

but that just, sorry.

So if you had an 18 karat gold Apple watch,

it is no longer going to be supported.

- Another quick Apple watch story you'll link to,

which I thought was great.

The best ways to track your kid

and why you might not want to,

this was on the wire cutter, which is New York times,

but this is great.

There was some, you know, to me,

the best is going to be an Apple watch.

And I think that's one of their, you know,

their top options here,

but they have the Verizon gizmo watch as well.

Anyway, I kind of like this idea.

You know, I thought she did a good job.

The author did a good job of talking about when they're younger.

We just dropped my daughter off in college and so we still have the ability to track

her to see if she's in class or at the dorm or somewhere else like that.

That gives us a little bit of comfort just being far away from her, that kind of a thing.

I thought the author did a good job of understanding privacy aspects and things in here, but this

was a good article that you linked to.

Thanks for doing that.

It's funny because I remember in the '70s and the '80s, Brett, when I was a kid, if

My brother and I got on our bikes

and just rode around to the neighborhood.

My parents had no idea where we are.

They couldn't find us.

If there was an emergency,

we might come back at the end of the day.

And yet in today's world, and I'm just as guilty of it,

if my kids are anywhere,

I wanna know exactly where they are at all times.

- I know, I know.

- It's just a different world.

- I think GPS, when I was a kid, was here's a quarter.

So if you get in trouble, give us a call, right?

Here's a quarter, put it in your shoe or something.

One last thing on the Apple Watch.

When we had the Apple announcement,

they talked about the Apple Watch Series 9

and the Apple Watch Ultra 2,

which have really been, the consensus has been,

it's not really worth the upgrade.

If you came from an 8 or an Apple Watch Ultra 1, right?

It's like not much different,

except one of the big things that Apple doubled down on

was the double tap that they offer,

which as soon as I saw it,

I think me along with millions of other people said,

well, wait a minute,

that capability where you can just tap your thumb

and forefinger tap, tap while you're wearing the watch,

that capability is already in the Apple Watch OS.

It is part of the assistance

or the accessibility functions in there.

And you link to a story today in Apple Insider,

which I thought did the best job I've seen so far

of understanding the differences,

why this is a little bit different, like what they have.

You can only do this with an Apple Watch Series 9

or an Ultra 2.

If you have those newest watches,

you can use this double tap,

which they do a good job of differentiating

between quick actions and assistive touch.

- Yeah, then they are very, they work differently.

When you have the accessibility feature turned on,

it sort of takes over your whole Apple Watch,

whereas Apple's brand new double tap feature,

which to be clear, it's actually still not available yet.

If you have one of the newest Apple watches,

you can download the beta version to enable it.

But it's probably gonna be another month

before it comes out to everybody's Apple watches,

but it's coming very soon.

It's obviously one of the features

that will be upcoming for the new Apple watch.

But I get the sense that Apple tried out the feature.

Somebody smart at Apple said,

"Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you could use your hands

to control certain things?"

And I think it was smart

that they made it an accessibility feature

for people who needed it

because you only have one hand, for example,

but it still didn't work perfectly.

And I think it was only with this newest Apple Watch

that has the better processor that they got consistent.

And this article that you're showing confirms that,

that with the new Apple Watch Series 9,

with the newest Apple Watch and the new processor,

it works so well almost 100% of the time

that it's probably ready for the masses.

Whereas the former accessibility feature,

it was a little bit more hit and miss.

And I guess it's better than nothing if you needed it.

But so yeah, so that's why when you and I, like you say,

both heard about double tap, we were like, wait a minute,

I thought that something like this existed.

Well, yeah, that's because we just saw an earlier form

of it, but now it's ready for prime time.

Or at least it will be when it comes out of beta.

- Yeah, I remember when we first heard

about these accessibility functions,

it had to be at least a year ago, maybe even more.

I turned it on, tried it, and exactly what you said.

It's like, yeah, this is not, this is not,

this isn't as functional as what I needed,

but I didn't need it, right?

I don't have a situation

where I need to have something like that,

but I was thrilled that Apple put something like that in.

And I feel like this is just kind of the evolution of it.

Like we talked about this before

to where they solve that something was functional,

even from an accessibility standpoint,

but then they've continued to improve it

to where now it's sort of built in.

But you have to have the new watches in order to,

I guess I'm just frustrated with that

because it's like, wait a minute,

My Apple Watch Ultra isn't even a year old.

It's like, why can't I get that function in there?

And it really, you know, maybe they could,

but I think to your point, Apple made the decision,

like we're not gonna provide this,

it's just gonna be for the newest watches.

And probably because it just does take advantage

of that newest processor on there.

Apple TV, the actual box, not TV Plus,

but the Apple TV, TV OS 17.

That's something that was also released not too long ago.

And if you wanted to take a couple of days

to read everything there is to know about tvOS 17,

Max Stories has you covered.

Actually, I thought this was a fantastic article.

I mostly skimmed a lot of it from Sigmund Judge here

in Max Stories, but boy,

he goes through everything you can possibly do.

And really it just kind of opened my eyes

on some of this stuff.

Like, really?

I did not actually know that it was that,

you know, these features were so good.

And also the big takeaway for me was,

wow, the Apple TV can really do so much

from watching videos, from the FaceTime,

from fitness, from shortcuts, from, you know, Siri.

I mean, just so much that it can do these days.

A really great article here.

- For folks that are not gonna take the time

to read the entire article,

although I did think it was interesting.

Let me just tease out one single feature

just so that you know about it.

- Yeah, do it.

operating system for your TV. If you lose your Apple TV remote, you know, that thin little remote,

you don't know where it is. It's stuck between the couch. What you can do is you can load up

on your iPhone, the remote app, which of course allows you to control the Apple TV. But one of

the features in the remote app is you can now locate your remote. And now how do you do that?

Cause the remote doesn't have like an air tag in it or anything like that, but just Bluetooth,

you can sort of get, you know, you're closer, you're further away. And this article describes

how to do the feature. So if you ever find yourself that you've lost your remote and you

think it might be somewhere else in the house or try that couch cushions, just remember that as

long as you have your iPhone with the aid of your Apple TV running TV OS, what's the number again,

that ruptures 17, 17. You could actually try to find your, I haven't tried it yet. Cause I haven't

lost my remote, but just keep in mind that that option is there. And if six months from now,

you need to use it. Just remember, ah, maybe I can find it. So, if you're looking for some

some popular baby names, might we just suggest that you stay away from S-I-R-I?

This is an interesting story.

Apparently this lady in the United Kingdom, that is her name.

What she says, what's the actual thing that it means, S-I-R-I, or at least that's what

they said that it was going to stand for?

Speech, interpretation, and recognition interface.

Yeah, that's actually.

I know, but.

Yeah, I don't know.

That's not true.

That's not where it came up with.

I know it's not.

Yes.

The Siri name came up from the Stanford Research Institute, who's which developed the original

Siri app way, way back when, which Apple purchased.

But anyway, regardless, I have to admit, I know if your name is Siri or if your name

is in some households, Alexa, I do feel for you because, you know, people that may be

talking to you and every time they say your name, it's triggering alerts all around you.

And I do feel for this woman who decided she would take on a nickname instead.

And you know, I probably do the same thing too.

She says that she works in a gym or something like that.

And so you can imagine people that are working out all the time and they're saying, you know,

talking to their watch and getting information or talking to her and then everybody else

watch an iPhone being triggered.

It's confusing.

- Apparently it was okay before iOS 17.

- Right, because you have to have the hey mark.

- People just couldn't say hey,

well like when they see her come in the door,

they can't say hey, blank, because that would turn it on.

So they were trained to not say hey

when they said hello to Mrs. Price here.

But now with iOS 17, you don't have to say hey anymore.

And so she is literally going to change her name.

She has to change her name

because everybody is saying her name.

Anyway, kind of a funny story.

And last but not least,

if you need your daily dose of happy tears,

it's a video from Apple called "Another Birthday."

And if I'm not mistaken, Jeff,

I think they showed this in the Apple announcement

a few weeks ago, is that right?

Okay. - They did.

- But it is so well worth watching again.

- Don't give it away, Brad.

Don't give away. - I know.

- For anyone that hasn't seen it yet,

There's a little twist in it and you're holding back.

Let's just say--

- I am, I am.

- If you're ready to have some happy tears--

- It's so worth it.

- Go ahead and start off.

- Absolutely.

It just, it makes you feel good.

And then you just wanna go hug somebody,

which is also great as well.

We wanna thank SaneBox for being our sponsor today.

You've heard us talk about it.

If you haven't had a chance to try it,

I think it is, you owe it to yourself to at least try it.

Certainly because if you're drawn in an email,

or I should say, you probably are drowning in email

at some point, if it's not even for your work email,

it's probably for one of your personal accounts, right?

And what's great about SaneBox is that you can apply it

to any of the accounts that you currently have.

You can use it with a Google account,

an Office 365 account, an iCloud account,

or frankly, I even use it for what I call

an IMAP account, right, Jeff?

These are like old email accounts, well, not old,

but my email accounts 'cause I have an email host.

And the fact is is that I can set,

I set up SaneBox on one of those accounts.

I just had to put in my server information

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So SaneBox is basically, I mean,

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for email because it looks at all of my email.

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It's like from business standpoint,

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And because now SaneBox does that initial calling,

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If it's other emails that like, I can look at later,

there's like the reply later or the same black hole,

some of these other folders that SaneBox sets up for us

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that I have some additional time

or at the end of the day or something like that.

I know we've been talking about a lot of these different

features and folders.

And while you hear us talk about it,

you can go to sanebox.com/inthenews.

But we talked, I think a little bit last week

about some of the different offerings

on the subscription levels, Jeff.

You did a good job of explaining

about how to approach this as well.

- Yeah, just so you can decide

how many accounts you wanna cover,

how many of the features that you wanna cover.

But I mean, I will tell you,

I like the version that has the two email accounts

because it means that every time I go to my iPhone JD email,

I can go in and out quickly

because I'm not wasting my time

on the stuff that eventually I wanna look at,

like my newsletters.

But when I just jump in the inbox,

I see that I have three messages, I deal with them, I'm done.

It's not trying to pull out those three among the dozens of messages around them that sort

of mess everything up.

I also have it on my Gmail account.

It means when I need to get, when I go to my Gmail, I get in, I get out and I'm done.

And then later, whenever I decide to take the time, then I go through the other stuff.

So if your time is valuable to you and you want to be more efficient, especially with

maybe some, like you said, some of your ancillary email accounts, this is just a great way to

be more efficient.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani I think I've kind of tangentially calculated,

Jeff, that it's gotta save me a couple hours a week.

I mean truly, just from the times that I would check email and kinda go through and manually

like you know, click, click, click, click, go to the next one, you know, delete, delete,

click, click.

I mean it just has saved me several hours a week now.

And so what we're referencing here, if you go to Sanebox.com/inthenews, you can get to

the pricing page and they have very clever subscriptions.

One's called Snack, that's for one email account,

and you can pick two of the features.

The lunch subscription level is what Jeff

is talking about here.

You can get two email accounts, right?

And you get six features on each of those mailboxes.

And some of the features, if you click the little help,

a little icon here, that's the Sane Later folder,

the Sane Black Hole folder, the Sane News folder,

which is probably my favorite.

There's some other power tools,

there's some snooze folders on here as well.

Just really worth going and looking at.

If you wanted to bump up even more,

they got the dinner subscription level.

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But if you're still not even sure,

even the snack is a little bit too much

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they do have an appetizer plan for only 7 cents a day.

I think you only have one, yeah,

one email account and one feature.

But hey, if the newsletter,

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the way that it appeals to me.

That's a great place to start.

You can always upgrade later if you need to.

You can always change it.

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So thank you SaneBox for partnering with us

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SaneBox.com/inthenews.

In the know, time for in the know.

I know, my friend, that you are a crossword junkie.

Well, maybe a New York Times crossword junkie,

if I was to be specific.

We've talked about this before.

You like crosswords.

I have to confess, I have never liked crosswords.

They have always frustrated me.

I have always just said, I don't have time for this.

It's not something that I'm interested in.

But one little sneaky thing that came in iOS 17

is the Apple News Plus subscription

and the Apple News Plus app

now offers the New York Times crosswords.

And not just the crosswords.

- It's not the New York Times crosswords,

it's their own crosswords.

- Oh, it's their own crosswords.

Oh, I thought they were pulling

from the New York Times on here.

- No, see that's the thing is-

- Oh, well this even, okay.

Okay, this even makes it more mysterious now.

- So this is like, I like this feature.

And what it means, it makes sense that any good news

you're gonna wanna have crosswords.

And so, a newspaper always has a crossword.

And so Apple has decided we have Apple News,

It's this digital age.

We don't have the physical newspapers, but we should have some puzzles, including crosswords.

So what they've done is they've, they've teamed up with one, I think it's called the puzzle

society or it's an organization that's been around for a long time.

And they said, why don't you make some great crosswords for us?

And and they are, they are really good crosswords.

And if you're already paying for news plus, so you get it free as part of your Apple one

subscription, you can play these crosswords and they have a big crossword every day.

They have a mini crossword every day.

So it's just fun to get there.

So I appreciate that you've, that you've enjoyed it, Brett, but you didn't even realize what

you were not playing the New York times crossword puzzles.

And I'll tell you for, for crossword people that are a little bit deeper into it, there

is a distinction.

There is a difference.

And one of them is purposeful.

And I linked to this today that, um, what is his name?

Uh, Ross Trudeau is the editor for the puzzles and news plus.

And he said that their Apple's goal was to make their crosswords more approachable.

So for people like you, Brett, that haven't been doing crosswords as much, they're a little

bit, it's not even, I hate to say that they're easier because that's not, I think you're

good.

Say it.

He says, yeah, he actually says it's more welcoming to newcomers.

That's me.

I'm the newbie.

I'm the newbie on crosswords and it's, and it's appealing to me.

But what he means is there's, they're going to be sometimes a little bit less obtuse.

Sometimes, you know, there are New York times, you know, the New York times crossword puzzle

is easy on Monday and it gets harder on Saturday and Sunday is just the big puzzle.

And so, especially as you get later into the week, they will have all of these clever,

sometimes they're puns, sometimes they're double meanings.

For example, just take the word book, for example.

It might have a clue that uses the word book and you might be thinking, "Oh, it's a physical

book."

And then you realize, "Oh, no, no, no.

They're talking about book as like the verb, like when you book a vacation."

And it's only when you think of that secondary meaning, then you can understand the clue.

Or sometimes they'll have clues that have a question mark at the end in the New York

Times, which means that they're really sort of a, it's almost a jokey answer.

It's a play on words.

The Apple crossword puzzle tends to stay away from that.

You know, they're much more straightforward.

It's much, it's much closer to the Monday New York times puzzle where everything is

straightforward except that what Apple will do is they will have those straightforward

clues, but even have medium and hard ones.

So you can have hard clues, but they are hard, straightforward clues versus whereas the New

York times gets to be more clever. Now, which one is better? Just totally up to you. If you're a

newbie like you, Brett, you know, then this is better. This is a great way to do it. Um, I

actually prefer those obtuse clues because even though they're hard, I sort of like have this

sense of accomplishment when I'm like, yeah, that's what they're doing. And you know, the way

that I do the crossword puzzles in the New York times is my wife and I do that. In fact, my daughter

does as well. Uh, but we'll share them. And like, sometimes I won't figure it out. And then later at

dinner, my wife will be like, Hey, you know what? I saw that you didn't answer 17 across.

It's because they were taking it was this. And I'm like, Oh, I didn't even think, you

know, they got me sort of thing. So it's just, it's a different strategy, but it's fun that

you now have another source of crosswords that are included in your subscription. I

do think that Apple needs to, I wish they improved the interface a little bit on my

iPad pro. If it's in landscape mode, the way that the puzzle is in the middle, you can't

Yeah, it is a little you need to turn it.

So I hope that they that they tweak the interface in the future and hopefully they will but

I love what they're doing and I love having another source of crossword puzzles, but just

keep in mind.

It's a different type of money.

I think the story that you linked to today said it's an NY Times style crossword.

Okay, so that's a big deal.

What they mean by that is the way that it's the layout the number of bricks the fact that

yeah symmetrical, you know crossword, but the okay the nature of the clues is different.

- But here's even a lower common denominator

that got me into it.

Does the New York Times have the crossword

and then they have crossword mini?

Do they have like a smaller crossword?

- Yeah, those are fun.

- That's what grabbed me because it's like,

okay, I could do a six by six block

(laughing)

and that's what hooked me, Jeff.

I'm like, wait a minute, this is kind of fun.

Like I got it and I love how you can tap it

to go down and go across.

Obviously, everyone knows by now

that I have not done crosswords all of my life.

But I will tell you, I look forward to this every day.

Now for this past week, Jeff, I've been doing it every day

and it's a barrel of fun.

I really am enjoying it.

So I feel like I will evolve.

Like I'm already getting a little smarter, I feel like,

to the sense like, okay, maybe I could graduate

into the actual New York Times.

You know, I mean, that is the be all standard, I know.

But if you have the Apple News app

and if you subscribe to Apple News+,

I get that as part of my Apple One subscription.

You have to have a subscription for this.

Then I would say, go and try it.

If you're like me, if you're a newbie to crosswords,

this is a good way.

If you have been doing crosswords,

stick with the New York Times, right?

Go with Jeff on that.

That's my in the know for the day.

- Well, let me just tell you, Brett,

I am delighted that you picked that

as your in the know today,

because as someone who loves crossword puzzles,

it makes me happy to see people like you

get into crossword puzzles. - I'm coming in the fold.

I'm coming in the fold, it's great.

- You bought a smile to my face

when you believe that you're picked.

Okay, so my pick for today is the people and pets features

in the photos app on the iPhone, on the iPad, on your Mac.

And of course, for many, many, many years now,

we've had the people photos feature.

What's one of the new things this year

is it now includes pets as well.

So just as a reminder,

many people don't take advantage of this feature

and I hope that you really should.

It allows you to go through,

Apple will find pictures

that seem to be the same person

And it will allow you to assign a name to that picture,

you know, your spouse's name, your kid's name,

your friend's name.

And once you do that,

it actually makes it so much easier in the future

if you're trying to find pictures,

like, you know, you're talking to your friend

and you're like, "Hey, remember when we did such and such

way back when?"

If you've already tagged your friend,

you can use this feature to say,

"Okay, now show me all the pictures of me and John.

Oh, now I see, you know, this is the restaurant

that we went to four years ago."

And you can find that picture.

So I find it very useful to have these tags done,

but you need to go through a tiny bit of work

of just assigning names to it.

What's new this year is I think they're doing

an even better job of identifying people.

- Yeah.

- Now keep in mind that when you first update to iOS 17,

you need to wait a couple of days

for it to rescan all of your photos.

And in fact, you'll know when-

- And it gets on, the phone will get hot.

- It's only a little hot.

You'll know when it's finished

because you'll actually see the name of the folder change

from people as it was before to people and pets.

And then we'll go through it.

Now I noticed for me, for example,

I have lots of pictures of animals in my folder,

but the only two that it actually tagged for me

is my current dog and my prior dog that I had before.

And maybe that's a function of the fact

that I had so many more pictures of my primary pet

than neighbors, dogs and stuff like that.

Or it might be that I've noticed that for the pet pictures,

the pet's gotta be really looking at the camera.

If the pet has its head turned,

Apple's right now not really picking it up.

Whereas if a person has their head turned, it actually does a pretty good job of tagging the

person. Um, so the one, but one thing that's also new this year is the, the, the app is

tacking a lot more people. So even if you're someone like me and I've got like, you know,

25 people tagged, if I go to the photos app and I click or tap on the tab called peoples and pets,

which is one of your album, it's underneath albums. If you scroll down below all the people

that you've assigned names to, you'll see a bunch of faces that you haven't yet assigned names to

in case you want to assign a name to them. And then if you want to see even more people,

at the very bottom, there's a button that's called Add People, and the phone will show you the rest

of them. And that would include, for example, the add people might be the ones that it doesn't have

that many photos of, or it might be somebody that you previously tagged and then you decided to

remove them from your collection. A big example that people often have is if you have someone in

your family and then there's a divorce and they're not really part of your family anymore, you might

not want to see that person's picture anymore. And so you can put it out there so that you don't see

them. That's that feature. So there's a lot more people identified. I wanted to alert people that.

And then another thing is, so let's say that I've, I've tagged my picture. So, so you, Brett, I mean,

I might have 20 pictures of you, Brett, because you and I have known each other for many, many years.

And I've had different pictures of you from different times in our lives. But there might

be that one picture, maybe because it's a good recent picture, or it's just like a picture that,

you know, looks the best. You need to choose what is going to be your, um, the, the, the key photos,

is what Apple calls it. And it's going to be the picture that shows up in the circle.

So it's going to presumably be a picture that you really associate with that person. The

way that you assign that has changed a little bit in the new operating system. It used to

be that you use the share sheet to do it. There's now two ways that you do it. One way

you do it is if you're looking at like all the pictures that I have of Brett Fernie,

if I long press on one of the pictures, a little menu will pop up. And one of the options

in that menu is make key photo. And then that is the picture of you that will be my default picture

of you. A second way to do it is when you're looking at a particular photo. So when the

picture is full screen, if I either tap the info button, which is that eye at the bottom of the

screen, or if I just swipe up a little bit and it brings up all the info, like the date the picture

was taken, the location, all that sort of stuff. Once you get to that, you'll actually see at the

bottom left of the photo, a little circle with all of the people that are identified in that photo.

And if I want this photo to be my new key photo of you, I can just press on your face

and then it has an option again to make it a key photo. So once you have a key photo,

you know, at the end, you can have it that whenever you open your photos, not only you

see all the people, but you see like a really good, clear picture of that person.

Yeah, I like that. Very nice.

If you have somebody that you've known for years and years, you don't necessarily want

to picture them from 15 years ago, you want something that you look like today.

Or alternatively, maybe you actually do want the picture from 15 years ago,

because that's such a great picture of the person, but you can decide, don't,

don't let your iPhone decide that for you. You go ahead and I encourage you to use the key photo

pictures so that you decide what's the photo you want to associate. So when you take a little time

to play around with it, assign your names, pick your key photos, decide who's in there.

It's just so much more powerful and it makes it so much easier to work with your pictures in the

future. It is fun. Sometimes when I have, if I've just got some downtime for 15 minutes somewhere,

I will sometimes go through and just tag additional pictures and stuff. Let me say one

last thing before we get off of this. The way that tagging works is let's say, for example,

that I might have 25 pictures of you, Brett. I will actually tag five of them and say, this is

Brett Burney. But then my iPhone using its on device artificial intelligence will figure out

that the other 20 are also you, because it knows what the shape of your face is and everything

else, right? So if I do that on my iPhone, on my iPad, or on my Mac on a different computer,

it doesn't sync all of those over. It won't sync all 25. It will only sync the five that I identify

and then it will do its own analysis of the pictures to find the other ones. And so what

it means is on my iPhone, I could have a situation in which my iPhone says, I think these 25 are

Brett pictures, five I know for sure because you've actually done them. Whereas on my iPad,

it may actually say that there's 22 pictures or 28 pictures.

So it can vary from device to device.

I sort of wish Apple did it a different way,

but they've just decided that they want to do all the processing power on device.

It's sort of a privacy feature and stuff,

so that it's not all synced to the cloud and stuff.

So that might be why you might see a picture of somebody on one of your devices,

but not on another device.

Okay.

Because of the way it works.

Yeah.

That's fantastic.

I'm like, I'm going through all my photos while you're talking

because I just didn't realize, I mean, first of all,

I need to update a lot of stuff on here,

but I didn't realize you could have that much power.

And I love being able to change that key photo in there.

That's really great.

- That's nice.

- And now it'll recognize my dog even better on that.

All right, great stuff.

Thanks for talking again.

I know there's so much, we keep talking.

Every week it seems like we just have more to talk about,

but we do want to say thank you to SaneBox

for being our sponsor this week.

You can go to sanebox.com/inthenews

to find out a little bit more.

Thanks as always, Jeff, and we'll talk with you next week.