127: Honking Apple’s Horn with Bigger Badder Batteries!

(upbeat music)

- Welcome to In the News for December 15th, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey Brett.

- Hello Jeff.

The time has come.

I installed iOS 17.2, I think what,

three days ago or something like that.

I forget exactly when it came out,

but you and I have been talking about this.

- It actually came out on Monday,

which surprised me because Apple will often release upgrades

on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I don't normally see it on Monday.

So I was surprised to see it on Monday, but go ahead.

- I was ready.

We've been talking about it for a while and I was ready.

I had all my devices updated by the end of the day,

but a couple of good articles have already come out.

You linked to this one in a gadget hacks,

59 new features and changes for the iPhone with 17.2.

There's a lot here.

I gotta say some of them kind of like,

well, that's not so much a, you know,

there's not a whole lot of biggies,

but there's some really nice small tweaks in here.

- Yeah, I like this article that Justin Myers

does a gadget hacks because he really does,

like he counts as a new feature,

even the tiniest little thing.

So it's not truly 59 things, you know,

some of these are minor, but they are changes.

There are 59 changes and some of them are super,

super, super tiny,

but some of them are bigger and important.

You know, there's the sort of the tap backs

instead of the traditional tap back for messages

in the messages app,

you only have like six different things.

Now you can put an emoji on a message

and it goes into a special little spot on it.

So it's just something that comes up in the pop-up menu.

What is it called?

It's called the add sticker.

- Sticker tap back reaction.

Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

The big one though is this journal app,

which is interesting, you know, on the one hand,

I don't consider myself a journaler,

but on the other hand, have you opened up this app, Brett?

Cause it's pretty impressive.

- I just barely opened it.

And then I was like,

I don't have time to look at it right now,

but I knew there was going to be some folks

that are coming out.

You've got a couple of other links here to some reviews,

which I'm going to open it now.

- What's interesting to me is, you know,

journal apps have been on for forever.

There's one called day one that people say

is really fantastic.

- Very nice.

- And, but I would, I've, from what I understand,

that when you're going to sit down to journal something,

whether you're writing in handwriting

or you're doing it digitally, you know,

it's always, what are you going to say about today?

You know, what did I have for lunch?

Blah, blah, blah.

And the cool thing is that the new Apple journal app,

it gives you ideas of what to talk about.

And it does that based upon recent pictures

that you've added or recent albums you've listened,

songs you've listened to,

or recent places that you've been.

And what I think is really cool is if you just open up

the journal app and look at it for yourself,

it will suggest like for the past couple of days,

it's like, do you want to talk about the fact that on

Tuesday you were at such and such?

And you're like, oh yeah, I guess I was there.

And they're good little sort of reminders of things

that you might want to talk about.

And then what's particularly nice is that when Apple came

out with the journal app, it's not this closed garden,

but instead it is much like the Apple calendar app

can work with a unlimited number

of third-party calendar apps.

This is the same way.

So if you use another app like day one,

day one can tap into it.

And the thing is, you know,

traditionally day one would not have access to your photos

and your songs and stuff like that for privacy reasons.

But because of this API that they've done,

now the day one app can basically just say, you know,

hey, iOS pop up a screen of things that are recent.

The app has no idea what's being shown on the screen.

And it's not until you actually say,

I would like to take this picture and put it in day one,

or I would like to put this location and put it in.

And so you can still keep things private.

But then again, if you want to talk about it,

then you can easily put it in there.

So, you know, again, I don't know.

I've started playing around with it, you know,

just jotting down little things to see what it is.

I don't know if I'll stick with it, but you know,

at the same time, I will admit this is not really journaling

but I save a lot of old emails that go back forever.

And there have been times when I've been looking

for something and suddenly I'll find myself looking

through emails from like 2010 and you know, you're there.

And then you're like, oh yeah, I see this email

from October of 2010 that was talking about such and such.

I remember that.

And it'll bring a memory much like looking

at an old picture will bring back a fun memory.

So I do understand the idea of journaling,

not only because it's sort of good for mental health

to sort of, you know, think about your day,

but also for the future to look back on it.

So I think it's really cool.

I think it's really cool that Apple has done this app.

They've done it the right way by working with third parties

and you know, this is one thing,

but this is just one of the things that's in iOS 7.2.

- Yeah, well, I was just gonna say, I underscore,

you know, I'm not that big of a journaler myself either.

Like sitting down and writing a diary, dear diary,

you know what's going on today.

But this story you linked to this review from Dan Morin,

I think really brought it out.

Like this is almost like a capturing tool, if you will.

Like for me throughout the day,

I just really appreciated the way

that Dan was like bringing this up.

He's not much of a journaler either.

He's a journalist, not a journaler.

That's what he said in his story here.

But just the fact that like it captured a picture

that he took at this convention center and the little map.

And then he just had a little comment like,

"Oh yeah, I went there, you know, the smell was bad,"

or you know, whatever the case may be.

But it's just really neat that I kind of liked it

from that aspect.

If I could get into a habit of like saying,

well, you know, exactly what you're talking about

with your emails.

Like, oh yeah, I remember six years ago that, you know,

we went and visited this concert.

And it's just kind of nice to see it, which is similar.

And Dan's point in here as well,

to maybe some of the, what the photos app is doing, right?

If it'll bubble up memories, kind of a thing like that,

which is really neat.

- Yeah. In fact, what might be cool for me personally is,

what if I never journaled at all,

but the Apple app could just create a journal for me,

based upon, you know, much like the photos app does

for photos of, here's a memory of 10 years ago today.

You know, wouldn't it be interesting

if the journal app could say,

I've put this together based upon the places you were,

the, you know, people that you've texted with,

the pictures you have.

I don't know. That's an interesting idea.

That's not this version of journal, but regardless.

Anyway, it's a cool app.

So the real thing is if you haven't checked it out,

I encourage everybody listening to this to check it out.

So that's a cool one.

There's unlimited things to talk about.

Can I mention one more that I thought was really cool?

You know how on the new iPhones, you have this,

I guess it's just the pros, right?

The 15 pros, you've got this button at the top

that you can assign to do something special,

as opposed to the action button.

And so the action button is really cool.

And it's been really cool since I got my new phone,

but there's a new action added to it with 17.2

for the Apple Translate app.

And I will tell you, Brett, it works really, really well.

It's so cool.

I mean, all you do is you just hold down the,

you first have to assign the Translate app

to that action button.

But then once you do it,

so let's say I'm visiting France or something like that.

So if I have it set up for my trip,

then all I do is just hold down the button

and say something in English.

And as you're speaking,

the words appear on the screen.

And as soon as you stop,

it instantly translates it and says it out loud.

It's like having a translator standing next to you

and instantly translating everything that you say

into a foreign language.

It's really, really cool.

And so, no, it's not gonna work the other way.

You actually have to open up the Translate app

if you want it to translate back.

But I can see so many times, you know, you're around,

you just wanna quickly say something

in French or Spanish or Russian

or whatever the language is.

If, you know, if translation is important to you,

being able to use it with the action button

is really, really, really cool.

So.

- I guess I completely mistook this.

I thought it was like you turned on the camera

to translate like some text or something.

But what you just described is pretty amazing.

Like that's happening on your own little translator,

like you said in there.

That's interesting.

And so you can change that.

'Cause I've just kept mine on like the silence of the phone,

you know, like almost like the mute button,

like the old clicker button was.

And maybe this will get me to change,

make that change finally on there.

I really like that aspect.

Yeah, this list, I mean, I had to search

because when you were talking about this,

he's got a nice little piece here on the action button

being able to change,

but he's got so many other little tiny settings in here.

There was like three or four about the Books app,

which I gotta admit, I didn't even know the Books app.

- I don't use the Apple Books app, so yeah.

So I didn't really pay too much attention to those.

- That was there.

And then I also like, there was one thing really

that I was like, ooh, I gotta find it now.

But apparently in your dynamic island,

when you have an alarm go off

in that little dynamic island up there,

now the alarm clock is animated in the dynamic island.

- I did not notice that.

- Hey, I'll take it.

- Speaking of alarm clock,

let me give you another one that I love.

So I've talked in the past that I'm a big fan

of the standby mode where I put my iPhone.

So when I'm sitting here working at my desk

and I'm not working, I've got the little,

who is it, Belkin, Anker,

whatever company makes this thing,

Anker is the one that I have here at my desk

that I just stick my phone on it.

And it used to be that Apple, of course,

had clocks in the standby mode.

That's one of the three modes is clocks.

But many of the clocks were analog clocks

and I sort of preferred a digital clock.

And so for the last couple of weeks,

I had been using the Widget Smith app,

which was fine,

but to use it only had the clock on the left side.

Anyway, long story short.

Now Apple has, which actually here's a picture of it.

I'll hold it for the camera.

It's a very nice little, you know,

I took the screenshot.

- Oh yeah.

- It's a nice large numbers.

You can put whatever color you want.

- Big, I like it.

- It take, it's super big

and it's got in the corner of the day, the date,

so I can see what date it is and the temperature,

you know, for whatever that's worth.

But I like it because again,

the same reason I liked it before,

as I'm doing my work and everything else,

and especially because as a lawyer, I build my time.

- Right.

- In increments of the hour,

I can just sort of,

I'm always glancing down and I see a nice big clock.

There were clocks before.

It's just the brand new clock that they've added in this.

It's the biggest one.

It's super easy to see.

It seems like a no brainer.

- It's super simple.

- Yeah.

I mean, you know,

they had a very easy to see digital clock.

I know that doesn't sound very exciting,

but I'm telling you,

this one's better than the ones that they had before.

So it's really cool.

So, so that's a million little things.

If I encourage folks to take a look at the list,

you'll find some other fun things that are relevant to you.

There's a lot that's new.

- In addition to iOS 17.2 for the iPhone and the iPad,

watchOS got an update as well to 10.2,

not as much new in this,

but some nifty little options here now

that you can change in the settings,

which I've already done.

I like this.

- Yeah.

So I'm going to save one of my favorite features

for my tip of the week,

but one of them,

another one I'm going to talk about right now,

which is it's just sort of a return to the old.

And I've mentioned this in past podcasts.

I like to switch the watch faces on my watch

from time to time.

- Right.

- And it used to be that you could just swipe left

or right to do that.

And then that stopped.

Now you can do it again,

but here's the key to do it.

You have to change the settings,

which I know we talk about all the time,

but you have to change the settings on the Apple watch.

And I underscore that because I don't know about you,

but I never go into settings on my Apple watch.

- Right.

- When I think about changing something on my iPhone,

I go to the settings app.

When I think about changing something on my Apple watch,

I usually think about the Apple watch app on my iPhone.

Right?

But this is one of those things.

- That's right.

- You actually have to go in the settings

of the Apple watch itself and then scroll in there.

And there's a link on the article that shows you

where you go for it,

but you can set it so that you can just swipe left

and right to change the watch screens.

And I mean, getting rid of that.

I mean, again,

it was a step backwards that Apple took last fall

or this fall a couple of months ago.

And now they've gone back.

So that's one thing that's really cool.

And then another thing that I thought was cool about this,

and this was one of the articles that I linked to

from CNET is that the newest Apple watches,

you can actually talk to Siri to get your health data.

But what I thought was interesting about this

is not the feature.

I mean, the feature is pretty cool.

You could talk to your watch and say,

"What's my heartbeat?"

Or whatever else.

But what's interesting about it is that this feature

only works on the newest Apple Watch Series 9

or the new Ultra 2.

And you may think,

"Well, I have Siri on my older watches.

Why can't it do this?"

And the reason is that

Apple didn't wanna include this feature unless,

because when you're talking about your health,

you're obviously talking about confidential information.

Apple didn't want that Siri command to leave your watch

and go to your phone and go up to the cloud

or wherever else.

It wanted to keep that all on device

because that's Apple's big privacy thing

is they keep everything on the device.

So it maintains the privacy of your information.

There's no risk of a third party hacking some website

and finding out about your private health data.

And so only these newest watches have the new processor

that's powerful enough to do Siri online.

So I just, what was interesting to me is,

sometimes people say,

"Does it really matter if you have a more powerful processor

in your Apple Watch?

It's just a watch, right?"

The one that I had two years ago

had plenty of power.

But this is an example of why you actually can get

some new features by having a more powerful processor,

a more powerful chip inside of the Apple Watch.

- Good to know.

So the iPhone down, the watch OS down, Apple TV.

I don't know if this was a new thing with the Apple TV.

You link to a story from Johnny Evans in Computer World,

which I know we talked about this last week,

using the Apple TV with the Zoom app.

And I like how Johnny here goes a little bit more

into detail about it.

- Yeah, I mean, one thing that you and I

sort of thought about,

but he goes into it more detail.

You know, what does it mean that Zoom is now an app

on the Apple TV that can work as continuity camera?

But what it means is that many times at a business,

you know, a business of all sizes,

certainly at my law firm, we have this,

we have some specific rooms that you can go to

for video conferences.

And we have very expensive equipment that we've paid.

I don't even know what the companies are

that we buy all these cameras and everything else

to make everything work very well.

But what he's pointing out is that if you have

a small office that has a television in it,

all you need is an Apple TV, you know,

which is relatively inexpensive.

And then you can just use continuity camera

with your iPhone or your iPad, whatever.

And then suddenly you have a very nice, powerful

video conference room that will work

for your Zoom conferences.

And so it, you know, it's really something to consider.

I mean, you may already have the tools that you need

for a small business to have a sophisticated

teleconferencing set up using Zoom,

which so many people use.

So it's, I just thought it was an interesting way

to think about it in this article for small businesses.

- Yeah, I like this.

First of all, I followed Johnny Evans a long time

'cause I love his little column name is Appleholic.

- Yeah.

- He's an Appleholic.

But he's always good.

He's always does a good job of not only just talking

about the consumer aspect of a lot of the Apple products,

but he has been one that over the years has focused

on even like the business aspects.

'Cause he even says right here in a subtitle,

"Did you miss that Apple TV is now an enterprise product?"

That might be going a little too far,

but it's just the idea of exactly

what you were describing, Jeff.

It's like, hey, you can use these consumer tools

or products, devices now,

even in some kind of a small to mid-sized business,

that kind of a thing.

And that's really neat.

- Yeah.

- Couple of weeks ago, we talked about Apple giving out

their app awards, like the best Apple awards,

which I thought was great.

Flighty, I'm sorry, Owl Trails was the winner.

Flighty was like the runner up.

I wanted them both to win.

Well, now a lot of other people getting in on this

kind of an idea here, but these are great stories

'cause if nothing else, it just gives you more access

to different apps.

You link to a story, nine to five Mac,

where now Apple unveils the most downloaded app.

And then I think the next story here,

I'll just jump into it, is what I was talking about.

MacStory selects some of their best apps of the year.

But this was neat.

This first one, we'll talk about the most downloaded apps

of the year.

Apple released these, and it was just kind of interesting

to see the list a little bit here.

- Yeah, so Apple's not saying that these are the best apps.

And it's, I mean, they're just saying statistically,

these are the ones that most people are downloading.

And so it's gonna have things like, you know,

TikTok and Instagram and things that you, YouTube.

I mean, of course people are downloading those things.

The number one free iPhone app is one, Brett,

that I did not even know about it until I had to ask my wife

what this is. - Neither did I.

I'm with you. - This thing called TEMU,

T-E-M-U, and it's been, I think some people

are rolling their eyes at us 'cause of course

they know what it is. - I know, I know.

- It's been around for over a year,

and it's a way that you can buy, suffice it to say,

it's sort of like a dollar store on your iPhone.

You can buy relatively inexpensive items

from direct from the manufacturers in China.

Some people talk about the quality not always being there,

but you can definitely, you know, spend, you know,

it's a good way for deals.

And there's a lot more to the app than that.

There's social aspects of losing points.

But it was just interesting

that that's the number one thing.

So people are definitely thinking about, you know,

commerce and stuff like that.

What were some of the other ones?

- That was the free apps.

- Yeah, the top paid apps. - Then they have like,

- They break it out into free apps

and the top paid apps here.

- Yeah, Shadow Rocket, that's a VPN thing, you know,

to hide your IP address.

And some other ones that are good in here,

Procreate, which is great.

- Yeah, those were good. - Some games.

- They have the free iPhone games, Monopoly Go, Roblox.

I mean, a lot of this kind of stuff.

Again, most of these, the vast majority of these,

I think along the lines of what you're thinking, Jeff.

I expected and I anticipated.

Yeah, just a couple of them were kind of like,

wow, that's a little interesting why that one's there

where it is.

- Well, let's pause for a second on the top five paid

free apps because, you know, many of them are things like,

you know, Max, which is for streaming HBO and Netflix.

- YouTube, Netflix. - But number six on the list

is GoodNotes 6, which is my favorite app

for taking handwritten notes on my iPad.

And the fact that they are a top,

of course it's listed as a free app

because you can download it for free

and then you can pay if you wanna get

some more powerful features.

But I love the fact that people are trying that out

because I really love that app.

- Can I just say, I was last week or earlier this week,

actually, I was at a conference,

I was given a presentation and the session that I was doing,

it was really focusing on AI, Jeff.

You know, we don't talk about a whole lot of this podcast,

but AI is like what everybody else is talking about.

- Absolutely. - And it was interesting

'cause I was talking about all kinds of things,

about using AI, you know, from Chad GPT to, you know,

using it within like Netflix or anything.

But I tell you what came up and I presented this

was something like GoodNotes.

They're now using AI so well from the aspect

of like handwriting recognition to where, you know,

a lot of folks in our profession try to think,

well, can I convert my handwriting into editable text?

That is possible, but in some cases I'm like,

well, just leave it in your handwriting.

But the fact that these apps like GoodNotes

can search your handwriting, that is just blows me away.

And now it can even, I think, even anticipate

what you might be handwriting out.

It's just amazing.

So really, you know, and the fact that first of all,

it's GoodNotes, an app on an iPad

that is having this much power.

You and I have both followed GoodNotes

and Notability for many years,

and it's just wonderful to kind of see them

continuing to evolve and to work on this.

- What GoodNotes is doing for AI is

it can take your handwriting and it can suggest edits.

And so let's say that you wrote a word

and you left out a letter by mistake.

It will actually add the letter in there,

but it will use artificial intelligence

to make the letter that was missing, you know,

the A or the O or the E, whatever it's adding,

make it sort of look like it's in your handwriting,

which is the AI part of it.

So it's sort of cool. - Incredible.

- Yeah, so interesting. - Very good stuff.

All right, we'll put this list in for folks.

And then, hey, if that's not all,

here's some other apps you might wanna look at.

So I guess MacStories has been doing this

for several years now,

and it's the whole team getting together.

We follow John Vorhees and Frederico, of course,

and some of the other folks on here.

But they have categories, Best New App, Best App Update,

and several others here.

I thought a couple of these I still had not heard of,

but several of them I had,

and I just thought they do such a great job

of going through and explaining, you know,

why they selected it, what is so great about it.

And most of these apps are already reviewed

a lot of times on the website as well,

but great roundup here.

- Yeah, and I think we've talked about many of these.

We were just mentioning Flighty, Widget Smith,

I was just talking about,

Ivory, which is a great Mastodon client.

The first one that they have is their app of the year, Orion.

I think you and I have mentioned it before, Brett.

It's an app that basically turns your iPad

into an external display,

so that if you have like a video game machine

or anything that exports video,

you know, professional film folks could use this too.

If you're just looking for a screen to hook up to,

this will allow your iPad to be that screen.

You just need to have like an HDMI to a USB-C connector.

And I know a lot of folks find it really useful

to have an external screen.

I mean, technically, you could have like a Windows computer

and you could use this app to set up your iPad next to it

and have your iPad be a second screen

for your Windows computer,

so that while you're in the coffee house,

you have a two screen setup instead of a one screen setup.

- Absolutely.

- You know, so, you know, this is just an example.

It's a pretty innovative idea.

And I know the people that have been using Orion,

it's not something that I really need for my practice,

but from what I understand, it works incredibly well, so.

- Well, I'm gonna try this out because as you know,

I'm sure I've mentioned this before,

that's exactly how I use my iPad,

my 12.9 inch iPad, along with my MacBook Pro.

The iPad is my second screen.

And it's really good.

- And that's built in.

Yeah, the Apple built in, built in.

- It's built in, that's all built in continuity, exactly.

- So that's why I mentioned for a Windows computer,

this gives you the same thing.

- Exactly, exactly.

And that's the thing, I just got a Windows laptop

not too long ago and I'm like, man, I really, you know,

and it's only a 13 inch screen, so it's not that bad,

but it's like, I would like some extra screen real estate

and this is a good way to do it.

There's some other great ones in here.

And there's some very specific ones,

like an app right here,

this is if you play "Tears of the Kingdom"

from Nintendo.

Like, this is Frederico picking a specific app

just for that game on there.

But there's some other really good ones on here as well.

This next story, Jeff,

I think I need a little bit of explanation.

It seems like you've been following this story

a little bit closer than I have,

mainly because you know, as everybody knows,

we're really the Apple ecosystem,

but we've talked in the past that if other people

that I'm texting with that don't have an iPhone,

they have an Android device,

it's a green bubble instead of a blue bubble.

And we've gone through,

there's been some stories that have come out,

it's like how, you know,

that's maybe discriminated against certain people.

Well, there was one small company that decided

they wanted to try to get it to where

there was one platform that everybody

could have the same color bubbles.

Explain this story a little bit.

The company is Beeper, right?

- Yeah, so let me start by saying that, you know,

here in the United States, we think of text messaging,

you know, for Apple users,

we think of iMessage as being very important,

blue bubble, green bubble.

You know, let me just acknowledge that around the world,

people don't use Apple nearly as much, you know,

WhatsApp is by far the most popular

or some of the other apps that people use.

But if you're, you know,

if you do care about the Apple messaging system,

there are lots of advantages to iMessage

because it's secure, it allows for, you know,

the emoji we were talking about,

all these little extra features.

And of course, it gives you a blue bubble.

If you're communicating with somebody on Android,

because that's traditional SMS text messaging,

it's gonna be a green bubble,

which means they get no extra features,

they can't share big pictures,

they can't share big videos.

- They can't do the stickers.

- Security issues, you know, so whatever.

So what Beeper has tried to do is they have an app

for an Android phone that allows it to communicate

with Apple servers, just as if it was an iPhone.

So you're communicating with your Android friends

and they appear to be iPhones.

And they've been doing this through various ways

over the years, but the one that they did recently

is basically a way of sort of reverse engineering

Apple's system.

It was actually a 16 year old who came up with this,

who stayed anonymous.

He just goes by his online handle,

but he basically reversed engineered the Apple system

so that it would be arguably legal.

And then he said, so now you can, you know, use this.

Well, it worked for about 24 hours

and then Apple figured out what was going on

and shut it down.

And then Beeper changed something

and then it worked for another 24 hours.

And then I think it's currently down again.

You know, there's the cat and mouse game

that they're gonna go back and forth.

I mean, from the Beeper standpoint, they say,

hey, we're being a good citizen.

We are just letting an Android

use the more secure Apple system.

We are, you know, communicating.

We came up with this on our own, reverse engineered it.

Why not let us do it?

But from the Apple standpoint, you know,

we don't know who this Beeper company is.

You know, maybe they're good, maybe they're not.

And whatever loophole that they are exploiting,

whatever backdoor that they're exploiting,

a more nefarious company with, you know,

trying to infect your messages with, you know,

who knows what could do the same thing.

Not to mention they never got permission from Apple

for using Apple's intellectual property.

So there's like just the legal aspect

and aside to the security.

So, you know, different sides

are gonna take different things.

You know, it's not like Android people

can't communicate securely with folks that use an iPhone.

They could just use WhatsApp or they could use Signal

or they could use one of the other apps

or they could use Facebook Messenger or whatever.

But, you know, so there's a lot of interesting aspects

to the story 'cause there's the legal aspect,

there's the hacker sort of mentality

that they figured out how to pretend

like it's an Apple device.

You know, when the Beeper,

I think the reason the Beeper folks really got,

I think the reason the story got so much attention

is when they first came out about a week ago

and they said that they had reverse engineered

Apple's system, they said boldly,

"Apple will not be able to stop us from doing this

"because we're using the same system

"that like an older Mac would use to communicate.

"And so if you stop us from working,

"you're gonna also stop

"the legitimate Apple devices from working."

It turns out they were wrong about that

since Apple figured out a way to turn it off a few days later

and then they got it on again and then it got it off again.

And who knows the current status,

but, you know, they were bold in their predictions

and Apple has a whole lot of engineers and even more lawyers.

So at the end of the day,

I suspect that this app will not work.

When the app came out, they were charging people for it.

If I was an Android person,

I would not pay any money for something

that's probably not gonna work more than 24 hours.

But it's sort of been an interesting show

to watch, so to speak.

- Well, I gotta read this story a little bit better

from David Pierce.

A little bit that I did read through though,

it just seems like he's really balanced in this.

In fact, he says right here,

"What is so odd about this story

"is that you have two sides completely at odds,

"but both saying entirely correct things."

To your point that you were saying earlier.

Yeah, I don't think we've seen the last of this,

but even at the very end, David Pierce, you know,

says there's two ways that this could play out, right?

Is that the first is that Apple successfully keeps Beeper

out just like you were talking about.

But the second is that maybe they could start

a little bit of a revolution, right?

I mean, to the point is, you know,

they have some backing maybe in sort of

the EU perspective to your point again,

about the fact that this is really just US centric

a lot of times the issue here is,

but you know, the EU wants Apple to open up

a whole lot of stuff on that.

And, you know, maybe Beeper is just one, you know,

one chapter in that book that may eventually

open some things up.

On the other hand, just like he says,

and like you said in the story, it's all about the--

- Maybe.

I mean, I'll say two more things I'm gonna say that.

I mean, you mentioned the EU.

The reality is that Apple's market share is so small

in the EU compared to WhatsApp.

That I think that EU has actually announced just this week

that they don't even care about Apple.

They're not a big enough player in the messaging market.

- Okay.

- And then second of all, the Apple announced,

we talked about this a couple of weeks ago,

that at least by the end of next year,

I believe that they're gonna be supporting

one of the open standards that Google uses

for Android communications.

It's I'm forgetting the initials or the R or something,

but, you know, so there is going to come a time

in the relatively near future where Android and iPhones

will be able to communicate more securely,

share larger pictures, share videos and stuff.

So, you know, that day is at which point,

perhaps the whole purpose of an app like PaperMini

becomes useless.

So anyway.

- Yeah, RCS, you were close.

- Thank you, RCS.

- Rich Communication Services.

Yeah, that they are going to.

Okay, well, thank you for the explanation on there.

That was, it's just a little odd, a little funny,

but, you know, I think it could be a little blip

in the history of technology,

but hey, that's where some of the best ideas

come from a lot of times.

Okay, maybe something a little more fun and useful.

If you're in your car and using CarPlay, you know,

my wife sometimes like to drive around

different neighborhoods and look at houses.

Well, now we can use the Rocket Homes app in Apple CarPlay

to shop around for some of those houses

as we're driving by them.

This was really funny.

- Yeah, I just like the idea of you're driving

down your street and you see a sign outside of a house

and like, "Oh, I wonder how much that house is selling for."

And then you look at your CarPlay thing and say,

"Oh, okay, well, there it is."

And I can see it's got three bedrooms and two baths.

So it's just a sort of funny.

It's also funny because, you know,

there's not a lot of different types of CarPlay apps.

You've got your apps, you got your music apps.

This is a new type of app.

I have never seen an app in CarPlay before

that was for buying houses.

So, you know, bravo to them for even getting Apple

to put them in CarPlay.

- If I'm not mistaken, it's called Rocket Homes.

I think it's from Rocket Mortgage, maybe.

Is that where it comes from?

It may be, either way.

Somehow they're affiliated there,

but yeah, that's neat and cute.

I like that.

Well, if you have an older pair of AirPods Pro,

just like I do, and Jeff,

you and I have talked about this.

I've bellyached about this quite a bit,

is that the case for my AirPods Pro second generation

has a lightning port at the very bottom.

The newer, what, they call them third generation, right?

Apple AirPods Pro second generation.

- They're still called second generation,

just second generation USB.

- But USB-C.

Well, if I wanted to change the USB-C prior to this,

I would have had to buy an entire new pair

of AirPods Pro second generation.

Well, now, thankfully, Apple has allowed me

that I could just buy the case if I wanted to do that.

I don't know why I would with the pricing,

but yeah, exactly.

It's like, if I'm gonna pay $100,

I might as well, I mean, I would go all the way

and get the full, you know,

a brand new pair, I guess, or something, but.

- Yeah, $100 is a lot to pay

to just have a USB-C connector at the bottom

instead of lightning.

But if it matters to you, now you can do it.

I'll note, by the way,

that even though you can buy this directly from Apple,

one thing you can't do is online,

I have my little logo, iPhone JD, engraved online.

You can't get engraving if you buy just the charging case.

You can only get that if you buy a brand new pair.

So I thought it was inevitable that Apple, you know,

one of these days we knew that Apple

would probably start selling this on its own.

And I guess they have enough of them now

in their warehouse that they can sell it just on its own.

But I mean, heck, if you're,

for some reason your charging case, you know, breaks

and you have to buy a new charging case,

you know, it's nice that you can now get one

that uses the modern USB-C. - Oh, that's true.

Okay, that's, yeah. - Instead of lightning.

- That's a good point, I like that.

And yeah, you may have to pay more for the AirPods Pro,

but the graving is free, right?

They still have the free engraving on there.

You may be like me in a house

that has a couple of teenagers in it.

And so I've got my phone sitting over on the side,

charging up really nicely.

And then somebody comes by

and yoinks my charger out of the wall.

And then I can't find it anymore.

So thank you, Jeff, for solving this issue in my household

with the lock socket. (laughs)

- I hear this all the time in my house.

My wife has got like a charger in the kitchen.

And then like the next morning, she's like,

"Who took my charger?

I'm trying to charge my phone.

Someone has stolen my charger."

And so this device that's called lock socket,

it actually, you screw it into the actual outlet.

So, I mean, I guess if the teenager

could get a screwdriver, they could remove it,

but that's too much work for today's teenagers

to do that. - Yeah.

You gotta go rummage around somewhere else.

- It's a little extreme of a solution,

and it makes me laugh more than I wanna buy it.

Having said that, it's just a piece of plastic.

How much does it cost?

It's not very expensive.

So, oh, it's actually $20.

It's a little more expensive than I thought,

almost 30 bucks, but even so.

It's funny that somebody thought of this

and said this would be a good idea,

and I give them full credit for bringing them to market

and putting it on sale. - And they brought it

to market. - So bravo.

People will buy it, I'm sure. - That's very good.

Hey, it's a stocking stuffer, if nothing else, right?

- There you go. - Taste the season there.

Let's go from lock sockets to batteries.

This was an amazing little story here.

I'm gonna bring up the review of this.

I gotta tell you, this might be a little big

for my stocking. (laughs)

It might weigh it down a little bit,

but after reading this review

that you'll link to in 9to5toys,

I might be ready to spring for this.

This is the Anker Prime Power Bank,

250-watt portable charger.

I mean, you're basically carrying like Tesla battery

in your backpack at this point. (laughs)

- So there's two stories here, Brett.

I mean, on the one hand,

there's the one that you're emphasizing,

that this is a honkin' big battery

that can provide a lot of portable storage.

- Yeah. - And for an iPhone

or an iPad, well, maybe not an iPad,

but for an iPhone, it's probably overkill.

If you have like a MacBook Pro,

maybe you would like having all the storage.

But that's one aspect of it.

But what I think is the real story here

is that Anker has this new system that came out called,

it's called Prime, is that what you just said out loud?

Yeah, the Prime lineup. - The Prime lineup, yeah.

- And the idea of this, I think is pretty brilliant.

If you're a person who often carries a battery with you,

so you know that you need to charge it like every night

'cause it starts fresh the next day,

this new system has a little charging base

that plugs into your wall.

And so you can have a place right there on your desktop

that you can always put your Anker on it.

It's got like a little proprietary little pins

that you just sort of sit it in there to charge it.

And then you pick it up to leave in the next morning

and it's good to go.

So you don't have to worry about fumbling around

with the outlet and stuff.

It seems like it's a nice way to charge it.

And I believe that on the back of this,

of the thing that sits on your desktop, the base,

I think there's actually some USB-C outs there too,

or something like that. - Oh, really?

- So you can actually plug some other things into that

and sort of use it as a little charging station.

So, you know, for some setups,

I can actually see this, make me from perfect sense.

It gives you an easy way to charge your battery every night,

have it freshly charged the next day.

And then with the Prime system,

you can decide how much battery you need.

You know, maybe you only need a 10,000 milliamp battery,

which would be less expensive

and it would be not weighing as much.

Or if you want to go for the huge,

and I'm sure heavy one here,

that's even got like a digital display

and stuff like that, you can do that.

So I think the Prime Power Bank system

makes a lot of sense for some people.

And then for people that need the extra power,

this model of it makes even more sense.

- I gotta say, Anker is just continuing to roll through,

like on the, just not just in the battery side,

but in the power side.

'Cause we talked about those GAN,

I think they're called Prime 2.

So it's this whole Prime lineup.

But I have this little brick, basically,

we were talking about bricks here,

but it's 100, I got the 120 watt,

because that can now,

I can plug it in at a coffee shop

and it will power my MacBook Pro, my iPad, and my iPhone.

And I loved having this.

You were talking about one last week,

I think that was only 65 watt,

but it was so nice and portable

because it's using this GAN technology.

But now, the idea, and I love this review here from,

is it Rika Atlan at 9to5toys?

I mean, just the way that they were describing it,

I'm like, I don't need to look for a power cable anymore.

Right, I could just have this in my bag.

And as long as it's charged up,

and by goodness gracious, it's so big,

it's gonna keep a charge for a long time.

I can power everything when I'm at a coffee shop

or I'm out traveling.

I mean, just the traveling alone.

Now, it's still big, I don't know how heavy it is,

but I'm gonna guess it's pretty heavy,

we could probably find out.

But I also like, to your point quickly,

going back to this little charging stand,

is that he even says in this review,

it's more expensive to buy,

'cause the charging stand is separate.

But he's like, I would not look back,

I would not hesitate.

'Cause he just said it's so easy

just to like set it on the stand when you walk in the door,

and then you know that it's charging.

So you don't have to specifically go

and like grab it and plug it in somewhere.

I mean, it's just that it sits on a table or on a desk

and you can just continue to charge it.

And I just thought that that was really remarkable

how he was describing that there.

- I'm the sort of person, Brett,

that I always have a charger in my bag,

my briefcase with me. - Me too.

- Because I never know when I would need it.

But the reality is I will go weeks without needing it.

And then I'll need it, and I'm so happy that I have it.

So for me, this would be overkill.

But if you have a different lifestyle

where you work in a shared space or a coffee shop

or daily, if you're constantly taking

a portable power with you, I think that this is great.

And I love that Anker came up with the solution.

- Yeah, let's see, right now it's $180.

Now that's just for the battery.

- That's for the big one.

And then I think the stand is what, 70?

- Something like that, yeah.

- So to get the biggest one would be 250.

But again, you could pay less if you get the smaller ones.

- That's right, 'cause this is the 250 watt portable charger.

- And then I think in the story,

and you mentioned this as well,

that you can get ones for 100 watt,

and there's other ones that are,

if you don't need quite that much out there,

then you can use another one.

Okay, great, man, that's a lot of great stuff, right?

Before Christmas here, I like that.

Hey, you can, if still, you gotta hurry

if you want Amazon to deliver it on time.

In the know.

- In the know.

- So we've talked about the continuity features

several times in the past between the iPhone and the Mac.

And exactly just today.

I gotta tell you one thing that I find myself

using quite a bit, which I think is fairly obvious,

maybe some people will know it,

but for me it becomes just a really cool thing

that I find myself doing several times a day.

So the idea of the continuity, I am on my iPhone,

I have pulled up a webpage, I wanted to read a story,

or maybe I'm shopping at a certain page,

whatever page that I have open on Safari on my iPhone,

and maybe I'm sitting there or I go sit down at my desk

where my MacBook Pro is sitting,

I really just wanna look at that website on my MacBook Pro.

So in the past, what I used to have to do, Jeff,

is that I would, on my phone, I would email myself that link

or I would maybe try to make a tab or save a bookmark

and then go on my Mac.

Well, now this is so easy that I just love doing this.

I can have my phone just close to my MacBook Pro,

I've got a website open, and on my MacBook Pro,

I can go down to my dock and I can see

there's a little symbol of the Safari app there

and it has a little tiny phone

in the upper right corner of it.

And if I click on that, that literally opens

the website that I have on my phone

right on my MacBook Pro.

Now, I like that, but I gotta tell you,

on my Mac, I typically hide my dock.

I don't interact with my dock just a whole lot

'cause I'm usually searching or so.

But one thing I do a whole lot on my computer, Jeff,

is I'll use the Command tab to switch between apps.

So similar to on Windows computer, you have the Alt tab.

I use Command tab on the Mac.

And if I have a website open on my phone,

I can, and I do Command tab,

it brings up the list of apps that I have open.

And if I go all the way over to the left,

there is another icon there that I can pull up

the website that's on my phone.

So for me, it's just a nice little workflow there.

By the way, I tried this on my iPhone using Google Chrome

and even Microsoft Edge on my phone,

and it didn't show, it showed that it was Safari,

but it opened those pages too.

So somehow it's doing some magic in the back

that whatever website that I have open

and whatever browser that I have open,

I can actually use Command tab on my Mac

and open that same website that's open on my phone.

I just find that to be such a seamless workflow for me

because I'm going back and forth all the time

between my phone and my iPad

and even on my iPad and my Mac as well.

- The solution that you just described

is probably better than what I usually do,

but I do something similar and I find it really useful.

- Okay. - This is only working

with my Mac because it doesn't work on my PC.

But if I'm in front of my Mac at home

and I have my iPhone or iPad for that matter,

with a website open, what I would do is I copy the URL.

I tap on the URL and then do copy.

And then because the devices are so close to each other

using the continuity stuff on my Mac,

I'll just go into my browser and paste.

And it works about 95% of the time.

Every once in a while it doesn't work,

but usually the thing that I just copied on my iPhone

is there for me to paste to my Mac.

But I'd have to think about what I do to go and select it

and copy and then paste and hit return and open a webpage.

- There you go. - The tip that you described

may be actually a little faster.

You'll have to start trying that one.

But it's just- - Try that and report back.

- It's nice.

I mean, it's nice that you don't have to like retype

the URL by hand or something crazy like that.

I do love that you have some abilities to go back and forth.

So that's cool. - Yeah, yeah.

Good stuff.

That's my tip for the day.

- So my tip for the day has to do with workouts on the watch

and as I sort of- - Oh, okay, yeah.

That's right. - I previewed this earlier.

I was saying one of the things that I liked

about watchOS 10.2 is that I can now go back

to the old way of switching between apps on my screen.

Another thing that you can do, and again, to do this,

you have to go into the settings on the watch to do it,

is when watchOS 10 came out last, was it September

or something like that, a couple of months ago?

One of the changes is that when you got to the end

of your workout and you say, "I'm done with my workout,"

I tap on my watch to say I'm done.

A little pop-up comes up and says,

"Do you want to end the workout?"

And I'm like, "Yes, I just told you

I wanted to end the workout.

Why are you asking me a second time?"

- We're just confirming.

- The reason that it's annoying is that,

"I've just finished a workout.

I'm tired."

You know? - Right.

- I'm perhaps not in the-- - Don't bug me.

- I'm not in the most friendly Jeff mood.

And so when somebody says,

"Are you sure you want to stop this workout?"

I'm like, "Come on."

You know, it perhaps annoys me a little more than it would

if I was in a more pleasant personality.

- Perhaps.

- So that alert has been annoying me.

Now, I know it's there for a reason.

For some people, if they end their workout prematurely

just by actually tapping it.

But the thing is, I don't think you can do that by accident.

You have to actually go through little swipes

to end a workout. - Right, right, right.

- So that alert box just killed me.

Every time I stopped a workout, it drove me crazy.

And so I am thrilled to report

that our long national nightmare is over.

And in WatchOS 10.2, if you, on the watch,

go to the settings app on the watch,

scroll all the way to the bottom,

all the way to the bottom.

Probably the last one you have,

'cause it's got a W, is workout.

And if you go to workout,

three things I'm gonna tell you about

that you can do there.

One of them is you can go,

and there's an option called end workout confirmation.

You can turn that puppy off.

And I encourage you to do so

because it has made me so happy.

I did this, I mean, what we say,

it was Monday of this week that the feature came out

and I was on my treadmill,

I think it was the very next day,

and I finished my workout and I stopped it

and it did not prompt me again.

And Brett, I felt just a wave of happiness come upon me.

So while I was there, however,

I discovered two more things that you can do

in that exact same area that I actually did not know about.

I'm sure you've had this happen before

where you're outside walking around,

maybe at a brisk pace,

and your watch says,

it appears that you're doing an outside walking workout.

- I do. - Do you want to start

a workout?

And some people might say yes.

For me, the answer has always been no,

because if I'm doing a workout,

you can be darn sure

that I'm gonna purposefully do a workout.

If I just happen to be walking around fast enough

for it to think I'm doing a workout,

no, no, no, no, no.

And so by default, it's on.

But what I did is I turned it off.

So now if my watch thinks I might be working out,

it's not gonna prompt me and ask me.

It's gonna only record workouts when I tell it to do so.

And that works fine for my personality,

because believe me, if I'm starting a workout,

I'm gonna get credit for it in my watch.

I'm gonna tell it.

There's another option there too

called end workout reminder.

That was also on by default.

And I actually like leaving that one on

because for me, again, I might be finished,

you know, I'm up under the treadmill for 30 minutes

and I'm getting off and I'm sort of tired.

And, you know, all I'm thinking about

is I wanna get some water to drink

or I wanna go change or whatever.

And I forget to stop my workout on my Apple Watch.

And what will happen is after a few minutes

of it noticing that my heart rate has gone down

and that it no longer senses that I'm working out,

I will get a pop-up alert saying,

"Hey, Jeff, did you want to end that workout?"

And that one, actually, I do find useful.

And so I have kept that one turned on

so that I can say, "Oh yeah, I totally forgot."

And of course, when you do that,

what was a 30 minute workout will then be recorded

as like a 35 minute workout

because of that extra five minutes, but you know, so be it.

So I actually like that one and so I keep it on.

But if you don't like that one, you can turn it off.

But I didn't even realize

where all these things were controlled.

- No joke.

- So that's my take.

- I can see there's so much in here.

- Settings on the watch. - I keep scrolling down.

- Go all the way down to workout.

And those are the three things that I think you,

at least make a conscious decision.

Do you want to have the reminders

at the end of your workout for confirmation?

Do you want to, you know, have to confirm the end?

Do you want to end, you know, all these, you know,

make your decision of what's best for you

and you'll be much happier.

So that's my tip.

- Or you can be like Jeff and turn off two of them.

I kind of like the start workout reminder

because it's like, if I'm walking around,

I may not be working out, but I'm like,

"Yes, yeah, I do want to get credit for that watch."

- Whatever.

- Yeah, you count that watch.

Thank you for doing that.

- But you know for me, Brett, I usually get that alert

like five seconds before I walk into the store

that I was walking to.

And I'm like, "Don't do it now

'cause I'm about to stop."

You know, what's the whole point?

So maybe that's why I don't like it,

but maybe that's just me.

So I don't know.

- Good tips though.

I mean, I just, I did not realize

like how many settings were in there in that workout thing.

So there's a whole lot more for like cycling

and stuff like that, but those are good.

And I did turn off that end workout confirmation.

So thank you.

I'm not-

- You'll be happy you did so.

- I'm not quite as animosity about it,

but I see where you're coming from on there.

It's good stuff.

All right, my friend, that'll do it.

We are gonna be off next week.

Just so everybody knows,

next week will be December 22nd.

And so for Christmas,

we decided we're gonna give ourselves a break one week,

but we'll be itching to get back the week after.

That'll be the 29th, I believe.

Because there'll be a lot of stories to report on here.

But hey, everybody have a great and happy holiday.

Enjoy your Apple products

or whatever other technology products

that you're gonna be using this holiday season.

- Thanks, Brad.