Welcome to In the News for October 20th, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Good morning, Brett.

Good morning, Jeff.

It's a new day, a new week, new Apple stuff.

Actually, and a new sponsor.

We just want to say thank you quickly to our sponsor for this episode,

Lit Software, that make the trial pad apps and the transcript pad apps.

We will talk a little bit more about them here in just a moment.

But we happen to be very, very big fans of these apps.

And you'll hear why.

You'll hear why in a little bit.

But let's jump into some 3D awkward reactions.

You know, I think we talked about this, I remember, a few weeks ago.

Or maybe we didn't talk about this in the podcast.

But before we started recording, Jeff, I remember once I had upgraded to macOS Sonoma,

because I used my MacBook here for recording our podcast.

And I remember I just started, like, holding up a peace sign or a thumbs up in my screen.

And all of a sudden I had fireworks behind me or balloons started happening.

In fact, I can do it right now.

If I just hold up a peace sign, there's balloons that are floating in my background.

Now, we use Zoom to record this.

And it was interesting.

You can use Zoom for some virtual backgrounds and other things.

But this was a technology built into the new macOS Sonoma.

And when it came out, I thought, well, this is so fun.

I love to have fireworks happening behind my head.

But as usual, there is another side to this.

And people have been reporting on it.

It could be a little awkward depending on what kind of a meeting that you might be in at the time when those fireworks happened.

Two things that people should know about this feature, and one of them is the one that's on the article.

But another one is something that you and I just sort of discovered this morning.

But let's start with this article.

Folks have mentioned, and I've heard this independently from different people, so it's not like this happened to one person.

Everybody's reporting on it.

People use video for all sorts of things, silly podcasts like us or talking to friends and family.

But some people use it for much more serious things like a business meeting or with the telemedicine, talking to a psychiatrist or a therapist or something like that.

And people have noticed that because Apple introduced this new technology that if you have various hand motions, it will make somewhat silly things happen on the screen, that you might have a point where you're talking to your therapist about something that's really serious.

And just because you happen to indicate thumbs up maybe in sort of a mocking way, suddenly you've got balloons or fireworks or whatever going off around you, and it just seems really appropriate and it could actually sort of ruin the mood of it.

And so it's really sort of a public service announcement that people should know that this is there.

I think the most important part of it is that it is there by default.

I mean, that's the key.

When you update your iPhone or when you update your Mac, it will just start happening.

And you can turn it off, but if you don't do anything about it and or more importantly, if you don't know about it, which I think is going to be the situation for many people, suddenly you might realize that whether you purposefully put your hands into a heart or just sort of happen to put your hands in a gesture that was misinterpreted that way, you're going to have hearts floating up your screen.

And the thing is, it's not just in FaceTime.

It is across every app.

And the reason for that is because Apple has baked this in to the actual camera.

So when an app like Zoom or Microsoft Teams or anything else, it just thinks it's getting the regular camera.

But what it doesn't know is that Apple has pre-processed it in some good ways, in some ways to sort of boost the image and make it better, but also to sort of add this overlay.

So it's not like, you know, there's nothing to turn off in Zoom.

I think if this happens to many people and they're in a Zoom call, for example, they will immediately start looking for the Zoom thing to turn it off.

There is no Zoom thing to turn it off.

Yeah. And to your point just quickly, it used to be like there were certain reactions and there's even like you could put a mustache on yourself in Zoom and Microsoft Teams had different tools and like Skype had different tools and FaceTime had different tools.

But to your point, Jeff, that's the thing is this is baked into the actual camera.

So this goes across all of these applications, which is kind of fun.

So it'll happen in any of these applications.

But you're right.

Like if you didn't know about it, if somebody didn't tell you about it, and I think that's one of the points here that Jason Snell made, it's like if Apple, Apple maybe should have done a little bit of better job of like warning people like, hey, this is new.

It's fun.

It's exciting.

But you might want to just make sure you're in the right environment, the right scenario before you do a thumbs up there.

What it reminds me of, Brett, is during sort of the height of the pandemic, when all of us lawyers were doing Zoom court hearings, there was the infamous lawyer cat, you know, the guy, the attorney from Texas that said, yeah, he looked like a cat, a cat face.

And he said, Your Honor, I am not a cat in such a dead pay way that it became it became a meme across the Internet.

It was so funny.

Of course, he was a good spirit about the whole thing.

But that was an example of his secretary had turned on a feature on the computer that much like this Apple feature, it applies right camera before it even got to Zoom.

But that was just on one computer.

This is something that Apple has put on all iPhones and I think it's I can't remember.

It's on the iPad, but it's definitely on iPhones.

It's definitely on the Mac.

So, so I'm going to think about it.

But one of the thing that you and I were talking about is that because it's baked in to the camera, if you're using another app like Microsoft team or Zooms or WebEx or any of these other ones, any effects that they do are on top of it.

And it might not be in a way that's complimentary, because as you and I were discussing right now, if folks are watching the YouTube version of this, you are out of the office right now.

You're in a hotel room.

So you've got a blurred background on you.

If you make one of these special effects, like, you know, the hearts of the balloons, when the heart of the balloon is over your face, it's going to be clear.

But as soon as it crosses into the background, it's going to be blurry.

And likewise, if you put a fake background behind you to make it look like you were on a beach somewhere, you know, everything that's being replaced by that fake background is going to cover up the Apple effect.

Which means that then not only is this the Apple effect, perhaps surprising, but it's even more confusing.

It's not even complete.

It's like, what did you even see there?

So it's just a lot of things.

I'm going to try it.

So I'm going to do double peace signs here.

And that should be there's confetti.

And you're right.

If the confetti is falling in front of my face, I see it.

OK, I want to I want to try this real quick.

I'm going to turn off.

I'm going to turn off, blur my background.

So now there's no more background.

So double peace sign here.

Oh, and look at that.

And now it's so much nicer.

Exactly.

It's actually a very nice to its credit.

Apple has done a nice job of these effects.

It looks great.

They're actually there are three D effects.

Apple is using, you know, its sense of depth to have some of the balloons, some of the confetti lasers appear behind you.

And some of it appear to be in front of you.

So it's actually as I'm trying to talk seriously and you're having lasers appear behind me, I know I can totally understand that it could be fireworks.

It could definitely be distracting to the person that you're talking to or even to your right.

So it's you know, I like the effect.

It gets a quote unquote thumbs up for me.

But I and I'm recording on a PC right now, which is why I'm not doing the silly effects that Brett is doing.

But I do think it's a huge PSA that people need to know what's going on so that they can turn it off.

And keep in mind that on the iPhone to turn it off, I think you actually have to be in a video conference in the first place in order to turn it off.

So if you're going to have a business meeting in an hour, you might want to first have sort of a dummy meeting either with yourself.

You could sometimes a meeting with yourself or set up a meeting with somebody that you know, so that once you're in the video mode, you can then go to the control center and turn it off.

And then it will be off.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple tweet this in the future because of this.

I mean, as you remarked, I linked to an article from Jason Snell, who he suggested that Apple put some big warning on the screen so that people know what's going on.

So I've stopped goofing off here and trying all the different the signs.

Okay, but how do we turn it off?

I think you said that in your last paragraph, like how can people turn this off if they want to turn it off across all of all of the apps?

When you're on a Mac, I believe there is like a green box at the top of your screen.

There is.

That's right.

In the menu bar.

And then if you click on that, you'll see an option to to control those effects.

Okay, click in there.

It's called the option.

I don't have.

I'm not in a Mac.

So what is it called?

It's called.

I forget what it's called.

And then on the IOS video effects.

I think it's video effects.

Thank you.

And then yeah, on IOS when you're so you're using your phone and you're having a video call.

Yeah.

Go to your control center, which is either a swipe up from the right on modern iPhones or it's coming up from the bottom on older iPhones.

And once you're in the control center with all those little doodads, you will see one that that only appears when you're in a video call for the camera.

And then you can go through there and you can go through the video effects.

So that's how you turn it off.

It's really not the most intuitive way to do it.

Apple has no it's not right now.

Yeah, right.

Just how to get to control center.

But it's it, you know, but that's where you're supposed to go.

I wouldn't say it's hidden, but it's certainly not intuitive as to how go in there, how to go in there and turn it off.

Yeah, this is like I said, when I first came out and I know everybody was like playing around with them and it's really cool.

But I figured there was going to be some instance, some scenario where people were going to be like, well, maybe not so quick.

And sure enough, these are good.

This article from The Verge is one that we're referencing here.

And then I thought Jason Stout did a really good job of of talking about it, too, because, I mean, I do that all the time.

Just, you know, give it like a quick thumbs up.

And by the way, it is an immediate like you have to have your thumb up for like, you know, like a.

Maybe two seconds or something like that.

So it's not immediate.

So I know I've taken to the practice where I've left my my effects on.

And if I do a thumbs up, I do it real quick.

And then I did. I bring it down.

But it just it just might be something, you know, again, it's like like you said, public service announcement and people just be cognizant of that.

Next week, I was 17.1.

We're already doing 17.1, which I got to tell you, I'm still enjoying iOS 17.

And we know this because people, all of you good folks have been listening to us for a while that even if we talk about the next iteration of the iOS, there's already two or three people have been working on and some even developer betas and public betas.

And so this was a great article from nine to five Mac about the 17.1 iOS features that are expected to come out next week.

For the last few years, Apple has been following a consistent trajectory.

First, they have the big operating system update, like in our case, I was 17.

And then about a month later, they fix some bugs that they've discovered and add a couple of features that weren't fully baked when iOS, the big iOS update came out and they're ready now.

And so, and that's the point one date.

And then by the point two update, which is about two or three months into it, that's the one where Apple typically adds the new emoji.

And that's important because so many people update their iPhone specifically to get all the new emoji and Apple figures by the time we're at the point to update, everything is, you know, we've, we've gotten all the flaws kicked out.

So we are right now at the point when normally you and I would not be announcing beforehand that we know that point one's coming out next week.

The only reason we know this is it's a little funny.

France had a regulatory action against Apple that not the current iPhones, but the iPhone fourteens were emitting.

They thought it was too much.

I don't know, some, some radiation or something like that.

And so Apple worked out an agreement with France to tweak that and it was going to be an iOS 17.1.

And apparently Apple told France, the government that it was going to be out next week.

And so France told the world.

And so that's the only reason that we know.

Thank you, France.

Yeah.

Thank you, France for the, the, the leak there.

So, but anyway, the article there's, there's a number of new features coming out that we've talked about before that we're going to be cool.

Like for example, one of them is that you can start doing an airdrop.

We talked about this when I was, when I come out, you could start doing an airdrop with someone when you're close by, and then you could separate from each other and it would continue over wifi.

That's something that was not part of iOS 17.0, but it's going to be around for 17.1.

And then there's also things that fall within the tweaks category.

For example, one of the cool things about the new iPhones, the iPhone 15 pro is that you have the action button on the side instead of the switch.

But some people notice that when their iPhone was in their pocket, they would accidentally.

Hit the sleep, wake button and cause it to do whatever, turn on the camera or something like that.

And so Apple has made it, if I understand this correctly, that using the sensor, if it sees that it's in a pocket, like if there's something close to it and then it will require you to press the button for a little bit longer before it triggers just to try to prevent accidental triggering.

So it's those sorts of things.

It's a mix of features and fixing some things that once the iPhone's been out in the wild, people are realizing, Hey, maybe we could do a better job with some of this stuff.

Even a flashlight indicator in the dynamic Island.

So that's something interesting that is actually already on the iPhone 15 pro, but for some reason on the 14, even though you could have a flashlight turn on and off, there's no indicator in the island.

And so Apple's decided that doesn't have to be unique to the newest iPhone.

So, you know, all these little tweaks, you know, I am, I'm happy to, I'm happy to report that that is correct because I don't know if you can see, I have my brand new natural titanium iPhone 15 pro in my hand and sure enough, I cannot believe I'm turning the flashlight on.

So I know it's, that's another dynamic video effect.

Yes.

But sure enough, I see the flashlight indicator in the dynamic Island.

Just as a quick minute review, this is fantastic.

The iPhone 15 pro, absolutely amazing.

Just, I, I, you know, obviously you and I are somebody that, that upgrades every, every year.

But I'm not going to say significant, but it is a tangible speed updates and improvements.

I would say from the iPhone 14 pro, like sometimes I just can't, I keep thinking to myself, Jeff, how can it get any a little bit better?

And it's just a little minor tweaks.

So yeah, anybody coming from like an iPhone 12 or 13 or something else, you're going to really enjoy the iPhone 15 pro.

One thing that you and I were texting each other about earlier this week, Brad is, you know, you have the 15 pro and I had the 15 pro max.

So mine's a little bigger, but both of our pros have this.

It's the titanium, which is nice because of weight reasons, but also what Apple has done with the edge of the phone.

It's a little smooth.

It's it really, it's one of the best iPhones in the hand that Apple has done in many, many, many years.

If you get the pro model with the titanium, you are for, there's a number, I mean, it's not just the weight.

It really does feel like a premium product.

And you and I have both texting to each other about how much we both appreciate it.

I will also tell you, I got the black iPhone because I've always gotten the black one, but the titanium that you have looks really nice.

I mean, it almost does like, like that sort of very supposed to be.

It's, it's, it's, it's a really good looking color.

To your point on the, I have always purchased a case and immediately put my iPhone in the case as soon as I open it up and I have this, the back safe case from the Apple.

But you know what?

I hesitated for like a day before I put it in the case because exactly what you're talking about, Jeff, it just, it felt a little bit better.

Like I really enjoyed holding it.

Now I put the case on when I travel, I got to find a way how to quickly get it in and out of the case.

I think you do this, right?

You'll take yours out of the case quite often.

I usually never take it out of the case, but I want to, like, I really enjoy just holding it for what it was like.

I want titanium in my hand, which is important.

How about a new Apple pencil?

Well, yeah, new pencil, but sort of old technology.

You had a great post on this this past week and Apple indeed introduced a brand new Apple pencil.

I don't know if I would recommend it for a lot of people, Jeff.

Please explain to us where it fits in the line.

If you already have an Apple pencil, then you know how valuable it is.

But if you don't already have an Apple pencil, it's probably because you think it thought it wasn't worth it for you.

And so this actually might be the perfect one for you.

What this is, is it's a new entry level, i.e. more inexpensive Apple pencil.

So instead of spending $129 like I have for my Apple pencil, second generation, this one's only $79.

So you save $50 and that under $100 price tag, you know, that's the sort of thing that it could be almost like even appropriate, you know, Christmas or Hanukkah presents.

You know, it's to that point that you can, you know, get it for yourself, get it for somebody else.

More than $100.

I can see people going away from that.

I love Apple pencil.

I use it every day.

Me too.

Taking notes for a lawyer.

I'm annotating documents.

I'm highlighting things all the time.

I just love it.

But I know that not.

And of course, I talk to people all the time that say the same thing.

But I also frequently talk to lawyers and other professionals who say, no, I don't really think I need a stylus.

And I'm often like, you know, don't you read documents?

Don't you want to annotate things?

And like, well, you know, I don't know if I would use it that much.

And so I know that there is a huge segment of the population which has not yet, you know, seen the advantages of having a stylus.

And so for those people, you know, you don't have to get a stylus from Apple.

You can get cheaper ones from other companies.

I've always been a fan of the ones that Adonit makes.

But Apple's really are superior.

They have the best technology.

It's the fastest.

Like when you touch the pencil tip to the screen, there is just no lag at all.

So it really has the illusion of you actually writing with a pencil or a pen on the screen.

Because this one's cheaper, it lacks some more advanced features.

For example, it lacks pressure sensitivity, which I know is important to graphic artists.

That's not me.

So it doesn't matter to me.

People that use a pencil for drawing things, for cartooning, for sketching, if you're at all in the graphics art, this is really not the pencil for you.

But if you're just looking to write on documents and stuff like I do, that doesn't really matter.

Now, you do also lose some things like the other big one is the double tap feature, which I like because I will often be writing something like taking notes in a conference and then you want to erase.

I just, you know, double tap and then it switches to the eraser.

And I can erase.

And then the fact the program that I use, GoodNotes, after you erase and pick up your pencil, it automatically switches back to the regular pen.

So I just double tap to go into the eraser mode, not out of the mode.

But still, I like that feature.

But again, could I live without it?

Sure.

I mean, if I didn't have it, I could just tap the eraser icon to turn it into an eraser.

That would be fine.

And so, you know, if you've if you already know if you already have an Apple Pencil, you know what the value is.

But if the reason that you've been writing is you just weren't sure if it was worth it, this might be worth checking out.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Maybe I'm too deep into the ecosystem, Jeff, like you.

Like, I just I could not imagine being without the Apple Pencil 2.

Even when was that?

This is it's already three years old or something, right?

I mean, the Apple Pencil 2 has been out for a long time, but it is still amazing to me how well that I can write.

And I could not do without it's almost muscle memory now, the double tap on that Apple Pencil 2.

But you're right.

I guess this is I mean, we still have the Apple Pencil 1, right, which has the little cap on the end.

Yeah.

And that's only that little cap off lightning.

Yeah, correct.

Because it plugs into the lightning port on the iPad and it charges.

But you mentioned this and I know you believe to another story by Jason Snell as well, where this does this Apple Pencil USB-C.

I guess that's what it's called, right?

So it's like the mid entry.

It's the middle, the middle tier Apple Pencil, but it doesn't have lightning because there is an iPad Pro that doesn't have the magnetized charging dock for the Apple Pencil on the side.

So there's no way if you had an Apple Pencil 1, you couldn't charge it really at that point.

I mean, I know there's adapters.

And anyway, I know I'm really kind of getting into the weeds at this point now because of me and I think Jason Snell made it.

It is confusing.

Jason Snell makes that same point.

Yeah, you just called this the mid level.

It's really it's not the mid level.

It really is the low level.

This is the cheapest Apple Pencil you can get.

The original Apple Pencil cost ninety nine bucks.

So it's twenty dollars more than this one.

So, you know, this one is less expensive, but this is really anyone.

If you have an iPad with USB-C, this is made for you.

That is a very simple thing about it.

Do you have USB-C?

This is the one you get.

And if you have a look, you know, the disadvantage of it is because it sticks to the top magnetically, but it doesn't charge magnetically.

So you still have to use a USB-C cord to charge it, which is no fun.

But fortunately, Apple Pencils can go a long time between charges.

So, you know, it does have those disadvantages, but but it's cheap.

I feel like if you don't have an Apple Pencil, go and get this one for seventy nine dollars.

Use it for a week.

Understand how incredibly useful it is and then go trade it in for an Apple Pencil 2.

Or perhaps better yet, wait a little bit, because what is that?

That's true.

So two has been out for a long time.

It came out in 20, five years ago.

Oh, my goodness.

OK, in my heart, believe that Apple is going to come out with a third generation Apple Pencil.

And when that happens, then I think there will be an even more clear differentiation.

That is true.

The low end Apple Pencil, maybe they'll call that that one that called the Apple Pencil.

Maybe the new one will be called the Apple Pencil Pro.

Who knows?

We'll see.

But you just really, really, really want that to be true.

And I do, too, my friend.

And if I keep saying it, it'll be true.

You know, I think I've talked in the past about how it's hard for me to understand the wattage and the voltage of things.

You know, I'm just not an electrical engineer of any kind.

Another word that has thrown me off for many years is gigahertz.

I mean, I understand when we talk about gigahertz, it's typically in the Wi-Fi routers.

Right. We used to have two point five gigahertz.

We had five gigahertz.

Well, now, thankfully, apparently, the FCC just approved a six gigahertz band for Wi-Fi tethering.

This isn't necessarily something you're going to take advantage of, I don't think, from like a Wi-Fi network.

But it could be advantageous for I think in this story they're talking about like for for AR uses.

Right. Or it could be for some very specific uses here that they could use it for.

Yeah. So let me explain what's going on here.

You know, for a long time, we've had the regular Wi-Fi network.

It's been I think it was originally approved by the FCC, gosh, in the 1980s.

But, you know, Wi-Fi became a thing sort of in the late 90s.

Apple was an innovator. Right.

And for the past 20 years, although we have had those two bands, it's been sort of that that original type of Wi-Fi.

The six gigahertz spectrum, which wasn't even possible until some technical things that are above my head.

But once they figured out how to take advantage of it, it actually offers like four times the bandwidth of the spectrums that we've been using so far.

And when you have so much more bandwidth, that means there's less interference between devices.

It means you can have devices that use multiple streams at once to be faster.

So it is a huge, huge deal.

So the FCC, once they had the technology for it and FCC did its testing in the United States, they approved it, I think effective 2020.

And the first thing that you saw for a couple of years and they're out today are these Wi-Fi six because it's called Wi-Fi six Wi-Fi six routers.

So you could, for example, get an Eero and they're expensive.

They're not cheap, but you can get an Eero that uses Wi-Fi six.

And so that means that although your device is not going to be like your iPhone is not going to have Wi-Fi six, the different Eeros can talk to each other using Wi-Fi six and spread that in your house really fast.

But that's all that we've had for the past couple of years.

What the FCC approved this week was using the six gigahertz spectrum for individual devices could be an iPhone, could be a computer or could be like a virtual reality device, which is sort of the next thing like the Apple vision pro coming out next year.

And this is important because of what the FCC approved.

It's got to be in a relatively small area.

So it's not like a router could be across your entire house.

But if you're within like a car or if your VR device is relatively close to something else, it can take advantage of these really fast, really efficient, not a lot of interference speed.

So to get back to what you said, right.

Are you going to take advantage of this today?

No, but now it's approved.

And so you got to think that over the next couple of years, much like it took a few years for when the routers could do it before when they started doing it, you know, in a few years, you're going to start to see consumer devices and other devices that have Wi-Fi six support built in.

And it's going to start, you know, I've seen people say that this is the most revolutionary thing to happen to Wi-Fi in over 20 years.

I mean, it's going to be big.

We're just on the precipice of it right now.

We're just laying the foundation on that.

Okay.

Thank you for explaining.

Very helpful.

Jeff, I know you like your Apple watch.

I also know that you like your Apple watch bands and you trade them out.

I think every day, if I'm not mistaken, I didn't know that this was a thing, but I talked to many other people and now I've started doing that.

If I work out, I have one man that I use.

If I go into the office, I put, I switched to another band.

Now, thankfully, one of our favorite companies that makes some accessories for the iPhone and iPad 12 South, they now have the time Porter.

And as silly, it is obnoxious as this looks.

I cannot wait to get one Jeff.

Thanks for spending my money today.

It's a cute little strip for 30 bucks and you can get a couple of them if you want and you can either put them on a wall or they have some examples of the video inside of a cabinet door.

So you open up the cabinet door and you can see it, but it allows your Apple watch bands to sort of hang there.

Very nice.

So good.

And the video is hilarious, Brett, because there's a part near the end of the video where somebody walks into their closet and, you know, much like a gentleman might choose out what time it is.

Yeah, right.

Which, which Apple watch brand shall I wear today?

Which I just think is really funny.

What's going to match with my shirt today.

But, you know, I do that a little bit too.

I have my loop that I wear at work every day.

Yeah.

But when I get home, I take off the Milanese loop and I usually put on a solo band, either my green one or my blue one.

Sometimes I put on one of my other bands, but I definitely feel like because you like you say, when you're working out and you're sweating and stuff, you don't want to have a metallic band on you.

It's nicer to have something that's the rubbery sort of like the solo loop.

Yeah.

Whatever it's called.

So I love it.

You know, I might not be to the extreme of this person who's got like, I know he's got like four.

I know.

But you could, though, Jeff, that's the thing.

And if when you do, when you do, you now have the ability to hold this.

The first thing I thought of is, you know, there's a world of people that have that is foreign to me, but they have closets of designer shoes, for example.

Right.

And they go in and they can pick which shoe pair of shoes that they want.

I prefer to choose which Apple watch band that I'm going to watch.

But, you know, on a quasi serious note about this, there are like, you know, my wife has like a little holder for different jewelry and necklaces right on her on her little credenza or so.

So that, you know, she can see what is it, which one do I want to buy?

Because I have a few Apple watch bands, but I got them in a drawer somewhere and I got to rummage through them all the time.

I mean, as as as silly as this looks like initially, of course, I've got to have very elegant.

Yeah.

It's called the Time Porter.

I just think I just think that's that's great.

How about some generative hot dogs?

That's my that's that's that's not Stephen Hackett's title.

That's mine, because I thought this was a really neat article that you link to generative.

I fill in Photoshop feels like magic.

I really do feel for his wife and maybe for Stephen if he gets some pushback on this.

But he had a lovely picture of his wife in a hot dog suit as as as one does.

And he likes it, but he didn't like the background of it.

He wanted to use this picture, it looks like as a contact card or as a picture on his lock screen, right on the iPhone.

And so he was able to modify the background of this picture with his lovely wife in a hot dog suit.

And it looks really good.

The end result looks really good.

I'm sure he's going to pay for it, but it looks good.

He said he didn't like the background.

I've noticed this before. When you have a picture on a lock screen, whether it be like your just your pure lock screen picture or the picture that you assign to a contact, so that if they're calling you, you will see there.

You know, it used to be you see just a tiny little circle, but now you see a full width of the iPhone.

So when you do that, if you just take a normal picture like the one that he has at the top, and if you make that the picture, what's going to happen is the top of your screen that has the time and widgets and stuff.

Right. It's going to be over the person's face.

Yeah, you want it.

So exactly.

So what you need to have is additional space in the picture above the person's head.

OK, I see.

And a normal picture, whether it's a picture of your wife in a hot dog or pretty much any other picture you have of a person, because you weren't taking it with the intention of having all this extra space at the top, you're not going to have enough space there.

And so this is what generative AI can do.

Yeah.

So through the photographic tools of Photoshop and some other programs allow you to do it, you can say, hey, Photoshop, you can see that the top of this picture is like some trees.

Why don't you just continue the tree, make a tree top and then put some blue sky above it.

And that way, I put that on my screen, the top portion of it, the blue sky that you've added through AI and the tops of the trees, that part can be covered up by the time and the widgets and everything else.

And then in the middle of the screen, I'll see the person's face and stuff.

So it actually makes a lot of sense. And I've done this in the past in a very simplistic way.

I'm looking across my office right now.

Yeah.

I have a picture that I took, gosh, I don't know, 10 years ago at the beach that's got members of my family who are no longer even alive.

I'll go to some crack it up.

So I love that picture, right, because it's got some bread Paris, my mom and stuff.

But I put that picture into a five by seven frame because the way I had taken it, it didn't like I wanted it to be a certain five frame, but the picture wasn't dimensions.

So I used Photoshop to just, and this was long before generative AI.

So I did a, okay.

Version of it.

I added additional blue sky so that the picture could be taller than it actually was.

And it would fit in the frame.

Now there was also a palm tree on the side.

And so I had to extend the palm tree out and like copy the palm tree and paste it.

So if you look really close, you can sort of see that there's a stump and then the stump repeats because it's like, you know, a copy and paste in one step, one step, another step.

You know, all people notices it's a nice picture of the family that fits in the frame.

So the idea of extending a picture to, you know, whether it's horizontally or more often vertically, however you need to do it, you can do that so easily and incredibly realistic way using this brand new generative AI.

So I think that what Stephen's done here is great.

Putting aside the fact that he also showed his wife in a hotdog costume, which I think is hilarious, but hopefully she has a good sense of humor.

So yeah, I did say, okay, well, that is so much more helpful because indeed I've done some lock screens and I want to use a picture of maybe my family or so.

But sure enough, you know, I just didn't want to take the time to like fix it because it'll be right over their face or their forehead.

And I'm like, I don't want that.

Like I want it down.

So that makes a lot more sense now, Jeff, thanks for explaining that.

And this is a, this is in Photoshop.

They call it generative AI fill in.

So in other words, you're filling in areas that that you may not want, like on this picture here, they've got like a bookshelf, but then they wanted to make it a jungle.

Okay, that's making a lot more sense now.

And that's, that's, that's really helpful.

I would tell you too, Brad, I've tried this on my Photoshop and I mean, I'm not a Photoshop maven, but like, I don't have to know anything and you click a few buttons and it does it works.

Yeah, this is one of these things that's like, oh, M G.

It is really incredible that it can do it.

Just, I just remember what is it last week or two weeks ago, we were talking about the Google photo, you know, the pixel tools and Google photos.

What just what a time, you know, and I've heard other people talk about the concerns that we even brought up was like, what is a picture anymore?

If you could modify it and, you know, put on the actual face gesture that you know, that you would, or facial expression that you want somebody to have if they were not smiling or something like that.

You just can create your own pictures now. Just such an interesting, interesting time.

It is. I don't have an ethical problem adding the blue sky that wasn't in the picture.

Right.

You can definitely see where people say, well, you know, maybe, maybe it's inappropriate what you're doing.

It's a legitimate debate.

A quick related article you link to here is setting a custom contact poster on your iPhone that others will see when you call them.

I got to tell you, I've just barely gone into like my contact card and this is something new and I was 17 and I really wanted to do it.

It's just it takes a little bit of time. I feel like it takes a little bit of time.

Like, OK, what picture do I want? Like, what if I'm calling a professional contact versus, you know, my family or my kids?

Like I might want a certain picture. I don't know. I know there's some things that I want to I want to figure out first on there.

But this was a great article that you linked to from Gadget Hacks that at least it'll help me kind of walk through if you want to do an emoji or you want a photo or something along those lines.

I know I want to start seeing contact posters a little bit more.

I want to create them for me. And then I also want to make sure that I have contact posters for other people that call me as well.

Exactly.

Yeah. Good stuff on that.

I know, my friend, we have talked about Apple TV quite a bit.

And one of your favorite, I know this, which I still have not started.

I wrote this post.

Don't hate me.

For you.

I know.

If you didn't see it, hidden in this post is if you haven't started watching the show yet, comma, let Bernie, comma.

Yes. One of my all time favorite shows is for it for all mankind.

For all mankind.

It starts back in the 1960s. It's an alternative history. What if the Soviets got to the moon first?

Yeah, right.

Season one takes place in the 60s. Season two takes place in the 80s. Season three took place in the 90s or 70s, 80s.

And then season four is going to start to take place a little more.

You know, eventually, it's going to get to the point where it's going to be in the future, you know, even beyond where we are now, when they get to season five.

And I don't know if that'll be the end or maybe not.

Oh, cool. Okay.

So I think it was originally announced to be a five season arc if Apple picked it up for all five seasons.

And they've certainly picked it up for the first four.

I'm sure they will.

So hopefully they'll pick it up too.

Anyway, three weeks from today, Brett, season four starts.

Okay.

So as I pointed out, if you watch, if you can binge a season a week, you'll be totally caught up.

You said that.

Or if you don't, just whenever you get around to it, it's a great show.

And in all seriousness, anyone who hasn't seen this, if you have access to Apple TV+, I just think it's a fabulous show.

It does start a little slow the first couple of episodes, but by the middle of season one, it picks up.

Okay.

So it's just nonstop through the end of season one, season two, season three, great fun stuff.

I did notice that you provided specific directions on how someone can get up to speed and be ready for season four, November 10th.

So thank you for that public service announcement there.

For all mankind, I did watch the trailer, this one, which is for season four, and I was like, okay, that's really, really cool.

Okay.

I will do my best.

I did not watch this before November 10th, but I will do my best according to your instructions there.

Let's talk about our sponsor, Lit Software.

So Lit Software, we have known the developers of Lit Software for many, many years, Jeff, because one of the first times that you and I were even together presenting at conferences, typically legal conferences or conferences for lawyers about using technology, we have been talking about the iPad and the iPhone.

And one of, I would say, probably the premier app for legal professionals, so the apps for legal professionals has been from Lit Software.

Everybody mostly knows this company for their TrialPad app, which is a presentation app that you can do a zoom in on a section, you can highlight text in real time in a dynamic fashion, which I use not just for trials.

Like you don't even have to use it for trials.

You can use it for all kinds of uses.

And they have several other apps in their suite, and one is called TranscriptPad.

They also have DocReviewPad and ExhibitsPad.

But TranscriptPad, now this is really getting a little bit more specifically to legal professionals and mostly lawyers and even more specifically to lawyers that go into litigation because you have a lot of transcripts from depositions and from court proceedings and whatnot.

And you need to review them.

You need to review and read through this transcript, which typically comes from a court reporter, that kind of a thing.

We have followed these apps for a long time.

We are very big fans of Lit Software.

In fact, I'm actually at a conference today, and I'm going to be giving an hour lecture on how to use the iPad in trial presentation.

And guess what I'm going to talk about.

I'm going to be talking about TrialPad here quite a bit.

But the TranscriptPad is something you wrote about this on your iPhoneJD blog this past week, Jeff.

So I'm going to let you explain this a little bit.

They have a pretty amazing update to the TranscriptPad app, which not only lets you read the text now, but you can synchronize a video of the deposition or a witness or whatever with the text of the transcript.

This is pretty mind blowing to me.

Yeah, it's really, really cool stuff.

Let me say a little beginning stuff, too, like you did.

Lit Software has been around since the iPad itself was introduced in 2010.

They've been around for a long time.

And if you're ever in a situation where you want to show things off, I mean, jurors now expected in trials that, of course, lawyers are going to use some sort of big screen to show things off.

Even if you're not a lawyer, if you give presentations and you want to be able to have documents come up that you can zoom in on parts of it and highlight parts of it, I mean, you could use this no matter what your profession is.

But TrialPad is really just by far the best for that.

It's fantastic.

But what I like about these Lit Software apps is that they are empowering.

They allow people to do things that in the old days or even in the current days with people that don't know better, you know, people would have to hire a separate graphic professional to be in charge of the graphics at their presentation, at their trial, at their wherever it is to bring things up on the screen.

You'd say, OK, now so and so, could you please bring up exhibit number four?

And then that person would do it.

But when you have this in your own hand, it's just so empowering that you yourself can bring things up and it allows you to look so much more professional.

So that's my pitch for all of their apps.

Now, let's talk specifically about TranscriptPad.

So TranscriptPad for lawyers is when you have a deposition of someone and you get that transcript, most of us and I'm sort of guilty of the same thing for, you know, I've been practicing law for a long time now, since 1994, 30 years.

And most of my transcripts have just been the text transcript.

And TranscriptPad has been a fantastic app because it loads in the transcript.

It automatically you can have like all my questions bold and my answers not bold.

So as you're reading through it, you can see what's a question, what's an answer.

And it's always had this fantastic feature that you can not just highlight in yellow or whatever color you want, but you can assign codes.

So as I'm reading through the transcript, I can say this series of question and answers is relevant because it has to do with, you know, the cause of the car accident.

And then these questions and answers are relevant because they have to do with, you know, the injury that the person suffered or whatever it is.

And so at the end of the day, when you've gone through all your transcripts, you can very easily pull up the relevant parts that you need when you're preparing for trial.

So, but that's always been just the black and white words.

And something that's people have been doing for a while now is having videographers take a video of the deposition as well.

And it does make a difference because we all know this from everyday life that sometimes it's not just the words that a person says.

It's the way that they say it.

You know, the black and white words may seem like it's just a straightforward answer.

And then you listen to them and you can tell that the person is squirming or that the person's uncomfortable or the opposite.

You can tell that the person's very, very confident.

And so if they're now giving a different answer on the stand and you want to impeach them, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words.

A video is worth even more.

When you can show that video, it's so much better.

So what's really nice about transcript pad is they added this ability that when you have the video, video people will charge you if you want to sync up the video to the transcript.

And, you know, people can routinely pay $75 an hour for that.

But on its own, just the iPad itself is smart enough because of Apple's technology that it understands, you know, it can translate words into text.

Siri does that every day.

Right.

If you just feed in the video and transcript pad, you're showing sort of like the little circle of, you know, the percentage, 15 percent, 20 percent, 25.

It will just go through and analyze the words in the video and it will sync them up to the words in the text.

And it doesn't just do a simple pass.

It uses sophisticated artificial intelligence so that even, for example, if the court reporter gets the word a little bit wrong, it will understand that and it will fix that so that it's still lined up.

And so then once you have it in there, you can be looking at your transcript at the bottom of your screen and at the top of the screen as the transcript is moving and people are speaking, you will actually see the person talk at the top.

And I've noticed as I've been playing around with this app that, you know, because you're actually seeing them speak, you suddenly realize, wow, you know, this passage of the transcript is even more important than I thought because of the emotions, the person, the body language, et cetera, et cetera.

So just for looking at a transcript and preparing for trial, it's totally useful.

But that's just the first part.

The second part is that once you actually have it all synced up, you can then export video excerpts.

Normally, the trial, you're not going to play a major higher thing beginning to end.

Right.

You're going to cut out the parts where lawyers have objections.

You're going to cut out the parts that don't matter for trial.

Or maybe if the witness is going to be there at trial, you actually only want like a little one minute segment to just improve what they're saying.

So what the app lets you do is find the little, you know, take out the stuff you don't want, just leave in the stuff that you do want.

And it has these really cool tools that you can have.

You can edit very precisely where the video starts and where the video stops.

And they show a waveform at the bottom.

So, for example, somebody might say, well, and then start the answer.

If it's appropriate and you wanted to cut it this way, you can cut out the well, whatever.

Or maybe you want to leave that in there because of the impeachment.

But you make those decisions.

And with the waveform, you can see where each word is, where each cough is.

So I, you know, transcript pad, lit software has done this the right way.

They took their time with this.

And when they came out with it, I'm like, wow, this is the, this is their initial offering.

You might expect this to be like the 2.0 or the 3.0 version of it.

So it's really well done.

So, you know, I'm glad that lit software is sponsoring today.

For any lawyers that are listening to this podcast or anyone that works with transcripts, it is a significant upgrade.

And it's just part of the app.

I mean, if you subscribe to their software and you get the app, you just get this new feature.

It's just part of what you have.

So I can't wait to see what they do.

I'm sure they're going to find ways to tweak it in the future in ways that are far beyond my imagination.

But what they have done today is really, really good.

So, bravo.

I'm old enough that I was one of those people in that seat, Jeff, that we call it a hot seater, right?

Because the lawyers would turn around and say, bring this up or do that.

And so as a trial presentation specialist, you have to know a lot of these different applications.

And I will tell you, I remember doing this task, syncing a text transcript with a video by literally listening and watching the video.

And at the end of every sentence, every line of the transcript, I would have to hit the space bar because I'm manually putting in like a time code for the video to tell the software,

this was not TranscriptPad, this was a very old, this is other trial presentation software.

It would tell the video like where the area would be that you're syncing the text with the video.

Anyway, just a very, very long, laborious process.

But we had to do it.

There was no other way to do it then.

I mean, I'm literally doing it manually.

I had to speed it up.

It was like chipmunk style.

Oh, it was just the pits.

So just the fact that this is now built in, not even just to a computer, Jeff, but we can do this even on the iPad, like it's all built in.

And by the way, it's also secure because it's doing it all on the actual iPad.

You're not like sending it up to the cloud or anything.

And I know that that's something that developers, Ian and Tara, were both very interested in as well.

Anyway, thanks for describing.

I just had to jump in because people can, you all can tell that Jeff and I are pretty excited about this.

We're pretty passionate about this because these apps are really just done so very well.

And if you just go to simply litsoftware.com, L-I-T software.com, you'll see all of the information is there about all of the different apps individually if you want to look at it, as well as if you wanted to drill down into one specific app.

So anyway, if you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to us because Jeff and I talk about this quite a bit.

In the know, I'm going to cheat a little bit.

I'm going to cheat a little bit and use one of my favorite transcript pad tips.

So if you are listening to this and you already have the Lit Suite and you have the transcript pad, one of the great things about it is that you can actually search for words in the transcript.

Now, that doesn't sound like it's that big of a deal, like, okay, whatever.

The thing is, is that you and I both know, Jeff, because a lot of the way lawyers use this, they'll get one transcript, they'll open it up, maybe it's a PDF, maybe it's a text file, and they'll search just in that transcript.

And that's good and sometimes that's all that you might need.

But there are times when I've got several transcripts across several witnesses and I want to search across all of those transcripts at one time.

There's ways to do it in a kind of a hackery fashion on your computer.

But what I love about it in transcript pad, if you put them all into transcript pad, into one case file, then transcript pad is smart enough that if I'm drilled down into one specific transcript in transcript pad and I hit the search box up there in the very top left, it will search only that transcript in which I'm in.

But if I go up a couple of levels to where I can see all of the transcripts, if I got four or five different transcripts in this particular case, and I tap the search box there, I'm not just searching one transcript, I'm searching across all of the transcripts.

And what's even neat is that transcript pad will then give me a rundown, a breakdown of like, okay, transcript one has 18 hits.

Transcript two has 53 hits of this particular word or phrase or something that I'm looking at.

And then I can drill down into each one of those transcripts and look at it.

And as you might know, there's a little button there that I can annotate the search results, which basically just creates a little report or kind of highlights each of those little sections so I can just jump to them at a later time and maybe even include them in a full report that you can do out of transcript pad.

So I feel like we're just scratching the surface.

There's so much more that I like to work with when I'm working with lawyers in transcript pad and even trial pad.

So that's my tip for the day. If you have transcript pad, try that search function, whether it's just for a single transcript or multiple transcripts at one time.

Great tip. I do it all the time.

My tip is for CarPlay, maps in CarPlay.

Lovely.

Usually when you are driving someplace you don't know, or maybe you do know the directions, but you just want to have some assistance along the way.

I love using CarPlay to sort of give me my directions.

Every once in a while, I will have issues with CarPlay not knowing where it is.

For me, it happens consistently in one very specific place, which is my office.

When I'm leaving my office, which is a big office tower, I usually park eight, ten floors up in my office tower.

As I circle around my office building parking lot to get to the bottom and then leave, I find it often takes – I don't know if it – I always assumed it was something about me spinning around and the GPS is not very good downtown New Orleans.

I would have to go many, many blocks before CarPlay realizes where it is.

If I just follow my CarPlay for those first couple blocks, it thinks I'm 18 blocks away, or maybe not quite that far, but far away.

So it's not going to give me the right direction.

It's not where you are.

Usually, by the time I get to the interstate 10 or something like that, it will have figured it out and it'll be fine.

But for those first couple blocks, it can be rough.

Chance Miller wrote about this, that he's actually noticed this in other areas too, where they're just on the road and suddenly you can tell that CarPlay has been totally confused.

It may think that you're in one location, but you're actually many, many blocks away.

So if you have this happen, what Chance has as a possible workaround is actually one that I've noticed too.

I will say this with some trepidation because it's not the safest thing to do.

We all know you're not supposed to use an iPhone while you're driving, right?

But I will tell you that if you do open up your iPhone and if you do open up the navigation app, whether it's Apple Maps or Google Maps or whatever one you're using, I have found that by opening up the app on the phone, it usually locks in the GPS location pretty quickly.

But if you don't do that, if you're just relying upon CarPlay to do it, it takes longer.

And I've noticed this because of the parking lot of my office for years.

Chance Miller notes here that he's noticed it for about the past year.

So whatever it is, this doesn't happen a lot.

It doesn't happen consistently.

For me, I've never had it happen outside of my office environment.

Chance Miller has had worse luck.

But in whatever your personal situation is, if you find that there's a dead zone where you often get bad GPS or if it just happens while you're driving or better yet happens while you're with somebody and they're driving and you have access to their phone, if you open up the navigation app, that will usually help it to lock in.

This is above you.

And I really hope that Apple can fix this.

Because you don't want to have to, while you're driving, be distracted from the road and open up the Maps app on the iPhone.

That's not a good solution, unless you're out like a red light or something like that, which I guess it's okay.

So that's the problem.

If you're out there and you've experienced the two, maybe this will help you work around it.

Yeah.

He said this bug makes CarPlay almost unusable and dangerous.

I have seen something similar.

I will tell you, like when I go to a different city and rent a car, usually near the airport, right, just like you, it's like a big parking garage or something.

And I'll try to get to the exit and I don't know which way to turn.

Like which way do I turn?

And sometimes what I've just done, I'm a little bit more lazy because I'm not going to pick up my phone.

I'll just decide which way looks best, right?

I'm going to turn this way and just have some confidence that the map will catch up with me at some point and then reroute.

Now, I'm not saying that's a better way to go, but that's when I have seen a little bit of frustration on this.

And I guess I wouldn't really think about it because I'm like, okay, the map will have to just catch up with me.

But now, yeah, that is frustrating.

Like why should I have to wait for that?

Like it should be a little bit more on point there.

Okay.

Hopefully, it is some kind of a software update or something.

I don't know.

I don't know if it requires better hardware or what.

But yeah, now I'm frustrated more than I was before.

One more thing I mentioned, Brad, is that sometimes I don't really see this in metropolitan areas like New Orleans or another big city.

But sometimes if you're out sort of in the middle of nowhere, you could have the opposite problem where the GPS in CarPlay knows exactly where you are.

But because your cellular connection is so slow or maybe non-existent, it has trouble downloading maps.

That's right.

And for that, I will actually point people that one of the new features, and you and I mentioned in the past, that one of the new features of iOS 17 is that before your trip, you can actually say,

I want you to download and you can control by zooming in and out.

Do I want it the whole area or just a small part?

You can have your phone download maps and then you can say, okay, if you've downloaded the map, how frequently do you want me to update those maps?

And so that way, if you're traveling to a small town and you're concerned that you might have some dead spots, you could just go in and download the maps to your iPhone beforehand.

And that way, it can just use the local maps regardless of whether it doesn't have to download anything.

And so as long as you can get a GPS signal, it knows where it's are.

So that's sort of the opposite of the problem that we're talking about here.

That's where you do have GPS, but you don't have the map.

That's such a great tip.

I'm going to give you a thumbs up on my screen here.

Maybe a double thumbs up.

Thank you, Apple.

Fireworks.

I know.

We also want to thank our sponsor, and I'll turn my fireworks off for that, even though they're much worthy of fireworks, Lit Software.

So litsoftware.com, Lit Software.

You can go and find out a little bit more about their apps as well.

Jeff, always thank you, my friend, and we'll talk with you next week.

Thanks, Brett.