124: Black Fridays, Breakfast Browsers, and Fuzzy Feelings

Welcome to In the News for November 24th, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Happy Black Friday, Brett.

Happy Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, well, at least for our US of A based listeners.

We appreciate everyone.

There's a couple of people that I talk with up in Canada throughout the year and they

always give me a hard time, it's like, oh man, you guys get off this week.

But they were off like what, July, whatever it is.

They had their Thanksgiving a while ago.

That's right.

They had it already.

But because it is Black Friday, obviously so many people know, no matter what country

that you live in, at least a lot of retailers and online retailers have a very big sale

going on, typically known as the Black Friday or to stretch it out just a little bit more,

the Cyber Monday deals.

And boy, there have already been quite a number.

You link to several things here today, Jeff, which I just think was great.

That's why we wanted to be on today because it's a fun time to look around and see what's

on sale.

It is.

You know, part of me rolls my eyes at all this Black Friday stuff.

You think of the people waking up at four o'clock in the morning to line up in front

of a Walmart or something.

But the reality is like a lot of this tech stuff that we all lust after, either for ourselves

or as a gift to give someone else, you know, they're really cool items.

It's just like, can I justify spending X on this thing?

And there are legitimately really good sales today.

It literally is worth it if you've been on the fence about some of these items.

There's some really good ones here.

I'm going to start with this.

You want to start off with the iPad?

Yeah, I'm going to start with this iPad one.

You know, there's the three levels of the iPad.

There's the entry level.

There's the iPad Air and there's the high end iPad Pro.

And you know, when lawyers and people talk to me, you know, I'm always like, you know,

the iPad Air is sort of the sweet spot right there in the middle.

But you know, this entry level iPad, if you just want something simple, it's a really

nice machine, you know, and there was a big step up when Apple went between the ninth

generation and the current 10th generation.

It's a really nice, nice computer.

So our iPad tablet.

And then with the new Apple pencil, you can actually have like a decent pencil with USB

C with it.

So and what is the price of this thing?

It's only three hundred and forty nine dollars instead of four forty nine.

Wow.

Fifty for a decent laptop.

You know, I've seen you can get the ninth generation sometimes for even cheaper.

They had some sales earlier this week.

But I mean, this is a good iPad that really does what you need.

And at three hundred fifty bucks.

Wow.

That's a hundred dollars off, Jeff.

A hundred dollars off of that regular iPad.

And again, I know my preference I lean toward, especially for for professionals.

If you're going to use an iPad in any kind of a professional capacity, not necessarily

just legal aspect, but I usually go for the iPad pro because I think it's worth a little

bit of an extra investment there.

But this is still such a great one to have around the house or if you've got little kids.

I mean, that's really an amazing deal that you have for the iPad there.

And if you're not going to be an intense user, but you just want to have something that works,

this is going to be good.

It's really going to be absolutely.

And like you said, the pencil, you got to get the pencil along with it as well.

Yeah, we just talked a few weeks ago about the new Apple pencil USB.

It doesn't have all of the features, but it's pretty cheap and it's even cheaper today.

You can get it for seventy one bucks.

So, you know, you pay this this one for seventy one bucks, which is 10 percent off.

You pair it with a three fifty iPad.

You know, you've got a pretty, pretty sophisticated, you know, set up there for really not much

money.

Yeah.

That's really crazy.

I like that there.

I like that there's crazy deal deals on either regular air pods or the air pods pro.

Like this just seems like it's still a hot item.

Even this year, I remember last year was a hot item, Jeff.

But even this year, I'm seeing all kinds of crazy deals on the regular air pods and the

air pods pro.

This may be the best one I've seen.

In fact, a number of times that I've seen this morning is that you can get air pods

at all time low prices if you get them today.

And these are this is like perfect because I mean, I'm using your pods right now to listen

to you.

I mean, I've got air pods.

They work fantastically.

Everybody should have them.

And over time, you might want to upgrade from the regular to the pro.

And oh, my goodness, what a perfect gift.

You know, you're looking for the perfect gift for a teenager.

Perfect gift for anybody.

I mean, I love the pods I use.

You know, I live in the Apple ecosystem.

So of course, I use my air pods, you know, with all of my Apple devices.

But you know, as we're sitting here right now, Brett, my air pods are actually connected

to my Windows PC.

And it is my preferred way to be listening to audio on my Windows.

So I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, air pods are made for Windows computers, but

that just shows how versatile they are.

They work with everything.

They are great.

You can get the entry level ones.

I mean, what is it?

Seventy nine, seventy nine ninety nine.

So it's normally one hundred and thirty dollars and it's really, really good price.

And even the regular air pods, even the air pods pro are one hundred ninety and those

are fantastic.

Oh, it's just great, great prices.

The regular the air pods pro second generation now with USB C case, right?

You can't get the light.

That's that's even better than what I have.

I know that's the USB C casing.

I got to be honest with you.

I mean, I pretty much use my air pods pro every single day.

People that listen to us know that.

I mean, I constantly have them in and I've gotten it for all the family because even

from a school aspect, you know, now even when I want to just zone everything out, whether

wherever I am, even with the family in the house, sometimes I would use these because

it just helps me kind of focus.

But now the USB C and I keep thinking I need to get the USB C, even though there's not

really that much different.

There may be a little bit of tweaks on the technology side, but one hundred and eighty

nine dollars when it's regular two hundred and forty nine.

I will say I have seen a little bit less even if you are lucky enough either to be in a

Costco or you have seen like there's, you know, I don't know, some, you know, temporary

deals that I've seen that where I've seen it go just a little bit lower even.

But you got to jump on that quick because there are a lot of people that are doing that.

And I would say for the air pods, you can get them for under two hundred bucks.

You're getting a deal.

I mean, whether whether it's one eighty five, one eighty one, absolutely anything below

two hundred dollars on the air pods pro is good.

And one more thing before you move on.

You mentioned just just putting out the world.

Of course, air pods are great if you're listening to something, whether it's music or podcasts.

But I have literally put my air pods in my ear, turned on noise cancellation and not

played anything just because I was trying to work.

And it's not it doesn't make the outside world silent, but it just brings everything down.

So it makes a difference.

Yeah, I was just thinking I I saw even this morning, if I'm not correct.

Yes.

If you want the air pods, Max, they are also on sale.

So they are.

That's a hundred dollars off of the air pods.

Max at Amazon right now.

He normally is five hundred and forty nine dollars.

They are four hundred and forty nine dollars.

I don't think I'm going to let my daughter know that because she bought some and I think

she paid a little bit more than that.

But that's an amazing deal on there as well.

By the way, we'll have links to all of these items that we're mentioning today in the show

notes.

And both Jeff and I have affiliate links to Amazon and some other places.

So we'll make sure that we are very transparent in that you can go to Amazon dot com and look

up the devices yourself or you can use our affiliate links.

And that always is helpful to us as well, which we appreciate.

Another interesting one you link to today.

I didn't even see this, but this is a James Thompson, right?

The long, long revered, longtime revered developer of Mac apps, including Peacock.

He has his apps on sale now for Black Friday, which is great.

It was like forty two percent off, which is great.

That's sort of his joke is 42 percent because 42 is the number he uses on his icon.

I think most of his discounts are actually 50 percent off.

But it's just an example that even indie developers, you know, if you look around the app store

today, you can get some good deals.

And you know, if you weren't going to spend ten bucks on Peacock for the iPhone or for

the Mac, it's five bucks today.

So and his little his little dice app, which is a cute way of rolling the dice in 3D.

It's a dollar.

You know, it's just a buck for goodness sakes.

Even if you just play with it a few times, it's worth the buck.

He has been around for so long.

I think it wasn't too long ago there.

He was on the Mac break weekly podcast and it was just such a delight to hear him.

And you know, all the people that are that are on that, all the hosts, just how much

that they appreciate him.

Speaking of, I don't think any of these hosts from the Mac Power Users podcast was on that

one.

But can I just ask you, Jeff, to please stop linking to things like this?

Oh, my goodness.

There's so many good items in here from David Sparks and Stephen Hackett, their Mac Power

Users podcast, which has gone on for so long.

There's so many great little items in here that they link to for their like Black Friday

or their Christmas special that they did.

Of course, I encourage you to listen to their show because it's a great show.

But even if all you do is what Brett is doing on the screen right now, which is just scroll

through the link of items, this will just give you some ideas of, you know, and some

of these are Black Friday.

The many of them are just just good ideas.

And I never thought about getting something like that for myself.

So they had they had a great list.

I like to see some of the overlap here.

They talk about the Time Porter, you know, the 12 South Time Porter watch band, Wal-Mart.

I like we talked about that.

It's only a little bit ago.

Anyway, we'll link to that.

I mean, we appreciate you listening to our podcast.

But man, if there's some other podcasts out there, Mac Power Users, probably many of you

already know about that.

But keep going.

Just a few more links quickly.

Apple AirTags.

Yeah, it's the one that keeps on giving.

Yeah, we always talk about it.

But you know, whenever the AirTags dip below 80 bucks and right now they're right there

at seventy nine ninety nine, it's a good it's a good deal on a four pack.

The lowest that I've really ever seen AirTags are about seventy five, seventy four bucks.

But you know, they're right around there.

These go on sale much more routinely than the other items that we've talked about today.

But nevertheless, if you're ready to get some AirTags, you know, I would don't pay one hundred

dollars for your tax.

At least, you know, wait for them to dip down to about 80 or so and Amazon save yourself

20 bucks.

So can I just tell you a quick little story, Jeff?

I saw something.

I got the Staples store little ad weekly ad.

Right.

And on the front or I don't think it was on the front.

It was Barry.

But I saw this.

They were selling a four pack of AirTags for seventy dollars in person like you had to

be in the store in person.

And so I'm thinking, well, you know, this is part of my duty as a podcast host that I

need to go and purchase this and see.

Sure enough, it was like one day only.

It was last Sunday.

I boogie to the store as quickly as I could, as soon as I could in the morning.

And I mean, I don't think it was an hour and a half after after they opened.

And guess what?

They were all sold out.

I was so disappointed.

I was so mad.

I don't like is there anything else?

Is there any any other place?

But anyway, so just so that you can see, like Jeff said, they probably are not going to

go less than seventy five dollars.

But if you could see, you know, if you just were able to get up early, early last Sunday

morning, go to Staples, it was worth it.

A couple of other things I think.

Did you link to one of these or no?

I've seen some of these.

The anchor prime chargers, the Gann prime chargers.

I've talked about this before because here is the one that I purchased, I think maybe

just maybe eight months ago, Jeff, the anchor one hundred and twenty watt USB charger.

This is the anchor seven three seven.

I think I paid ninety four ninety nine for it.

Ninety five dollars for it.

And look at it today, this Black Friday sale on Amazon is sixty dollars.

That's an amazing.

Now, there's there's others on there.

You may not need one hundred and twenty watt, but I got to tell you, this is the only thing

that I travel with.

And I think somebody put out a YouTube comment on our show from last week, Jeff, where they

were asking, like, can you have a recommendation for a travel plug or, you know, just one little

brick that I can take with me that can charge my MacBook Air, my iPad, my iPhone.

And this is it.

And my AirPods Pro, I take this one little hundred and twenty watt USB charger brick

with me everywhere that I go, Jeff, and I can plug and charge all of my devices.

You know, if I get all my devices in, it doesn't charge as fast as if I had just one device

in there.

But these anchor prime charges are on sale and they're amazing.

This is a sixty seven watt USB charger for only thirty eight dollars.

So that's a good price as well.

And probably the sixty seven watt is more than enough for most people.

I just wanted the one twenty watt because I had a MacBook Pro that I wanted to charge.

That's going to need more power.

Yeah.

Let me say something about these chargers, these sorts of things, which are wall chargers

and portable batteries.

Those two categories of devices are great gifts and they're great for yourself because

they're always, always useful.

I will tell you something, though, on the chargers, you know, here's my advice on the

chargers.

First of all, both of them that you've linked to are the GAN, the Gallium Nitride Chargers,

G little A and the capital N.

And that's the next generation of charger.

We've talked about them in the past.

It means that they're much more compact.

It also has traditionally meant that they're more expensive.

But when you take advantage of the sales that you're linking to today, they're now the

same price as a non GAN charger.

So you're getting something that is higher capacity, smaller size without paying more

for it.

So that's fantastic.

The second thing I'll say about all of these charges is be careful because you can get

what looks like to be a great deal on Amazon or anywhere else.

But you really got to be careful about the quality of the manufacturer for chargers.

Because you can get cheap ones that are cheaply made and they look from the outside just like

an Apple charger or just like an Anker charger and they are crap and they can blow out your

devices so or just short.

And maybe if it doesn't hurt your devices, the device, the charger itself goes away.

So you know, there's a couple of brands out there that we recommend from time to time.

Anker is a good one.

Apple, of course, is an excellent one.

And you sometimes pay more for them, but I do think it's worth it.

Now you take advantage of a sale like this and you get the best of all worlds because

you get a name brand that you're paying a good price on.

So this is sort of like the perfect convergence for these two things that you're showing off

right now.

Good prices on really good quality things.

I'm so glad you mentioned that because I'm exactly in that camp right now, Jeff.

I used to get some of the cheapo knockoff things, but no more worth it.

I'm just, it's not worth it.

And you know, we've seen some of those and I think there was even a link and maybe the

Mac power users podcast where they were showing like CT scans of like knockoff AirPods pro

versus the actual Apple ones.

And we did this the other day with what the USB-C cables, right?

And one of our shows and it just shows like there's so much more that goes into the internal

guts of these things that I just don't want to take a chance anymore.

Like to me, this is well worth the investment there.

So thanks.

Oh, okay.

A couple more things quickly.

How about stands?

We've been talking about stands for the iPhone mainly because of the standby mode.

You had an excellent post on iPhone JD not too long ago, Jeff, where you were talking

about the importance of this and hey, there's some, there's some, there's some stands that

are on sale.

Now we like the one from, from anchor but there's also the 12 South one.

And was there another one there?

Oh, I think there was one, I think for Belkin that's on there, but any of those are going

to be good.

My favorite two are the anchor three and one cube, which is right in front of me right

now it's a six inches in front of me and it's nice because it's small, it's compact, but

he can charge your three devices.

He can charge your iPhone and your Apple watch and one other device.

I off like my AirPods, for example, just, you know, through, through backstage charging

the 12 South one does the same thing.

Now both of these are 150, which I know seems expensive, but you are charging three things

at once and you're charging them at the maximum possible speeds.

So one 50 is actually a pretty reasonable price for these things.

I love them both.

I noticed this morning that if you get the anchor one directly from anchor, instead of

paying 150, it's only 135.

So you save 10%, you save 15 bucks.

However the downside is I think that you noticed that you get it between January 31st and February

29th.

So you can save 15 bucks and wait two months, or you can go to Amazon, spend the extra 15

bucks and get it like literally tomorrow.

So let me see, Jeff, I think if I'm not mistaken, did I just see this?

Oh yeah.

Right now, if you hurry and we'll get this podcast up as quick as possible, look at that.

Do have a 10% apply a coupon on amazon.com.

Bravo, Mr. Bernie.

Good job.

Check that box right there.

Now it all depends if Amazon has the quantity right in their warehouses.

It says three delivery tomorrow on the side.

You know, goodness, this very nice.

I might have to pull the trigger right there, right here, live on camera as we do that.

Anyway, those are some good sales.

I think we got a couple more picks later on, but let's move on, shall we?

I know people are like, Hey, this is the black Friday special.

Well yeah, it is kind of.

It is sort of, yeah, exactly.

We're having fun.

It's a little bit nice, but let's get to something that's even maybe more important.

My friend, Jeff, congratulations for 15 years of iPhone JD.

I saw that you posted on this.

I always enjoy your posts every year that you do when you go through like the top 10

posts over the year.

You also go through and show the top visitors, like the locations where your top visitors

came from.

I mean, this is such a milestone for you.

Even your law firm acknowledged you this past week.

That was nice.

Richard says iPhone JD celebrates 15 years, the oldest and largest website for lawyers

using iPhones and iPads.

Congratulations, Jeff.

That's nice of the folks in my firm's marketing office were looking out for you.

That was very, very nice.

Yeah, I tell you, it is funny though, how time flies, Brett.

I was thinking the other day, because my son is a senior in high school and I'm thinking,

you know, how much time do you spend in high school and how much time do you spend in college?

And for someone like me that went to law school and YouTuber, I spent, you know, eight, nine,

10, I spent 11 years just going from high school to college to law school.

And I think of, you know, that's a huge, huge portion of my life.

And yet, you know, iPhone JD has been around for even longer than that.

The iPhone itself has been around for so long.

I mean, there's still this part of me that feels like the iPhone is brand new, because

I'm still remembering using the BlackBerrys and using the other devices we used to use.

And here we are, the iPhone, you know, for kids like my daughter, who's 16 years old,

she doesn't even know a world in which an iPhone didn't exist.

You know, it's always been around.

So it's, it's fun to do.

I enjoy doing these annual posts because it sort of gives me an excuse to say what you

can look at the Google analytics at which posts got lots of readers.

I don't know if that tells you anything, but you know, it's things like getting new batteries

for your air tags, which I just laugh at because it's because all of us bought air tags about

two years ago when they came out.

And so it was time to get replacement batteries and things like the good notes app, which

I love so much for taking handwritten notes.

And and of course, that standby post we're talking about, which not only talks about

the external things to pay 150 bucks or maybe less on, but also just how to, how to make

the best use of the mode.

So I, it was fun for me to just sort of look through what were the posts that got lots

of lots of reads.

And I'm like, Oh, there you go.

And the visitors too.

I mean, this year, the number one city for iPhone JD readers was London.

And that's been the case a couple of years in the past.

But we started off today's podcast with you saying, you know, I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving

if you were here in the US, but you know, professionals using iPhones truly is a worldwide

thing and we have lots of people listening to us, listening to this podcast from places,

you know, England and Australia and all around the world, Canada.

And it truly is a global thing.

So I like how you start off this in 2008, I took a picture of my iPhone sitting on top

of a yellow legal pad and you published your first post and there it is.

And you're still using that picture today.

Like this becomes so iconic, Jeff, in the sense that like, you know, you're at iPhone

JD.com when you see the yellow legal pad with the original iPhone.

Very old iPhone.

Yeah, very old.

That's good stuff.

I like it.

You know, once upon a time when all the family was gathered around for Thanksgiving, maybe

there was a radio, you know, people gather around the radio.

To your point, Jeff, that you said your daughter may not even know how to turn on a radio these

days.

I don't think my kids would, but they do know how to get into a playlist, a shared playlist,

their iPhone, whether that's Spotify or Apple music.

You link to a story today from Michael Poteau where he's talking about Apple music, collaborative

playlists that are coming out in iOS 17.2.

Yeah, this is a cool feature.

You know, playlists have been around forever.

And in fact, again, talking about my daughter, she has her, I was driving her in the car

the other day and she wanted to play some music and she's like, oh, well, dad, I have

the best playlist because of course I was curating her playlist, the great songs on

it.

Now I'm sure what my daughter really wants is a playlist that she can collaborate on

with her dad so that I can add my songs to it too.

That's she's, she's really been looking forward to this future.

Exactly.

But in all seriousness, this is a fun feature coming in the next version of the iOS so that,

you know, you can have, you know, two friends can, can each collaborate on the same playlist.

And that's fun because that way, you know, sometimes these are just surprised by someone

else has added something cool to your playlist.

So it's, it's a simple feature.

Why not, you know, share it like this?

I'm sure you're going to tell me that Spotify has had this for years now.

I know they're always ahead of Apple music when it comes to this stuff, but at least

it's coming to Apple music now.

So absolutely.

Sometimes I feel like the Android user is like, oh my goodness, we've had that for years

and years.

But you know me that I do both the Spotify and the Apple music, which by the way, just

quickly thinking about Apple music, going back to that David Sparks, Mac power users

podcast.

I always enjoy David puts together a jazz centric Christmas music playlist.

And so, you know, I'll have the link of the show notes for that as well.

I've already listened to it this morning and that's only a, he does it for Apple music.

But anyway, this collaborative playlist is a good thing.

We've always enjoyed it as a family on Spotify, not because we're the card.

Typically my daughter takes over the entire playlist, but in some cases, especially for

Christmas, I don't know, I was making a joke about it, but it is fun to have a collaboration

playlist because then we can all, you know, put in some additional songs that we want

to listen to, which is great.

And maybe at the same time you might want to download a new web browser for your iPhone.

I feel like there's so many web browsers and I always continue to come back to Safari just

for the basics on this, but there are some other ones out there that duck, duck, go for

example.

And I know some people will even use that.

It used to be the Firefox as the edge browser even, but this is the the quiche browser.

I'm assuming it's quiche as in the breakfast quiche.

Quiche browser is a beautiful and modular web browser for iOS.

We linked to one Mac stories today.

The reason this jumped out at me is that, I mean, although you did name a couple of

them there and, you know, iCab and some others, but you know, web browsers don't come out

that often, especially, especially for the iPhone because it's really all Safari on the

iPhone.

And so when someone takes the trouble to try to come up with something interesting, I think

it's worth just mentioning it so folks can check it out.

And this one is interesting because it's a hundred percent customizable.

You can decide just about every little button and do dad and this, you know, I've mentioned

in the past that one of the reasons that I enjoy using the carrot weather app is because

it's infinitely customizable.

So I can make exactly the weather app that I want.

And this is the same approach for the browser.

I mean, you can, you know, any little features that maybe most people would never even use

in a browser, but if you want to have a button for it, you can make a button for it.

And so, you know, I just applaud the creativity.

Now at the end of the day, Safari does what I need and that's what I'm going to stick

with.

But I love that people are still coming up with innovative approaches.

So, you know, a big clap of the hands and I hope that the quiche browser, you know,

does some, you know, does well for the developer so that people can, you know, continue to

do something new.

Yeah.

This is a well done review.

I like it here in the quiche browser.

Every button can be moved and customized.

If you're not the kind of person who likes to tweak the placement of every interface

element, this may sound a little overwhelming and it does, but I got to tell you, I think

I'm going to download this and just try it out because, you know, I do want to see if

there's something else maybe that I feel like would work a little bit better for me.

So nice review on that.

Now a little bit of a scary story.

Yeah.

Well, I sometimes wish you wouldn't link to, you know, all the items that I got to buy

and get out of my bank account.

I wish you wouldn't link to some of these stories sometimes.

Secretive White House surveillance program gives cops access to trillions of US phone

records.

Not only does that sound scary.

Number two, it usually is.

It sounds like it's targeted for AT&T users of which I am.

And number three, it's actually not.

It's actually not.

I'll come back to that in a second.

But it sounds like it's been going on for a long time, right?

Yeah.

This is the DAS program, data analytical services.

Yeah.

You know, the idea is that if certain people are suspected of crimes, you know, in the

long days, you know, the government might try to get a tap on your line or something

like that.

But in today's digital age, I mean, it's all electronic.

And so what they're able to do with the service is not only can they get a quote unquote digital

tap so they can get all the information about your phone use if you're the target of a crime,

which that part seems understandable, but it extends out.

So any person that the target of the crime communicates with, they get all of their records

and any person that that person communicates with, they get all of their records.

And you only need to branch out a couple layers before you get to, what did you say, trillions

of US phone records.

And although AT&T is the one cooperating with the government.

And again, I know that this is coming from the right place, that they're trying to help

the Department of Justice get the bad guys.

But it's so expansive.

Although AT&T is the one that's doing it, it's AT&T because they own the backbone that

goes back to Ma Bell.

So it doesn't really matter what if you're in the United States, you could be using,

you know, and this is also mobile records, not just landlines.

So because of so much of the backbone of the internet is through AT&T, the fact that you're

using Verizon or T-Mobile or some other company, the records are still going through AT&T systems,

the communications.

And so it's still being shared with the government.

So it's, you know, these things are always so difficult for me because yes, you want

the government to have access to catch the bad guys, but you always know that there are

a part of government, not to be too much of a conspiracy theorist, but the tinfoil hat,

but that could be using it for other purposes.

And, you know, we learned so much through Ed Snowden and everything else.

You know, it's a tough situation.

I don't have good answers, but it is nice to be informed about it.

And so like, you know, the one thing I would say is read this article that was in Wired.

And I also linked to something from John Gruber and Daring Fireball where he has a take on

it.

It's nice to sort of just at least understand what the privacy risks are out there.

Can you do anything about it as just as a user?

No, but at least you can be better informed.

And if things do go too far, perhaps we can call our elected leaders and talk about it.

But you know, hopefully there's some degree of at least knowing about it is better than

not knowing about it.

Exactly.

And that's really kind of the way that I left it to Jeff.

I'm like, well, okay, at least I'm aware of it now.

Apparently the program used to be called Hemisphere and it's been around since 2013.

The program has been funded and not funded kind of off and on throughout the years on

there.

But anyway, great story on Wired and thank you Wired, obviously, as always for kind of

exposing that.

But yeah, the comments from John Gruber are interesting just to kind of keep in mind as

well.

But at the end of the day, I guess a couple of thoughts quickly.

Yeah, I really can't do anything about it necessarily.

I'm just being aware of it.

And number two, I guess I kind of always suspected and thought this kind of stuff was probably

going on anyway.

I mean, I hate to say it that way, but it's like it doesn't surprise me maybe is a better

way to look at it there.

And kind of a similar type of a story or maybe from a different angle here.

Again, I always figured that Apple had some kind of secret labs or layers or something

where they were doing testing on different products, either from a security standpoint,

where I would think there's got to be places where Apple is testing how much punishment

that a phone can take before it starts cracking the screen, things like that.

But this is a really interesting story from The Independent, why Apple is working hard

to break into its own iPhones.

And this is really from a security aspect.

This doesn't surprise me at all.

In fact, I expected that Apple would have some secret places where this was going on.

I'm surprised we even heard about it here from this one in Paris, but there's got to

be secret locations around the world.

I'm guessing that Apple is also maintaining.

Yeah, you have to wonder if Apple has cooperated to a certain degree with this Andrew Griffin

with The Independent in the UK.

Apparently there's this lab in Paris that employs some of the smartest people in there,

basically white hat hackers, some of the some of the smartest people in security.

And their job is just to work 24 seven to try to break into the iPhone.

And the reality is that as the iPhone gets more complicated, as all of these internet

technologies become more complicated, there's always going to be some holes.

And if hackers can find the holes and exploit them for buffer overruns and all these technical

things that are way beyond our understanding, but it allows them to sort of crack into the

system and take advantage of it.

And we know that there are sophisticated companies like the one in Israel we talked about in

the past that can use a package of software to that's right.

They're hired by governments to break into phones and stuff.

This is Apple itself, trying to do the same thing.

Companies like Apple have, well, Apple hasn't long offered it.

Other companies have long offered it.

Apple started more recently to offer bug bounties to independent hackers.

And the idea being that if you find a flaw, instead of selling it to the bad guys, so

to speak, hopefully you will sell it to Apple for far less money, but at least you know

you're doing the right thing.

And so, but through that and through having a dedicated group of Apple employees that

are trying to break into the iPhone, they hope to find these security flaws and keep

it as safe as possible.

But I thought it was a really interesting article just to read about what these people

do to try to break into the phones and stuff.

It's interesting.

Again, I just expected that Apple certainly would be doing something like this because

there's always going to be people out there that are doing this on the road.

They are looking, I mean, we see every year there's the Black Hat Convention or Defcon

or whatever it is that they have their conference.

And there's always people that are showing exploits.

And of course, we've talked numerous times, Jeff, about the zero day exploits that Apple

is patching and sending out.

I think some of that, even if nothing else, I think these labs would verify maybe some

of the things that they may have hear about in the wild, that kind of a thing.

I like that there are some pictures accompanying this story.

But it looks like the pictures come from Apple themselves because I got to tell you, I have

never seen a Black Hat or a White Hat office that looks so clean and pristine as these

do.

Maybe they do.

I mean, it's Apple after all and everything.

But boy, they look really nice in these pictures here.

But good stuff on that.

And I'm glad you linked to it.

Again, just having some awareness on some of those aspects on there.

Where are you at segment?

I thought this was an excellent video that I highly recommend from Brian Tong, which

I recognize him from other places.

He must have, maybe he does this on his own on some of the YouTube videos, but I know

he's been a journalist around that I've seen before as well.

He has been for a long time, yes.

Right.

He did an excellent video.

You said it was good and I completely agree.

It was wonderful to see the entire, I guess, experience with using the iPhone 14 or 15

with the satellite roadside assistance.

We've talked about the satellite assistance either for emergency purposes or even for

roadside assistance in the past.

But just to actually see it, I mean, he literally holds the phone up and shows you what each

text message looks like as he's finding the satellite and he gets to AAA and they come

back to him and say, you know, what's the make and model of your car?

Are you a AAA member?

You don't have to be, but if you are, what's your member number?

All that kind of stuff.

And I just really appreciated the fact that Brian did a step by step walkthrough here

so that if nothing else, talking about awareness, just so that you know what it looks like,

right?

So that the first time that you're seeing it all, isn't the time that you're under the

stress of being in an emergency situation.

That's exactly right.

I mean, for example, he sort of purposefully drove this electric car off the grid to where

there was no cell phone coverage.

And then he ran down the battery.

I think he did all this purposefully by leaving the lights on and stuff.

And so when he comes back to his car after a hike, the car is completely dead.

But he knew that what you do is if you go into messages normally this won't work, but

if you are off the grid, if you're not having a cellular connection or a wifi connection

and you start to type a text message to, I think it's roadside assistance, as you type

that in, it will auto populate and it will be an option.

And so, you know, only if you're in the satellite situation where you see that as an option,

and then you can start to talk to roadside assistance via satellite.

And you'll know that you're in this situation because as he shows you, and it's nice to

see it in real life, that you can actually see a little icon of the satellite at the

top and your phone will help you to make sure that you're holding your phone in the right

position to get a connection to the satellite.

But he went through the whole system.

And so you, like you say, you explain your problem.

You say, you know, I need to jump my car.

Of course he could have, hopefully you would have something in your, we've talked to the

past about some of these portable chargers you can carry around with you.

But if you don't happen to have one of those with you, and then he contacted AAA.

And again, as you've pointed out, Brad, it works one of two ways.

If you are a AAA member and he is, it's just included in your service.

And he had to wait because he was so far off the grid.

I think he had to wait an hour for someone from AAA to actually come.

And I almost feel bad that he made a person come do this for something that was just a

test.

I don't know if he coordinated with AAA beforehand or anything like that, but it worked.

You know, they jumped his car, they got it started again.

And if you're not a AAA member, well then you'll have to pay like a one-time surcharge.

And what I have not yet seen, and I've been looking for this for months, Brad, I haven't

seen what that surcharge is.

Perhaps it depends upon the service that you're using and how far off the grid you are.

But I would just be curious to know.

And my understanding is the app will tell you before you do it.

So it'll say, you know, if you want to take advantage of this, AAA will send someone out

there, but it's going to cost you X because you're not currently a member.

I just don't know what those numbers are, but I guess if you're really stuck and have

no other solution, it doesn't matter what that number is.

You don't really need to pay it.

But again, without your iPhone having the satellite capability, which is an iPhone 14

and iPhone 15, you're just stuck in the middle of nowhere with no help.

So thank goodness you at least have this option that all of us hope that we never have to

use, but it certainly makes us feel good that we could use it.

So I definitely recommend watching the video just so that you have a sense of it in the

back of your head.

And that way, if 12, 18 months from now, you ever need to use it, you'll be like, oh yeah,

I remember how this works.

And then you can actually do it.

Because the kicker here is that you don't have cellular access, right?

Exactly.

People just think, well, I'm going to have, you know, there'll be a cell tower around.

Sometimes there's not.

And I like this again, just to go through this, because here, when he's doing this texting

back and forth, he's actually holding the phone up into the air because the, uh, there

is a little, uh, item that says at the top of the phone, keep pointing it at satellite.

So it's like, you have to keep it involved because the way that cell, that satellite,

you know, connections work is a little bit different than the cell towers.

Right?

So you have to keep pointing it at the satellite and it tells you that all along.

Otherwise you're not going to get the actual messages back and forth.

And then quickly back to your point about in the little satellite in the upper right

corner, that's typically where your, um, your wifi symbol would be, right?

How many bars do you have?

Yeah.

Or how many bar exactly the five G. So instead of that, it actually says SOS there.

Now I've seen that several times, to be honest with you, even when I, either when I've been

hiking or when I've been, it may be like in a basement of a big industrial building or

something like that, Jeff, I've seen that come on to where there's no coverage, but

it does have the SOS and this little tiny, tiny satellite picture there, this little

icon.

And it's just important.

Again, I'm glad that I've seen this now so that I'm just not going to be surprised again

when it comes under the stress of, of being able to, you know, be in one of those situations

where I need to use it.

I just have like having a sense of a general sense of like, this is going to be the process

that we follow there, which is good.

Yeah.

I'll mention just quickly, but there's a difference between also the SOS icon and the SOS with

the satellite icon.

If you are, for example, an AT&T user and you're somewhere where AT&T doesn't have cell

phone coverage, but if your iPhone can sense that there's Verizon or T-Mobile out there,

it will by law, your phone has to be able to connect to 911.

And so you'll see SOS, but that doesn't mean SOS satellite.

That means that there's a different carrier's network that you can only use for emergency

services.

But then if you're really off the grid, that there's no cell phone from any network, then

you see the satellite icon.

So you have to be in very special parts of the world.

But then again, if you're hiking or something, that's exactly where you're most likely to

be completely off the grid.

I see Apple continuing to improve this, Jeff.

I mean, it just completely makes sense.

And it's just, you and I know so well how many stories we see almost every week of people

getting saved by this.

And I'm glad that Apple is doubling down.

I mean, again, I feel like they should be buying satellites, sending them up themselves.

They have enough money.

They've even got a spaceship location, right?

I mean, they could just launch a spaceship right in the middle of their ring there.

It's good.

How about some good feels for the holiday?

This is so great.

I think Apple's done this before in several.

This is a five, what about, no, only about maybe a four minute little video here, but

it's so good.

I'm so glad you linked to this.

You're always so good.

Apple's been doing this for a long time, maybe 10 years, even longer.

They have their holiday videos.

This is good stuff.

I'm glad you have a link to it.

It's called, what is it called?

Fuzzy Feelings.

But it's just the artistry that goes into this, because you also have a link to the

behind the scenes aspect.

I know this is stop motion.

I'm not going to give anything away.

I know this is stop motion, but we're watching it and you just get involved in it and you

forget that it's stop motion until I see that behind the scenes video.

And I'm like, wow, there's a lot of artistry that goes into that, which is good.

Yeah.

Apple works hard to come up with a video that's sort of appropriate for the season, a little

bittersweet and maybe brings a tear in your eye.

And this one certainly does that too.

I enjoyed it.

I thought it was a pretty good way.

It's perhaps not the best that Apple's done in the last decades, but it comes at it in

a different, it's got some surprise to it.

I'm not going to give it away.

It's got some surprises in it that you don't expect at first.

And then you're like, oh, I see what they're doing here.

And it was clever.

I enjoyed watching it.

It's a little meta.

It's like the video has her using an iPhone and then we have the behind the scenes of

them filming it with an iPhone.

Okay.

You'll have, you'll just have to watch it to get it.

I don't want to spoil it.

Yeah.

Worth watching.

In the know.

How about a couple more Black Friday picks just because it's a day.

Let's round it up with some more picks.

We're in the mood.

One of the things that I know, I rec, again, I keep going to the Mac Power Users podcast

episode, but I have been a big fan of the Field Notes notebooks.

I think I've mentioned them several times on the list on some of our other podcasts

as well, Jeff.

But right now there is a 25% off Black Friday sale.

I love these.

They just came out with this Heartland notebooks.

And if you can see, you can, uh, they're normally $15.

They're like $11 and 21 cents for a little pack of three.

These are just small little notebooks that you kind of fit in your breast pocket.

I love these notebooks.

I've been a subscriber now for several years and I love having them on, but everything

is 25% off on the Field Notes.

I think that's an excellent deal if you are interested.

Another little piece of software that I have used and talked about many times, not necessarily

on this podcast, Jeff, but when I talk with folks about wanting to do backups of their

iPhone and their iPad, we used to do that on iTunes.

You can still do that on your Mac.

You can still use iTunes on your Windows computer.

But I also talk about this piece of software when like lawyers want to capture text messages

from a phone, from a client's phone.

This software is called iMazing, like amazing, but it's i, iMazing, iMazing.com.

They have a 50% off Black Friday sale going on right now.

I think that means you can probably get a single license copy for maybe about $25 or

$30, which is usually double that.

This is an excellent piece of software that runs on your Windows or your Mac computer.

You would then plug your iPhone or iPad into that computer with a little cable and it does

a full backup, but it just doesn't do the backup.

You can also pull like your voicemails off of there, for example, or you can export out

pictures that you might want.

Or again, the way that a lot of people would use this is so they want to preserve their

text messages or even messages from their WhatsApp conversations.

You can export those messages off of your phone or your iPad and with the iMazing software

you can even export it out as a PDF file or a text file, which is just really great because

you can see where the legal aspects come from this, Jeff.

A lot of people want to preserve their text messages maybe with clients the same way that

they preserve text messages from email messages obviously from their client or something like

that.

So iMazing.com, we'll have the show notes, all these links in the show notes.

And by the way, these are also a lot of affiliate links for us so you don't have to click on

them, but if you do, we really appreciate it.

One more affiliate link quickly that I'll give.

I've mentioned the click-through service called Rakuten, R-A-K-U-T-E-N.

This used to be Ebates way back in the day.

I'm a big fan of Rakuten.

This is one of these shopping portals, so instead of just going to like Macy's.com or

Dell.com and buying it outright, you can get a little bit of money back from that.

For example, if you go to Dell.com, you can get 15% of your purchase back through using

Rakuten.

And right now, if you use my affiliate link, you can get $40 back.

So both of us get $40.

If you sign up, go to Rakuten, you buy something with at least $40, you'll get $40 back.

And that either comes in every quarter they send a quote big fat check is what they send

and it racks up pretty quickly.

You can also exchange those points.

Instead of getting cash, you can get American Express card points if you have an American

Express.

But I don't go and buy anything online, Jeff, unless I check with Rakuten first is what

I'm telling people.

You don't have to use it, but it is an excellent way to go through and get a little bit of

cash back on some of that.

Rakuten makes a commission off of everything, so you're not taking money out of anybody.

And it's just a way like it's like, why not?

Like why not use it if you're going to go to Walmart.com or Saks.com or Kiehl's or Hoka,

any of those places, Nike.

It's a good place to go.

So I'll have my affiliate show link in the show notes there.

Your pick, sir.

And my last pick is just one more deal of the day type thing.

I, if Apple watches, everybody loves the Apple watch and you can get some pretty good deals

on Amazon today.

I think they run through Monday of, and again, these Amazon deals change hourly.

So, but as we're recording and right since yesterday, at least you can get the Apple

watch series nine, which is the latest and greatest Apple watch, and you can save $70

on it.

So it's only $329, which is a nice price.

Now that's of course for the, the, the smaller one, the smaller one.

But you know, there's other discounts for the other ones too.

And likewise the Apple watch S E which is, you know, the lower end doesn't have as many

of the, the sensor features and stuff like that, but it's still a great basic one.

This is I, I, we gave my daughter an Apple watch SC when she turned 16 not too long ago

and she was thrilled to have it.

And it's basic you know, and you can get it for as little as $179, you know, under 200

bucks.

So very, very cool features.

And again, different models and different colors, you'll get better or worse.

But my point is not any particular deal.

But my point is like if, if an Apple watches in your future or somebody else for the holidays,

this is the weekend to look and see if the model that you, that they want that you're

that you wanted to get is significantly discounted because you can save some real money on these

things and, you know, put that money towards something else.

I mean, just to give you one example from my daughter although we got her the SC instead

of the series nine, because I really didn't think she needed some of the sensors on the,

on the more expensive series nine.

What I did do was spend extra money on the cellular version.

And because that way, you know, even if she, no matter where she is, she can always communicate

with us and stuff like that.

Even if the iPhone is dead, which you know, her, she's constantly running out of power

in our iPhone.

So, you know, these sorts of things take advantage of the sales, not only to save money, but

also to justify adding a feature that otherwise you might have skipped.

And you can get some really good Apple watch deals on Amazon right now.

Man, this is, these prices are pretty amazing.

So we've done Black Friday sales for Apple AirTags, for the AirPods, for Apple watches,

for the iPads.

There's some really good stuff out there.

If you're in, like you said, Jeff, if you're, if you're even thinking about it or on the

fence, I mean, this is the weekend to, to pull the trigger for sure, because these,

these are, these are some really great deals on there.

Ooh, okay.

Well, happy Black Friday to you and happy 15 years, Jeff.

Wow.

15 years, man.

The iPhone JD.

That's really amazing.

Here's to another 15 more.

Thanks so much, Fred.