129: 2024 iPredictions and 2023 Profiles & Hugs (including the iPhone’s Biggest Security Loophole!)

(upbeat music)

- Welcome to In the News for the first episode of 2024.

It is January 5th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey Brett.

- Happy New Year, Jeff.

- Indeed. - I can't believe 2024.

It's like we just talked about a week ago.

(laughing)

But that was last year and now it is 2024.

And right out of the gate here,

you are linking to, again,

one of our favorite Mac-focused journalists, Jason Snell.

And he, of course, had to do some predictions for 2024.

What is Apple gonna be up to in 2024?

Some of these I thought were great.

Jason just always has such a balanced approach to this.

It's like we all like to think about

what's the cool new things, and so does Jason, of course.

But he balances it out with like,

yeah, we may not see a watch,

but they're working on it, right?

That kind of a thing.

Good article here.

- I will tell you, Brett, in light of this article

and a couple other I've seen since it,

I am as excited about what Apple and related companies

are coming out in 2024 as I have been in any,

I mean, literally, certainly since we started the podcast,

and even going all the way back,

because on the one hand,

you have the Apple Vision Pro coming out,

which is a completely new platform.

And I know it's gonna be expensive,

and I know that not many people will have it at first,

but it is Apple going to something completely different.

And what I put on my post today is,

I said it was the Apple's first platform

since the iPad in 2010,

and I realized that the watch came out in 2015,

but, you know, and the watch is a platform,

but we all know that there's not a lot

for third-party apps on the watch and stuff.

But, and I love my watch, don't get me wrong,

but this Vision Pro is something completely different,

and I really think it's as much of a brand new open palette

as the iPad was.

We don't know where this is gonna go.

It just fascinates me.

And I do think that in the long-term future,

we'll look back and say, yes, this was a huge change.

So that alone is gonna make 2024 exciting.

But on top of that, we've talked about how the fact

that there was no iPads in 2023,

so something's gonna come out in 2024.

We've also talked in the past,

I mean, you and I are always talking

about artificial intelligence and how it's,

I mean, it's just doing so many incredible things.

And we haven't seen a ton from Apple in 2023,

but they keep saying in interviews and stuff,

you know, we're working on it, it's in these other things,

you know, are we gonna see AI in Siri in 2024

or some other way?

I think there's nothing but possibilities.

And even if it's not from Apple,

from other companies that are working in,

whether it's the AI sphere or other spheres,

but that are Apple adjacent and that have an effect

on the things that you and I use every day, Brett,

you know, I could not be more excited.

There's just so much that's gonna be going on this year.

You know, that's on top of, you know,

perhaps new AirPods and new iPhones and everything else,

and you know, HomePod, who knows what else?

So it's an exciting time, it is.

- I've been taking a fairly,

kind of a balanced approach to the Apple vision.

I'm excited about it just like anything, it's gleaming,

it's beautiful, I'm excited to see it.

But I think the more that you and I have talked about this

and the more I've seen people talking about it,

yeah, it's gonna be a great thing.

And even Jason here says, you know,

there's only gonna be so many

that are gonna be available in 2024, right?

This is not gonna be something

that you're gonna walk into the Apple store,

you know, just the average Joe off the street,

certainly not me, and purchase.

But I'm starting to see

that it's just a bigger picture here, right?

I mean, I think Jason mentions in here,

especially for the iPhones,

which we're really not anticipating a whole lot of bumps

in the iPhone side, you know, better cameras, of course,

and, you know, faster processors possibly,

and maybe a little bit lighter.

But on the camera side specifically,

that the iPhone cameras may be embracing

sort of the spatial video, right?

Or the spatial pictures, that kind of a thing.

And I guess it just gets me a little bit more excited

is that it's not just like it's a new product

of the Apple Vision,

just for the sake of it being a product,

but it seems like, I think Apple is kind of

building something around it,

or they're gonna maybe incorporate

some of these other things into it.

And this isn't like it's brand, you know,

brand new for Apple to do something like this.

But I think I'm just kind of getting excited there

because it's just like you said,

I'm getting, now I'm getting excited

or getting on your excitement train,

in just the sense it's like, wow,

we could really be interacting with information

a little bit differently.

Maybe the way that I kind of started thinking

about interacting with information with the iPad,

like I was able to touch the internet browser

or even with the original iPhone, right?

We had touchscreens before,

but it wasn't anything specific to what, you know,

it was when it actually came out.

- Yeah, Levandre, you are so on point.

As you just said, with the iPad,

when you're finally, the ability to touch the picture

and touch things just changes the way

that you work with it.

And Vision Pro, I think could be the same.

And let me just give you some specific examples.

The idea of these, I think it's called spatial videos.

You know, it's like a 3D video that you take with,

some, you either take it with the Vision Pro

or more likely you take it with your iPhone

or something like that.

And you'd later view it again.

You know, people are saying that when you see a home movie,

people that you know and love and your friends and family,

in 3D, it allows you to relive a memory

in a way you've never done it before.

People say that when you look at panoramic video,

panoramic photos that you may have taken of,

you know, who knows, the Grand Canyon

or something really cool, years and years and years ago,

when you can look at it in this 3D environment,

it's so immersive.

And I'll give you one last example.

For Christmas this year, my son,

one of the things that we gave him was the MetaQuest 3,

which is their newest headset.

- Right, right.

- The other day, literally just the other day,

I was about to go to work and my son

hadn't started school yet.

And so he says, "Dad, you gotta come see this."

And so I sat down at my computer study.

He was sitting in front of my home computer,

which is a Mac mini with a big 27 inch display.

And he's like, "I want you to sit here

"and put on the MetaQuest."

So I put on the headset and he had it hooked up

to my computer through a USB-C cord.

And suddenly, my Mac's screen,

the 27 inch screen, pretty big,

I was seeing the Mac screen in the MetaQuest,

so like in a 3D world,

and it looked like it was like a 60 inch TV,

but it was my Mac's desktop.

And then on top of it, there was another desktop.

And to the left, there was another desktop.

He had basically hooked up three virtual monitors to my Mac

and they were all running different things.

Now I'll tell you the quality,

the pixel quality, it was a little blurry.

And in all honesty, I mean, I could look at,

at the top of the Mac screen, it's like file, edit, view.

I know what those are because of course,

you've seen them in your entire life,

but they were a little blurry.

And this is of course, the difference between the Quest

and the Apple Vision product,

which is gonna be a lot more expensive,

but it's gonna be a lot crisper and stuff.

But as I just sat there and I looked around,

I thought, this is transformative.

This is something completely new.

And whether I'm using my literal Mac or my iPad

in some virtual world that's around me,

or just otherwise interacting with elements,

I mean, it's just like touching an iPad screen

with something completely new.

This was something completely new.

And that was the moment when I was like,

thank you for showing me this,

because this just gives me a preview

into what we could be doing.

So that's the reason why I'm excited.

And again, is it gonna be a flop?

Who knows?

Maybe nobody will buy it.

Maybe it'll be a flop and it'll be something like,

well, we all thought that would be cool,

but they are pushing the envelope

and doing something really interesting.

And gosh, I cannot wait to find out what it is.

- Yeah, okay, well, you got me sold.

I mean, I'd like to use your son's as well,

but I just have to wait, I guess,

until I can finally get the vision, bro.

And then just quickly, a couple of things

that Jason underscores here that we've talked about before.

The iPads might finally kind of, I don't know,

get a little balanced or kind of synthesize themselves

a little bit better into a line

that makes a little more sense right now.

It's a little confusing.

You and I get this question all the time,

like, which iPad do I buy?

And I'm like, well, there's so many on there.

And then he talks a little bit about the Macs.

Obviously, they might get a bump.

Everything, the MacBook Airs might come up to an M3 as well,

which I still don't think is absolutely necessary.

But anyway, just some other little tiny things

that Jason, I thought, did a good job in here

in covering on that as well.

- Cool stuff.

- Well, speaking of the Apple Watch, Jeff,

here is another article that you linked to,

which is a review of the Apple Watch Series 9,

which I think you and I have kind of concluded this

because neither of us bought a Series 9, by the way,

but this is Wesley Hilliard in Apple Insider.

He's like, well, if the only reason that you want it

is for the double tap, you might not necessarily need it.

I thought this was a good review here too.

- Yeah, when new Apple products come out,

of course, I love reading those reviews in that first week.

But what I like just as much is when people say,

now that I've been using a product for three months,

for six months, here's my views,

because it allows you to get a lot more perspective.

And so this was an interesting

because he's been using the Apple Watch Series 9

for three months.

And of course it's been in the news lately

because it was momentarily Apple couldn't sell them

and then they could sell them

and made change again in January.

So we're all thinking about the Series 9,

but the real question is,

is the Series 9 worth upgrading to

if you already have an Apple Watch?

And I have the Apple Watch version 7

and I decided not to make this upgrade

because although there were some new features added

in the 8 and even more in the 9,

for me, it wasn't quite enough.

But the biggest new feature was like you just said,

this double touch feature that you can

see what's on your watch

and you can tap your fingers together

to select a default option, which is cool.

And so that's why I was interested to see this review

where he says, it does work,

but sometimes it doesn't work.

And it's not such a trend.

In the times that it does work,

it's not such a transformative new thing

that like you wanna rush out and get this.

So, again, I'm glad that Apple has the feature

and whenever I upgrade, which who knows might be this year,

if Apple comes out with an Apple Watch version 10,

that's really cool.

And maybe it'll be time for me to upgrade.

And I will probably appreciate having this

as yet another feature,

but it's always nice when people give you this perspective

of saying, yeah, it's interesting,

but like it's not so good that this is a reason to upgrade.

I think that's really helpful advice.

- I like where he said, first of all,

double tap is not a brand new feature.

This was a little confusing.

Some people have asked me about this

and I'm sure they've asked you about as well.

It has been in the Apple Watches

as an accessibility feature for a while,

but it didn't work quite as good as what we saw.

- It's much more bigger feature now.

- In the Series 9 and by the way,

the Apple Ultra Watch 2 that came out.

So I have an Apple Ultra Watch 1

and similar to what you just were talking about, Jeff,

I did not see the insane need to upgrade

to an Ultra Watch 2 other than the fact

that I was thinking about it a couple of weeks ago

when there's like, hey,

I'm not gonna sell it anymore.

Should I get one, you know,

just to say that I have one.

I ended up not doing that.

But to your point also quickly,

I got my daughter an Apple Watch over Christmas

and we actually got her a Series 8

because Jeff, I just, I felt like that,

first of all, it was a little bit less expensive, right?

And I'm like, I just don't think that she needs,

she doesn't need the fastest and greatest,

but you know, the biggest thing was,

it was a little faster and the double tap was there.

And I'm like, yeah,

I just don't think that's quite enough

to bring it up there.

But anyway, it is good.

Yeah, I'm just, I'm glad to see this.

And I'm glad the Series 9 is out.

And man, I would love to see something this year.

Although Jason Snell,

just in that last article was talking about,

he doesn't think anything brand new

is gonna come out Apple Watch wise,

even though this might be the 10th anniversary of it.

Although didn't he say,

it's the 10th anniversary of the announcement,

but not the 10th anniversary of it going on sale.

So anyway, we'll see what, I mean, it's not going away.

We know that Apple's working on it.

And I would definitely see either this year or next year

that we'll see maybe even a little bit of a redesigned.

And anyway, I'm excited about that as well.

Jeff, you and I have been doing this long enough

that we remember the old BlackBerries.

And one of my first quote smartphones was the Palm Treo 650.

Who's out there?

Who's with me on this?

Oh my goodness.

(laughing)

You pulled it out of your desk for crying out loud.

Okay.

The one big feature, and I remember this,

and so do you Jeff.

The one big feature when people were going

from these older devices into the newer devices

with bigger screens was,

what's gonna happen to my hardware keyboard?

And we've, I think made the transition okay

over the last several years

until you link to this story today.

I don't know whether to like you for this

or to hate you for this,

because it's like, I might have to get one of these.

John Gruber and Darian Fireball

wrote about a new clicks device.

- Hmm. Very interesting.

- Yeah. The first time I saw this link on the internet,

which I think was just yesterday,

my first reaction, Brett, was this is ridiculous.

I'm not gonna even-

- Exactly.

- I'm not gonna even link to it on iPhone JD.

And then I saw two more people talk about it.

And I'm like, why are people talking about it?

And then I saw the John Gruber post

that you're showing right now,

where he was so excited about it

that I think he's already ordered one.

You know, there might be, I don't know.

I still don't think it's for me,

but I do know that people did used to like

to type on the little keyboard

because it's tactile and you can feel it.

Of course, they're little chicklet type keys.

They're so tiny.

But I think it's fascinating that this product is coming out.

And so it looks like an iPhone case.

It completely covers your entire iPhone,

which means of course that it is the size of your iPhone.

So if you get one for your iPhone 15 Pro,

and then this fall you get a new iPhone

that's a different size, it's not gonna work with it.

So just keep that in mind

that it's gonna be limited to this one model you have.

And what it does is, but it's smart.

It doesn't, instead of using Bluetooth

to communicate with the iPhone,

and Bluetooth when you communicate a lot,

you know, wears down the battery,

it actually just plugs into the USB-C port

or a lightning port if you have an iPhone 14 Pro.

And so it uses first basically no power at all.

And it gives you a little keyboard

that can even light up if you want at the bottom.

So it makes your iPhone really long,

as you can see from the pictures,

you're showing up on the screen

because it's your entire length of your iPhone.

Plus, plus the space for, you know,

one, two, three, four rows of keys.

So, but you know what?

It's incredible.

And I love the idea that, you know,

not everybody needs to have it,

but for those people that really think that they,

you know, that they would like to have the buttons again,

like the old BlackBerry or the old Palm Trio,

it's great that it's an option.

How much is it?

I don't wanna say it's like $150 or something like that.

- I was trying to see what their pricing.

- Yeah, I forget.

Yeah, there you go.

- You're right. - $140 or $160,

around $150, depending on what model you get.

And they've got some different colors and stuff like that.

- Bumblebee yellow.

- I really look forward to seeing the reviews

from people that use it,

because I will tell you, if the reviews are really positive

and people are like, this is great, you know, I love it.

I will admit that I don't use an external keyboard

with my iPhone very often, but you know what?

I literally just used it last night,

just last night, Brett.

I was at home and I wanted to type a work,

a work-related email, and I didn't have my iPad with me.

And on my iPhone, you know,

I was right there in front of my computer

and I could have connected to my work,

but I gotta go through all sorts of levels of security.

I'm like, I'm just gonna type this on my iPhone.

So I use this little app I have on my computer

that I can't remember the name of it right now,

but it allows the keyboard on my Mac

to talk to, to type on my iPhone.

And I've recommended it in the past on this podcast.

And so I did that.

And I just like, I just wrote my message real quick

using the keyboard.

Now that was a full-size keyboard,

not a little chicklet keyboard,

but there are times when you want to have something

besides the on-screen software keyboard.

So I really do get it.

I really do.

- I don't know if it's just my age, Jeff,

or if it's just that I am not as coordinated,

but I still, after all these years,

do find that I am not that speedy

with the on-screen keyboard.

Or I just get frustrated because I routinely

will make some kind of a typo or a mistake.

And it's like, I've either got to like,

hit the backspace button,

go all the way back and clear it out,

or I have to hold the space bar down, you know,

to move the cursor around and to make the changes.

And there are times when I just want to get something

out quickly.

And I know there's a lot of people screaming

at the radio right now, at the patio.

And there's like saying,

yes, that's why I liked my hardware keyboards.

When I first saw this link to it,

I started laughing just because of all of the history

that we have with hardware keyboards.

But then I started thinking like,

I think I'd like to try that.

Like, I just would,

I would love to compare and see what the speeds are.

And I don't know.

I mean, they've really done a beautiful job on this website.

They have some of the most lovely models

that are showing this keyboard here.

But I'm just, I'm saying, I would really like to see it.

So yeah, I appreciate you linking to that

because even though at first I thought

this was just hilarious,

I want to know what people are thinking.

I don't know.

I mean, it has all of the buttons.

It even has a tab button on there for crying out loud

and a command button on there.

And it has the Siri microphone.

Like that's all the stuff I really want to have

if I'm typing something on my iPhone.

Certainly if I'm doing some kind of a document work

like what you were talking about.

- One thing that we should mention,

and I don't even know if you know this yet, Brett,

but the people behind this company,

they, these are actually good people.

Like they, like one of the guys is a guy that,

the guy who's showing right now,

I forget his name, he's got like a name on YouTube.

- Mr. Mobile.

- It's Mr. Mobile.

He does tons of reviews.

He got together with a guy, I just know his,

he would call him Crackberry Kevin.

- That's right.

- He wrote that Crackberry was a website

that existed for many, it was like the Blackberry website.

- There he is.

- There you go.

And I forget what Kevin's last name is.

He, Kevin truly knows everything Blackberry.

And they also hooked up with people that used to work

for the hardware design at Blackberry,

people that used to work at Apple.

I mean, they put together what looks to be

like an all-star team to come up with this product.

So whether or not this product makes sense,

this is probably the best version of this product

that it could be.

Again, still will leave to be determined

whether it actually makes enough sense to be worth it.

But you know, this looks like the real deal.

- Well, thanks.

I had not seen this.

And so anyway, it was just great to see this morning,

wake up this morning and be like,

huh, that's interesting.

Speaking of buttons, how about the shortcut button

on the iPhone 15 Pro?

We've talked about this.

This is one of the first things I remember

when you first got your phone,

it was live on air, I believe.

And that we were talking about like,

what does that shortcut button look like?

Because before that,

it was that little clicker back and forth, right?

That would only mute your phone.

Well, now with this shortcut,

you can assign different things to the shortcut button.

I gotta admit, I've just left mine at the default,

which is the shortcut button is the mute my phone, right?

Or just silence my phone.

And I haven't really changed that or done much.

I know other people have made it to,

you can do a flashlight or you can turn the camera on.

I know we've talked about stories

where people are doing that.

But one of the interesting things

that I remember you mentioned early on as well

is that you can assign a shortcut to that shortcut button

that could launch all kinds of stuff on your phone.

So this was a good article that you linked to today as well.

- Yeah, now remember right now,

the action button is only on the iPhone 15 Pro.

So you have to have the newest

and the most expensive iPhone.

But I presume that in future models, Apple will continue.

So eventually more and more of us

will have these action buttons.

And there's nothing wrong, Brett,

if you wanna keep the action button

on the default setting, great.

But I do hope that people take a look at this article

because it would hopefully inspire you

to consider alternatives.

Because when you have the action button

trigger a shortcut that you create,

it literally means that there are infinite things

it can do.

It's just depending upon what's best for you.

And I may have mentioned this before,

but the way that I have mine set up right now

is during the day, like right now,

if I was to hold it down,

it's going to jump me into the camera.

So I can very quickly start taking a photo or video.

And I find that useful.

But after, I wanna say it's after nine o'clock at night,

I have mine turn off a lamp in my bedroom.

My wife always goes to sleep before I do,

and she always leaves a lamp on for me.

And just every single night of my life,

I'm always turning off that lamp.

And because it's a HomeKit controlled lamp,

I used to have to like go and open up my iPhone

and go to HomeKit and find the lamp and then put the,

but whereas now, where my iPhone's always in my hand

as I'm going to bed, I just hold down that button

and it turns off the lamp.

Now that may see, if you don't live my life,

the life of Jeff Richardson,

you may see having a button dedicated

to turning off your lamp seems silly,

but that is exactly my point.

Whatever is important for your specific life,

whether it's a specific light in your house,

maybe you wanna make it that turns off

all the downstairs lights,

or maybe it has nothing to do with lights.

Maybe you wanna have it like,

I'm a sort of person that's always writing a new note

and I want a single button

that will start writing a new note,

or I want a single button

that's gonna start playing a song,

or a single button that's gonna do whatever it is.

Maybe for you, you want a single button

that plays the sad trombone sign,

a trombone sign, you know,

whatever is specific to your life, no judgment here,

but you get to pick that one thing that you do a lot

and you wanna have one button access to it.

That's what I love.

And so that's why I love this post

because it encourages you to find something

that's specific to you, that really matters to you,

and assign the function to it.

- You know, I should correct myself.

I say, I've been calling it the shortcut button

and it's actually called the action button.

- The action button, yeah.

- And so in settings, and by the way,

a lot of this we're talking about

is sort of over and above kind of the built-in options here.

If you go into your settings in the iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max,

you will find an action button setting.

And first of all, I think this is one of the most

prettiest integrations of a setting

that Apple has come up with.

Because you can say,

it has this beautiful little pictures here

of like you can turn it to silent mode,

you can say a focus mode, you can say camera.

In other words, there's what,

maybe about seven or eight built-in things

that you can assign to the action button,

including translate, or this is the magnifier, for example.

And then the last two, by the way,

I didn't recognize this, but the last two,

first of all, you can quickly use an accessibility feature

and you can choose which feature that that comes on.

And then of course,

the last one is what we're just talking about.

You can assign a shortcut to the action button on there.

Just really nifty.

So there's already some built-in options

for assigning that action button on your phone,

but then if you wanna go over and above,

exactly I think the way you presented it, Jeff, is great.

And you're right, like it can be something specific

to each person that makes sense.

And I liked your idea on top of that,

to put it on a schedule.

So it's like after a certain time,

it does something different.

Is that built in?

That, or-

- I just have a shortcut.

So my shortcut says that, you know,

when this shortcut is triggered,

if the time is before a certain time, do X.

And if it's after a certain time, do Y.

And just in case you're curious,

the time that it takes it to figure out

what time of day it is, it's like a fraction of a second.

So the action button is not any slower,

just because I have it do different things

depending upon the time of day.

- Well done, my friend.

I like that.

Boy, that's just like adding layers on top of all of that.

That's great.

Last week, you linked to a video

that I just thought was really nifty here.

Sorry, I think I'm skipping over one here,

but let's just go ahead and cover this right now.

This was Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal,

who we very much enjoy and appreciate on this podcast.

And her reporting has just been absolutely fantastic.

Well, last week, you linked to a story

where she went into a high security prison

and was interviewing somebody that has been accused

or convicted of crimes and stealing iPhones

and information from iPhones.

And we've talked about this.

So this kind of story builds on some of the other things

that we've talked about here.

But I will admit to you, my friend,

last week, I did not actually watch this video.

This morning, I watched this.

And can I just say, this is required watching

for anybody with an iPhone.

I like one of the lines in here that she says,

"The iPhone's biggest security loophole is you."

It's us, right?

It's the user.

And it really is.

And just going through,

some of this information is not new.

You and I have talked about some of the abilities

that if a thief gets access to your iPhone passcode,

that they could change your iCloud passcode,

your Apple ID, and then it's gone.

Everything is gone then at that point.

But it's just, I think the social engineering component

of this, Jeff, is what fascinated me.

Just from his standpoint, the thief here,

is talking about how he would just go start making friends

and start talking with folks and say,

"Oh, let me put it, I'm a rapper.

Let me give you my information, my details.

I'll put it in your phone.

Here, unlock your phone for me."

And then they just do it right there in front of him.

And he just can remember the six digits.

And then he takes the phone

and then he's off to the races.

- In fact, it's more than that, Brett.

This was the most alarming part to me,

is he said that most of the time,

he would just ask somebody to borrow their phone.

And if you hold down the buttons on the left and the right

and stuff, you can lock your phone, right?

So he would lock their phone and say,

"Oh, it happens to be locked.

What's your passcode?"

And they would just give it to him.

And so he would just type in the number.

It makes it easier for him to remember it.

And then when he steals it from him, as he leaves the bar,

he knows the number.

That was the most troubling part to me about this video,

is how easy it was for people

to just give away their numbers.

Because once somebody has your phone and your passcode,

they can delete every photo you have,

not just from your phone,

but from your entire iCloud account.

So it's gone from your computer,

it's gone from your iPad,

it's gone from everything.

They can get into your bank account.

They can take up thousands and thousands of dollars.

It is literally almost unlimited chaos

they can do to your life.

You do not want your iPhone to be stolen

by somebody that has your passcode.

So yeah, if you didn't watch this video

after I mentioned it on last week's podcast,

you might wanna watch it now.

- Definitely. - Because it is important.

And we should mention that the Wall Street Journal,

if you subscribe to it, great.

If you don't pay for the Wall Street Journal,

you can read the articles for free.

If you subscribe to News Plus through Apple,

and even if you don't subscribe to any of that stuff,

anyone can watch the video for free.

The video's at the very top

of this Wall Street Journal article.

Now, once you scroll down,

you'll have to pay to read the article,

but you can watch the video for free.

- Oh yeah, just watching the video is enough.

And I'll try to find the YouTube link on this as well

and share it with everybody.

I mean, it's nine minutes of your life

that I think is just gonna help you

and all of your loved ones.

I mean, truly and honestly.

I mean, even this gentleman was saying,

he's like, "Yeah, I've stolen some Android phones,"

but he's like, "The bigger money is in iPhones."

And they know exactly where to go.

Joanna Stern even asked him like,

"Oh yeah, you go into Venmo and PayPal."

He's like, "No, no, that's small money."

He's like, "I go immediately to the bank accounts.

"I go immediately to using the credit cards."

I mean, it's just amazing.

And then he goes and buys more Apple products to resell.

I mean, you just gotta watch it, folks, everybody, seriously.

And then you can thank us later for that.

Where are you at segment?

Speaking of, (laughs)

some of this on there could be folded right into that.

Where is your phone?

Anyway, this was a nice little angle I thought for where you,

I think we have like three quick stories on this.

How about roadside assistance?

You know, we've talked about using the iPhone

and Apple satellite connection

to basically get help when you need it.

And most of the time we're talking about

like emergency personnel, right?

But what if you just need a flat tire to be replaced

or to jump your battery?

I thought this was really interesting

that Verizon is getting on this as well as AAA,

which of course everybody knows about.

- Yeah, everybody knows about the AAA service.

I did not know that,

I guess I've never been a Verizon customer.

I've used AT&T ever since the first iPhone came out,

but Verizon has long offered a roadside assistance program

to Verizon customers.

And now that service is going to work with Apple satellite.

So if you're in the middle of nowhere

and you're a Verizon customer,

if you already pay five bucks a month,

well then now you can use the Verizon service

and the services, different things that they pay for

and different things that are added services.

But even if you just like AAA,

even if you don't currently subscribe to the service,

you can like pay per use.

So you can say,

"I don't pay five bucks a month for roadside assistance,

but I wanna use that Verizon program for this one time only

because I've got a flat tire

and I need somebody to bring me a new tire."

Even though I'm completely off the grid

and everything else and only within satellites.

So now you've got even more options.

And I hope that we see even more of this, Brett.

Every one of these services should be available.

And that way, I mean, I don't even know about this,

but maybe you could compare prices.

Like if I don't subscribe to either one of them

and Verizon's gonna charge me X to replace my tire

and AAA would cost Y,

I could pick the one that makes more sense.

I don't know.

So it's great to have more options.

And I'm glad that Apple is not limiting

its roadside assistance to only AAA.

- And again, it's just the fact that people might say,

"Well, wait, what's the big deal?

Like I just call AAA if I need to."

But what if you don't have cell service, right?

- This is the whole point, that's the satellite.

- Exactly, that's the whole point of this.

And I just love seeing that kind of wrapped into it.

We've talked about the iPhone saving people when they fall

or they break a leg or something.

How about saving you from carbon monoxide poisoning?

This was really a fascinating story.

I think this out of Delaware, is that right?

Yeah.

- Yeah, this woman, she's a student

and she is a, must be a college student.

And she suddenly feels herself like losing consciousness,

which is one of the signs of carbon monoxide poisoning.

- Right, her vision was getting blurry.

- Yeah, vision blurry, that's one of the,

and those two, and I think becoming nauseous,

those are the three typical signs

of carbon monoxide poisoning.

And so as she was collapsing onto her bed,

fortunately she didn't have anything,

the only thing she had was her Apple watch.

So, if you press down the,

what's the button called on the side of the Apple watch?

Not the digital crown, but the other one.

If you hold down that button.

- The side button.

- The side button, that's what it might be called.

If you hold down the side button,

you'll see call SOS, whatever.

And so she did that to call 911 as she collapsed.

And the next thing she knows,

there's a firefighter on top of her.

And sure enough, it was, you know,

as we're changing weather and stuff like that,

it was getting cold.

The heater in her home apparently had some sort of a leak,

which leaked carbon monoxide.

And thank goodness the firefighters were there.

So, you know, I'm curious if she hadn't collapsed

in her bed, if she had just completely fallen on the floor,

maybe fall detection, you know, could have worked as well.

But in this case,

this is an example of not using fall detection.

She had just enough consciousness before she collapsed

to dial 911 through her watch.

And thank goodness she did,

because I mean, she could have died, seriously.

- Right.

- I mean, this is bad stuff.

- I like that that's what you went to is like,

hey, would your watch have worked

if you had fallen completely on the floor?

Because my first thought after reading this was like,

oh, I need to go check my carbon monoxide.

- Yeah.

- Monitor.

- And she admits she should have had one of those monitors.

- I know, right.

- In her house, we all should, yeah.

(laughing)

- Gotta make sure.

Okay, last little story here.

Woo, a couple of more crash detection features,

saving people.

And I liked how this is a story from Chance Miller

in "9 to 5 Mac,"

where it's like the first responders

are still a little upset sometimes

because of all of the false calls

or the false positives that they get.

But most of them have agreed that that's all worth it.

Right, because when they do find somebody

that was in a real accident and they really needed help,

that makes it all worthwhile.

And anyway, this was, I think, one from Tennessee,

and the other one was what, Alabama or somewhere else,

I think, on here.

Couple of neat stories in this as well.

- Yeah, and it's just anecdotal, but it's interesting.

These are people that are really out there in the wild,

and they say, "Yes, occasionally we get a false positive."

- Right.

- But like you said, Brett,

that the number of times that it actually is something real

and that without this service,

we just wouldn't have been able to help them,

it definitely makes it worth it.

So it's nice to see that Apple's crash detection

and fall detection and SOS,

I mean, all these things, satellite services.

- Just continuing, yeah.

- I mean, all these things are coming together.

When you think of all these things we talked about one time,

none of which existed a few years ago,

these Apple products are truly saving lives.

Hopefully you and I and nobody listening needs them,

but sure is comforting to know that you have access to them

and your loved ones that have Apple Watches and iPhones

have access to them too.

- Right.

Didn't one of these here,

I think the iPhone was thrown away from the car, right?

As part of the wreck or something like that?

Was it thrown out of the car?

- But still they were able to go to that location

and be able to find it.

Anyway, just really great stuff on all of that.

It sounds like over this past weekend, Jeff,

you and I could have probably watched

the last season of "Slow Horses" together.

- Oh, did you watch it?

- My wife and I binged season three as well

because we could not stop watching it, Jeff.

It was so good.

Those characters are so fantastic.

And what is it, Gary Oldman?

I mean, he is so fantastic in this role.

Even the music.

I mean, there was a story.

Did we link to this not too long ago?

- We talked about it last week.

Yeah, Mick Jagger wrote the theme song.

- Mick Jagger wrote the theme and just that song.

I usually will sometimes skip through the intros

'cause I'm like, okay, I've seen it,

but I won't do that one just because it fits so beautifully

with the show.

It just gets me in the mood.

Anyway, just such a great, great season there.

"Slow Horses" season three.

And then at the end, yeah,

and at the end they talked about "Slow Horses" season four.

And I was even getting more excited there.

Okay, but I'm glad that we got to both watch it.

That was good.

- So Apple filmed seasons one and two at the same time

and then released them separately.

They filmed seasons three and four at the same time.

And so season four is already wrapped and stuff like that.

And it will presumably come out later on this year.

And then Apple announced that they've picked up the show

for a season five,

which this is the very first Apple TV+ show

to get season five, which makes sense.

- No kidding.

- Apple TV came out in 2019

and here we are in the very beginning of 2024.

So it hasn't quite been five years yet.

So it's not surprising

that we're just slowly getting to that point.

I certainly hope that for all mankind

is another one that gets a season five,

but regardless "Slow Horses."

And the thing about "Slow Horses" I like,

and I'm sure you do too, is the episodes,

I mean, aren't they much like 30, 40 minutes?

I mean, they're not that long.

So it's a really bingeable show.

Like you can watch an episode quickly

and then you're gonna wanna watch that next episode.

I didn't get through the whole thing in one sitting.

I got through it in two sittings.

- I think us too.

- It is such a great show.

Just so, oh, and that Gary Oldman character,

you almost hate him.

And then you look, in fact, I have questions.

We may have to do this offline

because I don't wanna spoil it,

but there's some things, let me just say it.

Let me say it delicately.

- Yes, yes.

- The way that he acts towards another character

that we know is very important to him in the last episode.

At first, I think this is harsh,

but now I'm thinking it was actually calculated.

And he does actually have,

I don't wanna give anything away, but-

- Okay, okay.

You're being very vague.

- You and I are gonna have to talk about this,

but there was just some,

you know how you love a good show

that you continue to think about it afterwards?

- Oh, sure.

- I continue to think about that last episode of season three.

- Guilty.

- And I cannot wait to see how it all unfolds in season four,

which hopefully will be just a few months away.

So, it's a great show. - There's only six episodes.

So, I think we did two episodes the first night,

and then it's like, we couldn't stop thinking about it

that next day, Jeff.

And so, we ended up watching all four episodes the next day.

So, that was great. - So good, so good.

- And then along those lines,

a great little video you'll link to here

called "A Toast to 2023" from Apple TV+.

As I was watching this,

I just thought, this isn't a toast.

This is just a series of profiles and hugs.

- It is.

- You have to watch the video

to understand what I mean there.

- I will admit, it almost, I know it's promotional.

I know it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

- Right, it was good. - It almost brought

a tear to my eye.

- Oh, it was not that good. - And it showed some

of those Ted Lasso people.

Just because some of those Ted Lasso things they showed

is like, oh, I remember how bittersweet it was

when the series ended. - I know, I know.

- And I love that show so much.

So, anyway, it's definitely worth watching the video.

It's just like a minute or something like that.

- I'll link that video for sure.

In the know. - In the know.

- So, speaking of "A Toast to 2024,"

I had a great time with my family, all four of us.

My kids had never been to New York City.

Now, we didn't go for New Year's Eve, we weren't that crazy.

But we landed there on New Year's Day, so January 1st.

And we had a great time just walking around,

seeing the Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building,

all kinds of stuff like that.

But, Jeff, one of the things that I've talked about before

is walking around, going to a restaurant or somewhere,

and hearing a song that they're playing over the audio.

And I love Shazam, I always have.

Well, in New York, of course, boy,

there was such great music everywhere.

And it's like we're waiting in line for a bagel.

And I'm like, man, they're playing

some kind of really great jazz.

I think I know who it is, but I don't know for sure.

So, I've talked about this before,

'cause it's one of my favorite things.

There's a couple of different ways

to get into the Shazam app that will listen to the song,

and then it'll tell me the song.

And, Jeff, I don't know about you,

but over the years, I have seen Shazam get even better.

Like, every time I use it, I'm like,

there's no way, there's other people talking.

You know, it's not that loud, it won't be able to hear it.

And then there was a siren that goes off

in the middle of it.

But no, it finds it.

And it still just fascinates me every single time now.

Well, a couple of different ways.

You can get to the Shazam app.

You can just go into your phone and find the Shazam app.

The other way that I was doing this

over the last couple of years

is I added it to my control center.

So, you can pull it down in your control center,

and you can just tap it, and then it listens right there.

But it's like, I was doing this so often, Jeff,

that it's like, I hated to unlock the phone

and go to the control center.

So, I'm like, hey, I wonder if they have

a lock screen widget.

And sure enough, they now do.

In fact, this only came out,

it looks like this is stories from August of 2023.

So, this, I think this is right after 17 came out,

that you can now add Shazam as a lock screen widget.

And I think I have it on every single one

of my lock screens now.

There's two little options.

You can have just one little tiny square,

which just opens the Shazam app directly,

and it starts listening.

Or there's a little bit of a bigger one.

You can have those lock screen widgets,

or either, I call them one square, or they're two squares.

And you can have a little bit of a bigger one,

which actually will show you,

it'll launch this Shazam app as well,

but it'll show you what the last song

that it recognized on this.

So, anyway, that's the thing that I just really enjoyed

walking around New York,

going into different restaurants,

and different places that we were in.

I was like, what is that song?

Plus, to me, it's just like, am I right?

Am I thinking it's the right song?

I just like kind of having the ability to do that.

And it just continues to amaze me how good it is.

And it just reminds me how much that Apple

is improving this.

The Apple acquired it in 2018.

And what I love about it is that it will launch the song

that it recognizes into Apple Music,

but you can also launch it into Spotify.

Like, they're still allowing you a little bit more

of a custom component on this.

And anyway, I was just enthralled doing that.

The kids were just getting a little upset.

Like, come on, dad.

We didn't stand here and listen to the music,

but I enjoyed it.

So that's my tip.

Add Shazam widget to your lock screen as a widget.

Small one or a big one today?

- The reason I love that tip is because Shazam

truly is magical, like you say.

It's incredible how often it works.

But every time I launch Shazam,

I want to launch it as quickly as possible.

Because that's my definition.

- Yes, exactly.

- You're like, before this song ends, I want you to launch.

So giving you even faster,

hey, it might be something you could attach

to your action button as well, Brett.

You might consider that.

- I was just thinking about that.

- But Shazam launching as fast as possible is awesome.

Okay, so here is my tip.

My tip has to do with messages.

And the reason for my tip is I've been encountering an issue

over the last couple of months that sometimes my iPhone

will show that I have no new messages,

but my iPad will think that I do have a new message

or vice versa.

They get out of sync.

And I haven't figured out the solution to it yet,

but in the process of thinking about it,

I came across this post on threads by Lauren Good,

who's a writer for Wired Magazine.

And she said that, and again,

I'm not sure it's going to fix the particular problem

that I have, but it's actually a clever thing

that I plan to use in the future.

What she said is that if you ever are being told

by your messages app that you have an unread message

and you can't figure out what it is,

perhaps because you don't, you know,

whatever it is, you don't know where it is.

If you ask Siri on that device to read any unread messages,

it will read to you whatever it thinks is unread.

And I'm like, okay, that's clever.

I'm glad she gave a tip.

I'm going to try that in the future.

But then there's a reply to her post on threads

by John Gruber, who we were just talking about

a few minutes ago during Fireball.

And John says, this is a clever tip.

And here's yet another one.

And this one I thought I didn't even know about.

So normally in your messages app,

if you open up your messages app

and you're looking just at the top level,

at the very top left of the screen, it says edit,

and you can tap that to have some edit functions.

But if you want to change it,

the way that you change it is if you go

into your settings app, so get out of the message app,

you go into the settings app,

and then you go down to tap on messages,

which is a little ways down there.

And then when you're in messages,

there's tons of things you can change.

So you scroll all the way to the bottom.

And at the very bottom, it's not the very bottom,

it's like third from the bottom.

There's something called message filtering.

If you tap, and then underneath message filtering,

if you tap on that, you'll see some options.

There's a thing that is turned on

called filter unknown senders.

- Yes. - Turn that on.

Now, the reason you want to turn that on

is it now changes the way that your messages app operates.

If you go back to your messages app at the top left,

instead of seeing the edit button,

you will now see a new button called filters.

- It says filters.

- And if you tap on filters, you'll go back one level,

just like when you're in your mail app,

you can go back one level.

- Look at that. - And you can say,

I either want to see all messages,

I just want to see messages from people

that are known senders.

So in other words, you know, those little,

they may not be spam,

they may just be like confirmation codes from companies,

I don't want those to show up.

You can see only unknown senders,

or you can see unread messages.

And then you can also see recently deleted

if you're trying to find something that you deleted.

And so I had no idea that you could filter messages.

- Brilliant.

- And so whether you're using it

for what I originally started talking about,

which is unread messages,

or you're using it because you just want to focus

on the people that you know,

or the people that you don't know,

or, you know, this is just a useful tool to go,

you're not going to use it all the time,

but I think it's, and again, you don't lose anything

because now that it says filters

at the top left of my screen,

things that used to be under the edit screen,

there's a new button at the top of the screen,

it's a circle with three dots in it.

It wasn't there before.

- Yeah, I see that.

- But if you tap on the circle with three dots,

you'll now see some of those same things

that were previously under the edit.

So you haven't lost any features,

it's just added something to your messages app

that you might find useful one day.

Now, I hope that this is a solution,

or I hope that this leads to a solution

for the problem that I originally encountered

of it's not syncing, but even if it doesn't,

even if it doesn't, these are useful.

I'm so thrilled that I now know about this new way

to have issue functionality in the messages app.

So that's my tip of the week.

And again, I didn't come up,

I thank Lauren Good and John Gruber

for sharing this information on threads

that I am now sharing with everybody else.

- Okay, but I'm gonna give you credit too, Jeff.

That's, what a way to bang start the new year.

That is fantastic.

I am so thrilled with that

because I typically don't have any unreads on there,

but every once in a while I'll leave one,

just like I leave an unread email, right?

And 'cause I'm gonna go back to it.

This just jumps me, I have four unreads right now

and I go into the filter and all I see are the four unreads

instead of having to like scroll through and find it.

(laughing)

I am so happy.

- Wow, happy new year.

(laughing)

That's great, Jeff.

Thanks again.

All right, good.

It's great to start 2024.

Happy to be doing this, continuing to do this.

And thank you all for listening to us

and for starting off the new year with us.

And Jeff, we'll talk to you next week.

- Happy new year, Brett, and goodbye, everybody.