135: Shedding a Tear for the Vision, Bougie First Class, and Tracking Stolen Golf Carts

Welcome to In the News for February 16, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey, Brett.

Jeff, it's two weeks now.

You with the Apple Vision Pro.

You do more and more and more.

I was thrilled to see that.

I mean, some people have been doing like, hey, you know, a full day, 24 hours with a Vision Pro, you know, all these kinds of things.

I really enjoyed your post this past week.

Movies on a plane or train with the Apple Vision Pro in travel mode.

Some interesting discoveries you made here.

Absolutely.

This is something I was really looking forward to trying.

And it just worked out well for me that we traveled, me and my family, for Mardi Gras because the kids were off of school.

And so it was a great opportunity to try the Vision Pro when it was still really new.

As I've discussed before, there are some things the Vision Pro, you know, is going to be good at.

But one of the things the Vision Pro is already really good at is entertainment, just watching movies.

And that's something that, you know, we've all done on airplanes for forever, whether you're watching the back of the plane seat in front of you or, you know, watching your iPad or your iPhone.

We've all done this before.

So this was a great, great use for it.

I've actually seen a couple other reviews after I posted this, a couple other people had talked about getting on a plane too.

And one of the things that jumped out at me the most is that the first thing I talked about in my review is something that I haven't seen discussed by others.

So I don't know, maybe it was unique to me, but it was the fact that the downside is that it's awkward to put on the Vision Pro.

I mean, a Vision Pro is big, you know, it's a big thing and you've got it in the case like I do.

You know, you have it in the case and you got to hook up the cord and everything else.

And for me, if I'm on a plane and there's somebody sitting right next to me who I do not know, I think that would be a little difficult to do.

I'm not saying you can't do it.

You can.

I guess you could just walk onto the plane and have the Vision Pro like in your hand.

Although even that I'd be worried about because it's so expensive.

So I'm surprised that nobody's talked about that because I do think it's a real issue.

If you are in first class, well, you know, you're great.

If you happen to have like, I was so incredibly lucky, Brett, how often do you have two plane flights in a row where you have no one next to you?

I was actually more jealous about that than the Vision Pro.

My wife and I joke that that's almost sudo first class when you have nobody next to you because you can stretch out and you got a place to go.

Bougie, bougie first class.

Exactly.

And so for that, it works perfectly.

So but I'm just surprised that I haven't seen more people talk about that.

But if you can get past that, when you actually get to the watching experience, oh my God, Brett, I mean, it is it's really, really, really good.

There are some minor hiccups that I'll get to.

But you know, when you're sitting there, you know, and you can just have your screen as big as it can be and you're on the plane anyway, so it's not like you're doing anything.

I mean, it's a perfect time to just sit there and just watch something.

And I was using the air pods and they worked great for the sound.

And the the screen was was huge.

The device automatically notices that you're moving.

And so it prompts you to turn on travel mode, which I did, which is important because otherwise it has trouble because it senses that you're moving.

And so it would have trouble keeping the screen in one place.

And I did mention in the review that if you're looking straight ahead at your screen, everything's perfect.

But then if you look to your side, you will no longer see the screen in front of you.

And I saw a little pop ups giving me an error message.

And I think I may have put a little screenshot of that basically said, you know, we've lost the image for a second or something like that.

So it's it does work, but it's just it's just a little different from wearing it in normal life.

But watching the movie is wonderful.

I mean, it's it's it's just as crisp and a 3D movie.

It was it was really, really, really, really, really, really good.

Just immersive.

And it just strikes me just real quick, because I know when they when Apple has put out a couple of commercials, I distinctly remember a couple of them actually have somebody in an airplane.

In other words, like Apple thought of this as an actual use of this.

And I remember even thinking then like, well, OK, we'll see how that goes.

I don't know if I want to be that awkward on a plane.

But it sounds like some people accepted you just looking like an alien and others were kind of pointing at you a little bit.

I'm like, hey, what are you doing there?

But I but I gather and just quickly, I want to add this real quick.

I gather that Apple has done such a great job that there wasn't probably a lot of people like staring at you because they didn't know what it was.

Right.

In other words, I don't want to dismiss that because the fact that everybody knew what it was, I think it's a compliment to Apple on getting the word out.

Like in other words, everybody had already seen that.

Right.

So I think it might have been odd that you had it on, but it wasn't odd that it was actually in the wild, I think.

Yeah, I think part of that is Apple marketing.

I think part of it is it's actually the design of the device.

If you have looked at a meta quest, you know, whatever version there are now, the Oculus, the old Oculus, it's it's you know, it completely blocks your face.

It's got three dots.

You sort of look like a robot.

Whereas with the Vision Pro, it really does look like you're wearing ski goggles, which I mentioned to you because for this vacation we had recently, my kids went skiing.

So I know it's like, OK, it really does look like.

But as a result, even if somebody had never seen an Apple commercial about the Vision Pro, I think that it's a little less odd.

I mean, you can see that you're wearing a headset device.

But it doesn't look quite as bizarre as maybe some of its competitors do.

Right.

And I think that adds to it, too.

But I also think that, you know, when you're on an airplane, people tend to leave other people, you know, as long as you're being quiet.

Nobody really pays too much attention.

Right.

Nobody's actually sitting right next to you, which is why I mentioned that, you know, my anecdotal experience is the only people that said anything to me about it were the flight attendants who walked down the, you know, one of them sort of laughed and pointed me out to somebody else.

I'm sure they were waiting for their first sighting of it.

And then another person actually walked up to me and said, you know, how does it work?

You know, what are you watching right now?

Can you see me, too?

You know, all the sort of typical questions that you would expect.

So it's but it's a really nice experience.

So if you can get past having space to put it on and then take it off, it's by far, you know, it's almost funny because you can see this in the picture you see right now.

You can't see what I was watching because Apple blacks out the screen like it.

So if you actually saw what I was watching, you would have seen an avatar screen right there.

But you can sort of get a sense from the edges.

My image screen was huge.

And then I look to my right and I see the people looking at the screens in the back of their other of their of their their seats.

And I'm like, oh, my goodness, my screen is like a hundred times bigger than yours.

This experience, you know, it's really there's nothing else.

So it is the premier experience.

If you want to just tune out and gosh, if I was doing like a 12 hour plane flight or even just a cross-country plane flight where I had to write in time, this would really, really help the plane.

You know, the time go by.

Sleeping on a plane is a good way to make the time go by.

But watching a movie is a great way to make that.

So so that was good.

And I also mentioned in there that I happen to be on a commuter train as well.

Yeah, it's worked really well.

You know, that tends to be on automobiles.

Exactly.

So there tends to be more space around you in a commuter train, if you're lucky.

Right.

So I had like a whole seat to myself.

So I had nothing but space there and it was no problem.

But it was the same idea that I could see my screen really big with the movie that was watching.

And then it's it's it was really nice.

So it was a great experience.

Apparently everything works out good until you get to the sad part of the movie.

This was such a surprise for me.

I mean, it shows you how immersive the experience was, Brett, that I'm sitting here and near the end of the movie.

And again, I tear up at Hallmark commercials.

That's just who I am.

I've accepted this.

That's that's the type of guy that I am.

That's precious.

And so, you know, as I start to tear up at the end, I bring my fingers up to my face to wipe the tears.

And I can't wipe the tears because I'm touching my goggles.

And I'm like, oh, this is ridiculous.

And so then I just started to tear.

And then they sort of went down into the little in the things that go around the vision pro light seal, the light seal.

Exactly.

And so I'm like, OK, well, this is just ridiculous.

And then I just happened to notice that David Sparks has been writing a number of articles about the pro on his site.

And we're going to talk in a second about when he wrote in productivity.

But he also wrote one on entertainment.

And I'm not the only person, because he said the same thing happened to him.

He was watching Moana and he started to tear up.

Really?

Oh, wow.

And he noticed the same thing.

So it's fact it's it's such an issue that Apple must have noticed this because they know what a great entertainment device it is.

Yeah.

And they must have watched some sad movies.

People tear up from time to times when you're doing that.

And so I'm surprised that I guess Apple has they must have recognized in this in this in their own testing that it happens.

And I guess they've decided, you know, that that is what it is.

Maybe that's the reason that we even have the little inserts for it.

Who knows?

Well, yeah.

You said that the tear to your tear got absorbed quickly by the light seal cushion.

So maybe maybe they just maybe they just had that built in.

But then I'm thinking, OK, well, at one point, you need to wash that.

Right.

I mean, who knows?

It's going to be the the the Vision Pro, you know, the light seal cushion comes off.

It's just a tiny.

Oh, yeah.

There you go.

OK, Apple even gives you a second one with you.

They've never really explained why they include a second one.

And it's a little bit different size.

I think the one that's included is a little bit thicker.

And the way they get a little bit thinner, the implication being that one fits better than the other.

But I haven't tried the other one.

That's interesting.

But I guess in theory, that's great.

Wash this one out and let it dry.

You could put the yeah, you could you could do that.

Yeah, we shall say.

That's great.

Well, let's talk, David Sparks.

There was there was a couple of really good articles you linked to today specifically around using the Vision Pro in a productivity setting.

Right.

Or how to be productive on the Vision Pro.

And you and I, I know, talked about this even a couple of weeks ago.

And just you, for example, I think you mentioned that while you haven't specifically been able to do some of that productivity, like a daily productivity.

Right.

And with the Vision Pro, I think you said you're waiting for the MDM to come, you know, so that you have your access to your work information.

But you know, not everybody maybe has that limitation.

And there's some good articles here, even starting with, like you said, with David Sparks here.

And I always love how he puts these in the bullet points.

Right.

Just some quick hits here on his notes or his observations on being productive with the Vision Pro.

Yeah, it's been interesting because one of the things that he mentions and I've heard others mention this, too, is there's always the things you know, there's the things that you think are going to happen.

And then when you use it, there's the things that you learn.

Right.

Actuality.

And actually, and one of them is when I was thinking about the Vision Pro, when you and I were speculating about it, Brett, we talked about the idea of having screens around you being great for multitasking.

Right.

But what David mentions, and I've seen others mention this as well, is that and I actually think I understand this, where the Vision Pro really shines is not for multitasking, although it can do that.

But it's for very focused tasks, because if you although you can see the windows around you, it's great for just looking at one thing and sort of making it large, much like how I talked about making the movie really big in front of me.

And also people have talked that when you use the environments feature to dial it in so that you're on a mountain top or you're on the moon or whatever it is, it's just the idea of you sort of close out the world around you.

And it's not unlike the idea that sometimes, and I've done this myself, sometimes you might be in an environment where you just, instead of listening to music, you might just turn on some white noise or something like that in your headset, just to sort of help you focus.

Just, you know, I'm doing this one thing, I want to focus on this one thing.

And David mentioned that another person you and I follow all the time, Federico Vittici at Mac Stories, he has some podcasts where he's mentioned that he's trying to live exclusively in the Vision Pro as much as possible.

And he has found that, you know, obviously, which has some drawbacks, but he's found the same thing that if you're just focusing on something, and I actually haven't done this, but most of the time when I'm using my Vision Pro, I have the environments turned off because I like being able to see the world around me.

And if someone happens to come by my office, I can see them or something, or even if I'm at my house, if my wife, you know, but I'm actually learning through other people that where the Vision Pro might really shine is when you just want to do this one thing, you want to write this one brief, not that you won't look at other resources as you're doing so, but you're writing your one paper and you're focused on it and you're in an environment.

The environments, in addition to being a visual thing around you, some of them also have some sort of light audio aspects of it, you know, sort of hear like you're outside, like some bird chirping or something like that, just to sort of get you in the mood.

And that may add to it as well, just sort of the ambient noise.

And so that's something I hadn't considered is that it might be even better as a productivity tool if you're focused on one thing, as opposed to doing a bunch of things. - Well, you know, just quickly, I'm going to say like several writing apps have kind of had this idea, right?

Especially on the iPad, it's like, or even, you know, I think even Microsoft Word may still have like a focus setting.

I don't even use it, I've hardly ever used it.

But I know when you do, it like takes away all of the toolbars, it takes away all of the extraneous and everything so that you can just focus on the writing.

And so when I was reading this, and in this article that you linked to from David Sparks, I went a second link to what he calls his writing cabin, right?

This is what you're talking about.

And the environment here is the Yosemite Valley.

But I just breeze through this article, but I just like the idea like he has this, his brain now associates this writing environment, he calls it his writing cabin, with the Yosemite environment so that when he goes into that environment in the Vision Pro, he knows he's at work, right?

He's able to focus on this one aspect on there.

And I like this idea like, you know, like, hey, you can go into the mountains for a retreat kind of a thing.

You can kind of do that from the Vision Pro.

And I had not thought about that.

And I think that's what you're referring to, right?

That David is doing here, which I just thought was really cool.

Yeah, so that's an interesting observation that I would not have predicted beforehand.

And now that I've heard other people describe how successful it was for them, it's something that I look forward to doing a little bit more myself.

Right.

I'll also mention that when it comes to getting work done, again, this is something that I reported immediately.

It, you know, much like you would not use a computer without a keyboard and a pointing device to get work done on the Vision Pro.

You absolutely need a keyboard.

And I think that you absolutely need a trackpad.

I've heard some people say that the trackpad is optional.

I think David was one of them that he mentioned that a trackpad is nice, but not efficient.

And maybe it has more to do with the fact that my vision is not as good as some other people.

And as a result, my cursor control is not as sharp as other people.

But for me, having a trackpad to have that precision is really, really good.

And as I've mentioned before, that's especially true if you're using an app that's an iPad app on the Vision Pro, because things are closer together.

Gotcha.

And then the last thing that I'll mention from David, and I haven't tried it out myself, is he mentions a app called AICO, A-I-K-O, which is an AI-based transcription tool.

I know that this is sort of the new fancy thing, is that instead of something like a dragon dictation, that's really good at hearing your words, people, apps are using artificial intelligence to not just listen to what you're saying, but be smart about it and say, "Oh, in context, what he's really doing is this."

And of course, this is what if a real person like us in the legal sphere, a court reporter, they understand, they're typing what you're saying because they understand the context as much as anything else.

And so it really makes sense to bring an AI element to something.

And he said that if you're using a Vision Pro, this app does all of the AI on device.

So it's not sending your words up to the internet where somebody else could, you know, it's got that privacy aspect to it and he recommended it.

So as an alternative to typing, you could just talk with the Vision Pro, assuming that you're in a quiet environment, of course, where it's appropriate to do so.

So that's a productivity tool that I look forward to trying and I haven't yet.

I'm just going to quickly say, that's fantastic.

First of all, you and I both know David has been doing audio transcription for years and years and years, right?

So the fact that he even, you know, kind of supports this tells me a lot right there and then.

And the second thing, I'm at a conference, as you know, it's a legal technology conference that you and I have attended many times, Jeff.

And of course, one of the big topics, just like any other conference today is AI.

But I heard a presentation yesterday that was so beautiful about explaining this.

Like it's just a computer's like making a guess at like the next thing.

Like what is the best word that's going to come after this kind of a sentence?

And so in similar to what you were just describing here, and as I was looking at some of these prompts down here on this, IECO AI, as I'm looking at some of the prompts down here, it's really just like fixing the missing punctuation or understanding like where your paragraph, you know, are going to be divided.

And again, that's all sort of a guessing game that computers can guess so well at, as in like play in chess, for example, or go.

I mean, there's obviously some strategy involved with that, but they can just look at large language models and sort of guess and guess very accurately at what is the next word or what is the next sentence or when is he starting or ending a sentence.

You know, as opposed to all of us that have been doing audio transcription for so long, you know, we have to say, you know, the dog ran over comma, but then also open open paren, you know, we had to like say all the punctuation and the fact that we might just be able to continue to talk and have AI make guesses at that, I think it's really cool.

So I'm glad you linked to that too.

Right.

Before we move on to the next article, which I know is a one from Apple insider that you're going to show, you mentioned that you are in Chicago at a tech show, which is sort of the premier legal technology show and has been for a long time.

You yourself ran tech show, gosh, what a decade ago or something like that.

Something almost.

Yeah.

There has been as someone that's interested in productivity and technology, I myself have learned a lot of tech show.

I will, you know, for, you know, I definitely remember the tech shows right after the iPad came out and people were sort of speculating how that might be useful because the Vision Pro is just two weeks old.

My guess is that you're not you're certainly not seeing a tech show this year.

Things on the tech show.

Well, are you or have you seen anything?

I will say it this way.

So there's no presentations around something like that.

Sure.

But it's been mentioned several times, Jeff.

And I will tell you, when I when I entered this conference and, you know, we both know this isn't like humongous conference, obviously, but it's very focused on lawyers and law firms and how they use technology, how they integrate technology.

And I have been amazed.

I have probably counted about a dozen people that have been carrying around a Vision Pro.

Now, nobody's like, you know, going through the exhibit hall yet, but I've seen people like carried it around.

Like I just did not think even at a conference like this, that there would be some.

And so just the fact that, you know, just like probably any other, you know, facet of the of the general society at large.

It's just interesting to me that in this little bubble of folks that you and I know so well, that there are people that are utilizing it and that they are, you know, experimenting with it and seeing how they can do, which is why I'm so glad that you were talking about a lot of the productivity components today.

I think that's helpful.

Yeah.

You know, one of the people I don't mind that I don't think she would mind if I said this, but one of the people that you and I both know through tech show, in other words, is Nikki Black, who has been writing about legal technology forever.

She brought it.

Yeah, she and I were communicating because she at first she was just looking at it.

And then I got an email from her last week saying, OK, I broke down and I bought it.

You know, I just I had to try it out.

And I think that she recognizes, as I've been saying, that, you know, in this productivity angle, it's more that you're getting a glimpse of the future than than you're actually using it today.

But anyway, well, that's it.

I just have to tell you quickly, though, I did see her and Nikki, you know, she's so well respected in the legal tech world and beyond.

But she did not have it with her because to your point about it being a little bulky.

She's like, I couldn't fit it into my luggage.

Yeah.

And I'm like, well, that's not a good excuse.

You should just wear it like, you know, how can you how can you leave it at home?

Coming to a conference?

It's like and I'm like, well, OK, it is a little bulky.

And then when I was reading about you today, you know how to put it on and everything.

But I'm like, what is that like a separate carry on?

Does it fit under the seat in front of you?

I don't know.

I thought that was that was interesting there.

Yeah.

And that is good of what?

Yeah.

That's an article.

But that was a legitimate part about the traveling with it is that, yes, how did you do it?

And I mean, what I had is I brought a knapsack as my carry on.

And in my house, I actually put two bags inside of one bag.

One bag inside of my knapsack was my Tom Bin bag that has my iPad on my iPad.

And the other thing in my knapsack was the case for the Vision Pro.

And those, you know, turning those two bags into a single bag made for a very thick bag that just barely fit under the seat in front of me.

But and that's the thing, like if I thought that I wasn't going to have the space to put it on and if it was a short flight, I probably would not take the Vision Pro on a flight.

Interesting.

You have to make that.

Yeah.

So the other this other article we're going to talk about, which was from Mike Worthall at Apple Insider, again, talking about productivity with the Vision Pro.

One thing that he mentioned that I did not try is he said that if you're on a train or a plane, he says, don't look outside the windows, because once you look outside the window, the Vision Pro is going to sense that motion and it's going to mess up all the window positions and they're going to float behind you.

So I when I was on my.

You didn't try that.

OK.

When I was on my airplane flights, we were flying at night.

So everybody had their windows closed and there was nothing to see outside the window.

When I was on the train, it was during the day.

And I guess I just didn't really look outside that much because I was talking about the same thing that that was interesting thing.

Mike also talks in this article about how he you know, the idea of wearing goggles to get work done is nothing new.

People have been doing it in for safety reasons.

Sure.

Of course.

And he points out that, you know, when you wear goggles, one of the downsides is it can get sweaty in your face, especially if you're outside.

And this is a legitimate thing.

You know, the idea of going to go sit outside in the park and wear Vision Pro goggles, maybe not because it could be sweaty.

It's the same problem of tearing up at the end of the movie.

He concludes this article the same way again.

We always do that.

It's really more of a glimpse of the future of productivity than a tool for today.

And so that's why, you know, if any people that ask me because a few people in my office know that I have it, they say, you know, is this something to get yet?

You know, it's really, you know, unless you want to be an early adopter, it's really not right.

Right.

You know, you can live and the next generation's, you know, wait a couple of years.

But if you want to spend more money than it's probably worthwhile, and if you want a glimpse of the future, well, then it's great fun.

But this really, you know, it's we will soon look back at this product and think, you know, this was just the one point over.

You know, you mentioned wearing goggles for work is nothing new.

And my favorite part of this article from Mike is the fact that who wears goggles sometimes from a safety?

Well, maybe construction workers.

Right.

And unfortunately, as he showed here, a hard hat doesn't work so well with the Apple Vision Pro.

And I think the main thing he was talking about, because it does fit.

But the main thing he said is that the hard hat would keep hitting the digital crown button on top.

Is that right?

And it's like, so it's like, you know, if you don't want it anyway, it's like, I don't know that Apple had construction workers, you know, specifically in my designing the Apple Vision Pro.

But I'm glad that Mike has gone forward with this to let us know, you know, you say they didn't have it in mind, but there's actually more of a there's more logic here than you might think, because I can understand someone being in a dangerous environment such that they'd want a hard hat and working on something that's very complicated, sophisticated machinery.

And having something like a Vision Pro where you can augment reality and have like, you know, instruct people can watch you as you're doing things and can talk you through it.

And you can actually see an example of you have to turn it until it's this way.

And you in the real world turn it into it's this way.

I can I can see real world industrial examples of people doing this.

I mean, heck, we've already had telemedicine for a while where a doctor in one place is basically controlling a surgical procedure somewhere else.

So I do think that there's something to this.

It's it'll be interesting.

Well, OK, so we're not a couple more things quickly on the productivity focus of the Vision Pro.

This was an excellent review, I thought about the things app, which I know you still use that right Jeff, the things app.

Yeah, I've used it before in the past and just kind of got away for a variety of reasons.

But I've always held it as like probably one of the nicest and best designed apps that I have ever used on the iPad and the iPhone.

And now when I get when I get my Apple Vision Pro, one day, I can use things on the Apple Vision Pro.

Have you tried it on yours yet?

I haven't.

And in part because, well, actually, the number one reason I haven't tried it yet is you need to the company that makes things.

I think the culture code, they it's a brand new app to buy.

And so and it wasn't.

Oh, I mean, I want to say it was fifty dollars or thirty dollars.

I mean, it was it's not like let me see for getting work done, but it was enough to actually think that thirty dollars.

So I wasn't going to just spend the thirty dollars right away.

I have no doubt that at one point I will get it once I really get more serious into getting work.

But the real the reason that the review stood out at me is Federico Vatici said that it was a really well done app, that it does a nice job of, you know, things.

There are times where you can actually have different to do lists for different types of things and you can have different windows floating in the environment.

So, you know, here's your overall to do list.

And then maybe here's for the specific task that you're working on, the steps that you're going to go through.

And it can very easily have different windows.

So it looks like it's a well done app.

I have not purchased it yet.

I suspect that I probably will in the future.

Yeah, I suspect you will as well.

I'm excited about that.

So as you mentioned, Federico is who you mentioned just a little while ago, who has really been trying to do all of his work in the Vision Pro, which just as a quick aside, what I remember getting to know Federico several years ago was because he was one of the only ones that was trying to do all of his work on an iPad.

Right.

That was the whole idea of where Max Stories came from.

So now he's trying to do this in the Vision Pro and something even simpler that I wouldn't even think would be an issue.

But you pointed out it is something that you like.

He's looking he just wants a clock in the Vision Pro.

Now, there's one there, but you have to click through a couple of things.

I think you said you had got to go through the control center.

And so Federico has been Federico has been testing out many clocks, apps, clock apps available for the Vision Pro.

Yeah.

And me as well.

As soon after I started using it to try to get some work done, I'm like, I really want to sort of keep track of the time and to bring up the control panel.

You have to look at the top of the screen, find the little downward, look, show.

Click it up on it and it brings down the thing and then you can see the time.

That's annoying.

I want to just know I don't like to see the time quickly and then absolutely like.

So I had tried out using the was called Widget Smith, which can have a clock widget.

And so that's what I did.

I put like a little clock widget in the corner, which was nice.

But he has some other alternatives here that actually look very nice.

In fact, one of them also has the battery power in it, too, which I thought was a good idea because to see because the Vision Pro is so new, I don't you know, you always have sort of a sense of how much power your iPhone has, your iPad, because we've been here for so long.

We just sort of know how long they last.

But I really don't know what the Vision Pro.

And so I you know, it might be nice to have a way you can easily see the battery.

So far, I've been pleasantly surprised that the battery life I mean, whatever the reports are two and a half hours or something like that.

But whenever I get work done, I'm I always think I'm using battery faster than I actually am with the Vision Pro, which is good.

But still, it might be nice to be able to glance to the side, see the time, see how much power I have left or something.

You know, those are good ideas.

And so I like the ideas of these little apps.

And again, these apps are useful.

But at some point in the future, when Apple adds good window management to the Vision Pro, so that I can press one button or something and suddenly have put my clock app exactly where it was last time and put my things window exactly, you know, that will be that then the apps will be even more useful.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I, you know, again, I didn't think about it because I don't have a Vision Pro yet, but I cannot stand not having a clock, you know, on my Mac, it's in the upper right corner all the time, right on my windows, it's in the bottom right corner.

It's like I always have access to a clock because I just like to, you know, know where I am in the time.

And I hadn't even thought about this from the standpoint of a clock.

But again, to me, that's just 1.0 version, right?

I mean, certainly Apple is going to have to give you this option.

And like you said, Jeff, and this quickly on the battery, can I ask this real quick?

So the can't you plug power into the battery pack that's plugged into your Vision Pro?

And is that basically?

Okay, but that's what I'm actually doing right now.

So okay, okay.

Yeah.

So I mean, this is a USB C cord that I've got going into the battery.

And then this is the cord that goes out.

So my Vision Pro is sitting next to me right now.

I'm not actively using it.

But it is it's on.

So I guess in theory, it might be on a download.

Okay, so who knows what, and it's getting power.

So whenever I'm sitting down, that's what I was asking a long period of time.

And if I'm close to the plug, I'll plug it in.

But it's nice not to have to do that.

Just because it's Yeah, you know, you don't want to cord that someone's going to trip over.

So the best way to use the Vision Pro is to not plug it in.

When I was on the plane, for example, in theory, I could have plugged my battery into the there was like, yeah, the power, I could have plugged all that in and stuff like that.

But then I'd have to get out the power adapter and plug in the thing.

And it just wasn't right.

I knew that I wasn't gonna be watching movies for more than two hours on my flight.

So it was right.

Jeff, there's one story that's not about the Vision Pro.

Who knew?

Although this was really cool.

I'm so you linked to it.

I think it was a gift link from you.

So thanks again for that.

How to give your photos and videos a vintage look.

It's like the old is new again, kind of a thing, right?

Everybody wants to go back to vinyl instead of streaming, which is great.

Not everybody, but I like every once in a while you want to and hey, why not take a very modern picture and then make it look like it was taken in 1978.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean, at first I was laughing at this.

But as I read through it, I'm like, you know what, that's cool.

Like I'm just glad.

It's fun to have that creativity aspect, I guess, is the way that I thought about it.

It is.

And it's been a year since I really linked to one of these articles or even saw an article talking about these apps, some of which have been out for a long time.

But they really do add, you know, just something interesting to a picture.

And one way that I actually use them, I remember years ago, and this is a slightly different context, but years ago, I had taken a picture of my son when he was young and he was cute with my mom at Jazz Fest here in New Orleans.

And it turned out that the Vision was like a little blue.

I mean, the picture was a little blurry.

And part of me was thinking, oh, OK, it's an unusable picture.

I'm going to trash it.

And I was like, you know, actually, maybe what I should do.

And so I started to apply some filters.

And in that case, I didn't make it look old.

I use sort of a cartoony filter to make it almost look like it was a comic or something like that.

And it turned into this picture that's now one of my favorite pictures.

And it's incredibly, I mean, it's overly stylized.

But I went from a picture that was unusable to something that was one of the best ever just because of something I'd done to it.

And so, you know, you might want to make something look old just because it's a fun way to have a picture like it depending on, you know, it's a picture of an old log cabin.

So maybe you make it look old.

Sure.

But it may also be something to consider that if you have something that's blurry or something's off about the picture, you can actually, you know, take lemons and make lemonade, so to speak, you know, do something neat about it.

So that's what I like about the article.

Two other things about this article.

Interesting.

It's not just photos.

She also talks about how you can use it for videos, too.

That was interesting to me.

Yeah.

There's some examples in the article where you can see it.

In fact, the second example is you have not that one, but the one right below it is sort of like an eight millimeter camera vintage effect.

And like, if you look at this, you're like, oh, this is totally an old video.

And yet it's not.

So it's really interesting.

And then these were fascinating to me.

Both of these videos here really are neat.

And that's something that I have not done in the past is make a video look old.

And then the last thing that she talks about in the article is how to do just the opposite.

How to take an old photo.

And this is great, too.

You and I have talked about this in the past because way back when I had a subscription to MyHeritage because I was doing a review of it.

It was something that they had given me for a reviewer.

And those services that you can use for tracking your genealogy are very nice.

They're also somewhat expensive, but they include with them tools to take old images and colorize them.

Yeah, I remember you doing that.

They're really good.

And then she also recommended an app that I had not used before called Colorize, which is separate and apart from those apps.

So if you have those old apps and those old pictures, and I've done this in the past, if you take an old picture and you use one of these apps to update it, you can sometimes it's just freaky and it looks horrible.

But sometimes you can make an old picture like it can fill in like there's not enough dots in those old pictures.

But it can add in like, you know, it can fill in sometimes based on artificial intelligence what it should be, what should be there.

It will make the face look fuller.

I mean, it can really take an old picture that you might not think to turn it into something really special.

So these are awesome tools.

Every once in a while, somebody posts like on Twitter slash X or Instagram or so where they have like an old movie from like the 1940s, right?

It's black and white.

It's like it's all sped up and everything.

Or so I mean, then they've colorized it, they've slowed it down.

And so it almost would be like you are there in the scene.

And you know, sometimes you see all of these black and white old timey videos like that.

And it's freaky, but it's also so cool.

Like it's just good.

It messes with my mind.

But that's the same of the things I was thinking about when I was looking at this.

This is just a great article, you know, to go around.

Like you said, at first I was like, okay, it's another article, you know, about like making your modern day pictures look like a 1970s Polaroid.

And sometimes that is fun, like you said.

But then the videos and the colorization down here, that's the really cool components on there.

It's been a while, Jeff, but it's time for where you at segment.

You had a couple of stories today, which I thought were pretty cool.

This first one here, was this a couple from South Carolina?

Is that where they are?

Yes.

This is South Carolina.

The couple credited Apple Watch for helping them head off a serious heart problem.

And I think the thing, I'm so happy for the couple, obviously, but I was scared and anxious reading this story because the man never physically felt like anything was going on.

I think he's a former University of South Carolina professor, retired professor here.

And I'm like, wait a minute.

Usually anytime I would see these stories like, okay, I'm glad the Apple Watch confirmed for you that your heart was racing or that you were short of breath or something.

You looked at your Apple Watch and you're like, okay, that's when I knew.

But no.

So apparently he had no physical manifestations of anything and it's just that his Apple Watch was giving him a couple of alerts and he was just dismissing them.

And apparently, thank goodness, his wife looked at it and said, you know, maybe we should pay attention to this.

What a great story here.

It's been chock full of all kinds of other information in here too.

Yeah.

Many times the story sort of stopped where you are.

And what I mentioned is this story then goes on and they interviewed the doctors and the doctors, for example, talk about how they have been seeing over the years a very small number of false positives, but they've actually seen a more significant number of times where someone really did have a problem like atrial fibrillation or something else.

And they just didn't know about it.

They would have no reason to know about it.

And it's so good that they came and get checked up because there really was something that was there that, you know, he could have had a heart attack the next day or something like that.

And so that was really fascinating.

And then the article even goes on to like talk to some people at Apple and Apple's always very cautious about what they say because they know that they, they, because of FDA clearance and stuff, they're not saying that it's a medical device, but they also know that it can prompt people so that I think the way that Apple often says it is instead of you yourself being the only person thinking about your health, this is just like a little buddy with you that can sort of, you know, right.

You want some help, little buddy, right.

Suggest when it might be time for, you know, to, to go talk to a doctor and get some real advice and, and sometimes that can be life-saving.

So it's, it's just a really interesting article.

It's a really, really, really well done article.

And then it ends with the things that you sometimes see in these articles where the wife writes to Tim Cook and he writes back, which is great that he does that for people.

It's, it's almost like, you know, the happy ending of the story is that the, the, the, the man is still alive and that is happy.

But for us, like the happier ending of the story is the wife wrote to Tim Cook.

He wrote back and it was signed Tim.

The message ends with sent from my iPhone.

So again, it's one of these things, Jeff is like, is that really Tim on his iPhone?

Tim Cook on his iPhone, but it's sent from his iPhone and we all know that he gets up very early.

He gets a lot of work in very early hours.

And I'm like, if that's, if that's even a happier fun thing, last thing quickly in this, you're mentioning about Apple's, you know, approach to the health that we've talked about this many times with the Apple watch it, this story links to a health report from Apple originally drafted in July, 2022 updated in October, 2023.

Jeff, I don't know if I've ever seen this.

It's a 60 page report from Apple empowering people to live a healthier day.

There is all kinds of information in this report.

It's a PDF file that is hosted by Apple.

And I just thought this was amazing.

I didn't have any, I didn't have enough time to read through it all up here, but they just go through like the fall detection, you know, the hearing aspects.

I mean, a lot of this information I already knew, but it's just the fact that it was all together in this one PDF report.

This is a pretty amazing document here too.

I don't know if you have a link.

Yeah.

I didn't click on the link and I'm looking at it in real time.

Like you are right now and a ton of details in here.

This is, I know.

But I mean, to your point, you and I have always observed like Apple is very cautious about this, right?

Because you know, I mean, they're already in suits right now about the blood glucose monitor.

Like they can't say that it's, you know, from a health aspect, but you know, it would be interesting for me.

I want to read through this and kind of see how they weave and, you know, navigate that maze.

I was like, Hey, it's not, it's not a health device, but it can help you be aware.

I think I love the way you put it.

It's like a little buddy.

It's like the buddy system just to making sure that, you know, you've got somebody there to say, Hey, maybe you better check on this.

That kind of a thing.

That's good stuff.

We're having limits on what they feel comfortable saying.

They managed to say 59 pages of it. 59 pages stuff.

All right.

Well, we go from saving lives to saving golf carts because you know, some are pretty important.

This was the last little quick article from Chance Miller that a gentleman decided apparently to steal a golf cart that was being used.

I think it was like a mall security or something like that.

Someone decided to drive off, but he did not know there was an air tag in the golf cart.

So they were able to chase down and recover the golf cart, which is important, you know?

Yeah.

You know, it putting air tags and things that might be lost or stolen is always a good idea because you never know when something like this will happen.

And I do think it's, you know, I just had a funny little image of someone, you know, going off in a golf cart because it can't travel that fast to begin with.

And then sure enough, it's being tracked and the police are able to recover it.

I know, I know my image goes back to like those 1920, you know, Charlie Chaplin type reels, right?

Where all the clowns are jumping in and out of the little car.

And I'm like, wow, that's a good, by the way, is, is that, is that, are the air tags still on sale at Amazon?

I know we reported this one once a while here.

They have a link to it.

Let me see.

Look at that.

$79. 20% off.

That's pretty amazing.

You know, I have four and I, I keep telling my wife, like, I'm going to get more.

She's like, why?

We don't need any more.

But it's like, I keep seeing stories like this.

I'm like, hey honey, you should listen to the podcast because, because every time we have somebody being able to say some kind of a, of a property of something with an air tag, which is great.

I think we know, I think we know, have a dozen of them in my house, Brad.

And I, I have two that I haven't used yet, but 10, 10 of them are being used very well in the last two.

I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with them, but I'm going to find something good.

You got to find something for it.

Right.

I mean, that's the thing.

It's like, and then I don't want to forget about them also.

But you know, the find my app.

I mean, anyway, that's a little ridiculous because I think if you're aware of it, you know, and boy, they, they've saved my height a couple of times.

They saved yours as well.

And yeah, I think it's a great investment.

All right.

In the know now in the know.

Okay.

Here.

Okay.

So I've got a quick little tip.

I think the last couple of weeks I've let you take it with Apple vision, but so at this conference, one of the things that I am presenting on was about getting your files from your computer or from a cloud storage onto the iPad more than anything else.

And so part of that Jeff, as you know, is using the files app on the iPhone or the iPad.

And I've always liked the files app ever since Apple, you know, this was only what, three or four years ago that Apple finally had like an actual app, a files app that you could see files and manage files and organize files like we've been doing for decades on a computer.

And you know, Apple had good reasons for it at the time.

They've always often said, you know, this is not meant to be like a full computer.

And so we're not giving you access to the file, but a lot of people, you know, talked about the fact that we need access to this.

Anyway, the files app is something that I feel like most people just kind of dismiss Jeff.

It's like, it's there, it's free.

It's not like you have to buy anything, you don't have to download it.

And most people, I don't know if it's because the iPad didn't come with it initially so that nobody even used it.

And so people still don't know about it, but I know you use it quite often, so do I.

One of the things that I just discovered, because there's all kinds of things that you can really do on the files app, as opposed to including even tapping and holding on a file so that you can rename it, you can copy it, you can duplicate it, you know, you can zip many files together, so many things you can do.

But there was one thing I did not fully realize.

If you have an image, so I have a little image of a dragon, I think it's a picture from Lord of the Rings or something like this.

And I wanted to remove the background of this dragon, right?

So typically what I do these days is I'll either pull that image into some kind of an app, you know, I have to sometimes find an app because I don't do this every day.

Frankly, the way that I do it most of the time, Jeff, I'll tell you, is I pull the image into Keynote and Keynote does such a great job of removing the background.

Well now there are quick actions inside the files app on the phone.

So if you find an image, if you have a JPEG image or so, I really came to this because I was telling people, you know, sometimes a TIFF image doesn't work, so you need to convert it into a JPEG, right?

Or a PNG file.

And you can do that by tapping and holding on a file in the files app.

And one of the things you can do is you can convert it.

So if you tap and hold on an image though, you go down to the bottom of this little secondary menu that pops up, one of the options is quick actions.

Now I don't know where these quick actions exactly come from.

They are contextual in the sense that whatever file format that it is, those quick actions will probably differ.

But when I tap and hold on an image, go to quick actions, some of the things like I would normally expect for images, rotate left, rotate right, I can convert this image into something else, but there's a remove background option there.

And so I'm like, well, I got to try that.

And darn if it didn't do an excellent job, Jeff, of removing the background of this picture of a dragon that I have.

And I'm just like looking at this, like, wait, I didn't even pull that into another app.

I didn't have to like jump through five different hoops to get all of that done.

It just removed it.

Now before I did it though, I will tell you before I did that, I actually made a copy of the original image.

I don't know that you have to do that necessarily because when you move the background, it actually saves another version of that.

So I don't know that you do, but you know, I'm just, you know, being extra careful, make sure I've got a duplicate, a working copy and an original copy on there.

Then I can delete the working copy later on.

But anyway, I just, I feel, and then by the way, it also renames that file once you do it.

So now the original file that I had was dragon disclaimer.

And so now it's called dragon disclaimer background removed on there.

And I just thought that that was a fascinating way to use the files app.

There's so many other little nice tips inside the files app.

And I just feel like, I don't know that Apple has really done a good job of, of bringing those to surface again, maybe because I feel like sometimes Apple use the files app as, as just a, a consolation prize for those of us that have been talking about it for so long.

So, you know, Apple wasn't really too keen on it, but they gave it to everybody, but darned if they're not improving a few things in there.

So that's the files app.

That's my tip for the day.

The reason that I've been looking down the entire time you've been talking is I've been, first of all, I had no idea you could do this.

This is very cool.

And you know, just the other day I wanted to do this.

I wanted to remove the background from a picture and the thing that I was using my iPad.

And so I opened it up in Photoshop, which I was able to do it, but you know, using Photoshop to remove the backgrounds is, is a little bit overkill.

I had forgotten that I could have opened it up in keynote because you're right.

Keynote does a great job with background.

I should have done that.

And then I had no idea.

I just did it myself in a picture.

That's really cool.

I had no, it didn't work on that, on your picture.

It's not the best job ever.

It's a little, yeah.

Okay.

Cause I mean, I just picked a random picture, but it, you know, if for me doing something silly like taking this picture and then just sending it in a text message to someone like here's the little right review without the background, it would be totally good enough.

And I, and I could refine it if I wanted to, but it worked in about a, you know, not even a second.

I know.

Boom.

That's just like that.

Good.

Thank you for sharing that.

I had no idea.

Sure.

I have a, it's a vision pro tip, but this is a tip that you can take advantage of even if you don't have a vision pro, because if you haven't used, if you don't own a vision pro at some point, you're going to want to try it out.

And eventually you'll find somebody that has one and you'll want to do it.

I have I have let other people use my vision pro a number of times so far.

And sometimes I have been air playing it to like an Apple TV so that I can watch as they go, as they use it.

Oh yeah.

And they're superior because that way, as I'm trying to explain to them what to do, I can see what they're doing.

But sometimes when people have come to my office, I don't have an Apple TV here in my office.

And so I've just been trying to walk them through it.

And you know how it can be difficult if I can't see what they see, it can be difficult to say, okay, you're going to look for something like this.

I just learned this and I did not know this until I think yesterday or so that you can use, you can use airplay from an Apple vision pro to send the image to an iPad or an iPhone.

Um, which I did not know you have to go to settings on your iPad and then you go into general and then there's something called airplay and handoff and you turn on something called airplay receiver, which I had never heard of before.

Once you turn on that function, airplay receiver now.

So someone's in my office.

If they wanted to try out the vision pro, I can put it in the mode to allow a guest to use it.

And then I can, before I hand it to them, I can send it to my iPad.

So now I'm looking at my iPad screen or my iPhone if I wanted to, and I can see on my iPad screen, everything that they're seeing in the vision pro scene, which makes it so much easier to talk them through using it.

And I tried this with my daughter last night and it works great.

And so this is now what I'm going to do for now on, because I'm not going to always have an Apple TV with me, but I'm going to always have my iPhone and my iPad.

So once I saw this feature, the next thing I had, Brett is wait a minute, could I airplay from an iPhone to my iPad when I had this receiver function turned on?

And so far the answer seems to be no, I don't see it as an option.

But that would be cool.

So it doesn't seem like the iPad is, it's not quite as much of an airplay receiver as an Apple TV is.

It's a little bit less.

So it's good enough for the vision pro, but I hope that Apple explained does more with this in the future because they're having times like that.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you a good example.

There have been times that I've had a really big video on my iPad.

It's like a 4k HDR video and I have wanted to show it to someone immediately and it's on my iPhone and I could show it to them on the iPhone, but the screen is small.

So what I want to do is show it to them on my air on my iPad, but I haven't moved it over yet.

It hasn't synced with iCloud, whereas I could just use my iPad the same way that I use my Apple TV receiver to just instantly airplay it to it.

Then that can show it off immediately.

So I have to play with this and maybe in the future Apple will expand this so that it's just as powerful as an Apple TV.

I hope they do.

But for now, at least the one thing that it definitely works for is for a vision pro.

And so if you are using somebody else's vision pro and if they have an iPad or an iPhone with them, tell them about the feature if they don't know about it, because that way they can actually guide you through because when you're first using a vision pro, you're like, okay, you told me about the control panel.

I don't understand what to look for.

And they can say, okay, look at the top of it.

Not there.

There you go.

That's where you want to be.

And they can guide you through it and you'll have a better experience.

You know, just quickly going back to your example, the airplay receiver, I would love if I could be in a room and showing a video or a presentation, for example, and then everybody else that had an iPad could receive that content.

That to me, I mean, there's been apps that have tried to do this before.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's my first thing.

But the second thing, to your point, I'm on my iPhone now and I've gone into the settings, general airplay, and there is an airplay receiver.

I did not know that that was there.

It's turned off on me because I don't have a vision pro, but it specifically says here, Jeff, stream or share content from Apple vision pro to your iPhone.

Yeah.

So in other words, just like you said, it's only for streaming from the vision pro because I, that was the next thing I wanted to try was like being able to stream it to something else.

But it was like only the vision pro is involved here.

But you know, Brett, and maybe this is just me being an internal optimist.

They called the feature airplay receiver.

I know general pro receiver, you know, so it makes me hope that maybe in the future, maybe in the next iOS update, maybe they can expand it because it would be, again, this is not something you're going to want to do all the time, but for specific, like the one that this, the specific circumstance I described, there are circumstances in which it would be useful to turn an iPad or maybe even an iPhone into a full blown, um, airplay receiver device.

So yeah.

I wonder, so right now iOS is 17.3 0.1.

They had to have put that airplay receiver in one of these most recent updates.

Wouldn't you think Jeff?

I mean, that hasn't been there for a long time.

I'm guessing.

Well, it says on the Apple page that you're looking at right now, Brett, it says that you need to have 17.2 or later.

So maybe it wasn't too.

Okay.

Interesting.

Good stuff.

Okay.

Well, Hey, that's another good, that was, that's a good tip, Jeff.

You just did a vision pro tip, but it was also, you involve the iPhone or the iPad.

So well done that my friend.

All right.

Good stuff.

Uh, wow.

It just keeps getting more fascinating.

The more information about the vision pro that comes out and how people are using it.

And I'm glad to hear from you.

Uh, go, you have time now to go watch another tear jerker on your vision pro and, uh, things will work out good and we'll talk with you next week.

Thanks, Brett.