136: Fiscal Factuals, Quantum Messaging, and Visiting the Muppet Theater

Welcome to In the News for March 1st, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from AppsInLaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Happy March, Brett.

Wow, the year's coming alive.

It's the first of March.

I can't believe this.

It's like, what, we're almost like a third of the way through the year.

Well, maybe not quite, but March 1st already, March 1st.

And boy, it's good to get back into the news, Jeff.

And a little bit of kind of an unfortunate news, I guess, maybe just because we've been following this Apple car story for so long.

And I feel like now the last nail has been pounded into the coffin of it is what I'm kind of gathering from your In the News post today, Jeff.

Indeed.

You know, it's so funny because we have been quote unquote talking about this for a decade.

I know.

Apple has not been talking about it for the decade.

It's incredible that, you know, Apple does not talk about products before they're released.

So they've never said anything about the car product.

And yet it's been like the biggest open secret for so long.

You know, obviously, when you are hiring executives away from car manufacturers and stuff like that, you know, why would somebody who knows how brakes work be a part of Apple?

You know, it's so it's sort of obvious that they've been doing this stuff.

And you say it's a sad story.

I don't know.

I can't decide.

You know, part of it for me is that I have found it so hard to believe for the last decade that as smart as Apple is, you know, being a car company is something different.

Brett, I mean, it's like you need to have dealerships.

You need to have, you know, ways to fix cars.

You need to come up with something that's somewhat reasonably priced.

And it always seems like what they were doing was so futuristic that it would have been way too expensive that most people would not have been able to even afford it.

I don't know.

There's been no I will admit that what Apple has done with the iPhone, you know, when the iPhone first came out famously, what was it, BlackBerry and stuff?

They couldn't even believe it was possible.

Right.

So Apple does come out with things that seem impossible at first.

And so I can understand why they would have the moonshot of, wow, maybe we can come up with a really cool electric car.

But at the same time, it just doesn't surprise me that they they've decided this is just, you know, it's not working for us, you know, especially because I've always had trouble understanding for the you know, you got to assume that they were interested in autonomy and the self-driving cars, which of course Tesla and all the other ones are right on the highway.

Sure.

Great.

But when it comes to the last mile, when it comes to the streets around my house, I'd have potholes and everything else.

And you know, not to mention the uncertainty of other drivers that are driven by humans and are prone to do things that make no sense.

I don't know.

It's a tough problem.

And I mean, on the one hand, it would have been awesome if Apple had come out with a car because you've got to assume it would have been a really cool car.

At the same time, I sort of think it's a good thing that Apple's energy is focused on the products that we know and other new products like the Apple Vision Pro.

But you know, how much of the attention of the higher ups in the company has been on the car for all these years and now can be returned to the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, the you know, the AirPod, you know, all the products that we know and love.

I think it's probably a good thing, but it sure is going to be interesting.

You know that at some point, five, 10 years from now, somebody will write the tell all story of like what could have been and we will all be a little wistful, I'm sure.

Had it actually come to fruition, would it have been neat?

So it's fascinating.

I just love the way that you wrote about it today because you have the famous Steve Jobs quote that, you know, as I paraphrase it, it's like, you know, doing good is knowing what to focus on.

Right?

And that always typically means knowing when to say no to certain products, right?

That could always be done.

But it's just it's funny because was it you that wrote this or maybe this New York Times story that you link to?

It's like this is a very expensive no, right?

Apple was like they predict there was 10, no, $3 billion or whatever crazy number was.

I can't find it right now that Apple has maybe put into this, invested into this over the last 10 years.

But then they still said no to it.

Yeah, it was an expensive attempt.

But you know, the flip side is over the last decade, Apple's has had the best financial quarters that it's ever had.

And so apparently they had the money to spend on it.

You know, other companies would not have had the money to really put into it.

And Apple did.

And, you know, one of the things, you know, what the Bloomberg and the New York Times article says is that although some of those 2000 employees, you know, the people that may be specialized in things like, you know, bumpers, you know, maybe they're going to have to be laid off.

But so many of the employees thinking of the car problem is really an applied version of artificial intelligence.

And AI is such a huge topic for Apple that, you know, the article suggests that many of those folks will transition to Apple in other AI jobs.

And who knows, three, four or five years from now, that may pay off.

You know, maybe we will see features in the iPhone in a few years that never would have been possible, you know, had those employees been still working on the car.

So hopefully we'll all come out to the benefit of users and Apple as a company.

I'm going to double down on that thought because I think I'm going to write this book one day about looking back on the Apple car, because I said this a couple of times is when we've talked about car play.

I mean, you know, I've always thought about that.

And, you know, times change.

Ten years ago, building a car, you know, right when Tesla was kind of just, you know, getting off the ground and kind of having this thought of like, can there be another car company?

But now that Apple, I feel like, and I keep seeing these, we know Apple is actively working to enlarge the footprint of car play in cars.

And I'm getting to the point, Jeff, where I think the quote, the Apple car is going to take so much of this information that obviously Apple is stored somewhere into the Apple archives.

And they can use that information so that now when I get into a car, it's just going to be a shell.

And this is going to be my car, my Apple car, because I'm going to plug in my phone or it's going to connect automatically.

And then all the settings that I want or prefer, you know, even down to like how fast the car is going to go with as a governor or, you know, what kind of fuel economy.

I'm not just talking about like the interface with the inside the car, because that's to me that they've already got that down and they're going to take over that more.

But I feel like this, my phone is going to control so much of what's going to happen with the car, you know, you know, self-driving, whatever.

It's like it's all going to be controlled by that.

It's not going to be the actual mechanics of the car.

Now, I could be completely wrong, obviously.

It wouldn't be the first time.

But you know, I'm not one that cares about how my car looks necessarily, right?

Like I don't buy a car because I want to look like, you know, it's like a huge, tough truck on the road, that kind of a thing.

And so for me, having just a shell and being able to plug in my phone, that's where the excitement is going to be.

And I still believe that that's that to me, without any inside knowledge whatsoever, to me, is that's where Apple's got to go.

Like, I think that they got to know they can control Apple cars.

It's just not going to be an actual vehicle with four wheels.

They're going to be able to control any vehicle with four wheels because we're going to be able to plug in the iPhone.

Anyway, that's my prediction.

Yeah, I'll give you an option.

Here's my here's what I hope happens, because I agree with you.

So many people love the Apple car interface.

Yeah.

To the point where they won't even consider buying a car that doesn't have it.

Yeah, I won't get a Tesla.

There's a Tesla and what is it Rivian and GM and they're not going to have it.

But so many people, you know, don't buy those cars because they don't have it.

It would have been a little awkward if Apple had sold a car called the Apple car, which was, for example, a competitor to an Acura or a Mercedes or BMW.

And then at the same time, Apple is selling, you know, the software for the other cars.

But now that Apple is not going to be in this business, it sort of takes away that conflict of interest.

And so now they can just, you know, have the car play interface that will work with everybody that wants to work with them.

Apple's not going to be selling cars that compete with, you know, Honda and other manufacturers.

And so it gives them more credibility.

I actually hope that in the long term, it means that we as consumers will get an even better advanced version of the Apple car of the Apple car experience in the future.

That's my hope, at least.

And hopefully it comes out that way.

So Apple burned through ten billion dollars with the Apple car, but it didn't seem like it really hurt their bottom line.

You had a post this past week on the Apple twenty twenty four fiscal first quarter.

I always like the way that you highlighted, Jeff, because you really just focus really on the overall results.

But it's the iPhone or the iPad that you're mostly concerned about and just pretty interesting.

Remember of the same good, amazing numbers, iPhone revenue was sixty nine point seven billion dollars.

So the ten billion, you know, maybe that was more than just a quarter in the couch.

Maybe it was, you know, an order of a Happy Meal or something.

But it's like still sixty nine point seven billion dollars just on the iPhone alone.

Some interesting numbers out of the first quarter here.

Yeah.

I mean, I'll say only one thing about the financial part, because again, like you say, that's not the part I care about as much.

But the fiscal first quarter, which is basically the holiday quarter, it's like October, November, December of the of the previous calendar year.

That's always when Apple makes their most money.

Right.

Because of all the holiday sales.

Right.

And of course, so it's going to always be the Apple's highest quarter of the year.

This year, it was the second highest quarter of all time.

Last year was the highest.

So they weren't quite as good as last time, as a year ago.

But they were still pretty good.

So Apple, you know, don't worry, Fred, if you're concerned that Apple has enough money, you can go to sleep very soundly because Apple is doing just fine.

So that's all I'll say about the financials.

But otherwise, it's always interesting when Apple talks with the analysts because they give little sneak peeks about the iPhone and the iPad.

But here's the one that jumped out at me the most.

In all of these calls, the analysts always try to trick Apple into saying something about what Apple is going to release in the future.

And Apple never does it.

You know, Tim Cook and Luca Maestri, who is the Apple CFO.

They are very skilled at saying Apple does not announce future products.

But then again, every once in a while, they break their own rule.

And they did it this time.

In this analyst call a few weeks ago, when people asked Tim Cook about AI, in fact, even before they asked questions during his opening speech, he said that Apple had some AI stuff that they were going to be announcing later on this year.

You know, and he didn't say what it was.

He just says, you know, we have exciting stuff that's coming later this year.

And I think that this was announced for a strategic reason.

There are certain people in the media that are criticizing Apple because they are more secretive about what they're working on.

And so they haven't been announcing their AI initiatives, unlike Google and everybody, every other company out there.

So I think part of it was to let people know, don't worry, we are also working in AI.

Yeah.

But at the same time, they did tell us, I mean, now we know at some point this year, maybe it'll be the spring, maybe more likely it'll be this fall when the new iPhone comes out.

Wouldn't that be interesting if there's like a real big step forward?

And that would be consistent with there have been rumors from people like Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, the same person who broke the story about the car earlier this week.

You know, he says that iOS 18 will be one of the biggest step forwards ever, perhaps because of AI.

So, you know, wouldn't it be nice if Apple really has been working on AI, they will have something really cool to announce, maybe involving like a very improved version of Siri.

And so it's sort of exciting to think that, you know, between now, you know, we started off today's podcast by saying, here we are already in March.

It won't be long before we're getting close to the end of the year and we will have some substantial AI improvements in our products, at least announced, if not available.

And that's really exciting.

So for Apple to take the rare step of pre-announcing something, even though it's vague, you know, there's something there that that was done for a very specific reason.

I've always scoffed at these headlines that I think are a little clickbaity of like, hey, you know, Apple has fallen behind because we hear everything about open AI.

Right.

And then, of course, Microsoft has completely doubled down on this AI thing.

Right.

Pulling it into being put it into copilot and Google has doubled down on like, hey, we're incorporating that into a bard.

I think it's what they call it or now it's something different.

Gemini now.

But yeah, Gemini.

I mean, like all the huge technology companies have like come out with these stories over the last year.

Right.

Since chat GPT has come out like how are we doing AI, you know, even just in the little legal technology circles that we run in, Jeff, I mean, we've just been hearing it nonstop.

And so many people have said, well, Apple is falling behind or not doing anything.

And first of all, I think Apple was kind of doing some of this AI stuff before we even called it really AI.

Right.

I mean, it's not like they they don't know what's going on.

They've been doing it.

They just maybe haven't called it the same thing that, you know, a lot of us have been thinking about with the large language models, even though they've already been doing that.

That's really what Siri is.

In essence, it's a large language model.

That's why we've always talked about the idea when you do dictation, for example, on the phone, you've got to know it's going to the iCloud servers.

Right.

So it's part of what they have been building all of these years on that.

And then the second thing I remember, it was several weeks ago, Jeff, I think it was a video in Wall Street Journal or New York Times.

I can't remember now.

They were interviewing two of the Apple executives.

One was John something.

And I can't remember.

Anyway, they asked this question.

It was a lady that was the reporter.

She asked the question, like, are you guys, you know, people in the media that say that Apple is falling behind?

And I remember the executives just looked at each other and then turned right back to the reporter and said, we're not concerned.

Yeah.

And that was such a lovely.

It was a Wall Street Journal interview.

Yeah.

You know what I'm talking about.

It was such a lovely, like, you know, a mark of like, we're not worried.

Like I know they knew then that they're already working on this.

Exactly.

And so all that to underscore your comments, Jeff, that I love that.

Obviously, this is completely strategized with Tim Cook coming out and saying this to be like, yeah, you know what, guys, just just relax.

I mean, we've already been working on it and it's going to be exciting to see what's going to happen this year for sure.

Good stuff.

By the way, you also mentioned the iPad revenue was down this year.

It was only seven billion dollars down, 25 percent from one year ago at the all time record of nine point four billion dollars.

But what are the it's still seven billion dollars without any brand new iPads in 2023.

That was the price.

It was that high.

I know.

That's the whole thing I'm looking at because I know people have been down on this and like, oh, my goodness, it's 25 percent.

You know, it's gone down.

And I'm like, OK, but that those are products that are over a year old.

Like there's nothing new in 2023.

That's pretty amazing on that.

So anyway, just wanted to point that out.

Yeah, I will tell you, though, I mean, this past Christmas, Brett, I had people coming to me saying that, you know, I want to get an iPad for my husband or my son.

Right.

And what should I get?

And part of me wanted to say, well, first of all, let me just tell you that every model, every model available for Christmas 2023 was also available for Christmas 2022, which seems a little bizarre.

And yet at the same time, they were fantastic iPads.

So like just because it wasn't the quote unquote new thing, it was still a really good device.

And there were actually some deals to be had.

So so it made sense to get a new iPad.

But again, I will also mention now that we're here in March, you know, the rumor is that there's going to be new iPads announced perhaps this month.

So it would not surprise me if in a few weeks we're talking about new iPads.

Apple's not resting on anything and they're putting out new apps.

I miss this because I've been out of it for the last couple of weeks.

Apple has a new sports app for the iPhone, and it's all about the scores.

Indeed, the app, the sport, the app is called Apple Sports, although it's in England.

I don't know.

It's called Apple Sport.

Yeah, you have to download it.

And all it does, I mean, it's it's almost like a weather app in that the weather app just shows you the weather.

It's a weather app for sports.

You know, it's focused on just showing you the scores as fast as possible.

And the reason that Apple came out with this, according to people like Apple executive Eddie Q is there have been a number of third party apps that will show you sports scores from the big players like ESPN and some smaller players.

But so many of the apps are so full of ads and Croft and they want you to watch a video.

That's right.

If you're if your goal is just to get to the sports scores, that's all I want.

Very fast.

And so that's what this new app is.

It just it gets you quickly to the sports scores.

Now, having said that, Apple did not call this app Apple Scores.

They called it Apple Sports, which makes me think that maybe they've got bigger things in play.

So we all know that Apple has large, they have large ambitions in this field.

Apple now has all of Major League Soccer.

They have all sorts of other stuff that they're showing in Apple TV Plus.

Baseball, you know, I think, you know, Apple was in the running to get the NFL.

They did not get those rights.

Right.

Apple TV Plus.

But, you know, clearly Apple sees sports as a focus of the company in the future.

And so having a really good app for getting the latest scores for all of your teams is a good start.

It's still the one point version of the app.

You know, there's some still some things that are missing.

You know, the first thing that I that I hear people say about this app was, hey, it doesn't have any of the NFL scores.

And I'm like, well, yeah, that's because the NFL season is over.

So of course, it doesn't have it.

But, you know, wait till this fall.

They're going to be there.

So but but yeah, it looks like a nice, clean app.

And so now you have a great place to turn when you want to find out.

I'm so excited about this.

I'm not the biggest sports guy person.

So but the only I have I keep the ESPN app on my phone for exactly just this job.

I just want to be able to be at the water cooler the next day to say, hey, did you see that Browns game?

Wow.

The score was great.

You know, or whatever the Cowboys.

But I only use the ESPN app to see the scores and nothing against the ESPN app.

It's great.

But if I want to see the score, I typically have to tap two or three times.

I have to watch like several ads that pop up and brush them away.

And I don't want the story.

I don't want I just want the score.

And if that's what this does, that's pretty cool.

I notice I just downloaded it, by the way, live on the air.

I have a very, very quick.

It it immediately saw my teams from the Apple News app.

Right.

Because in the Apple News app, I typically follow teams and I get, you know, some of the stories about the Cavaliers or the Cowboys or whatever.

And sure enough, when I launched the Apple Sports app just now, my teams are already listed on there.

So that's kind of neat that it's already there.

And then you can follow the leaks, just like you said.

Oh, I love this.

Just nice and simple.

Very cool.

You know, Apple does a nice job with that.

Once you tell one of the apps what your favorite team or teams is that will, you know, it'll be in the sports app.

So the scores will be at top.

When you go to Apple News, you'll see the news about the sport, about the the the team that you like.

And then when you go into Apple TV Plus, you know, watching or even an Apple TV device on your TV at home, you know, it will give you announcements about the scores and stuff.

So Apple will use that information about your favorites in different apps.

Yeah, that's really cool.

Good.

I will I will be enjoying that app as we go as we go through.

And you had a couple of links here today.

Even Jason Snell, he had a quick story.

Did he interview Eddie Q or somebody?

Yeah, he did.

Right on this story here.

Anything new from Eddie on this?

They were just like, hey, here's an app, right?

It's free.

You can download it.

Nothing.

My favorite part was the one quote that he got from Eddie Q, where Eddie Q says, quote, I just want to get the damn score of the game.

Probably not the sort of statement.

I would say, but let's say what you feel.

I love it.

OK, so the Apple Sports app is a standalone app you have to download, but I'm sure it'll be maybe included in 17.4, Iowa 17.4 when it gets released.

I love the fact you always kind of highlight, Jeff, that, hey, we've got some, I guess, you know, pre visions of what the next version of the operating system is going to be.

When does you have to tell me when this gets released?

But this right now is just a release candidate.

It's just beta.

Nobody has to download anything.

But 17.4 is going to come with some a couple of neat features, including quantum messaging.

I just like to say that I think it really sounds nice to say that.

Yes.

Yeah.

When will 17.4 come out?

My guess is it could be next week.

And if it's not next week, I think it might be that we can get afterwards.

We are very, very close.

OK.

And what will it include when it comes out in the next week or two?

Well, one thing, it's going to have some new emoji, as you were just seeing on the screen there.

Yeah.

And the quantum computing thing is interesting.

You know what that story is, is that Apple wants to keep messages secure.

And so it's all got all sorts of cryptographic things in it that are way above my head that make it that you can't hack into messages.

But Apple has thought about, well, you know, one day in the future, we may have these quantum computers, which are many, many, many, many times more powerful than current computers.

And in theory, a quantum computer could break into messages.

And so Apple has come up with a way to prevent that now, even before quantum computers are even available.

So, you know, just just just in case, right, that it could be coming.

Yeah, that's really interesting, the whole quantum messaging thing.

I mean, again, it's something that we're not here yet.

It's not really on most people's radars.

Another thing quickly I just saw in here to go along with the exact exactly what we were just talking about.

Seventeen point four is going to include some updates to CarPlay.

So it looks like that you can toggle between what it is called.

The different cars that have two.

Yes.

So, you know, which I love driving now.

Yeah, yeah.

The traditional CarPlay display in the center of your console between the driver and the passenger, but then a secondary display like right in front of the driver, you know, right where it would traditionally show things like how fast you're going and stuff like that.

And for cars that have two screens, CarPlay will be able to use both screens.

And for example, it will be able to show driving directions right in front of you so that when you're driving, you could look right in front of you.

Or in fact, some cars, I don't know if CarPlay will use this, but some cars are starting to play around with actually showing things on the actual the windshield, the windshield.

Exactly.

By bringing things up and CarPlay taps into the app.

But this is it's more of an expansion of what CarPlay does.

And that will come out in 17.4.

So it will only be usable for people that have certain cars, but there will at least be some people out there that will get an improved experience, which is nice.

I think I mentioned a couple of months ago, I did a rental car and it was a Chrysler, I think that I had, but Jeff, this was the first time I experienced this.

Typically, I just have the screen like over in the middle console, right?

But also there was an entire screen where typically the speedometer, the odometer and everything is in front of me behind the steering wheel.

And I was able to use both of those screens.

That's the kind of experience that I'm talking about.

And I was able to customize it exactly to where I had the map showing on my behind the steering wheel.

And then in the very bottom, you can see on this little screenshot here, it will show you like your speed, right?

And maybe just some other information that you need.

But you can customize all of that so that you just get the information that you want to see while still I can use the other screen.

I had something else going on with the other screen.

I think I was playing music and I had a couple of other things that were on there.

And just the fact that I can customize that across everything that I'm doing is really, is really, really neat.

I like that.

Yeah, yeah.

That sounds cool.

Whatever.

I don't know when I'm going to get my next car, but I hope it has something like that because that sounds really cool.

In the meantime, you can do a rental car, right?

There you go.

That's what I did.

Hey, let's hear something that you found out with your AirPods Pro this past week, Jeff.

Thanks for the little bit of tip here and using them with Windows 11, right?

Yeah.

So Windows 11 has been out for a while, but many companies will wait many, many, many, many months and years before they upgrade just because you have to have all of your software compatible.

And so at the law firm that I work for, we are finally in the transition over to Windows 11.

Oh, nice.

And any time that you have a major upgrade, whether it's a Mac upgrade or a Windows upgrade, there's always going to be those growing pains of certain preferences that you had are gone and you got to reset them.

And things that used to work one way are going to work a different way.

And some things are improvements and some things sometimes feel like they're step backs.

But when I was just going through the simple process of pairing my AirPods Pro with my computer, it just would not connect.

I mean, I kept looking for them.

They were in the pairing mode.

They would just not show up.

And you know, there's that old maxim that what is it called?

When you do the same thing over and over again, if you expect a different result, that's supposed to be, you know, that your sanity.

And yet I did the same thing over and over again.

I did a different result and it didn't actually pair.

So what can I say?

So you made it happen.

So the idea is just keep on trying on something like that, right?

That's that's going to keep it on.

Where are you at?

Let's do a couple of where you at segments today.

It's been a while or maybe a couple of weeks ago we had it, but I love this.

Today our special comes from none other than Apple themselves with a couple of really nifty little videos from our friends down under.

These are both Australia focused.

I love this.

But one was really nice about a young lady that had an Apple Watch, kept giving her some of the notifications.

She finally went to the doctor and was able to take care of a potentially life threatening.

I think it was a heart blockage, right, that she had there.

And the other one was from a bicyclist, which my favorite because it involves a kangaroo and tire tracks possibly on the kangaroo.

But I thought these were really neat that Apple released these.

Yeah, oftentimes we see stories in the news, often like a local news segment about somebody whose life has been saved with an Apple Watch.

These are nice because Apple actually tracked down the people in Iran and did a very slick polished video and stuff like that.

But you know, they do you know what?

Obviously there's a marketing aspect here.

We all know that.

But at the same time, there is a person in Australia who was told that her heart rate was really low and it turned out that she had a blockage.

And thank goodness she got help.

And likewise, this poor guy that ran into a kangaroo in the middle of nowhere.

Thank goodness his Apple Watch could alert people to where he was so he could get help.

So it just shows that Apple Watch can really be helpful.

OK, well, let's go three for three.

We've got yet another story.

Seventy three year old New Jersey man credits Apple Watch for saving his life.

Yeah, this is not one that Apple made a slick commercial about.

This is the more traditional thing where it's the local news station talking about it.

But it's another good example.

This one I thought was sort of endearing because this guy who, like you just said, is in his 70s.

He says the reason he got the Apple Watch because he wanted to be cool.

You know, I think that they're hip and that they're in style.

And yet, you know, just like that, the woman down in Australia, he was sleeping and he got an alert.

I think it was also that his heart rate was too low.

Yeah, so they got rushed to the hospital and they're like, well, thank God you came here because it could have been really bad.

So it's yet another example.

You don't have to be down in Australia, even up in New Jersey.

You can you can get the benefits of having your life saved by an Apple Watch.

I think Apple should make a video about that.

They can say something like, you know, get an Apple Watch because it looks cool, but then it can also save your life.

Yeah, right.

I mean, that would sound good.

I like that.

All right.

We can't not go through in the news podcast, Jeff, without mentioning, of course, the Apple Vision Pro.

We've done good.

We haven't mentioned it.

I don't think even once this whole time.

But a couple of stories real quick here at the end.

I love this little story that you link to Apple Vision environments, cinema environments that we'd like to see.

Now, I don't really have the concept of this too much because I haven't actually tried on a Vision Pro yet.

But I've seen some stories from David Sparks and from you talking about that.

There are some cinematic type environments, right?

You can go sit like in the Rockies or something like that when you have the Vision Pro on.

But I love this.

I love this story, Mike, Worthily, Worthilel, that mentions, hey, there's a few other places that you could put in here, Apple, including the Steve Jobs Theater.

And of course, my favorite, two of my favorite, the Bridge of the Enterprise along with the Muppet Theater.

I mean, that would just really be cool.

That would be worth getting the Apple Vision Pro just to be able to sit in the Muppet Theater.

Yeah.

When you're watching a movie or a TV show, whatever, in the Apple Vision Pro or when you're getting work done, you know, sometimes you want to see the world around you, which is nice.

But sometimes it's nice to sort of get yourself isolated in a peaceful environment.

Like you say, maybe you're in the in Hawaii or on a beach or, you know, up in the mountains.

And so Apple has those environments and they're sort of cool because it really does put you in a nice quiet space.

You hear some very faint background noise and you can just get your work done or you can pay attention to your movie.

I have watched many TV shows when I was sitting on the moon because it's just a nice, quiet environment.

And if you're using the Disney Plus app, you can actually have a very nice Disney theater and the Apple TV.

So but anyway, Mike has come up with some other really great theaters.

And I have to admit, these are all fantastic idea.

I mean, the Muppet Theater, which is I think it's at Disney World or something like that.

That's got, you know, the people off on the side.

What are the name of those puppets?

Oh, I can't remember the two.

Oh, the gentleman.

Yeah.

Who have their little comments that they throw out.

That would be a great one.

And he also has like the Sydney Opera House and up in New York, the what is it?

Not Avery Fisher Hall, but one of the places up in New York, the Met or something like that.

Some of these famous environments that it would be very cool to be sitting in that environment while you watch your movie.

And I think that makes perfect sense.

And it just reminds me that although we have some cool environments right now with the Apple Vision Pro, when you read this post, you instantly think, oh, well, of course, in the future, Apple is going to come out with even more cool places that you can place yourself in to do work or to do it.

Statler and Waldorf.

There you go.

Statler and Waldorf.

You got places that you can that you could put yourself in to actually get some work done.

So I thought that that was just a cute idea.

Well, you've been busy with your Apple Vision Pro.

I love this little post that you had about watching a very old, but I guess updated type of a movie.

Dial M for Murder, right?

It's the old what is this?

The Hitchcock.

I don't remember seeing it because it's so old.

But wait, it was originally a 3D.

Now they've updated it for the Apple Vision Pro.

So it sounds like it was really worth watching for you.

Yes.

I mean, the issue is you look when you're watching an Apple Vision Pro because it does such a fantastic job with 3D content, it makes you want to watch things in 3D.

And if you subscribe to Disney Plus, there's a whole bunch of movies there.

And if you subscribe to Apple TV Plus, there are some things there, including some of the truly incredible immersive Apple environments that are not just a movie in a letterbox, but are like, you know, up and down around like the ones where you're with this woman who's walking on a tightrope across the mountains and you actually feel like you're there.

So those are all really cool experiences.

But having said that, you know, after a while, you get to the point where what else is out there?

And so Apple, there are about 100 3D movies.

And these are the same movies that you can currently buy on 3D Blu-ray if you've got like the glasses and you can watch them at your house, but they just because they're in 3D, they also work on the Vision Pro.

And of all of those movies, the one that jumped out at me was this Hitchhiker one because it was actually filmed back in 1954.

So 70 years ago, it was filmed as a 3D movie.

And there's actually an interesting historical aspect that I mentioned in the article, because at the time that the movie was released, people were sort of no longer interested in 3D movies.

Because the reality is even back in the 1950s, almost nobody saw the movie in 3D.

And then it was briefly brought back to a few movie theaters in the 1980s when it was remastered.

But I mean, a very tiny percentage of humanity has ever seen this movie in 3D.

And yet now on the Apple Vision Pro, you can watch it like better than Hitchcock would have ever thought about being watched.

Because it's restored.

So it was interesting to see a movie that was both an old movie, and you can definitely tell that it's an old movie, not just from the dialogue, but also the way it was shot.

And yet because it's 3D, it felt fresh.

It felt new.

It felt really interesting.

So it was really cool.

And as I mentioned in the article, you can't rent it to see the 3D version.

You have to actually buy it.

So you spend 10 bucks.

I mean, I don't want to be spending 10 bucks every time I watch a little two-hour movie.

But from time to time, it might be fun.

And I enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought I would.

But my, you know, so number one, it's a cool movie.

It's worth watching if you have an interest in like a mystery genre.

It's a great movie in any format, but it's also good in 3D.

But then secondarily, we've now had the Apple Vision Pro for about a month now, and I find myself wanting more really good 3D content.

And you know, you just brought up this article from Chance Miller over at 95Mac, and he was talking about how Apple apparently took some of the playoffs of Major League Soccer from last year and is going to be coming out with sort of like, you know, like sort of the best of moments.

But it's going to all be in 8K 3D with, you know, cameras that are right above the goal or some of these incredible positions that you could, you know, even if you had the best ticket in the house, you still wouldn't have this view.

And you know, that's what the Apple Vision Pro, I think people are going to be hungry for more and more really good 3D content.

And I realized that a very small percentage of people own a Vision Pro right now.

And so my hope is that over the next year or two, Apple starts to build up material so that when the second generation comes out in a few years, and like even more people start to buy it, they'll be able to go back and watch all of the stuff that Apple's been accumulating over time.

Love it.

That's good.

8K.

Like, I just, I can't even fathom, but I remember, you know, 10 years ago, I couldn't even fathom 4K for crying out loud.

Like it's just going to keep on going.

You know, maybe in 10 years we'll have, you know, 64K, who knows?

It'd be where it goes.

In the know, you mentioned the AirPods Pro and it just got me to thinking about how I rarely ever go into my Apple settings to like do any changes or anything on my AirPods Pro.

You know, I'm constantly now when I put my AirPods Pro on, cause I just did some travel and I love having them, but I do like to go between transparency mode to adaptive audio mode into noise cancellation.

And sometimes I'll do that by, you know, clicking and holding the stem of my AirPods Pro cause that works out fine.

And other times I will do it by unlocking my phone, going into the control center and then tapping and holding on the little volume slider there, right?

Cause if you do that, you can get into the different modes.

I kind of wish there was an easier way to do it.

I need to research on this a little bit cause I, I would love to be able to, you know, have less taps to be able to make those changes, even though I know, cause sometimes it's just not convenient to kind of hold the stem.

Anyway, the other thing I thought about was checking on my AirPods firmware version.

So we've talked about this before because throughout the time we've, we've done our podcast Jeff, you know, Apple will release some minor updates to the AirPods, to the firmware.

So if there's a little improvement or just to make sure that it connects better, whatever the case has been.

And so it'll update that.

The thing is, is that there is no way to like force the update.

Like we've told people in the past, I remember it like, Hey, there's an AirPods firmware update and you don't have to do anything.

Just be patient.

And eventually at some point, the next time that your AirPods connect to your phone, the firmware will update on your AirPods Pro and you know, good luck.

It'll happen when it happens and you don't have to worry about it.

I just wanted to point out that you can go, even when you don't have your AirPods connected to your phone, you or your iPad, even you can go into the settings, go into Bluetooth and you can see it listed there.

So I'm in my settings now and I can see my AirPods Pro.

I'm not connected to my phone right now, but there's a little eye in a circle next to it.

And if you tap on that, you can go into this little screen where it'll just give you some basic information about the AirPods Pro, the model name, the model number, your serial number, and it will show you the firmware version on there.

It'll, it'll, and if you can tap into there and you can see it has even has a firmware version for the AirPods themselves, as well as the firmware for the actual case of your AirPods Pro.

Yeah.

So what numbers do you have right now, Brett?

I have 6B34.

Same here.

6B34.

So, well, that's why I wanted to point out this page and I'll link to it because you can go here and if you wanted to ensure that you had the latest firmware versions, apparently this is where Apple keeps them, is on this little support page here.

And it'll tell you what the latest firmware version is because really that's the only way, at least that I know of Jeff, that you can recognize whether or not that you have the latest version.

Now, again, most of the time you are, you're going to, especially if you use them on a regular basis, right?

Just like we said, the firmware will automatically update in here.

And then of course it has the listing of the release notes of all of the updates.

In true Apple fashion, I think the vast majority of the release notes are simply bug fixes and other improvements.

And that's it.

So it doesn't like give you a lot of information on here.

There's a few of them that have a little bit more information on there.

But anyway, I'll link to this page in the show notes that everybody has it.

It's just a neat way to know this is where you can go and check the firmware updates.

Interestingly, though, also when your AirPods are not connected to your phone, you don't have a way to like change settings on there.

Like what the screen right now that we were just in just gives you like some basic, you know, the name and the model number of the firmware.

If you wanted to like change the name of your AirPods or you wanted to change some of the settings about how it works or what the click does, that kind of a thing, you have to actually be connected.

The AirPods have to be connected to the phone.

And then there's a whole different screen and a lot of other information that you can do in there.

But if you just wanted to check the firmware version, this is a quick way to do it.

And it just made me think about that when you were talking about the AirPods today.

So that's my tip for the day.

That's a great tip.

And I know you said you're going to include the link, but please do put the link in the show notes because I want to bookmark it because I oftentimes wonder, do I have the latest version?

And so it's nice just to have a specific place you can go to to say, here's the latest version for whatever model you have.

So that's that's very cool.

There's not much you can do about it if you don't except wait.

Except wait.

Yeah.

And also, by the way, this is I've been really focusing on the iPhone and the iPad, but the instructions here also make sure that you can if you have a Mac, you can also check it on the Mac because I'm constantly switching my AirPods between my phone, my iPad and my Mac.

And I love the fact that I can do that.

It's gotten much better than it used to be.

Still not the greatest, but much, much better.

And I'll take it.

But you can check it on your iPhone, your iPad and your Mac.

Yeah.

And just to confirm what you said about connecting other things, as you and I are talking right now, my AirPods are connected to my Windows computer.

Not the volume.

I'm speaking through a separate microphone, but I'm hearing you through my ears.

But even though my AirPods are connected to my Windows computer, I was able to use my iPhone to check the version number.

So you're excellent.

Yeah.

So great.

Good.

OK, so my tip is you and I talked earlier about the Apple Sports app.

One of the things that I have mixed emotions about is when you go to look at any particular game in the sports app, in addition to telling you the current score, it will also tell you the sport betting odds, which is interesting in a way because it shows you who was favored to win and lose the game, which is sometimes interesting to know.

But to tell you the truth, I actually find that I mean, I don't really do sports betting.

And if I was going to be interested in sports betting, I would want to get all my betting odds through my betting app, not through a sport, not through a score app.

And so I actually think it's a little bit of a distraction to have that in the app.

And so I recommend and my tip of the day is turn it off.

And here's the way that you do it.

You might look in the Apple Sports app itself.

You're not going to find it there.

You need to go into the iPhone's regular settings app and then in the settings app, you know how you scroll down and they have like, you know, different apps.

Go down to the very bottom of settings app where they have.

What's interesting that the sports app, even though it comes from Apple, it doesn't appear up top with like camera and other built in apps.

But it's at the very, very bottom where you have the big list of every single app installed in your iPhone.

So go down to the sports app.

And then once you're there, there it is.

I'd betting odds, you'll see an option to turn it off.

And I think it removes some of the cruft.

I mean, you really don't need it in there.

You know, one of the things that's interesting is it agreed.

It actually tells you there that the sports scores in the Apple Sports app are provided by a company called DraftKings, which is one of the betting apps.

And to a certain degree, that makes sense to me, because if I am a company that does betting, you're darn well right that I want to have the latest and greatest scores, right?

You know, this is important.

And so it would make sense that if Apple is looking for the best source of really up to date sports scores, a betting company is a pretty good source of that.

So I can understand why Apple has partnered with DraftKings to get the data in the first place.

But I don't want to see DraftKings or whatever, you know, wherever the source is.

I don't want to see betting data in the app.

So my recommendation, I mean, if it's interesting to you, keep it in there.

It's in there by default.

But you know, unless you're a betting person, and even if you're a betting person, you're going to use your betting app for that.

My recommendation is that you turn it off because it makes the already fast and slick and sleek Apple Sports app just all the more.

It's just the information you want.

It's just the scores.

So I recommend turning it off.

Excellent tip.

And I already did that.

But yeah, interesting that the draft, I mean, this is a world that I don't know as much, but I do know enough that DraftKings is one of the top on there, you know, from all of the information.

And I see that everywhere.

In fact, I was just in Chicago at Wrigley Field, and they've just built like a whole addition onto that, you know, all about DraftKings.

Like this is certainly where a lot of people are spending a lot of time.

But yeah, I don't need that.

And it does take it out.

You know, quickly, I'm just looking through this app.

You mentioned the NFL.

They don't have the NFL on here.

I mean, I know they're not in the season, right?

Right.

Interesting.

It would be, you know, part of me wanted to go in there because, you know, I live in New Orleans and I'm a big fan of this New Orleans Saints.

It would have been interesting to me to go in there and even just to see last season scores and statistics and stuff like that.

Right.

They don't have it at all.

But, you know, it sort of makes sense that, you know, they were trying to get this app out quickly.

So let's just get it out now with the things that really matter.

So it could still happen.

So it could still happen.

I am positive by this fall.

I mean, how could this app not have the NFL scores in it?

Of course, it's going to be there.

That's just what I'm thinking.

Right.

And, you know, and maybe whenever, maybe when that's added this fall, they'll have other new features in the app as well.

We'll see.

Interesting.

I, you know, I like it and I think I even saw it.

First of all, it's already number three in the sports category in the app store.

And I think the three reviews that they highlight down here at the bottom is great start.

Good start.

So I think everybody else is.

It's a 1.0 product.

It's a 1.0.

But just really interesting that Apple is getting into this.

We've talked many times about, you know, their push into the sports field.

And, you know, this will be interesting to kind of watch and see where they go with that.

Very good stuff.

Thanks for talking again, Jeff.

This is it's fun to be back.

And yeah, we'll talk with you next week.

Sounds good.