118: Weird Wattage, Greater G’s, and Apple Study Buddies

(upbeat music)

- Welcome to In the News for October the 13th, 2023.

Happens to be Friday the 13th,

but that's a good thing for us.

I'm Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

A little spooky too, 'cause the month of Halloween,

I don't know if that makes sense.

- Exactly.

- A more spooky Friday the 13th or what, anyway.

- We'll take it, we'll take it, it's okay.

Hey Jeff, how has the charging gone

for your brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max?

You had a good story here today about the fact that,

this has always been confusing to me.

It's like, what's the best adapter?

Someone's had that little tiny chiclet adapter

that came with the old iPhones.

Now there's bigger adapters.

I just, I never can read the fine print on those things

of how many wattage or how many volts

or whatever the heck is gonna be on those things.

But you linked to a good story today

from Zach Hall at 9to5Mac,

that maybe the 20 watt power adapter

is better than the 30 watt adapter.

Did I read that right?

- Yeah, that's what the headline is.

So what can I tell you about this?

What?

- Okay.

- A little dad joke there.

The best, you know, charging is a whole different story

with the new iPhone 15 because of the USB-C connector

in the bottom of it.

And so things are a little bit different than with lightning.

As before, I mean, people that have had iPhones

for the last couple of years know that with better chargers

you can actually charge them faster, which is super nice

if you want to get a lot of charge

in a smart period of time.

With the new iPhone 15s, you know,

technically the best charger to use is a 30 watt charger,

which is the one that, you know,

you can often get access to,

because I want to say that the iPhone can get like 27 watts

is the maximum it can suck up at one time.

- Okay.

- So if you've got 30 watt charger is the most.

But the interesting thing about Zach's article

is when the test that he ran,

he found that a 20 watt charger,

which are a little bit cheaper

and you can find them more readily,

the 20 watt chargers,

the difference is so minor between 20 and 30 watt

that he's like, you're really fine with either one of them.

- Okay, okay.

- So it's nice to know.

I mean, you and I have talked about this

almost every week since the new iPhones have come out.

The new USB-C world that we're in is great,

but more confusing.

It really is because not every cord is equal,

not every charging thing is equal.

But so you need to pay attention to things

that you never paid attention to before.

In the old days, you had a lightning cable, you were great.

You really had two choices.

Either you had lightning to USB-C,

in which case you knew it was gonna charge more slowly,

or I mean, more quickly,

or you had lightning to the old style USB

and then it would charge more slowly.

And that was it.

It was just really those two choices.

But now that we're in the USB-C world for sure,

where everything is possible,

you just need to sort of pay attention

about what speed your charges are.

And if you have one of these power adapters,

like I do all over the place,

I've got in my office, in my home,

that have like multiple USB-Cs on a single charging brick,

you know, it will say different amounts of power

based upon how many things you have plugged in.

So you just need to think about this.

So if you want to have a setup,

whether it's at your home or your office or wherever,

where you know you're going to charge your iPhone

as fast as possible, then a 30 Watts can be great.

And according to this article,

20 Watts is going to be just about as good.

One thing that I don't think he even mentioned

in this article, but it's worth noting,

is that another change of the new iPhones

is not only can the charge come in nice and fast,

you can actually send the charge out.

So you can, for the first time,

you can use your iPhone to charge another device.

With lightning, I think that the power

that used to go out of the lightning port

was something like, it was less than a watt.

It was like 0.3 or something like that.

But with the USB-C, it actually sends out,

I wanna say almost five watts of power.

It's like four point something.

And so as a result, if you're in a pinch

and your AirPods, for example, are dying

or your Apple Watch is dying,

you could actually plug into USB-C

at the bottom of your phone

and then plug into your,

something that would be a less powerful device

like your AirPods or your Apple Watch,

and you can actually give it a charge.

And it's a five, almost a five watt charger.

It's not gonna be the fastest charger in the world,

but for AirPods, it would actually be fine.

So just, I mean,

this is not something you're gonna do very often,

but it's an option that you have with,

and it's one of those examples of with USB-C on the iPhone

comes greater flexibility, it's just,

can also be more confusing 'cause it's more things

to know about and to think about and stuff like that.

- No kidding.

The confusing part is what getting me.

Okay, so which kind of adapter comes with the iPhone now?

Jeff, do you--

- That is a good question.

Yeah, we should look that up.

- Yeah.

- I'm gonna look it up right now.

- I wonder if they have the 30 watt,

because I know that the 30 watt,

I feel like that the 30 watt,

I think I'm looking at the picture here from Zach,

that that's the one that came with my iPad, I think.

Like it's obviously a little bit bigger

than the smaller one there.

And then I have one that came with my MagSafe Duo adapter.

And that I think is a 30 watt

because it goes in USB-C into Lightning,

you know, for the MagSafe,

which of course they don't make anymore.

But I do like the fact that, you know,

the conclusion of this article here is that

even though the 30 watt is going to do the best in here,

he says the 30 watt power adapter

technically wins the race, but you know, like you said,

the 20 watts a little bit smaller,

and maybe you prefer to maybe travel with that

or throw it in a bag,

and it's not like you're gonna tell the difference

because it's 10 minutes.

Like he says it here, I don't think, he goes,

I can't really find a time when 10 minutes

is going to add that much of a difference.

And it's just maybe, you know,

you pick portability over the power on there.

Were you able to find it?

- I was, and of course you and I both know the answer.

You don't get a charging brick with the new iPhones anymore.

Remember, you just get the cord.

- That was my trick question.

- Yeah, of course we all know that.

It's been a couple of years since Apple shipped those.

And Apple's excuse was that it's more environmental friendly

because some people already have a charging brick

so they don't need another one.

- Well, that's it.

- Yeah, that's it.

- I mean, that's the thing, Jeff.

I remember the justification for that was

everybody already has many bricks,

but now on this story, we may not have the right brick.

Right?

We may not have the one.

And so that's what frustrates me.

I hear you, Apple.

you know, I'd rather you just kind of like come out

and be a little more honest about it.

You just don't want to put it in.

It's a cost saving measure, maybe.

I don't know.

I don't have any inside information,

but I'm just assuming,

because now I might want a better brick.

Like I know now I have some bigger bricks

that I use with my iPad Pro,

'cause I do need some additional power there.

But if I have my iPhone 15,

I might want to use that same brick.

Now I'm kind of like you.

I've invested in a couple of Anker, you know,

adapters, Jeff, that obviously have, you know,

multiple ports in there.

And that's what I really travel with on there,

the GaN chargers and everything.

And that's really been fantastic

from a portability standpoint.

But it's almost like I still like to have,

I would like to have one that comes in the box

so I could just leave it plugged in

maybe at the office, right?

Or at the house somewhere.

- Yeah, I think for me, my two cents is that

I think it's probably okay

not to have additional charging bricks

because like you say, I tend to have those.

I will admit though, that it is fun

whenever you get a new device,

especially like an iPhone or an iPad.

when you get another charging cable,

the first thing that goes off my head is great.

I've got another brand new charging cable.

- Another cable. - Because even though

I don't necessarily need it right now,

I'm gonna put it in a drawer

and you know what a few months I will.

Of course, in my whole household,

what invariably happens is a month or two later,

everyone of the kids will come in and say,

- Absolutely.

- They show me their charging cord, Brett,

and the end of it is so frayed.

Oh my God, like, why are we not on fire right now

just looking at this?

And so I immediately pull out the new one

and hand it to them.

So I don't always get to use them myself,

but it is nice to have those additional charging cords.

- Apparently another little surprise

that comes with the iPhone 15s and the pros as well

is I'm so glad you found this link, a new Qualcomm modem,

which I don't have my iPhone 15 Pro yet,

but now this makes me want to have it even more

because apparently this new modem that they replaced

is gonna improve 5G performance

and something else he mentioned in here, I think,

is that it switches quicker between your 5G,

like if you're walking in the house,

you know, to your local wifi, right?

And apparently that new modem is very helpful on that.

I'm very interested to see if I,

do you notice any improvement?

Have you noticed any improvement, Jeff?

- So, you know, whenever you get a new device,

you never know when you feel like things are going better

and you never know how much of it is legitimately better

and how much of it is just your excitement

for the new device and how much of it is just

because it's faster and everything else.

- Shiny new thing.

- But I will admit, before I saw this report,

there were a few times when I thought to myself,

gosh, you know what?

It seems like I'm getting better cellular than before.

I mean, again, whether it was real or not,

it was just in the back of my head.

And so when I saw this article, I'm like,

well, maybe this has something to do with it.

You know, I'm in my office right now

and I'm like, you know, almost 50 stories up in the sky.

And so cellular connections are horrible up here.

And I just ran a speed test while you were starting.

So I turned off my wifi and I see that I'm still getting like 9.9 down,

which sounds hard.

And nobody, nobody would want to have that in their phone.

But for me up here in the sky, that's actually pretty good.

That's not bad.

I'd have to look through my history to see what I had been getting in the past.

It's been a while since I've tested it up here.

Um, so it doesn't surprise me that this is true.

And again, it also could just be because the processor is faster.

Um, what I find particularly interesting about this story is, is what's not said

in the story, which is the backstory.

And I'm sure some people know this, but Apple desperately wants to make all of the important

parts of the iPhone and the iPad and the Mac.

So Apple makes their own chips.

Apple has their own design.

Yes, they do.

Apple does so many things on their own.

And the one thing that they've been trying to do for years is do their own modems.

And years ago, they actually purchased from Intel, Intel's modem division.

So it's now Apple's modem division.

And you know, they did it so many years ago that I'm sure Apple had assumed that by now

in 2023, they would not have to rely on Qualcomm anymore.

But the reality is that it hasn't worked.

There was one iPhone a couple of years ago that had both a Qualcomm and an Intel modem

and the one that the Intel modem didn't work as well.

Qualcomm continues to just do the best job on modems and so Apple continues to use them.

And I know that Apple hates it because there's been litigation between Qualcomm and Apple

and they really don't want to have to rely upon them.

But it's the best.

They are the best.

And Apple, you know, as smart as Apple is, and as much money as they have to hire engineers,

they have not cracked this nut yet.

And so Qualcomm still makes the best.

So it's so the fact that we have a better Qualcomm modem, and that Apple is not advertising

it.

This is just a little conspiracy theory on my part.

But it wouldn't surprise me that the fact that they're not announcing it is because

they don't really want to congratulate Qualcomm for doing a better job.

That makes sense.

at themselves. But it does seem to be an advantage that you do

have a little bit better performance with the new

iPhones.

Well, I will conspire with you, my friend, because when I read

this, I'm like, wait a minute, Apple didn't make any mention of

this that I can recall anywhere. And sure enough, in the very

last paragraph here in this story, he says, "Qualcomm's X70

modem is also what powers many flagship Android smartphones."

And then he does link, apparently they reported on this,

that iPhone will continue to use Qualcomm chips through 2026.

And the headline says, as Apple designed 5G modem faces delays.

So I don't know if it's a conspiracy.

I mean, I'm happy to flame the flames on that.

But that's really interesting that at least for a couple of more years,

Apple has conceded that they're going to continue to work with Qualcomm.

Interesting.

And I can't remember what year they bought the Intel modems,

but it's been a couple of years ago.

So if they're committed through 2026, that's like Apple saying,

you know, we're buying a whole division that we're not going to use for what?

at least five years, if not more.

I mean, that's, I'm sure it's smarts.

I'm sure a lot of people at Apple do not like this headline.

- Yeah, I wanna dig deeper now,

'cause I would think a processor

would be more difficult than a modem.

Obviously, I have no engineering background,

so I am talking kind of basically out of my ear,

but I just can't imagine

that they haven't been able to do that yet.

But okay, thanks for the conspiracy check on this.

I appreciate it. - Yeah, I just found

the press release.

- Well, while, well.

- It was in 2019, by the way,

is when Apple announced they were buying it.

It's already been four years later and they haven't used it.

And you've just shown that it's gonna be another two years

and they're still not gonna be using it.

So, wow.

- Interesting.

All right, so while Apple is working

on the inside of the phone,

you might wanna pay attention to the outside of your phone.

I'm glad that you linked to this

because I forget that Apple does have a whole page

on how to clean your iPhone.

which most of the time, I mean,

I keep it in a case most of the time.

And so I wipe it down.

I got a nice cloth that I wipe.

In fact, I think I have an iPhone JD cloth still

over all these years, Jeff, if you remember,

that you used to have those cleaning cloths.

But I do like the fact that it's good to remind yourself.

They've got the first section up here

that if you have an iPhone 15, 14, 13, 12, or 11,

they got some really good ideas on what to do.

Like unplug all the cables, turn off your iPhone first.

They do caution, you're not gonna wanna use,

what, there's a couple of things on here.

Don't use compressed air.

- That was the one that jumped out at me.

- Yeah, right. - 'Cause I could see people

thinking, oh, compressed air.

- I do that. - I can easily

clean out my slots. - Right.

- But Apple says no, not to use it, so interesting.

- I know, the thing is, what I thought of immediately

is I use that, I use compressed air when I'm cleaning out,

well, for me, it's the old Lightning port, right?

'Cause I don't know if you've done this before, Jeff.

Maybe we've talked about this before,

but I remember when my father came a few years ago to that

and he kept complaining, he's like,

I'm gonna have to get a new iPhone.

I gotta get a new iPhone.

I'm like, why?

It's not charging anymore.

It's not charging.

And I'm like, but everything else is fine.

You know, I go in and I check the battery life

and it was fine.

But you know what this is,

you know where I'm going, right Jeff?

Like I looked in the Lightning port

and sure enough, in this case, what I did,

'cause I've read up on this,

although I don't see any mention of a toothpick here

in apples cleaning, I took a toothpick,

which is not metal, right, but it's a toothpick,

and I put it into the lightning port,

and I was able to pull out what was,

it's a little disgusting, but it's pocket lint.

It's basically what it comes down to.

It's pocket lint, 'cause you know,

people put it in their pockets all the time,

and things just get in there,

and then as you keep putting the lightning cable in and out,

you're like mashing it all down into the bottom there.

And sure enough, I cleaned it out, Jeff,

and what do you know?

It was like, my dad was like, this is amazing,

it's working, thank you for fixing it.

And I'm like, I'm here for you, pops.

It's good stuff.

But I mean, I don't see that they mentioned that here,

but I do like the fact, obviously,

it's good to just use a lint-free cloth, for example,

like one from iPhone JD, if you have any more there.

Avoid getting moisture in the openings.

Don't use cleaning products unless you're following

the instructions for disinfecting your phone.

Now, this page also has some other instructions

if you have an iPhone six, how far do they go down here?

Oh, they go all the way to an iPhone 3G original.

(laughing)

- Yeah, and you know, which means I think they're going,

you know, all the way to the ones

that are maybe still supported

'cause the original iPhone wouldn't be,

but lots of good advice here.

You and I have joked in the past

about the Apple watch cleaning page

because it always talks about putting it under running water

and we sort of joke about it. - Under running water.

- That always just seems funny that you do that.

But it is, I mean, some of this is common sense device,

but it's good to know that if you do wanna clean it,

Like for example, the fact that it now has aluminum

on the outside, does that change anything about cleaning it?

And no, it doesn't really, but it's nice to look that up.

This reminds me of something else.

I was listening to a podcast the other day.

I'm pretty sure it was the Mac Power Users Podcast

and David Sparks was interviewing

a professional photographer whose name is

in the tip of my tongue and I'm forgetting it.

- Oh, yes.

- One of the questions that David asked was,

what are your like your top three tips

for taking photos with your iPhone?

And his number one tip, this totally surprised me,

was to wipe off your lenses before you take a picture.

He says, you'd be surprised that, you know,

people have smudges on their lenses.

- Yeah, fingerprints and stuff.

- He goes, obviously, if you have a cloth, you can use that.

But even if you just wipe it on your shirt,

he's like, you'd be surprised at the number of times

that people don't realize that there's a smudge

on their lens and it totally affects the quality

of the pictures that they take.

I have to admit, Brad, I never think about that either.

- Interesting.

- So the next time that you take out your iPhone,

especially if you're taking like a portrait photo

or something that you, you know, it's like,

I really want this to be a good one.

just pay attention to the lenses.

I thought it was an interesting tip.

And of course you can use a lens cloth

or in a pinch you can just use your shirt of course.

- It looks like that was Tyler Stallman

is the guest that David had on.

- That was a really good episode by the way.

- I have it bookmarked.

- You haven't listened to it yet?

It's great.

He did a fantastic video.

And in fact, I think we talked about it a week or two ago

where he had a video review of the iPhone

from a photographer's perspective.

And he was showing all sorts of cool things.

Like for example, one of the things he showed in his video

is that with the new 5X lens,

if you get on action mode,

which is the video mode for the iPhone,

where it like really stabilizes everything,

he was showing these cool effects,

like he was in, I don't even know where he was,

but like, let's say you're in Rome or something

and there's this really cool statue.

He was like walking, almost even running

around the statue from different directions,

just holding an iPhone.

And you're thinking, well, of course,

the iPhone's gonna be jumping up and down,

but with the action mode on, it stayed very calm,

very steady and the effect of having a statue that just in this little video, you come around

it from a different angle, it was a pretty cool effect.

It was almost like a professional documentarian effect and it's something that any of us can

do.

I mean, how many times have you been on a family vacation and you encounter something

like a statue that you want to take a picture or in this case a video of and it's interesting

to give it a little 3D effect.

But if you didn't do that with the...

Now he points out that the image stabilization is so good on the iPhone that even if you

don't have action mode, it's pretty good.

But when you're in 5X zoom, because you are so zoomed in, you know, it's going to really

and any hand motion is going to have a big effect because there's such a zoom in effect.

And of course, this is just on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, it's got the 5X zoom.

So so action mode is something you use.

But anyway, that's kind of rabbit hole.

My point is, he went very deep on a lot of photography things that I would not have thought

about and it's a good episode to check out.

- Well, while you're on photography,

there was one thing that you mentioned

at the very beginning of your post today.

Let's just talk about that real quick

'cause I thought this was,

I haven't read the entire article

because within like the first eight paragraphs,

I'm like, oh, wow, you know what?

I wanna take some time to really understand this.

One of the things that I've heard,

I am not a professional photographer by any stretch, Jeff,

as you know, but I've heard photographers talk about RAW

and LOG and LUT and HEIF, that they call it, H-E-I-F.

I mean, so many of these things that I know,

if I had time, I would love to learn more

about this kind of stuff.

But sometimes I just need to know some of the basics there.

But one of the first things that you mentioned today

were some really interesting articles here.

LOG is the Pro, an iPhone 15 Pro.

This is a blog called Pro Lost by Stu Mastwich,

it sounds like.

Thank you for linking to this today, Jeff.

I just really think this is gonna be

one of the best articles that I have found

that really made me better understand what log means

and what LUTs, L-U-T, what LUTs are for me.

So yeah, I've got some airplane reading for later today.

- Yeah, I thought it was really interesting

and a lot of it's above my head.

I'm not a professional photographer or videographer

so I don't need to know this stuff.

And you don't need to either.

But if you're just curious, the new iPhone

has some real interesting capabilities.

Recording video directly from the iPhone

to an external SSD drive is useful for a lot of people.

I mean, if you know that you're going to immediately

take a video recording and then immediately hook it up

to your computer, that might be-- although you can now

have a faster connection to your computer thanks to the USB-C,

as we talked about a few minutes ago.

If you record directly to an external device,

you could just plug that into your computer

and start working with it.

So that's good for a lot of people,

but if you're a professional,

you wanna record in this log format.

And when you do it, it much like--

- Interesting.

- I don't know if you've ever seen a picture

that's when you take a photograph in RAW,

when you first look at the picture,

it actually looks pretty crappy.

It looks like very flat.

- Here's a version on this story here,

which is really, it looks horrible.

I'm like, I would never want a picture like that,

but go ahead.

- But what you're missing is that

because you took it in RAW,

All that that means is that the iPhone

didn't try to bring all the color out

and it's gonna leave it.

- Yeah.

- It's just gonna preserve all the details

so that you can do that later in Photoshop on a computer

or whatever your program of choice is.

And so it's the same issue with video.

When you record in this log format,

you get these flat looking videos that,

I mean, it looks like there's no color depth at all.

- It's all gray.

It looks terrible.

- What you do is you apply to it

one of these lookup tables, L-U-T, a LUT.

And you can control like, I want you to convert this much

of the, you know, the grayness, whatever, to a blue.

And I want this much of an intensity of blue

or this much not of an intensity of a blue.

And so the article does a good, you just had it.

If you go down to the one that has the woman sitting

in the chair and it's got the--

- Yeah, this was great picture.

- For anyone looking at the video,

you can tell that there's nothing like every single one

of this picture is divided into one, two, three, four,

five, six, seven, almost into eight different frames.

And if you were to look at any, just one of these frames,

There's nothing inherently wrong with it.

I mean, each of these is a perfectly appropriate way

to view this scene, but the colors are a little different.

You know, the wall looks a little bit whiter

or a little bit more yellow in some of the things.

And so-

- I wouldn't even say warmer and brighter.

Like, yeah, yeah.

- Exactly.

And so the idea is each one of these

is set just from a different LUT.

And so if I'm a professional videographer

and I'm using, you know, four different cameras,

I wanna make sure that all of my cameras are color coded

that it's the same LUT,

so that I can switch from different angles

and not have the background look different

as I switch from one to the other.

So that's good if you have multiple cameras,

but even if you just have one camera,

you may know, and we see this all the time

when we go to the movies and professional videographers,

I want this scene to be a little bit warmer

because maybe it's in the desert

and I wanna have this feeling of being hot,

or I want this one to be a little bluer

because it's supposed to be a snow theme

and it just makes you feel cool.

And so these are these artistic decisions

that I admit that I would very rarely go to the trouble

of thinking of them for my pictures.

But if you want to think about this stuff,

Apple's now giving professional photographers

and videographers the ability to make these decisions

and to apply these sets.

So, and as I sort of concluded my beginning,

what's neat about all of this is I love that the pros

are going, they're so excited about this.

And even though I personally,

I'm not gonna use these effects,

I have no doubt that as Apple pays attention

these high end details, it definitely filters down into the preset decisions that Apple

makes for the rest of us.

So the video that I take of my daughter playing basketball may not have that same incredible

look that if the person that wrote this blog post had taken it using all of these logs

and LUTs and everything else, he might have a richer end video than I would ever be able

to achieve.

But the fact that Apple is providing tools to pros, I'm sure, makes it that the stuff

that's available for the rest of us gets better along the way too. The same way that car manufacturers

show off their concept cars, not because anyone's going to buy the concept car, but because

it just shows off what they can do.

What they can do, right.

And then over time, those features sort of filter into the cars that the rest of us buy.

So, and so, again, I'm not going to use this stuff, but I really did enjoy reading about

it and it's good plain reading. It's just sort of, you know, to understand what's going

on here.

to be in the know, which is, hey, would you work so good?

You know, but for me, it's just more FOMO.

Like I feel like if these tools are there, Jeff,

I should be using them or I should know how to use them.

- And the things you can.

I mean, if you want to try it out one day.

- True, true.

- You totally could.

So, you know, it's.

- All of that being said though,

and I think Stu here does a good job of even saying this,

you know what, and to your point too, Jeff,

you've made the same point.

You don't have to worry about this

because the iPhone right now as it stands,

you know, almost any iPhone that you have,

certainly from 12 and up or so,

is going to do a good enough job

that you are gonna be happy.

Like I said, it's just maybe from a nerdy perspective,

I feel like there's a little bit of FOMO there.

But for the most part, for every,

I can't tell you that I can find a picture

that I've taken in the last three or four years,

and I look it up and I'm disappointed with it.

In fact, I'm usually impressed with it,

just because it took, on the iPhone,

and the iPhone does all the computational,

I like what he says here,

the candy coated punch that Apple puts into those pictures on there.

Anyway, okay, I'll make sure that we link to that at the show notes because it is a

really great article.

I like his style and the way he writes and I'm like, I really have a good concept now

of what that means.

So thanks very much.

And one last thing I'll say about that, Brett.

Yeah, please.

It reminds me that, you know, I think about it in terms of my kids because, you know,

as a parent, you're always taking pictures of your kids.

When my kids were, you know, babies long ago, I still had a standalone high definition video

camera that was made by Sony or somebody like that, that I used to use to take videos because

I knew that I was going to want to have really good videos of them when they're kids, when

they were young kids.

And of course, now that they're teenagers, you know, you look back at those days fondly

when they were much cuter.

But the day when you needed to have your own video camera, that ended long ago.

I mean, the original iPhone, I don't even know if it took much video, but there came

a time years ago where video on the iPhone surpassed an external video camera.

So now unless you truly are a professional video person, the iPhone is the better choice.

Period.

Yeah.

That happened years ago.

And we are already at the point with the camera where, um, you know, people used to have their

own camera for many, many, many years.

I use my DSLR camera from Nikon, which took beautiful pictures, but you had to fiddle

with the aperture and everything else.

And it was sometimes a pain.

And if I wouldn't have the setting right,

then the pictures would come out horrible

because I would have it was a little above me

because I'm not a professional photographer.

And I feel like we're getting to the point now.

I still own my DSLR camera

and I haven't been using it for the last two years,

except for exceptions, because even though

there are some times that I can get better picture,

like what I used to say is if I really wanted to zoom in

and now with my new iPhone, I've got the 5X zoom on it.

It's, you know, we're getting, I think we're pretty much at that point where there's nothing

wrong with having a standalone camera.

If you want to play with it, go for it.

But I don't know that you really need it.

I think that your smartphone camera, if you have a new iPhone is good enough.

And so, you know, that's just something that I've seen a transition happen over the lifetime

of my kids.

And it makes me curious, you know, what's going to be the next 10, 20 years where the

power that we get in taking photography and video with our smartphones is just going to

be far, like you wouldn't even think about using it unless you were, you know, James

Cameron making the next Titanic or something like that.

So it could happen.

Let's move to iOS 17.

One article you linked to today was focused on, well, a very large focus.

I tell you what, Glenn Fleischman is always amazing.

Oh, he's great.

He does.

But he is focusing on the check-in feature in iOS 17.

I didn't have a chance to read all of this, but I am very interested in how check-in is

going to work for iOS 17 and iPhones today.

Yeah, I mean, the quick version of it is if you're in a situation where, let's say that,

you know, you're going to be driving home at night and it's raining out and stuff like

that, or you're going to be going through a neighborhood that's a little questionable

or maybe not you, but somebody else that you know, if the person is about to do this, and

you know, you just, it's nice to just sort of check in with somebody else, you know,

I got home safe.

And we've all had that situation before where it's horrible driving out and you get home

and you text your spouse and you say,

I made it home, just so you know, I had this long trip

and then they feel better knowing that you got there.

Well, the iPhone can now do that sort of automatically

with the check-in feature.

And so when you turn it on

and therefore you can take a friend,

you know, like I may, let's just say that you're,

you were my friend for the day, Brett, you know,

or my family's out and I'm gonna let Brett know

that I got home safely.

I could turn this on and then you would get it.

It all happens within the messages app

and Glenn does a great job of describing

all the details of it.

- Okay, okay.

- And you know, the iPhone knows where I am

where I'm going and it knows about how long it should take me to get there.

And if I sort of go off track or if I stop moving for a period of time, it will ask me,

it will say, Jeff, you know, you're not moving anymore.

It's everything going okay.

And if I respond to my iPhone and say, everything's okay, well, that's fine.

But if I don't respond to the iPhone, then the iPhone's like, huh, something might be

wrong here.

You know, maybe, you know, maybe I was mugged or something horrible like that, or maybe

I got an accident, you know, who knows what happened and it will alert Brett, in this

case you the person that I've chosen and say you know Jeff probably should have been home

by now but he hasn't checked in a while and it will tell you here's where his iPhone currently

is or here's the last places iPhone was and you know you're giving up privacy no question

but by choice you are because you're saying I just want someone else to be able to check

in on me so it's the sort of feature that I might not I don't know that I Jeff Richardson

will be using it with somebody else.

Um, because especially because amongst my family, we all share

our location with each other, so I can always tell where my wife

and kids are, but, um, but I could see an older person or somebody

that was going to be in a situation or maybe you're single.

And it's like, you know what, I'm just going to let my buddy know

where I am and where I'm going.

And hopefully it'll be inconsequential and it won't matter, but just

in case it does matter, you have the security of knowing that there's

somebody out there that can, that can find you if necessary.

Yeah.

Apple calls it the safety partner.

Like you have to name a safety partner in here.

But I remember when Apple was announcing this back in the summer, and I immediately, I think

a lot of people have like, "Why would I need this?

I just do track location."

I'm the same way, Jeff.

We all share it, my family.

I can check any time, even with my daughter off in college.

I can check and see if she's even in the dorm room or she's at the gym or what.

When I'm traveling, my wife can track me on here.

But I guess I kind of like this.

One thing that Glenn shared that I did get through here, which I thought was really helpful,

is he said you might be familiar with a similar feature in the Uber app.

So when I do an Uber, for example, like I can share my trip or I can share this and

sometimes I will do that with my wife just to let her know, like, hey, I'm in route to

the airport, that kind of a thing.

And Uber introduced that, it said, because a driver, you know, there might be some kind

of an issue with the driver.

And so drivers receive the complimentary follow my ride to protect themselves against potential

violence from riders.

So when he said that, I'm like, okay, now this check-in feature makes a little bit more

sense in there.

Because I've done that with the Uber app.

And it's really nice because when I reserve a car, you know, come in to get me, it just

says, do you want to share this with somebody?

I'm like, yeah, share it with my wife.

That'd be great.

And so now that helped me to better understand how to check in on here.

And it just looks like that there's a few different options in here, you know, so that,

you know, if your iPhone is even offline, or when do you want to check in with folks?

I really think this is interesting.

I mean, I feel like I want to use it just so that I can get used to familiar with it.

Yeah.

But, you know, the example you were talking about for your daughter, let's say your daughter

was doing like a 300 mile road trip.

And you know, yeah, right, you could you can currently track her and that's fine.

But you might get tied up in something else.

And then what happens if she should have gotten to her destination an hour ago, but didn't

make it there. Unless you are right to think to look, you don't know. Whereas with this

feature, the iPhone itself will say, you know, gosh, this iPhone should have been there by

now and it's not there. And it would just sort of send you a little reminder just so

you could check in. And you know, maybe, maybe your daughter stopped for dinner. And again,

there's this, as I keep saying this, there's certainly some privacy invasion. But, but

again, it's it's you get to control this, it's not going to happen unless you turn it

on. So it's, you know, something people voluntarily do, just because they like the safety of knowing

that someone else out there is watching.

- And it looks like here, 'cause Glenn links

to the Apple page on how to turn this on,

like it's only one way.

Like in other words, my daughter would have to go

to the Messages app, which is neat,

that it goes in the Messages app,

'cause a lot of times she'll, you know,

we say, "Hey, text us when you get there."

But now she can go in the Messages app

and you tap the little new message apparently,

select who you wanna send it to, and say check in.

So in other words, she is the only one

that can initiate it, right?

I can't say, "Hey, make a check-in for my daughter."

I can track her location 'cause she shared that with me.

But okay, I kinda like that.

That's a little bit of a fail-safe on there.

In other words, you have to actually

formally initiate it for it to happen.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to try that.

That's good.

From, let's see, what else can we talk about on the iPhone?

How about an iPhone on your wrist?

(laughing)

This was a neat little, so Lance Whitney,

I know I've followed for many, many years

at PC Magazine, "An iPhone on your wrist,

"28 tips every Apple watch owner should know."

I like the way he just put that up

because we've been talking for several years now

that it's not just a watch, right?

It's a whole wrist computer that,

oh, by the way, I can tell you the time as well.

I mean, I'm just continuing,

especially now with watchOS 10, right?

10 was the last one.

I mean, there's just so many new things

I'm continuing to discover on watchOS 10, Jeff,

that I'm just, I'm loving.

Like I'm so much appreciating some of the updates.

A lot of these tips that I think Lance put in here,

I feel like I knew, but it was a good review.

- Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head with this article.

There's nothing, you know, earth shattering in here.

And a lot of these are features

that have been out for a few years,

but he's got, what is he?

So 27, 28 of them.

- 28, 28, yeah. - This is a nice way

just to sort of, yeah, did you know about this?

Did you know about this?

And some of these are a little dated.

Like one of them in here is the hand washing thing

to wash your hands for 20 seconds.

- That was COVID.

That was COVID.

even though we should continue to do that, I suppose.

I think we all, we have moved beyond timing or hand washing.

But still, it's just a nice reminder of,

when I went through the list,

I knew about every one of these

and I wasn't necessarily using all of them,

but I did know about them.

But sometimes it's nice just to go through a list

and just see if there's something you forgot about.

- It's funny you mentioned that hand washing.

I've left it on, even though I remember

that was like a COVID thing, right?

I have, but here's the thing, Jeff,

because it does make me feel good

when I get the little blibber bling, like I finished.

But here's, so I cheat a little bit, I'll admit this.

So I don't wash my, I don't actually wash my hands

for what is it, 20 seconds?

But I've noticed that like if you're in a public restroom

and you wash your hands and then you put it

under one of those hand dryers, for whatever reason,

the watch thinks that you're still washing your hands

because you know, you're pushing your hands together.

And so I'll stay under the hand warmer dryer

a little bit extra time, just so that I can feel like,

- Yes, right, Apple Watch.

Yeah, I got it.

You give me my little happy sound on there.

(laughing)

It's good.

All right, the other thing that you link to from Apple Watch

are things that I have to have almost immediately.

Where is Harry McCracken posting these little pictures?

So this was a series of little watch faces

that Harry McCracken,

a long time, very well respected tech journalist,

posted on Mastodon, and they are absolutely brilliant.

In fact, how does he even say it here?

I think he said,

"I am 100% more interested in the Apple Watch faces now,

since I realized it was possible to create faces of my own."

Look at that, just look at that.

That's the RadioShack TRS-80 watch face

with the time on the screen.

I am in love with that.

Like, where can I get this, Harry?

You've got to share these, please.

- So for people that are listening

to the audio version of the podcast,

what he's done here is,

you can select a photo to make your watch face, right?

- Okay.

Depending upon the type of photo, you can have the effect where the time appears to

be like behind somebody's head or behind your dog's head or something like that.

So with that in mind, what he's done is just by figuring out how to frame the photo correctly,

you know, this far over from the left, this far over from the right.

He has made it either that the clock shows up just behind the head of, for example, Porky

Pig wearing the, that's a famous episode.

It's a night at the opera, I think is it called?

the werewolf, you know, kill the rabbit, kill the rabbit. Exactly. So either it's appearing

behind his head for some of them or in other ones where he has like a TRS-80 or a Newton,

he has just positioned the picture perfectly so that the time shows up right on top of the

the Newton. So as he's pointed out, it took him a lot of time to get his pictures cropped

correctly. But then once you did, you get these, it almost looks like, you know, the TRS-80 watch

face and I have to admit the end results are pretty funny.

I know you wanted to see the picture but I'm scrolling down here because I want to see

in some of the comments, Harry, did you share these?

You can't just tease these out.

Now he does say this is based on the Apple Watch portraits face.

So to your point Jeff, he's just using the portraits watch which you can pick any picture

to be the background here.

And then he uses an app, I never heard of Clockology.

I wonder if that's something,

in fact, Harry says in one of the comments here,

'cause I just bought the new Apple Watch

after not owning one since the very first.

So this is all new to him.

So apparently he hasn't had one in a while.

But I mean, oh, I'm just, I'm so,

so these pictures make me happy.

I love this Newton one, by the way,

where it's got like the hand holding it and a hand.

I mean, now on the plane,

first I gotta read about Log and Lutz,

and then I'm gonna sit there

playing with my Apple Watch faces for the entire time.

I love this.

- Yeah, and thanks for finding the app.

I had missed that comment.

So what is it called again?

Clockology was the thing?

- Well, he says Clockology.

Now, I don't know if he says you have to have that.

- It probably just helps you to, I need to look up that app.

- I know, I'm just gonna read through all the comments on here because somebody was

asking like, "Are you loading an album?

What is the pixel measurement on there?"

Yeah, he says, "Creative stuff used in an app like Clockology," is what he says.

So yeah, I wanna know if that's something

that would be important.

And I'm like, what else can I do?

Like I needed an Atari 2600, you know, watch face.

I don't even know why,

but it just sounds like that would be cool.

All right, last thing here is a little fantastic video

that I gotta tell you,

I know that a while back Apple came out

when they did the Apple Watch and they did,

I forget what they call that,

like walk with me or walk with the star, right?

In other words, it would be usually famous movie stars,

authors, and they would do basically a walk

and they would talk to you, right?

I've never done a whole lot of these, to be honest with you.

And this is only in the Apple Fitness app.

I have, however, very much continue to enjoy

the Apple Fitness sessions,

even if it's just like on a treadmill, for example.

Now, obviously that's more focused on doing the fitness

as opposed to walking and talking.

But I really have enjoyed the fact

that Apple is kind of experimenting with this.

And so when I saw your video called

Study With Me from Apple,

that was the first thing that I thought of, Jeff.

I'm like, wait a minute, you can walk with somebody

and have them talk to you while you're walking

and just have your earbuds in.

I love getting on a treadmill and even those coaches,

they'll a lot of times will talk you through it,

pump you up as you're going through.

But I never kind of thought about

doing a study together with someone,

but it makes complete sense.

I know that my daughter, even in college now,

they get into little study groups

and we used to do that through school

and everything as well.

But this is like an hour and a half video from Apple

with Storm Reid, which I know she's a movie star, right?

I don't know what she's been in.

- Oh, actually, I think she's just a regular student

at University of California. - No way, seriously?

- I mean, I'm sure that she signed up for this on campus

or something like that.

But my understanding is that she's just a student

that I'm sure that they interviewed

a whole bunch of people for this.

- Yeah.

So yeah, I mean, whatever.

- It's a little boring, but it's fantastic.

You know, at one point,

like she does like the Pomodoro technique, right?

So she basically is sitting with you for 25 minutes,

then you get up for five minutes and take a break.

At one point, I thought she came back

with a beer in her hand, but it was apparently hot sauce

because she's like literally having a snack

of sardines and taco shells.

But I, you know, at first I'm like,

this is a little silly and corny,

but as I jumped through the video a little bit, Jeff,

I'm like, you know, that's really nifty.

Like, I'm really excited that they're doing something

like this, even if it's just encouraging folks.

You know, I mean, it'd be better if you could do

with somebody in real life, I think.

But hey, this is maybe the second best thing

if you don't have somebody else to study with.

- Okay, so two of the things to pick up on you just said.

First of all, what it reminds me of is,

I've heard people say, and frankly,

I actually believe this for myself.

Sometimes if you're working in a super quiet place,

you find yourself getting distracted.

But then you go to the coffee house,

where there's a little background noise around you,

and there's people around you,

And just somehow I find that I can be more focused

and I can be more productive just

because there's that slight background noise around me.

And that's what this video allows you to do.

If you could play this video and then just get your work done,

even though you're not staring at the video,

you're just hearing some of the noises from it

and glancing at it every once in a while,

it's as if you're in that coffee house atmosphere

and there's somebody next to you working and that may help you.

And then like you say, it does have

the advantage of it encourages a break every 30 minutes.

So that's one thing.

In terms of the live thing, we talked earlier in the podcast about David Sparks from the

Mac Power Users podcast and he has a little, I don't know, a club, you want to call it,

that you can get access to the premium things that he offers, which I'm a member of.

One thing that he did, he's been doing it for a while and I guess I first did it about

a year ago, just using Zoom.

What he does is he has a Zoom call and a bunch of people dial in.

I mean, the last one that I did, there may have been 15 people on it.

The idea is at the beginning of the call, we would sort of talk about some nerdy stuff

and then we'd stop talking.

And then everybody just sort of mutes themselves

and you just do your work.

But the idea is that you would keep the Zoom window

onto the background just because you see all these other people

working.

And I actually-- it was interesting because--

I mean, I usually do a pretty good job of staying

on task at my work.

But the idea that I'm sitting here working on my brief

and I can see people on the side doing their work too,

it sort of encouraged me to keep working and keep working.

And then at the end of the session,

we all just sort of take a break and then talk for a minute

or two and then it was over.

And so that, like you said, that was a live thing

and I've only done it once, but it actually,

it was sort of interesting.

I could see the advantage of it.

So it's something that I had never thought about

before David Sparks did it,

and now we've got Apple releasing videos on it.

And it's just another one of the ways

to sort of trick your brain into staying on focus

and having good tech things. - I think it's great.

- I hope that Apple releases more of these.

I think it's a great idea, I really do.

- I agree, I agree, yeah, I like it.

And I was right, she is a student,

but she is also an actor.

I knew I had seen her somewhere.

She was in, let's see, what was it that I saw?

Oh, A Wrinkle in Time was one of the things that she did.

And apparently she had a small role in The Last of Us.

She was like one of the friends in The Last of Us there.

- That was a great show, I love that show.

- I knew I had seen her.

And apparently she has the same birthday as I do.

So hey, I gotcha, my sister.

That's fantastic.

All right, good stuff on that.

So yeah, I'll link to that.

Study with me featuring Storm Reid from Apple.

In the know.

- In the know.

- So earlier this week, I was at a conference, Jeff,

and I was actually with folks that are fans of the podcast,

which thank you again,

but I was sitting next to one of the gentlemen,

Michael Eisenberg, who actually has a very good podcast for.

- He does.

- Called Tech Savvy Lawyer.

And so I like Michael.

Hi, Mike.

Hi, Michael.

but he got out an actual physical business card

and he was gonna write his cell phone number

on the business card to give to me

because we were gonna text back and forth

as we were at this conference.

And I'm like, wait a minute, I happen to know Michael.

I would say he's an Apple nerd

and I don't think he would take offense to that.

I mean, he was wearing a Scott eVest, we're crying out loud,

which I just think was so very cool.

So it's like, I'm like, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait.

You have iOS 17, I know you have upgraded

and I have upgraded to iOS 17, let's exchange contacts.

And he was getting ready to like open his contact app

and I kind of was too.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, wait a minute.

I know that there is a new thing in iOS 17.

And now I do know officially that Apple calls it NameDrop,

even though I have officially called it the Wubble,

the iPhone Wubble.

Because here's the thing, I mean,

we knew how this was gonna work

and I just had never had an opportunity to do it.

So I started getting very excited, Jeff.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, you just hold your phone here

and I'm going to hold my phone on top of it.

We're just going to like touch the phones

as if we were doing an airdrop.

And sure enough, it takes like a couple of seconds.

So you have to kind of stay there, right?

Because it doesn't do it immediately.

But in about two to three seconds,

it's like your screen just melts into like Terminator 2 style.

I mean, it just kind of like--

I call it the wobble.

It's hard to explain.

In fact, I think Apple tries to explain it here as

glow emerge, which makes no sense to me,

but okay, you know, that's a fancy Apple speak for,

it's a wobble.

It's like your screen melts away,

and sure enough, within another second or two,

you now have shared your contact info.

In fact, it pops up on, I think Apple,

yeah, this is the screen you get.

So it has the name of the person

that is sharing the contact with you,

and you have two options.

You can just receive their contact info,

which means that it will create a contact for you.

You don't have to type in anything.

You don't have to like, you know, tap around

and what is the phone number?

Was that 316 or, you know?

Or the other option is the share button,

which means that you will receive the contact

from the other person and you will share

your contact info with the other person.

Jeff, it worked brilliant.

I mean, people were starting to stare

because when that happened, I would just, you know me,

I get so excited.

I'm like, look, look at this happen.

This was so great.

And people were like, hey, we're trying to eat here,

you know, for our rubber chicken.

Like, let's keep going.

But it was so, it's so fluid.

I mean, almost literally, it was so fluid

in the way that it worked, Jeff,

because it was just so seamless.

I had his contact, he had my contact.

Now, we did a little bit more experimentation,

and just to make sure, because you can select

which pieces of your contact info that you wanna share.

This is getting involved with your contact card

and what picture that you wanna have on there.

So, in this case, we just wanted to share,

I think just our mobile numbers,

but he also has a business number.

So I did have to go in and I added that,

but the contact card was already created.

I mean, that was the great thing about it.

And then of course we sat there for another 30 minutes

just calling each other back and forth,

to see what the contact card looked like and everything.

This will only work if you have AirDrop turned on.

And now in iOS 17, if you go into settings,

you might just wanna check this.

I think it's turned on by default.

But if you have turned off AirDrop in the past,

you might want to go and check.

Go to settings, go to general,

and you'll see AirDrop there.

Now you can see that AirDrop is the old typical options

of receiving off or contacts only.

But now I think this is new in iOS 17.

At the bottom it says start sharing by,

and you can toggle on the option that says

bringing devices together.

So this is how you swap numbers with NameDrop,

share photos and more by holding the top of your iPhone

close to another iPhone.

Your wifi has to be turned on,

your Bluetooth has to be turned on,

and the AirDrop has to be enabled on your phone.

But I would just encourage you

that if you haven't tried this yet,

find somebody in your family

or close circle of nerdy friends

that has already upgraded to iOS 17

and try the iPhone Wubble.

I mean, it's just really nifty

and I just cannot wait until this

gets a little more standard, Jeff.

I wish I was closer to you

'cause I would have done it with you early on.

But thank you, Michael, for being my wobble guinea pig

on doing that.

And I would just encourage folks, try it out,

because it really is cool.

It's just a much, much better way

to share contact information today.

- Yeah, cool stuff.

I look forward to trying it out.

I have seen that wobble effect, though,

and I appreciate the fact that you were having difficulties

describing it, but it is one of those things

that you sort of need to see, and in fact, feel, too.

Doesn't it vibrate your phone a little bit?

- You gotta experience it.

- Yeah, you gotta experience it.

- Yes, it does, it does.

So the wobble effect.

So my tip of the week.

My tip of the week is stage manager.

Stage manager on the iPad has been around for a couple years now.

I know that you have been using it for a while now.

I did not use it before a couple of weeks ago when iPad OS X came out.

Because when I tried it in the past, I don't know, it just something about it just didn't

seem to work for me.

was too rigid and that it only let you put multiple windows in certain positions and

they seemed awkward to me.

I turned it off.

I kept my iPad in full screen mode and I never looked back.

But then when the beta period was going on this summer, Brett, I heard people saying,

"Hey, if you haven't, even if you wrote off stage manager, give it another try."

So I'm like, "Okay, okay, I'll try it out.

Let's see what all the fuss is about."

And I haven't turned it off again.

I really enjoy it.

Now, I mean, because you can put more.

You're on stage.

- Essentially, I'm on stage,

in essentially infinite positions,

it feels like a regular computer, a PC or a Mac.

I can basically control what size I want my window to be.

And I know that it's not truly infinite.

I mean, there are, it'll move it a little bit up

or a little bit down, but for all intents and purposes,

it's every possible window size that I would want.

And so the advantage of Stage Manager is it allows you,

just like on a computer where you might wanna be able

to see another window peeking behind your current window

and you can very easily swap between them.

It's the same idea.

And so I, you know, sometimes I have two windows,

sometimes I have four,

and I actually have found that it's made me more efficient.

Now there's one situation

in which it has infinitely changed my life,

which is I use an app on my iPad,

and not a lot of people are gonna have this example,

but I use an app called Log Me In,

where I can, it's like a virtual desktop.

And so I can take my work PC desktop

and I can see it on my iPad.

So if I'm out of the office

and I wanna do something on my work computer,

I can quickly do it.

LogMeIn is incredibly security conscious.

And so if you are using the LogMeIn app,

and then you switch to a different app,

you've got about five seconds before it logs you

out of your computer for security reasons.

So that's when you're in the normal mode.

But when you're in stage manager mode,

and you have one window on top of the other,

your iPad considers both windows,

or even three windows, if you got three,

it considers all of them to be the front most window

active and so I can stay logged in and so this is great for me. So for example, sometimes at home,

I will be using my iPad as a lawyer. We do time entry, you know, you got to record your time.

And so I'm putting in the rest of my time entries at night and I will have an app that I use called

I time keep to enter my time and then I'll have logged me in and I have one on top of the other

and then my email too, because I might be looking at my emails to remind myself that I sent so and

so an email and I want to build point one hours for that or whatever. And so I'm switching between

all these different apps, I stay logged in to LogMeIn because it considers itself active,

but I'm switching between it and my time entry and my email to put together my day and sort

of recreate that I spent this much on this task and this much on the other task.

And it all works seamlessly.

And because I can see the different windows, it's easy for me to just tap and move between

them.

So that's like an extreme example with LogMeIn.

But even if you're doing other things, other tasks, where you might want one window to

be much, much bigger and one a little bit smaller, and you're switching back and forth

and again, we all know this because we've done it on our computers for decades now.

It actually works well.

And I don't use it all the time.

For some of my apps, I actually, if you extend out the app enough, you can extend it so it's

completely full screen.

And then it's just like the old days.

Or for some of my apps, I extended that it's almost completely full screen.

It covers everything except for the bar at the very bottom, because that way, it just

makes it more easy for I don't have to it doesn't have to worry about it appearing and

disappearing I could just easily switch between apps using the bar at the bottom and it just

depends upon the app that I'm using what setup I have but I I'll be honest with you Brett

when I started it again I only did it because people said you got to try it out so yeah

I got it gotta eat my vegetables and see that you know what this is all about and then once

I started using it I'm like this works this is a so if you find yourself ever doing things

on your iPad where you switch back and forth between apps, then just pause for a second

and think, "Wait a minute, should I be using Stage Manager when I'm switching between apps?"

And if you don't do that, if you only use one app at a time and you never think about

two different apps, well, that's fine.

You don't have to turn it on.

But there's pages in the Apple website that you're showing right here that you can turn

Stage Manager on or off.

But for me, it's really working and it's making it a lot more efficient.

A couple of things real quick.

That's the way we've always used the iPad, right?

It was like one app, front and center,

taken over the entire screen.

And that was the beauty of the iPad from the beginning.

And so when we started having this option for multitasking,

what we call, which is still available,

split view and slide over, some of those options there,

people were like, okay, well that's nice,

just a little bit of an acknowledgement

of some multitasking.

But for the most part, we still like using the iPad

the way that we did.

But it was Iowa 16 when Stage Manager first came on

and it was not accepted the best.

I gotta tell you, and people might remember this,

we've talked about this before,

I jumped on the bandwagon and I loved it

because I do like having the ability

to move the items around.

Frederico Vaticci, of course, on Max Stories.

I mean, that gentleman has done probably the most writing

on anything with Stage Manager.

And I do remember, we talked about this several weeks ago,

that he very much liked the improvements with stage manager

with iOS 17 from 16.

It seemed like it wasn't huge changes,

but even Apple themselves on this page

that I've linked to here,

they have a dropdown here that you can go to iOS 16,

iPadOS 16, or you can go to iPadOS 17.

- Interesting, 'cause they really are different, yeah.

- There are some major differences there.

So I think to your point, I don't wanna steal your tip,

but I'm just saying for anybody

that maybe tried Stage Manager a year ago

with iPadOS 16 and you turned it off just like you did, Jeff,

it didn't go back, it might be worth trying.

They have made some very tiny

but significant type of improvements

in that it is a little more flexible.

I do this all the time, Jeff,

'cause I used to do the command tab

to switch back and forth between different apps.

But I usually have three or four apps open

where if I'm taking notes and my email behind there,

frankly, even like my Spotify player,

I've got it like a very thin little player

over on to the far right, just barely showing

so I can tap it and hit, you know, stop if I need to

from a music standpoint or something like that.

I mean, to me, I just love having the options on there.

So I'm so happy, my friend,

that you are now on stage with me.

Welcome.

It's a big enough stage for everybody.

Good stuff on that.

Good, good, good.

Stage manager.

All right.

Okay, that's probably enough for today.

Thanks everyone for listening.

As always, we truly do appreciate you all listening.

And hey, if you enjoy listening to us

and you've been listening for a while,

feel free to send a link on to somebody else

or maybe suggest it to somebody.

We always appreciate that anytime.

Or even frankly, leave a little review

in your favorite pod catcher that you use.

All right, my friend, Jeff, thanks as always.

And we'll talk with you next week.

- Thanks, Bret, and goodbye, everybody.