123: The Bitterant is Back and Apple’s Sympathetic Satellite Stipend

Welcome to in the news for November 17, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

This is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hi, Brett.

Good morning, Jeff.

We want to say thank you once again to our fantastic sponsor, Lit Software,

who are the makers and developers of trial pad, the trial pad app for the iPad.

The transcript pad app.

We'll talk a little bit more about them a little bit later.

But I was thrilled to hear Jeff that the bitter is back, baby.

I know we've talked about this a couple of times, but you had a post this past

week on the fact that you can now actually use CR two oh three, two batteries

with bitter at coatings in your Apple air tags now, which is good because those

are the ones, yeah, those are the ones that you should have.

I think only Doris makes them if I'm correct.

Maybe some other manufacturers do.

It might just be Doris.

So, but those make so much sense because although, you know, my kids are teenagers

now, Brett, but I remember, and I'm sure you do too, when kids are little, they

put everything in their mouth and something like one of these, you know,

batteries that almost looks like a little candy or something.

I can totally see them picking it up and trying to swallow it, which is very

dangerous.

So it's exactly just like a wafer.

So it makes perfect sense that you would want to put something in here that when

you stick it in your mouth, it makes you want to instantly, you know, say, and

take it out of your mouth.

But as I reported last year, when I bought some of these and tried to use them in an

air tag, it didn't work for me.

And at the time I was, I was traveling abroad and it was really a pain.

So I was thrilled to discover that that Apple and the batteries companies,

Doris, sell others, maybe have gotten their act together.

And so now you can have the best of all worlds.

You can have the bitter and coating and it works with the air tags.

So the next time that I go buy some, this is exactly what I'm going to buy.

Yeah.

I liked how you have the little picture here because up in the upper right corner,

it says what compatible with air tag like that wasn't there before on those.

My, my absolute favorite part of this is the little, the little logo that they,

that they put on these battery packs.

Now it's this little, little baby with X's for eyes and the tongue sticking out

called bitter taste.

I'm like, Hey, if you don't know what that means, then you know, you might need to

know.

If there's ever a picture tells a thousand words, that's a picture that tells a

thousand words, everything you need to know.

How about some RCS, some really cool software, at least that's the way I put it.

I think this actually stands for what rich communication services you reported on

this.

I saw a headline and I gotta be admit, I'm not, I wasn't too sure what was going on

here, probably because I'm a little too Apple centric because it sounds like the

RCS support that Apple is offering now is going to help us be a little bit more

friendly in our communications with our Android using brethren.

Sure.

So, you know, way back when we had text messaging, right?

I remember back during hurricane Katrina.

So that's 2005, uh, the cell phone network wasn't working in new Orleans because

you know, of all the disaster.

And it was the first time that me and a lot of my friends and family started to use

text messages.

And that was back in the days when, you know, you didn't have a keyboard.

So like to make the letter P you would have to press the number two, two, two, and

then three, three, all that sort of stuff.

So text messaging has come a long way, but years and years ago, Apple realized that

the original SMS text messaging was just too simplistic.

And so Apple developed its own my message to have so many, many more features, you

know, you could have longer messages, you can have Rick's rich text.

You can have, you know, the little thumbs up features, you know, all the different

things they've added on top of it.

And it works great when iPhones are talking to iPhones or other Apple products, but

you don't have the features when you talk to people using Android.

And so.

Over the years, Google has tried various efforts to have its own system that is

similar to iMessage.

And the most recent one is RCS, which is technically a standard, but since, you

know, really the only alternative to iMessage and the iPhone is Android, you

know, it's, yes, it's a standard, but it's also just sort of like the Google system.

And so Google for months now for years has been saying, you know, let's get at,

you know, Apple needs to adopt the standard and Apple needs to do the same

thing as everybody else in the world, which is really just them.

And they even ran a big campaign on it back in September, like ads, like, you

know, Apple, why won't you get on board?

And, you know, Apple has publicly said in the past, you know, we're fine with

our currently system current system.

So it was when I saw the news this week, I was very surprised.

I was like, wow.

Now you can argue, are they doing it because maybe European regulators are

pushing Apple to have more standards, compliance, or is Apple doing it out of

the goodness of their heart?

But the bottom line is, you know, it's going to take them a year to implement

this and we don't know the details, but the end result is going to be, you're

not going to get all the iMessage features, but you'll get more.

I mean, for example, if you've ever tried to send like a big movie or a big

picture to someone with Android using text messaging, and it's a pain in the

butt that should be fixed.

Um, now currently.

RCS is not encrypted.

So if you're worried about the privacy of your messages, as soon as you send it to

someone on RCS, you lose all the encryption where you keep that if you

communicate within the Apple network.

But, um, we'll see how this all gets worked out.

Now, a lot of people have said, Oh, does this mean that Android people

will no longer be green bubbles?

And the answer to that is no, that's going to say exactly the same.

So even though they will have a better system with RCS, they will

continue to be green bubbles.

And, you know, you can argue whether that's fair or unfair, but I mean, it's

just Apple's way of indicating that when you're communicating with the blue

bubble person, you have encryption, you have all the advantages of iMessage.

And if you're not, whether it's traditional SMS or this new RCS next year,

Apple's going to indicate that with the, with the green bubbles.

So, um, I mean, I, I it's, it's good upside for consumers and I'm

glad that Apple's doing it.

Although, you know, Apple doesn't always like to play in the open world.

They're, they're often happy just to, to live in their own little sandbox.

Sure.

And I mean, you know, in addition to the security aspects or the security

benefits of using iMessages, obviously that's the first thing people should be

thinking of, but it also allows me to do like tap backs, which I can't do what I'm,

you know, do easily when I'm, when I have a Android person that's in the mix of a

conversation, for example.

And again, I know that's, that's a little less important maybe than the security

aspects, but you know, it's just, I'm used to doing the tap backs, a little

thumbs up or something like that.

And when there's an Android, yeah, it doesn't work that way.

We don't know for sure how it's going to be supported.

Hopefully tap backs will work just fine next year, but it wouldn't be surprised

if like, maybe, maybe Memoji won't work, you know, we'll have to see.

There's going to be some features that will, some features that won't.

Stickers, you know, for example, that's a big thing.

Um, are stickers going to work?

We'll have to see how it gets implemented.

But regardless, you know, the, the, the bottom line is we're going to have more

features implemented than we have now.

That's for sure.

It's not going to be everything I'm sure, but it's going to be more than we have now.

So, um, you know, group texting, I know that that's an issue.

Some people like to have group text and, you know, if there's one.

Person that has Android, they often just don't even include them in the group

because it messes up all the features.

So it would be nice if, if you wouldn't have to exclude you.

I, I, I really think now that I understand a little better and you're

always so good to explain it, that this has got to be a good thing.

I mean, I, you know, I feel like we've gone enough years now with iMessages and

it's so kind of baked in to, to, to my, you know, general level of life and

whatever I do and the people that I, that I communicate with, I really just hope

that by this time Apple will be able to roll this out correctly.

I like a couple of things here that Chance Miller in this article, uh, that

you linked to, this is not Apple opening up iMessages to other platforms, which I

think that would kind of hurt that potential security there instead, he says

it's the company adopting RCS separately from iMessage, uh, which I think is great.

And then last year, like at the very bottom, I like how he says we have come

a very long way since Tim Cook's rebuttal of RCS back in 2022, which, uh, at the

time Cook said Apple hadn't heard from many users about RCS.

In other words, Tim Cook was like, yeah, we don't, it's not a big deal.

Nobody's asking about it.

Uh, so in fact, I think he said, buy your mom an iPhone was the answer.

Yeah.

The question, the question back last year was somebody said, oh, but my mom has an

Android phone and I can't communicate fully.

And his answer was, well, just buy your mom an iPhone if you love her.

So I added the, if you love her part at the end, but I think it was a good, so

that was good.

All right.

We'll keep watching that.

Well, another story that you linked to that involves Apple and Google, which a

little bit more than interesting, uh, aspect here.

Um, how much does Google pay Apple every year, uh, or, or part of their revenue

every year from the Google search results?

Is that right?

Is that an accurate way that people do on the iPhone?

Uh, probably an answer that wasn't supposed to be known, but it kind of

slipped down and a lot of people picked up on it.

Yeah.

Every web browser out there, um, has a search feature and for, you know, decades

now, Google would pay money if they were the default search feature.

And so way back, you know, 20 years ago, Apple, when it had its Safari

web browser, only on the Mac, it negotiated with Google that, you know,

if Google would be the default, which of course made sense because Google

was the best search engine, but a certain percentage of sales that Google

made by showing ads, when you run a search that you initiate from the

Safari search bar, Apple would get those sales.

And so that, you know, in the very beginning days, that was nothing.

But then as the Safari web browser came to the iPhone and the iPhone

became so dominant, um, suddenly, you know, the biggest way that Google

could get search, um, and thus can get revenue from ads and search on the

iPhone was because of this deal that they had an Apple, and we've always

known that Google pays Apple a lot of money for it and Google gets some,

sure, a lot of value out of it, but Apple does too.

But as you said, Brett, it was during the trial this week that a witness

revealed on the stand and he wasn't supposed to say it, but you know,

sometimes in trials, people just say things out loud and then they are in

the public record and there was a Bloomberg reporter there sitting,

watching it that, um, 36%.

And, you know, this, this number is interesting.

The percentage is interesting.

Cause it's big, you know, over a third, but the dollars are interesting

too, because it has been estimated and Apple's revealed some of this,

I think in the past, but I want to say that it's something like 18 or so

billion, billion with a B billion dollars that Apple is getting from Google.

And, you know, so think about that for a second, you know, Apple.

Apple likes to talk about how we are the company that, you

know, care about your privacy, right?

They have big ads that they run about privacy and, you know, we're not

trying to sell you as a product.

We are selling you an iPhone.

It's other companies like Google that are trying to make money off

of the searches that you do.

But the reality is Apple's making very good money off of the searches that

you do, if they're making around $18 billion a year, um, you know, a couple

of years ago, Apple was making about a hundred billion dollars in profit every

year, I think now it's closer to like one 60, but you know, let's just say

over 10% of Apple's profit, because I'm sure this is all profit over 10% of

Apple's profit is coming from people, you know, running searches and Google,

you know, selling those ads.

And so, you know, if you think about, you know, I can say I'm a lawyer, but if

10% of my profit comes from selling popcorn, well, you know, I'm sort of

a popcorn person too.

And so like Apple, they may sell hardware and services of their own, but they are

in the search business.

So that's one interesting thing.

And then of course, if 36% is Apple, the other 60% is Google.

And so that's why I think it's interesting.

We were just talking about the, um, you know, Google versus Apple when it comes

to text messaging and RCS and all that sort of stuff, you know, Google has

Android and Apple has iPhone, but Google is making money off of every

iPhone because of these ads.

Um, you know, there was a time, Brett, I'm sure you're going to remember the

statistic, but you know, years and years and years ago, Microsoft used to say

that they actually made more money off of every Mac user than they did every PC

user because PC users would buy a windows computer that has Microsoft office built

in.

So there wouldn't be as much profit, but Apple users would often go out

and purchase Microsoft office.

And so just, just, just on a per user basis, Microsoft would boast, you know,

if someone's going to be a Mac user, they're actually going to pay us more

than if they were a windows user, which was always a funny statistic.

And now we have something similar here that people that are purchasing iPhones

are actually paying quite a bit.

I mean, not directly, but you know, Google is making money off of you, even if

you're an iPhone person.

And so, you know, it just shows that all these companies are all very

interrelated.

There's these relationships and they may be competitors, but they also are each

making money off of each other and have a vested interest in the other one.

Um, continuing to do what they do.

It's really interesting.

I, uh, contribute a good amount of this every day because that Google is my

default search engine and Safari.

And I remember, uh, not too long ago, right there.

I think we only had a couple of options in the search engine default setting.

And you go to your settings in your iPhone, you go to Safari, you can dictate

which search engine you want to be the default.

And I believe before maybe it was Google and maybe Yahoo, maybe being, I don't

remember, but it seemed like not too long ago, Jeff, that duck duck go was now an

option and it is an option in there.

Now you can have Google Yahoo being duck duck go.

And then.

It cozy.

Uh, it cozy.

Uh, I'm not even familiar with that.

That's not familiar with that one either.

One that I have in here as well.

I just remember it was a big deal when duck duck go was like going to be like,

Hey, that's a, that that's one that if you don't want any ads, you don't want

to participate in this, you don't want to.

Now you would know you don't want to give any percentage of your search results

to, to Apple or Google, you could do that, but I've tried the others, Jeff.

And I keep coming back to the Google basic search engine.

I just, I feel like I get what I am typically looking for.

And there's a reason why people are going back there.

But you know, the point is you, people can go and tell your Safari browser on

your iPad and your iPhone to do a different default search engine.

But I, I I'm assuming the default is when you pull it out of the

box, it's still going to be Google.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll share before we leave this topic, Brett, I heard something funny this morning.

I was listening to a podcast when I was coming into work called dithering

that has a guy named John Gruber on it from Gary Carball.

And John, you know how sometimes Brett, when you'll ask Siri, you know, at

question, and instead of giving you an answer, it'll say, you know, you go

search, search the answer on, you know, if you want more search for it on the web.

Here's what I found on the web.

Uh, John's joke was, uh, maybe Apple's doing that because they can make a little

revenue, go search for it on the web, which I'm sure it's just a joke, but it

is sort of funny that maybe Siri has a vested interest in getting you to run

that Google search so that Apple can make it 36%.

Who knows?

I like the way John thinks that's good stuff.

Well, good news.

If you have ever relied on the emergency satellite coverage with your iPhone 14,

um, it's going to be extended.

You know, one of my favorite things that we do now, Jeff is when we have a where

yet segment, I don't think we have one this week, folks, I'm sorry, but I love

doing this and a couple of times we've reported on how incredibly helpful.

And amazingly helpful that this satellite emergency system has been, uh, to say

folks really that have been stranded, uh, either through, through their own fault

or no fault of their own or whatever the case may be.

The point is, is that even when there's not cellular access that they could

actually, I mean, you know, some of it is like when the satellite is just right at

the right position and then they can connect with that satellite and it's just

enough of a text message to get to the emergency personnel to let them, to let

them know where, where this poor person is.

Um, I suspected just like Dan talks about in this link story that you linked to

that, I don't know how Apple can stop this as a free service almost Jeff.

I mean, maybe you got a different take on it, but that was only for a year.

You bought an iPhone 14, right.

And it was for a year, but now they have officially said, we're going

to extend it for another year.

Is that, is that correct?

Yeah.

So it's still the rule that if you buy a new iPhone, you get it for a year, but

if you've already used up your first year, you're going to get us another year too.

And so we'll see what happens a year from now.

You know, on the one hand, I see what you're saying, Brett, because what

you're saying is why would Apple want to start saying, you know, if, you know,

if you don't want to die, you have to pay us money and I can understand you.

On the other hand, Brett, you know, there are companies like Garmin that

specifically sell satellite, you know, radios and security, you know,

specifically, you know, and you know, nobody says that Garmin should give

its things away for free because it can be life-saving people know

that they need to pay for that.

And so I don't know what Apple is going to do.

Um, my, my personal hope is that if Apple does monetize this, it will say, look,

it's going to be included if you subscribe to X, you know, any of these

sorts of services, if you, if you buy, you know, so maybe there'll be a way that

it'll be a sort of a built-in price.

Um, but the thing is, you know, this is one of those things.

It's, it's, it's like buying insurance.

You hope you never need it, but if you ever do, oh my goodness, you know,

are you glad that you have it?

I didn't link to it, but there was an article that this week that, uh, I think

Chance Miller wrote nine to five Mac.

And the question that he answered in the article was, should you buy an

Apple watch that has cellular on it?

And he was talking about the advantages and, you know, one of the big advantages

of cellular is if you ever find yourself in a situation where all you have with

you is your watch and something horrible happens, whether you, you fall and it's

crash detection like that, or if you're in an emergency, you need to call, you

know, you can always do it.

And, you know, people, people that were commenting on his posts were saying,

you know, yeah, it's another, you know, a hundred bucks or 200 bucks, you know,

whatever it is a year to pay for it, but the security that you get is so worth it.

And so, you know, how much is it worth paying on security?

You know, I guess we all have to answer those questions every day when we buy

things.

And I personally don't consider myself a person that goes off the grid very often.

So I don't know that satellite SOS is going to help me.

It's more likely to help you, Brett, because you sometimes go hiking in places

that are off the grid.

But, um, but I do like that.

It's there just in case, you know, just in case I'm driving in the middle of the

nowhere or something like that, going to a deposition somewhere or going to go

interview a witness in the middle of a state.

And I don't know where I am.

I like that.

I have that feature.

And so I probably would pay something for it, but I'm glad I don't have to think

about it now because Apple's just continuing not to charge for it.

Well, the quickly on the watch thing, I've, I have come full circle to that.

Like to me right now, if I get an Apple watch, I will probably have a cellular

plan with it.

Even though this past year is with this Apple watch ultra is the first time that

I've done that.

But going back to the phone thing here, here's the difference that I see, Jeff,

if you know, Garmin has always charged for it.

And so, and so if I knew that I wanted a Garmin quality, you know, a device, then

I would have gone and purchased it.

The thing is, Apple should have charged for this from the beginning, I guess is

what I would say, because now anybody that got an iPhone 14 back a year ago had this

option in there.

Right.

And so even if you were not aware of it, I mean, at least it was there, right.

So that it would have it, but it's like now I feel like how can Apple go back and

start charging for this?

Because you know, there's going to be a good amount of people that don't realize

that they need to actually pay for this or sign up, you know, as much marketing

as that Apple may do, there's still going to be some people that won't sign up for

it and they're going to get caught and they could have been saved if they had this

on there.

It's like, that's going to be blood on Apple's hands.

Anyway, that's my take on it.

It's like, I am thrilled that they're doing it.

Don't let me take anything away from Apple.

The fact that they are doing another year, even Dan down here says this, that he

suspected they were going to do this, but it definitely doesn't want to, Apple doesn't

want to be in a position of having a customer unable to use the service because

they didn't pony up for an additional monthly cost.

And I kind of, I kind of say, so, you know, all that to say, I mean, again, I know

how incredibly expensive satellite connections are.

I think Apple has rolled this out extremely well with the little tiny pieces and bits

of text communication that can happen there.

But I'm like, oh my goodness, you know, just wrap that into another bonus that you

can get, you know, from an Apple iPhone.

Like, I just feel like it could be bad if they start charging.

But here's my prediction, Brett.

This is what I mean, consistent with what you're saying.

I think that Apple, you know, Apple's now been testing this for a year.

They're going to test it for another year.

They're going to know how much it actually costs them to run the service and what

the cost is running.

There's talk that Apple is getting even worse satellites online and maybe take a

few years, but I think that at some point in the future, Apple's going to sell a

service and the service is going to be, you can use our satellites for just regular

text messages.

Maybe it'll go back to the days of saying like, you know, because it's still

expensive to send it via satellite.

It might be like you get, you know, 10 texts a month or a hundred texts a month

for a certain price.

And my guess is what Apple's going to say, look, we have our, we have our free package,

which is, you know, emergency services and you get one text a month.

There's something just to sort of come onto the service and then they'll have

tiers and, and through the cost of the entire package, it'll monetize the whole

thing and pay for it.

That's my prediction.

But I think that that technology is still a few years away, but I do think that we're

going to get there one day.

Yeah.

Good stuff.

You know, you mentioned John Gruber.

I would like to be John Gruber.

I would have liked to have been John Gruber this past week because he got a

special invite to go to New York.

I think he's out of Philadelphia.

He got to go to New York and use his iPhone 15 pro to record spatial video and

then, or I guess photos, right.

And then he got to see it on a vision pro in a very, you know, elaborate Apple

constructed specialized, you know, focused environment, of course.

But I was mesmerized a little bit by reading this story.

And then I think you also link to some other folks who had a Stern did this and

other folks have seen that and a wall street journal over that's Joanna as well.

Uh, interesting stuff here just to kind of, I think Apple is really doing a very

good job of kind of just continuing to wet our appetites for what they haven't

released until who knows when January, February of next year with the vision pro.

Yeah.

I'm very excited about the vision pro when Apple first debuted it and they

showed off the ability to have these spatial video.

Um, and initially Apple said you could record it with the vision pro and we all

joked about that because it's like, who wants to walk around recording video

with this thing on your face?

But what we're all very used to doing is just holding up our iPhone

and recording video that way.

And so one of the things that Apple did with the newest iPhone 15 pro, like you

and I have is they moved around these cameras in the back.

So right now this camera that I'm pointing to, which is all the way in the

corner, this is the 0.5, this is the ultra five, one, the ultra wide one.

And then the one that's right next to it here is the regular camera that

you use for your normal shots.

Um, and then the one down here is the telephoto.

And so these two that are right next to each other, if you're holding up your

phone left and right, what Apple is now doing is turning that into one is your

left eye and one is your right eye to take these, you know, 3d spatial videos.

And now those two cameras on the back of your iPhone are pretty close to each

other, certainly much closer than your eyes are, but according to the people

that, that tested this last week with Apple, they've said it actually works

pretty well that if you're recording video with your iPhone, just using, you

know, those are only about an inch apart.

Um, but recording some video with one and some with the other, and then you

later look at it with the vision pro it does look just like you were something

like, like 3d or 3d, like in a real life sense of 3d, not a, not in a special

effects 3d, but it feels more like you're actual there.

It's, it's not unlike the difference between listening to music and

mono, which can sound fine, but then you listen to it in stereo and suddenly

it feels all the more enveloping because it's, you know, different

things and different sides.

And so, um, I love that you'll be able to use an iPhone to capture memories that

you can later recreate using the vision pro.

And I would, Apple only allowed a few reviewers to see it last week.

I think you named most of them, but, um, all of them were incredibly enthusiastic

about the results saying that it really, really seems, you know, fantastic.

So, I mean, as I joked today, I don't know when a 70.2 is going to come out.

I presume it's going to come out in the next few weeks, but certainly by the

holidays this year, uh, you know, Christmas for me, I'm going to definitely

record some video using this because.

You know, although I won't be able to appreciate it now at some point in the

future, I'm sure I'll have a vision pro and it'll be cool to appreciate, you

know, the, the memories that I'm recording now in the future, there's

currently some limitations, Brett, like it doesn't have 4k, it can only do

10 ADP and that's just because of the quality of the ultra wide camera.

You know, Apple might fix that next year.

Maybe next year's iPhone 16 will be able to record 4k for spatial

video as opposed to this year's.

But, um, but you know, it still looks like it's a pretty compelling thing.

So I think it's really cool.

And the last thing I'll say is whenever we hear these, these little

stories about the, the, the vision pro, um, and you know, maybe there's some

bias because the people that are invited to use it are just so excited that they

had the opportunity that maybe they're more effervescent than they should be.

But these are reporters that are supposed to be, you know, somewhat,

you know, objective and they have all come away saying a lot of this is exactly

what they see so much effort.

And they're like, you know, this is really, really cool.

It makes me very excited that Apple might actually have something

really interesting on its hands.

We're going to all know next year when it's out, but for now, um,

this could be really cool.

I'm really looking forward to the vision.

Well, apparently you and John group will be recording spatial video on your

phones this, this, this year, this holiday season, he mentioned that in

this piece that you linked to, and it just, when I read that and I figured you

would be saying kind of the same thing.

I am so glad now we talked about this when we were getting our iPhone 15s

that typically we got two 56 gig or that's what I typically got, right?

Was that the size of my drive?

Cause I knew that I would be taking photos and that was plenty.

I would watch the storage and I think Apple has done a great job recently with

the photos app so that only, you know, the most recent photos maybe are actually

on your hard drive on the, on the iPhone or the iPad, the others are still

accessible, but in some cases you may have to download them.

They've done a very good job, I think, of balancing that out.

But both of us, I believe upgraded to 512 gigs on our iPhones this year.

I did, I followed your, your lead on that simply because I'm like, you know,

there's better.

I just, I didn't even think about the vision pro the spatial video.

I just thought I want to do more 4k.

I want to do better pictures because I know there's going to be better cameras.

And so I upgraded.

So I'm glad that I did now for this from, from that aspect.

And then the other thing quickly that you mentioned on here, and people

were showing some pictures, I had no idea that Apple changed the hardware

orientation of the three cameras on the back.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah.

I did not know that.

And I don't think I've ever even seen that.

And when I was reading through this story, I was just gobsmacked at this.

I was like, really?

Because in my mind, I know that wasn't, it probably wasn't that big of an

engineering feat, you know, to change these around, but the fact that they did

it tells me already that Apple is really investing a lot of time and resources

into setting up for the spatial video.

In other words, that gets me even a little bit more excited about the vision pro.

Whereas I thought maybe next year would just be apples kind of like, you know,

let's just, you know, shoot a flare up in the sky and see, you know, how

many people are going to look at it.

But if they've done this from like a precursor almost, because what other

reason would they be doing it that tells me that they're really putting in a

little bit more into vision pro that I kind of originally thought that they were

going to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's cool.

That's really cool.

Well, you mentioned 17.2 since we are currently on 17.1 and I thought this was

an excellent article that you linked to from gadget hacks, 43 cool new features

coming to your iPhone and 17.2.

Some of these are kind of, I know we've talked about before, but the others, I

was like, Hey, that's going to be really cool.

The journal app, for example, we've talked about and some of the additional

emoji components on there, but there's some really good art.

Like I'm even more excited about 17.2 now.

Yeah.

It's going to have a lot.

And you know, some of these features are not much more than just like one

additional setting in an app.

Um, so the number, the number 43 might actually, it might not feel like 43

different features, but they are different things and there are improvements here

and there, you know, you've got the big ones like the journal app, which is a

brand new app, and if you're interested in journaling and tracking your daily

activities, it's going to be exciting.

And then other ones are less important.

Like some of them that you're flipping by right here, but it just, it just

shows you that there's going to be a lot in this update.

And so I'm really, um, I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to it.

I didn't realize it was going to be as many like small, slight changes.

Like you're talking about in the music app and the app store app in the TV app.

Like, you know, and to me it sort of, but that just makes sense.

And I probably wouldn't even, you know, realize it other than just

the next time that opened it, it was like, Hey, that's kind of neat.

You know, the buttons in a different place, but I just like how he lays

that out here in the gadget tax site.

And it's like, Oh, okay.

Like you said, you know, each one of these may not justify its own

little listing here, uh, to, to get to 43, but there's, there's some really

cool, I think, you know, minor tweak slash upgrades in here that, uh, yeah,

that are going to, they're going to be helpful on that.

And like you said, you think it's going to be in maybe the next

week or two, right?

For 17.2.

Well, next week's Thanksgiving.

I don't think it's going to come out next week, but we're not that far away.

I mean, people seem to say, I think we're definitely going to

have it before the holidays.

So I wouldn't expect, you know, maybe the first, the last week of November,

first week, December, something like that.

Yeah.

Here's one of my favorite, the digital clock widget on your home screen.

I don't eat.

I usually don't put, I mean, most of the time I can look up in the upper

left corner and see the time.

Right.

But if I wanted to add a widget, the only option was the analog clock.

Isn't that correct before, but, but now you actually can

have a digital option there.

I mean, again, it's tiny minor tweak, but it's just neat that it, you

know, it's Lisa something there.

Uh, you also link to the watch.

OS 10 update.

No, what was this exactly here?

Oh yeah.

Oh, about swiping to change your watch faces.

Please explain a little bit more, my friend.

Yeah.

I mean, for a long time, um, you've been able to swipe between different

watch faces on your Apple watch just by, you know, swiping left to right.

And I do it a lot because I have like the watch face that I'm looking at right now

has like my circles and stuff.

I'm like trying to track my circles during the day, but then sometimes I

want to swipe over to like the Snoopy watch face, which is really funny.

Or I might want to swipe over to something that has the time really,

really big if I'm going to be outside in bright lights and I like.

Switching Apple watch faces.

Sure.

And it used to be so easy and now it's harder ever since the, uh, watch

OS 10, which came out, what a month or two ago now you need to first

push down on your screen, which just, you know, hold your finger on the

screen for two seconds until you get into the field, a little click.

Right.

Right.

And then you can use the digital crown or you can swipe back and forth.

And I just don't like that extra step of first having to push down.

I would, I would prefer to just swipe back and forth.

And so I was thrilled to see that at least in the current beta version of

10.2, it's an option that I don't think it's going to be on by default.

I think you have to go into settings and turn it on, but that's fine.

I'll go into settings and turn it on because I preferred it the

way that it used to be.

And I know it's a minor thing.

I'm like, why am I complaining about something so small?

But again, I do change my watch faces throughout the day.

And every time I do it now, it bothers me just a little bit.

And you know, nobody likes to be bothered even for a second or two, every

single day, multiple times a day.

So I really hope this feature comes out in 10.2.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I remember doing that not maybe as often as you, but

now that I can't do anything.

In other words, it seemed like that Apple should have swapped it out.

That feature was swiping back and forth with another feature.

Right.

But they just killed it.

Like there's nothing like, I just liked the idea that if I did want to switch

back and forth, that I would have that option.

Now I just accidentally kind of keep hitting widgets on here, which is not,

which is not good.

Okay, good.

That's a watchOS 10.2.

And we don't really watch out for.

Yeah.

We don't know when that's going to happen right on there.

So, you know, I mentioned our, where you're at segment, which we don't have

one today, we do our, I, our, in the no segment, we, I think we're going to

start having to have like a home automation segment, Jeff.

We keep coming up with these stories and I think it's just going to

get more and more interesting.

Uh, yeah, we'll think about that for our, uh, uh, automate my face.

Maybe for our home automation feature today, the, uh, Acara, Acquara,

Acquara E1 camera delivers home kit, secure video in a compact package.

I really liked the way this little gadget looks here.

Yeah.

Acara is one of the companies that they tend to be a little bit lower

priced, but they, but they're pretty good people.

I haven't tried any of them myself, but I know that people really like them

and they've got some stuff that works with a home kit, secure video.

As a reminder, you know, when you have a camera, whether it's external or

internal, many of the companies that sell the cameras will say that, you

know, they have a service that you need to pay for monthly and they will keep

your videos online so that you can go and you can view past videos.

And there have been instances in the past of some of these companies, you

know, they didn't program something correctly.

And so some third parties are able to view your videos and nobody would

certainly want to have a third party viewing videos from within your own house.

Right.

That's a real privacy invasion.

So one of the things I like about.

Apple's home kit, secure video system is that when your camera supports it,

all of the videos are, they're incredibly encrypted and yes, you can get to them

online, but Apple has super duper protections on it.

I trust Apple to do this correctly.

And so it's, it's a service that I can trust more to have online access.

So I have it turned on for, I have a Eero cameras at my house.

And I don't use Eero service.

They have one.

I just don't pay for it.

I don't use it.

I just use Apple's home kit, secure video.

And there are some downsides to like my cameras technically support 2k video,

but, um, Apple secure video only supports 1080 P.

So there's, there's some compromises to have it, but anyway, so.

If you're looking for a camera, whether it's an indoor camera like

this one, our outdoor camera, a feature you might want to have is not just

home kit support, but also Apple's, um, uh, the Apple's, uh, home kit, secure

video support, and this looks like a relatively low price to think it's about

like $60, it's a relatively low price camera that can sort of move around.

And, um, it's, uh, so it's, it's, it looks like a nice alternative.

It's something that I would definitely consider if I was in the market.

Could be something for the Christmas list.

I like it.

60, $60 on Amazon.

So.

Okay.

Very good.

It's also that time of the year, not just for Christmas, but

also the app store awards.

Uh, I gotta be honest.

I know we've covered this in the past and I gotta be honest.

I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to it because I feel like most

of the winners to me are, I take it for granted, like, okay, well, of course,

you know, I'm trying to remember a couple of the, the ones in the past, but

I'm like, well, that makes total sense this year.

I got to, I got a little skin in the game.

I feel like only because two of the three.

iPhone app of the year finalists are probably two of some of my favorite apps.

And I'm like, I don't know which one I would actually pick out of this.

So anyway, this page is great.

And also just quickly, by the way, I remember back in the day, they

used to do these app store awards and, and I would really more focus on like

local type, um, apps, mostly like games, for example, or, you know, something

that I could do like on, on the iPhone itself, but the two of these three apps

in my mind, I'm really relying probably more on the ability for it to connect

to the internet and also GPS capabilities.

So the three apps that are up for the iPhone app of the year finalists

are all trails, which I've had as my pick before, and then Duolingo,

which is a great app for my kids have been using that in the past when they

were learning different languages.

And the third finalist is flighty, which has also been one of my tips.

And so all trails is a way that I track like different trails.

If I'm hiking somewhere flighty is an absolute must have for me.

When I am traveling and flying, these are both great apps, Jeff.

I don't know.

I don't know what I would pick.

I want them both to win.

And I'll tell you to win really

Duolingo too.

Last year, when my wife and I traveled to Italy, I subscribed for a couple of

months to do a little bit to learn Italian and I didn't get very far in it,

but I'll tell you what, it was really helpful.

The Duolingo app is it's a great app for learning a language.

And so I knew the basics of Italian and I could sort of work my way around

menus and simple phrases simply because, you know, thanks to the Duolingo app.

So I have, because it sort of gamifies it a little bit and makes it fun to learn.

So these are all fantastic apps and these are just the app of the year finalists.

I mean, when you scroll down the page, there's tons of other apps, you know,

and I'm not a big game person.

So a lot of these games, I don't know, but there's lots of

really interesting things here.

And I love the idea that Apple will actually, you know, highlight these

apps so that you can learn about all these different ones that are out there

that really push the system, you know, to do its best or, you know, really

do something interesting and unique.

So it's, it's a great way to discover apps, just sort of scrolling through

the list and saying, huh, I might want to check this one out.

Yeah, because you know, all of these apps, anytime that Apple is going to pick one,

it's going to be a well-regarded, well-reviewed app.

I mean, they always do a very good job.

I just, I, I, I'm so torn.

Like I, I want all three of these to win the app of the year final

because they're so they're all so good.

And, and to be, and honestly just quickly, I don't know Duolingo as much,

but all trails and flighty just even over this past year, I have seen a

quite a number of excellent upgrades.

Like both of these companies have really put a lot into investing in that.

And to me, again, yeah.

To my earlier point, it's like, these are well used apps.

So I think you even mentioned it in your post today, Jeff, you're like, some of

these apps I have no idea about, but I want to go and try them, you know, just

so that we can be aware, like these are going to be some good apps on there, but.

Good luck.

Good luck to all of them.

And, and hoping that all of them could win.

That would be fantastic.

Well, let's take a moment quickly to thank our sponsor Lit Software.

We've talked about them a couple of times over the last few episodes.

And this is a company that you and I know very well, simply just because of our

professional career in the legal space that it just so happens, we also do the

professional career on the tech space.

And so this is a great mix of both of these things because Lit Software makes

some of the best apps that we recommend all the time for legal professionals.

If you're using an iPad mostly but it will also work on a Mac these days as well.

But if you're using an iPad, TrialPad is an excellent app for trial presentation

or frankly, any presentation.

I tell people all the time, don't get hung up on the trial part of it.

It is a great way to pull up a document and then zoom in or do a call out on a

specific area or a page or a sentence.

And then you can highlight using your iPad and then up on the screen, people

just see exactly what you highlight or what you underline, et cetera.

But Lit Software also makes another app that you've talked to and spoken about

quite a bit, TranscriptPad, which is a good way to summarize transcripts that we

might get from depositions or from court proceedings.

And it's a great way to organize all of these transcripts in one place and then

also apply issue tags.

Lit Software also...

And also, let me interrupt you for a second, Brett.

Just last week, I'm getting ready for a trial right now.

And I was talking to a whole bunch of other attorneys and we've lots of

depositions in the case and we're like, well, did some witness talk about X?

And while everybody else is fumbling around, in a second, I pulled up

TranscriptPad, instantly found, did a search across all the witnesses.

This is exactly what the witness said.

And they said it again down here.

So useful.

But anyway, sorry to interrupt, but I mean, TranscriptPad is fantastic.

Because I tell people that all the time, because I'm going to guess at least some

of those other folks that were in the room with you probably had paper copies

of those transcripts, right?

And so they were flipping back and forth.

It's just annoying to do.

Anyway, that's perfect.

That's an exact perfect example of why these are so great.

But as I said, we've done TrialPad, TranscriptPad.

Lit Software also makes DocReviewPad, which I don't see as many people using,

but it is an excellent app to be able to organize like a small-ish set of

documents that you might need to pull up for exactly the reason kind of along

the lines of what you just said, Jeff.

If you've got it like instead of a three-ring binder or a box of documents

that you might need to go and rumble around in, DocReviewPad allows you just

to instantly get to a specific document so you can pull it up even for reference.

But you can also then tag it with an issue designation or something else.

And then there is a fourth app that Lit Software includes in their Lit

Suite, which is called ExhibitsPad.

Now, that's a really very focused app that the developers created for giving

an iPad to like a jury, for example, if they need to have the documents

with them at the time, but it really, really works well when you need it.

Those are the four apps currently right now that are available in

the Lit Suite from Lit Software.

All of those apps come for $399 a year, which may initially sound a little crazy.

People always like, oh my goodness, like, you know, Angry Birds is free.

And I'm like, yeah, of course it is until you start having to pay for all the things.

But this is really professional grade software.

And you and I can both attest to the fact, Jeff, that even over all the years

that we've known, Lit Software, they continue to make amazing improvements.

Even as we spoke last week about now, the fact that you can sync text

and video in TranscriptPad, like that wasn't around, you know, eight months ago

or so, and the fact that they're continuing to make these improvements

is why this, this subscription makes sense.

Then what we'd just like to talk about quickly today is that's for an individual.

If you are at a bigger company or an organization or such as a law firm, for

example, and you would like to instead get multiple individuals up and running

on the Lit Software Lit Suite, there is an enterprise program that's available.

We'll have the links in the show notes so you can go and get some more information.

But there are some discounts available if you sign up for two years or three years

at a time so that you can put all of that into your budget and get that taken care of.

There is the ability that you can take a license and apply it to another iPad.

So some of the firms that I work with, Jeff, they may have, you know, 20 licenses

and they may have it assigned to certain individuals, but then they may also,

you know, somebody might leave the firm and they would need to reassign that

license to another individual that brings in their iPad, and you can absolutely

take care of that with the enterprise.

Or you can assign it to even iPads that are maybe just like, you know, firm wide

iPads that other people can use, that kind of a thing.

Anyway, we'll link to some of the additional information in here for the

enterprise option on this.

But again, this is multi-year licensing with discounted pricing.

There's other advantages.

You get some free training that's involved with that so that you can make sure

everybody's up to speed on it.

And I would just like to say, you know, if you've heard about these apps, even us

talking about them, or you've heard about it from other people that you connect

with, you can just go and use a seven day free trial for any of these apps.

You know, just try it out.

You get full access to all of this.

In fact, right here on the page, here's a free trial component here.

You can go and download those for either your Mac or for your iPad.

Try it out.

See how you can use it.

See how great it is.

You can ask us questions if you need to.

And then if at that point, once you're convinced you can reach out to us or even

the folks at Lit Software, if you wanted to talk to them about an enterprise

license on there.

Anything else you have to add, Jeff, on that?

I love the apps.

Use them all the time.

That was pretty simple.

We just, we do want to say thank you to Lit Software for being a sponsor here.

You can tell both of us, well, Jeff didn't get a chance to talk too much today, but

you can tell that both of us are big fans of these apps and happy to answer any

questions on that.

All right.

In the know, well, since I just talked a lot, Jeff, how about you take the first,

uh, the first, uh, slab?

What is your tip for in the know today?

So if you were the sort of person who enjoys listening to podcasts, and since

you're listening to this one, I hope that that includes you there, you know, that

there's a number of different podcasts apps out there, but the one that I

encourage people to use is called Overcast.

It is fantastic.

You know, Apple's built in podcast app is good.

It does get better every year, but Overcast is really the best one and you can use it

for free and you can get access to advanced features by paying a very small fee every

year.

There's so many things that I love about Overcast, but the one I was going to talk

about today is playlists because I suspected, you know, you don't just listen to one

podcast.

You have a bunch of podcasts you listen to and the Overcast app does a great job of

allowing you to have different playlists, um, so that to control what you want to

listen to.

And so, for example, I have a single playlist called new, which is the main

playlist that I use and what it does, it includes just about all episodes of all of

my podcasts with a few exceptions.

And I have it sorted newest to oldest because like, you know, maybe, um, if I have a

podcast I listened to, you know, I may have missed the episode that came out two weeks

ago, but if I go listen to it right now, I don't want to listen to two weeks ago's

episode.

I want to listen to the most recent one because it's the current news.

If it's like a news oriented podcast like this one is.

Um, so I have them sorted newest to oldest and you know, I, I have, you know, all the

stuff, but then I will exclude some and you know, then another thing you can do with the

list is you can have priority podcasts.

So if you know that of all the podcasts I listened to, you know, these two or three

are my favorite, they will go up to the top of the list automatically.

And so the end result is every time I open the list of new, it includes, you know, at

the very top are the ones that I'm going to want to listen to first.

And then it's going to have the latest episodes of the podcast that I want.

And for a lot of my podcasts listening, that works great, but then there's other

types of podcasts too.

There are some podcasts I call them sort of episodic podcasts where I want to listen

to them in order.

Sometimes it's because it's a podcast that, um, isn't like a time related one.

Like, you know, I have some podcasts that just describe like movies and books and

stuff like that.

And they're, they're sort of, you know, you could listen to them in any order.

I have some space podcasts I listened to that.

Yeah, they have the current news of space, but you can just sort of listen to them in

order.

And I just prefer to listen to them from oldest to newest.

And so I'll have a separate list of those podcasts or another good example is one of

the things that I love doing.

If there's a show that I really, really enjoy listening, enjoy watching, like for

example, the for all mankind, uh, show on Apple TV plus, which I, which I always brag

about and I love it.

There's a great podcast I listened to called, uh, NASA vending machine where, uh,

Jason Snow and Dan Moore and talk about each episode, but that's one that I don't

want that when they have a new episode come out, I don't want it to go to the top of

my list because I may not have seen the episode yet.

So you like last thing you want to be doing is driving around in the car and I

finished one podcast and suddenly they start spoiling the show that I haven't seen

yet.

And so I might put that in a separate list and have it go oldest to newest because

I'm going to want to listen to that order.

So, um, I like that you could have different lists.

Um, there's also a built-in one called in progress, which is nice because, you know,

sometimes I might start listening to a podcast and then you end up listening to a

different one.

And the next thing you know, you sort of forgot that you never listened to the

second half of that podcast.

And if it's a news related podcast, maybe it's no longer relevant, but if it's not,

it's like, Oh yeah, I do want to go back and listen to the rest of it.

So this list that's called in progress, you could just easily see here's the ones

that I did not finish listening to.

If I want to go back to them.

Um, and then finally you can have a list called a queue.

This is one of their built-in options and it's, you know, sometimes I will be reading

or listening or you, you learn about a specific episode of a specific podcast and

you're like, you know, I want to listen to that one day.

Maybe they interviewed an author of a book that I really enjoyed.

And so I will take that episode and I'll just put it in the queue playlist and

there, therefore at some point in the future, when I'm just like looking for

something, I would say, Oh yeah, this is sort of, it's like bookmarking.

It's like I bookmarked it that at some point in the future, I want to listen to

it.

If I really enjoy it, maybe I'll go ahead and subscribe to that podcast to listen

to all of their episodes.

But oftentimes, no, I just want to hear like one specific episode of just this one,

you know, specific podcast because of something that they talked about.

So the ability to use the different lists is something that makes overcast really,

really effective.

I love it.

So, you know, and the idea that they're smart enough and that they're

automatically updating, it's just one, I mean, there's a million things I love

about overcast app, but this one feature alone makes it great.

This on top of all the other features it has just for me makes it the app to use.

I think that your new playlist is brilliant.

I guess I had turned that off.

Like I used to, I only used a couple of playlists, which I'll talk about in just

a minute, but that's fantastic.

I love that idea about like the new playlist because probably like you, Jeff,

I've got so many podcasts that I have to scroll down to find the podcast first and

then I go into the episodes.

But if I could just tap at the very top.

Oh, that's good.

In fact, for some reason I turned off the in progress one as well, and now I just

turned it back on because now I can jump back.

Yeah, I could jump back to the ones that, uh, that, that I use.

Well, that's brilliant.

And I would just say, we know from our podcast stats that a lot of you out there

are probably using, are using overcast, which is great.

So here's the little Easter egg that I found this past week in overcast Jeff.

This I thought was absolutely brilliant and I hadn't seen anybody post about this.

So here is the situation.

I have a lot of podcasts in my overcast app on my iPhone, but when I go out walking

or running or hiking, I don't like to take my iPhone unless I have to, but I have my

Apple watch, right?

So what I do is I install the overcast app on my Apple watch.

This is going to take a little bit of explanation, but go with me here.

I have the overcast app on my watch and I can tell the overcast app on my Apple

watch that I want to synchronize or download the, the episodes from this

particular playlist in my iPhone.

So I, I right now I've got, uh, an educational podcast that I've got several

episodes that I wanted to listen to when I was out walking, right?

So I created a playlist, just like what we talked about on my iPhone on the overcast

app, and I, and then I went to my Apple watch in the overcast app on the Apple

watch and I said, download the episodes from this playlist.

And so what happens is the Apple watch and the iPhone synchronize, right?

So there's a little, there's a little button that you can tap to synchronize

the overcast app on the watch and your iPhone.

And it does a good job.

Most of the time of downloading those episodes in that playlist.

But there was a time this past week when I needed to go quickly.

I didn't have time for everything to synchronize up.

So I went into my Apple watch on my, uh, overcast app and I said, I want

this episode to download now.

And when I did that, there was an option there that allows me to download when it

was charging or to download when, uh, right now, but I have to have the

Apple watch face open at all times.

Here's a little video.

I found one video online that walks through this because when I said, I want

to watch it, I want to keep the screen on.

There is a little hidden game inside the app.

So here's this gentleman going in.

There's a little synchronization button in this video, and I know

people listening can't see it, but now when he goes into this list,

there's the download button.

He taps the download button.

You can download it when charging or keep the screen on.

And if you tap, keep the screen on, meaning that you don't want the screen

to go off, so you have to keep the screen on and as it's on Marco Armin,

put a little tiny game on your Apple watch.

Do you see it?

It's like, it looks like the little pong game, but the little

bricks that you're hitting, or I don't know, I forget what the day I call it

pong, but it was something else, right?

A brick smasher or something like that.

So you have to use the digital crown to move the little slider at the bottom

to hit the little ball that goes up and he's got a cute little thing of all of

the little icons of the podcast that you have downloaded on there.

That's very clever.

This was absolutely brilliant.

You have to keep the screen.

You have to keep the Apple watch on anyway for it to continue doing the right.

And this gives you something to do to keep your screen on.

I have, I, Brett, I had never heard of this before.

When you, when you put this in the show notes, I'm like, what are you talking about?

I have never seen this, but this is very, very clever.

And I agree with you on the utility, by the way.

It's I also like you will sometimes like to download a podcast directly to my Apple

watch because I'm just listening to it directly from there.

Right.

Um, but this is very clever that he came up with this.

Um, and see, this just shows you the people, when you think about things like

that, it shows that you have an app developer that is really, really thinking

about the features of their app.

That's one of the reasons I love overcast so much.

So thank you to Chris, Jay Jebet who posted this on Mastodon, what about a year ago or

so, and I agree, he calls this hecking delightful.

And I absolutely agree.

It was just such a foot.

Like I actually didn't, I think I got out walking late Jeff, because I sat there

playing this silly game because I'm just like, I had no idea something like that

was in, but thank you, Marco.

Uh, who is the developer of overcast by the way.

Uh, you know, it's almost like that's a pick.

He should get an Apple app store award.

Uh, if he hasn't already, I think it should.

All right.

Well, we want to quickly thank again, our sponsor for today, lit software.

If you have any more questions, you can go to lit software.com or certainly

reach out to one of us.

We are more than happy to talk about it.

Jeff has multiple posts on iPhone JD, where you can go and learn a little bit

more about any of these apps as we've talked about, uh, woo, good stuff today.

Thanks Jeff.

As always.

And we'll talk with you next week.

Thanks, Brett.

And for all of our listeners in the United States, I'll have a great

Thanksgiving next week.