141: Floating Balls, Floating Heads, and Sinking TVs

(upbeat music) - Welcome to In the News for April 5th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com. - And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Brett, do I see snow behind your head? - I do.

So it's always here in Northeast Ohio.

Usually the end of March, sometime in April, there's like one last like winter joke storm that has to happen before it's like, you know, and what's crazy is all the trees already are blooming.

We've got tulips and daffodils and stuff.

And it's like, oh, are you kidding me?

One more time. - Wow. - Yes, today is snow. - Well, I mean, that's crazy because mother nature is giving you snow today.

And then where you live, you are right in the zone of totality for the eclipse in a few days. - We sure are. - So I mean, like, you know, if people are not plugged into the news, they're seeing snow in April and then the sun's going away on Monday.

It's a pretty, pretty scary time, perhaps if they're not plugged in.

It is such a bright sunny day in New Orleans right now that out of my window in my office, the sun is bouncing off of the Mississippi River and it's causing weird shadows if folks are watching this on YouTube.

Anyway, that's enough for today's weather update. - Right, hopefully we'll be done with the snow during the eclipse.

That would really be weird, right?

No sun and the snow. - That would be weird. - I mean, that would just be crazy.

Okay, so two months.

Two months is how long you've had the Apple Vision Pro, Jeff.

And over these two months, it seems like Apple is focused on improving one aspect of the Apple Vision Pro experience and that is the floating heads.

Well, a month ago, we did a video, well, two months ago, you had your Apple Vision Pro, we had your floating head, your persona, right?

Is what they call it, but I like to stay in floating heads.

And it looked okay.

You did the podcast that way.

A month after that, a month ago, we did a follow-up where it looked much better.

You looked really good.

And now two months, not only can you have one floating head, you can have multiple floating heads.

I saw that you had a couple of links to the story.

I saw some people talking about this.

And I gotta tell you, as much as I'm kind of laughing about this, Jeff, first of all, it just amazes me that we've come this far so far in this.

And second, this looks like just about any other science fiction movie that I've watched since I was teenagers.

And I'm like, that's coming real.

Like that's "Star Trek Next Generation."

That's all of the science fiction movies.

It's really starting to happen there.

And it was pretty impressive, some of the stories you linked to today. - You have hit your nail on the head, I tell you.

And I wish we could demo it on the podcast. - I know, I thought about that. - Unlike in the past, you have to have both people using an Apple Vision Pro to really understand it, because you're seeing a person in 3D. - Right. - So many things to say.

First of all, when you say a floating head, that actually is a correct phrase, but that's not the correct phrase for what was in the past.

Because when you and I did it in the past, I was just like as if we were in a Zoom conference, I was in a rectangle, right?

You know, I was in the rectangle and that's where I was.

But now it truly is a floating head because there's nothing around you.

It's just, the closest I can think of it is, it's a hologram.

It is absolutely a hologram.

And you know, I joke about it. - That's a magic word, Jeff, wow. - You talk about science fiction, Brett.

You know, when I was little, I used to sort of say half jokingly, oh, you know, by the time that I am aged such and such, we're gonna all be, you know, using holograms and hovercrafts, you know? - Right. - And the hovercraft are not quite around yet, notwithstanding what George Jetson promised to us.

But the holograms, this is the first time in my life that I'm like, you know what?

This really is a hologram, much like you would see like in the Star Wars universe, whenever people are having these video conferences that like you see a 3D ghostly persona, this is it.

And I will tell you, I tried that out last night with my brother who has an Apple Vision Pro, and it is really cool because it's a floating head, because it's not a window, you just sort of see the person.

They very much feel 3D.

I mean, when they're turning and I'm wearing my Apple Vision Pro, it's as if I can sort of see, I can move around them.

In fact, it's not just 3D visually, it's also 3D from an audio standpoint, because like if I turn my head, I can hear him on my left ear.

And if I turn my head the other way, I can hear him from my right ear.

And also if he like, at one point, if I stand up and I move to a chair over here, it looks on his side as if I've stood up and moved somewhere else.

And it was very realistic.

When I was doing it, I was sitting in my living room and it was cool that like I was on one chair and I had sort of a sofa to my left and my brother's head was sort of floating over the chair, over the sofa rather.

And it was like he was sitting on the sofa.

I couldn't see his body, but his head, because of the recent improvements to spatial persona, it looked, I mean, it really did look like him.

Of course it wasn't 100% the same, but I did not experience that uncanny valley effect.

It was very believable.

And the other nice thing is it shows your hands too.

And so you don't think about it, but many people talk with their hands and stuff like that.

And that actually added to the realism is that, you know, if he might be saying one, two, three, and because you could see the hands and because you could see the face and because the audio was so convincing, after a few minutes, it's just like he's in the room with me.

And I have never, never felt that way with video conferencing.

With video conferencing, it's nice that you can see the person.

I have talked about how I'm a big fan of the recent update that Apple did.

I wish they had had it during the height of the pandemic to the Apple TV where you can have like full screen and you can set up your iPhone to look at you.

And that's a great video conference experience, but don't get me wrong, Brett, it's video conference.

We know what video conference is.

That's what it is.

This is something else.

This is not video conference, even though technically it's working through the FaceTime app.

It is, it's just like a hologram in your room with another person.

And I only did it with one person and the pictures you're showing are doing a decent job of sort of showing what it's like just from a picture.

In fact, that video up there is sort of funny because you were showing Jason Snell and Mike Curly and like they're pretending like they were sort of giving each other a high fives, which was funny.

Another thing that my brother and I did is we sort of did a quick little game of like rock, paper, scissors, because you can see your hands and that totally worked.

It's very realistic.

If you have somebody that's out of town and you wanted to have a conversation with them, I can 100% see a, you know, either the current or certainly a future version of an Apple Vision Pro where you're just sort of hanging out, having a conversation.

And if you had multiple people, it would be even more realistic.

This is one of, you know, some things the Apple Vision Pro doesn't do well yet, but there are, the reason that I continue to say it's like we're using this futuristic product today is yes, they're expensive and yes, they're still buggy in areas, but ideas like this, when I try this, I'm like, this is something.

Spatial videos, we've talked about that.

We're gonna talk about that in a second today.

Spatial video is something unlike I've ever seen before.

It's like, wow, I've never done this.

This is the same way.

I have never had a realistic conversation and interaction with the hologram and it really works.

It's next level.

It's so much further than a video call with somebody.

It's like you're in the same room with them.

And, you know, as this technology is, as the goggles get cheaper and the technology gets better and it's lighter and you don't have the battery pack and you know, everything else that we know is gonna come in the next five years.

This is something, mark my words, this is something that I think is transformative.

And there's only a few of us that are getting a preview of it now, but this is the real deal, Brett.

This is really, really cool. - I'm just sad I'm not one of them yet.

But so you linked to several stories.

This first one is from inverse.com by Raymond Wong.

And he links to, I guess this was officially from Apple, right?

Somebody from Apple posted this. - Yeah, Apple did some previews with a couple of folks before they went, before it debuted. - This looks great.

This looks fantastic.

But even just this picture up here in this first story, I mean, that looks so much more realistic.

This gentleman, I mean, it looks like his face.

Obviously it still looks just a little bit cartoonish.

And as a human eyeball to the human eye, obviously you can tell, make the difference, but it's real enough, right Jeff?

I mean, that video is what kind of started me down the path.

And then you link to two other stories, which I thought were great because I can see this from two sides.

First was Jason Snell and he's talking with Stephen Hackett.

So they both have Apple Vision Pros and they're talking to each other and exactly what you're talking about.

They're doing the high fives.

And then Stephen Hackett posts his side of the story, which is pretty much the same, but it's just like different pictures that he's adding in here.

And one of them said, and I can't remember who said, but it was like, yeah, at first, kind of similar to what you just said, Jeff.

At first, when you come in, you can tell a little bit cartoonish, but after a couple of minutes, it just seemed natural.

Like you were talking as if Stephen Hackett was in Jason Snell's washroom, even though I think they live on either coast, right?

And it's like Jason Snell, I mean, Stephen even said he was trying to pet Jason Snell's cat.

I mean, it was almost that immersive and interactive in the fact that you could see the areas in which you were in.

They even did the hokey pokey, I think they said here, because again, they were testing out like the hands.

You did rock, paper, scissors with your brother, but they were doing the hokey pokey.

And just these, again, just seeing these pictures, it just brings me so many flashbacks from the science fiction sides.

And it's like, this is real.

Like it's getting real because they're in different landscapes.

They're on the moon.

I think one of them said they went to the Apple Theater, right, and they were all sitting there watching a show.

And just amazing that in two months we have come even this far.

I'm just even more excited.

And I have heard your words, my friend, Jeff.

I know this is going to be something so big, and it's just amazing to see it kind of evolving here. - It is cool that this is only two months in that they're coming out with something this important of a change.

You mentioned the sort of joke that Steven, who was in Memphis, was pretending like he was petting Jason's cat, Jason's in California.

Just to be clear about it, that was a viewpoint from Jason.

Steven is only, Steven is seeing Jason's head in Steven's real world. - Gotcha, that's right. - So Steven could not actually see the cat.

There actually is a way to share your screen, but when you do that, you're basically sharing a rectangle.

So the next person will see what you see, but will see it in a moving around rectangle.

The one time, if you want to share an environment, you know, with the Apple Vision Pro, you can turn a little button to either go to a virtual environment, like you're seeing in some of these pictures here, where you're all like standing on the moon, or you're all standing on Mount Hood or whatever it is.

And if both sides are in that environment, well then actually it sort of looks like you're there.

One interesting things about those environments is, let me think of how to describe this.

When I was just in my living room, and I did not have a virtual environment turned on, I could listen to my brother and he's talking.

As I changed into a virtual environment, like being on the moon, the sound of his voice changed.

Because in my room, of course, it's a room.

There are walls and there are wooden floors and everything else, and the voice bounces off of it.

And in real life, there's a little bit more of an echo effect.

But in real life, if you were outside in a field, or you were outside on, I guess, the moon, there would not be this echo because you don't have walls around you.

And the sound actually changes to account for that, which is really sort of interesting.

I'm like, that's a detail that Apple did not need to do, and yet they did it to add a little bit more realism.

It just sort of shows you how they're thinking about these things.

Second thing I wanna say is, although Steven could not see his cat, there are ways that you can share things and watch them together.

And one thing you could do is you could watch a movie together.

And so you're both sort of sitting next to each other, watching a screen, but you can be more interactive.

Like, I'm not a big user of, Apple has this app called Freeform, which is basically a whiteboard, right?

But I did start the Freeform app in my Apple Vision Pro, and my brother did on his.

And then it actually sort of moved our personas so that it was almost like there was a triangle.

There's like one part of the triangle is the whiteboard, and then the two of us are two other points of the triangle.

And so we could sort of turn and look at each other, but we could also turn and look at the whiteboard.

And as I wrote the word "hello" on the whiteboard, he could see it in real time and he could change it too.

And so this is the sort of thing that we could be interacting together on the same whiteboard as if we were in the same room with the same whiteboard.

That was interesting.

By far, the coolest thing we did, however, is there is a game that I had never downloaded before for the Apple Vision Pro.

It's part of the Apple Arcade.

So look, if you subscribe to Apple One or Apple Arcade.

So this thing, it's called Game Room.

And it's a cute idea for a game because what it basically is, is the traditional board games and those sort of things, they don't have the license for it.

So for example, instead of calling it Yahtzee, their version is called Yacht, where you roll, it's a dice game, but it's the same thing. - I see what they did there. - The one that we played, I don't know what their clever name for it was, but I'm just gonna call it Battleship.

And you're showing a picture of it right here. - I did, yeah. - It's really cool because you know how Battleship works.

You know, it's almost like a laptop computer.

You've got your ships in front of you, and then you have the board straight in front of you where you're trying to guess where their ships are, but you can see their head around it.

And so sure enough, as we're playing, if I'm looking right at the board, I don't see my brother, but then if I sort of turn my head a little bit, I could sort of see his face around it.

It was very realistic.

It was as if we were two kids playing Battleship together.

But this game of Battleship was awesome, awesome, because the ships are very realistic. - Yeah, I see down here. - As he's, it's actually, it's as if they're on water.

And like when he sunk my Battleship, you sunk my Battleship.

It actually goes below the water.

Like it actually sinks. - Oh, no way. - It was the coolest. - Come on. - It was so fun.

And so the comedy, and then of course, when I send missiles over, I actually see a missile in real time going, boom. - Oh my goodness. - You know, crashing into his and likewise.

So it's very well done.

It's simple effects that are very charming.

And it was a fun little game.

You know, I would totally sit there and play this again over and over again with a person that was in a different part of the country or the world.

It was fun.

And that was the only one that we tried out.

We didn't, there was like five or six other games in there too. - Okay, okay. - Checkers and chess and Yahtzee and I think maybe a connect four, you know, all those sorts of fun things that you know.

So, but that is a great-- - Battleship sounds much more fun. - It's just, it gets to this idea of being immersive.

When the Vision Pro puts you in an immersive environment, it tricks you into thinking that you are really there.

And it is awesome, awesome.

And the combination of a virtual environment game like this or the whiteboard with the spatial personas, that's just like another person in the room. - Right. - Apple really has something here.

This is special.

And it's unlike any other computing device I've ever used before.

There's no real analog for it except for the real world.

It's really, really cool. - The last thing quickly, I was just gonna ask you about Jason.

They talk about playing Battleship and then they say they watch for all mankind together.

So you can do it's share play.

I mean, I don't know if this is share play or is it both of you just getting-- Oh, it is. - It's actually called share play. - Okay.

But you're both watching the video on your own Apple Vision Pro, but it's almost as if you're sitting there next to each other or on the couch and watching. - I mean, you can do share play now using Apple TVs and it's synced together.

But this is the same thing except that you can actually see each other, which is the one thing that's really sort of missing on the Apple TV.

And so it's nice that you can turn to each other and you can chit chat and you can see each other talking and then you can turn and you can both look at the screen.

We didn't watch a movie together.

No, you both have to have the service.

In fact, I was listening to a podcast on the way in and somebody was saying that he didn't subscribe to Apple TV Plus and the other person did.

So he couldn't watch for all mankind.

But assuming that you both have the app, assuming that you both subscribe to the service or whatever it is, then you can do it together.

And it's really cool.

It's really cool. - That is amazing.

I mean, what's gonna happen in another month?

It just keeps getting better.

Honestly, the first thing that struck me as I was running through this, like I think I've seen Stephen Hackett maybe one time in live in person, but I've watched many, many videos of him just like you have.

And this persona, like the first time I was scrolling through this story, I'm like, that looks like him.

Like, did they take a picture and superimpose that on him?

Like that looks really good.

Much like your improved persona, Jeff.

It looked so much better than it did two months ago.

I mean, it's just even getting better just in the way that it looks.

Like anyway, it's very exciting. - And what that picture is not showing you, Brett, is a still frame of a person.

You can look at the still frame and you can sort of see it's not really them, but when it's a moving video and their eyes are moving and their mouth and their hands, it becomes so much more believable that you just stop thinking about it.

And you're just like, yeah, it's just like Steven's in the room with you.

It's really neat. - You had another story about the Vision Pro and it's a game, but apparently this one you only play by yourself.

I mean, I guess at least for right now, right?

This was pretty funny.

This was like one of these basketball arcade things, right?

It's like a big trough and you got to pick the ball up and throw it into the hoop and you keep going and going and going.

This looks pretty cool though.

Somebody, you could set it up a virtual basketball.

What do they call this?

Basketball arcade game right in a room.

And then you can play, I guess you pinch the ball and then you throw it that way.

I couldn't really figure out how to do this, but I thought this was pretty cool. - I haven't tried it yet, but it looked like a cute idea.

And it's another example of, you know, some of the coolest experiences are the ones that are, you know, spatial experiences.

It's part of your 3D environment.

And so you, you know, you feel like you're throwing the ball the hoops, you know, through the hoops and stuff like that.

And this is cool stuff.

I want to see more things like this. - Right, agreed. - This is neat stuff.

Yeah. - At the bottom of this story, by the way, I just saw they linked to a YouTube video.

I don't even know who this person is, but they were just going immersive.

Yeah, just going into like watching an NBA game and just, he was talking about how, even just like in a regular, you know, non-immersive type of a video, which I'm going to ask you about here in just a minute, but he was just talking about, even with watching regular NBA game, the fact that you can like zoom in, I guess, or you can like make it even bigger in front of you.

I just thought that that was interesting.

You know, again, it's just, now that the Vision Pro is in the hands of, of most real non-Apple engineers, real people, and they're doing, it just is amazing how I'm, I'm kind of seeing more and more of these experiences there.

Much like we talked about. - You know, other examples of that are the, other examples of that are the Major League Baseball has an app for the Vision Pro.

And although it's a little buggy right now, in theory, you can watch a game, but at the same time that you're watching the video of the game, you have in front of you, it's almost like a, like a board, like a chess board of the field, where you can actually see little markers for where the players are.

And so it's like the players are being represented in a little, you know, like if you were a little kid and had your own little, you know, game of baseball that you manually moved your little figures around.

And so that's pretty cool.

Also, golf has one, the PGA golf, or one of the golf tournaments has one that I've downloaded.

That's really neat because you're, it's like you're recreating an actual, the game, or I guess you could watch it live too.

And you can see the greens with all the trees and the sand part and sand traps and the, you know, the water features and you can, I didn't watch it live.

I watched it for a professional game that had already happened, but I could actually see the shots.

And so you, you know, you see like a little thing with the ball going through the air and, you know, it gets onto the green and then he puts it in.

It was a very immersive way to sort of, and of course, because it's a virtual environment, I could turn it and see it from different angles and get zoom in and zoom out.

It was, it's neat.

And I think that there's a future in doing that in a way of enhancing professional sports to just give you a new angle that you haven't seen before. - Well, last week we talked about this video that Apple released about soccer, an immersive video aspect there.

You were pretty excited about this last week, but. - Yeah, this is why I want to talk about it. - Yeah, yeah, good. - So I saw the video, it came out late last night on Thursday and I had not seen anyone else talking about it.

So when you and I recorded this podcast a week ago, I believe I told you it was the most impressive video I've ever seen in my life. - I think that was something like that. - I stand by that.

I stand by it.

But I was surprised that after I, after you and I recorded, I saw many articles like this one from Jason Snell at Six Colors, where he says that he did not like the video.

And he said that, but the more I read it, I realized that he and I are actually, even though we come at it from different angles, we're actually in a lot in agreement.

The thing that I said was that I loved it because it was so immersive.

Like you're literally there.

And my regret was that I wish it wasn't five minutes.

I wished it was 20 minutes, because when you have a, something that has all these quick shots, you know, just as you're getting used to an environment, it's, it changes to another angle.

And just as you're getting used to that, it changes to another angle.

You know, we all know highlight reels.

We've seen it a million times in our life.

And when you're looking at a highlight reel, whether it's the old style four by three, or the current, you know, 16 by nine, you can see the entire screen at once.

And so when the director chooses to cut it and you switch from one angle to another angle, because you can see everything within your field of view, you can follow what's going on.

The problem with spatial video, and Jason pointed this out here, is, you know, you can choose to look at whatever you want to look around you.

So if you're looking over to the left, because there's just something interesting on the side that you want to see, and maybe the ball is on the right, so that it's not even in your field of view, and then suddenly the camera angle changes, it takes you a second to orient yourself of like, wait, wait, where am I?

What's going on?

And his criticism of the video was that, again, much like me, it was too short.

You should have been able to spend more time in each, you know, spatial area before they move you somewhere else.

And I think he does, I completely agree with them.

What I had not thought about though, is that Apple should have known better.

They hired a director to put together this video, and the director probably came from the old world of doing, you know, quick, you know, highlight things where you shot by shot by shot.

And someone that's more experienced with this brand new medium of spatial video would know that for spatial videos, you actually want to let the watcher sit in an environment and get used to it and experience it on their own pace.

It's not that you can't move to a different place, you can.

And I think I even mentioned last week, wouldn't it be neat if I myself could be the director and I could say, now I want you to put me behind the goal.

Now I want you to put me in the crowd.

Now I want to be over in here.

Because of course that would not be unnerving at all because I'd be controlling it myself.

I was listening to a podcast this week, MacBreak Weekly with Alex Lindsay, who he does videos professionally for companies.

And he's been working with 3D video for years, even though it's still in its infancy.

And he said that this is something that you just learn.

Like when you first come into any new medium, you know, the joke was when we first had movies, people thought that they would film a play on stage because that's what we knew before was on stage plays.

And so you would just play.

And then you learn, wait a minute, you don't have to keep a camera in one angle.

You can actually do all the cool things you could do with movies.

And so much like this, people are using what they know about 2D videos to shoot 3D videos.

And some things carry over, but some things don't.

And so this is, you know, I think at the same time that I can say that that's the most impressive video that we're seeing, 'cause it truly is, for at least each one of the minutes when you're in that immersive environment.

It also shows that people need to get used to this stuff.

Apple needs to have its directors and other people that are gonna film in this spatial environment.

They need to understand what's unique about the medium so that they can come up with videos that are better and that really allow you to get into the immersive video.

So, you know, once I dug deeper, I realized that I'm really on the same page as these people, but it amazed me that there were a couple of people out there that like me said that it was the best thing they've ever seen.

And that other people are like, "It's disappointing because Apple should have known better "because they should be pros in this."

But what's the core?

I mean, much like everything we keep saying with the Apple Vision Pro is this is just a learning time.

People have to figure it out.

And by the time more and more people are using the technology, much like that first generation iPhone back in 2007 that so few people use, Apple learned its lessons.

It got better.

It finally came out with an app store.

It finally came up with cut and paste, all these things that now seem, of course we have copy and paste on an iPhone.

You know, it's gonna take Apple a while, but it's fun watching this learning experience. - That was such a good job of explaining that, Jeff, because I heard you talk about the video last week and of course I haven't seen it.

And so I'm like, okay, well, how could it be that bad?

But the way you described it and here just reading Jason Snell's comment right here, it would take a few seconds for me to scan my surroundings and reorient, oftentimes a delay that led me to miss the highlight that I was meant to be viewing.

And just hearing you talk about it, like you're right.

Like, you know, it's so new that we have to kind of adjust it.

Our brain has to kind of adjust to the surroundings there.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And just exactly what you said about the play too.

That, well, it's gonna take a while and we just have to learn that there are new meetings.

But yeah, it does take people getting, I think a little bit more creative and understanding what the possibilities are.

But you know, there's already people that are thinking about this, I'm positive.

Speaking of watching things, let's go to another couple of stories you linked to about Apple TV and TV Plus and tvOS.

I thought this was a great article from Dan Morin, of course, we like Dan Morin's writing a whole lot.

But you know, I hadn't thought about this angle until I read Dan's post.

Apple TV deserves better than tvOS.

And he was just, he's talking about now that we know that WWDC is coming up in June.

And of course, we're all excited about what's gonna happen with the iOS, the iPhone and the iPad and the Apple Vision OS, but, and maybe even the watchOS.

But wait a minute, what about little Apple TV here?

I thought Dan had some good points in this piece here.

I love my Apple TV.

I know you have one too.

I use it all the time.

It is the primary way that I watch TV.

And it does amaze me how, at the same time, we're talking about how rapidly things are coming out for the Apple Vision Pro.

It, you know, if you look back, even over history, over the years and years and years, tvOS improvements have been slow.

They really have.

I mean, you get the sense that it's like two guys in Cupertino that are in charge of everything.

And, you know, they just take their time rolling out features.

So it's amazing that I can both love something so much and say, gosh, why don't they have many more features?

So Dan says, for example, you know, you shouldn't be stuck with the grid of having the apps in the grid, much like an iPhone nowadays, where you can have widgets, or you can put other things there.

You know, he said you should have some of that same integration on the tvOS.

And you know what?

He's right.

I mean, that would be more interesting.

You could personalize it for your own experience.

And he also points out that Apple has always had this rough relationship that, you know, and it's demonstrated by the name itself.

The box is called the Apple TV.

Their service is called TV+.

There's a TV+ channel, but the TV+ channel doesn't just show what's on Apple TV+.

It also shows what's on a bunch of other streaming services, but not Netflix, because Netflix doesn't give them the right to do it.

So it's, you know, they try to have like, this is the one app for everything, but it's not really for everything if you watch Netflix.

And it's a confusing mess.

And he says, and I actually haven't noticed this.

He says that when you use the Apple TV+ app to look for things to watch, although it integrates other services like, you know, HBO and other ones, that it tends to favor TV+.

I mean, that doesn't surprise me 'cause it's Apple's own service.

I actually haven't noticed that it, I haven't noticed any, you know, what I would consider to be unfair favoritism, but maybe I just haven't noticed it.

Maybe it has been there.

So, you know, there's, any of us that have used an Apple TV know that there are times that it's just a little clunky and doesn't work.

And yet at the same time, I still think it's probably the best box out there to connect to your TV, to watch television. - It seems like there's that fine line between familiarity.

Like when I would turn on the Apple TV, I know exactly where the apps are that I've placed there.

'Cause I remember the days when we couldn't place the apps, right?

When we had the ability to move them around.

But I've got like the first row, 'cause I think Dan even says this in here somewhere.

I don't ever scroll down below like the first or two rows of the apps on the home screen of the Apple TV.

I just stay there.

Or frankly, I'd either go into YouTube or I might go into the Apple TV plus app.

Is that what it's called?

The Apple TV app.

But every time that I go across to those different apps, at least from, maybe I just don't even know if you can do this, but you know, half the screen, the top half of the screen, Jeff, is just showing like a picture of whatever app that I've highlighted.

Does that make sense?

And I didn't think about this until I read Dan's piece here.

I'm like, you know, that's a lot of wasted space.

Just exactly what Dan says.

Why can't I have a widget there?

Like, why can't I have something out?

Like, I wanna be able to arrange that similar to the way that I've kind of customized my iPhone screen.

And I think that was Dan's point in here as well.

You know, you and I have talked about customizing our iPad home screens with all widgets just because it's so much more functional in what you can do. - Yeah. - And it's not like, I guess, when I'm sitting in front of the Apple TV that, you know, the vast amount of my time is not looking at the home screen 'cause I'm usually watching something.

But still, it would be nice if I could just customize that to the point.

You know, there's been some incremental improvements.

I know now that all four of my family members, we all have an account, right?

So if you turn it on, they say, is this Brett, who's watching, right?

And you can switch in and there's some other customizable things that you can do.

I know that they're making some incremental changes under the hood, but I would love to see, to Dan's point here, now that he's mentioned it, you know, just the ability to kind of customize this just a little bit more.

And again, I hadn't thought about it because I just turn it on and I know where to go and I know what I wanna watch, right?

And we go into one of the apps and we start watching everything, but it would be great.

Like this story, you know, think about the control center here, but it's just that first row of apps and I don't even go further than that.

So good on you, Dan, for pointing this out and making me now almost regret, like when I turn the Apple TV on, like, oh man, I wish I could do more.

I never thought about that until I read this piece, but that's okay.

All right, well, if you are turning on your Apple TV, another story that you'll link to, I thought it was pretty cool, a new batch of classic movies that are available on Apple TV+.

You know, I guess I don't think about going into the Apple TV+ app to see old movies, Jeff.

But most of the time I'm thinking, okay, is it on Netflix?

Is it in Max?

Is it Amazon Prime?

Is it in Paramount, Disney?

You know, I go to some of those other apps, but I guess I didn't really realize that Apple did this from time to time and they only stay around maybe for a month or two, but there's some pretty good movies in this list that if they're available in the Apple TV+ app, I would probably go there instead, like the John Wick, Mission Impossible, Sherlock Holmes, good stuff in here. - Yeah, I mean, we talked about this last month and I thought it was gonna be a one-off thing that Apple just had a series of movies for about a month.

And I watched a couple of them and we mentioned them on the podcast.

And I mean, they were perfectly good movies, even though they were a little bit older.

Likewise, this current set, I mean, just for example, I've actually never seen the John Wick series before, but I've heard they're pretty good, you know, just like action adventure sort of thing, right?

So maybe I'll watch some of those.

And you know, there's some other ones here that are great.

I mean, Clueless, I remember when that Clueless movie first came out, that was so funny.

So, you know, if you haven't seen them or if it's an old favorite you wanna see again, I like that Apple is doing this.

It's a nice way to account for the fact that they don't have a back catalog.

And I'm actually okay with- - Right, good point. - We've sort of been conditioned from other services to know that movies don't stay there forever.

Now on a Netflix or an Amazon, things tend to stay there for a very long period of time.

But I actually, this, I'm sure it's cheaper for Apple this way, this way of like, we're gonna have a set of movies, they're only gonna be here for a month.

So, you know, it gives you a little bit of a sense of urgency if you wanna watch it, you know, watch it this month, otherwise you're gonna have to find it elsewhere.

And then if they continue to do this over time, I actually think it's a great substitute for having a back catalog.

It's almost better.

It's like, we're not gonna have a set back catalog, so you can't depend upon us as the place to go to see John Wick.

But you know, if you wanna see one of these movies, "The Godfather," for example, you know, obviously a classic. - I know. - If you wanna see "The Godfather" again, you know, you got a month to watch it on Apple TV+.

So I hope that they continue to do this, you know, either nonstop or, you know, it's okay if they don't do it for another month or two, and then maybe in June, they have another set of movies.

That would be fun, and that's a nice way to get content, I'm sure relatively cheaply for Apple, and something more than just the shows they have.

Having said that, they have so many shows nowadays, and I'm not even keeping up with all of the new ones that they have.

I mean, for example, my wife and I just started watching that "Palm Royale" show, and we only watched the first episode so far, which was really fun, and I think they now have like three more episodes, we're way behind.

So I'm barely keeping up with the new stuff, let alone, you know, watching some of this old stuff, but it's fun that it's around. - I'm gonna be excited to hear when you get your wife an Apple Vision Pro, so that both of you can sit in the same physical couch, but watch it through the Apple Vision Pro together with your floaty heads. - I will tell you that that is never, probably never going to happen.

You know my wife, I love my wife. - I do. - But she is, I mean, can I just say something between, just between you and me, nobody else, okay? - Okay, yes, of course. - Everybody in my family has tried out my Apple Vision Pro, except for my wife.

In other words, my son and my daughter.

But she just has no interest, and whenever I'm like, "Don't you wanna like see this?"

She's like, "Eh, not really."

I'm like, "How could you not even wanna try?"

It's like, maybe one of these days she'll just, if there was something that was this exciting from, and I don't even know what the analogy would be for her that would just have no interest to me.

But I'm like, "This is so cool, and it's right there in the house with us."

And she just has no interest. - Whatever. - Well, that's why she's perfect for you, Jeff.

That's good.

Real quick, this last thought I had on these movies, I wish I could have looked this up.

Are these movies available on other services?

Like, I don't know.

Like, I see Armageddon here.

You know, some of these are old.

Some of these are not so old, like Dunkirk is on here.

That's not too old.

But I'm just wondering, like, could I watch "The Godfather" on another service?

I don't know.

The point is that I don't know if Apple is pulling these out, and it's the only place that maybe that they're available.

Anyway, we'll have to find out on that. - Yeah, I don't have the sense that they are exclusive, but it is a good, you know, if you- - Some of them might be.

That's what I'm thinking.

Anyway, we could, I should have looked that up before we started today. - "The Godfather," for example, which is a good example.

If you just do a Google search, and I bet you I just type in "The Godfather," it will show you where you can watch it.

And I see right here that, you know, it looks like it's free on Pluto TV.

It's free on Hulu. - Okay, okay, okay. - It's free on Amazon Prime.

So, you know, these are certainly not exclusive, so you might be able to find them elsewhere, but you gotta do some hunting around. - Yeah, very good.

But this is an Apple TV+, and I guess I should say, I think you have to have a subscription to Apple TV+, right?

In order to get access to the, okay, good.

Just wanted to be sure on that.

Last couple of things.

We've talked about standby mode on the iPhone, and really mostly in the context of making sure that you have a wireless charger that the phone can be in its horizontal layout so that you can turn on the standby mode.

Anyway, we've talked about this quite a bit.

Your favorite, or one of your favorite stands has been this Anker MagSafe charger stand, three-in-one cube, which I still drool over.

I do not have it yet, but I just, I love the little, the compactness of it.

We've talked about another one from 12 South, I believe.

Here, yeah, here, we'll pull this one up.

And you have both of these.

I think if I remember, you use one at the office and one at home, that kind of thing.

But you had a link today from another stand from Anker, which looks really promising, mostly because it's not anywhere near the price of the other Anker one and the 12 South.

It looks kind of neat.

It's not my favorite kind of conceptual picture there.

I don't know, I just, I like the cube, I think a little bit more 'cause it's a little more compact.

But this is the Anker MagGo three-in-one wireless charging station.

And it actually does have Qi2 certification on there, which is what we talked about last week as well. - Yeah, so it's nice that, you know, the one knock on the first two stands that you showed is that they're both 150.

Although when you showed the very first one, I see it's on sale for 130, so $20 less.

But still, it's a little pricey.

And I know for some people that are like, am I gonna spend that much money on a charger, especially if it's a wireless charger?

I mean, I would tell you, you know, I know it's expensive, but being able to experience standby mode, it's so cool.

It really is neat that it's nice to have.

But if you don't want to spend that much because of the Qi2 standard, which is an open standard, that's very similar to MagSafe, even though they're not paying Apple for the MagSafe certification, it allows companies to make things that are cheaper.

And here's a proof and point.

The same company, Anker, has one product.

Admittedly, it's a different product and it's more compact.

So one product for 130, another one for 90.

So, you know, $40 less, which is, you know, at this price, it's a significant change in price.

You know, you can buy the thing that doesn't have the quote unquote Apple certification, but I'm sure it works just as well.

It's a different form factor, so you can decide which form factor you prefer.

But if you like the layout of this one, it gives you the advantage of, you know, you can charge three different things at once, your watch and your phone and your AirPods or something else, and you can use it in standby mode so that you can display the time as you're going to sleep, if you want to make it like it's a clock next to your bed, or if you want to have it in your office.

You know, what I encourage people, and we've been talking about this forever, you know, if you haven't tried standby mode yet, it's really nice, it's really cool.

It's a way to make your iPhone useful for you.

If you're a type of person like I am that works at a desk for a big part of your day, you know, making my iPhone always useful for me, even if I'm not actively touching it, because I can just see it in the distance, I can see the time, or I can see my calendar, or the weather, or whatever you choose to have as your widgets.

So I like, I love these standby devices. - I might have to eat my words, now that I'm looking at this picture here of this new one.

That's really nice, actually, like it's a lady asleep in her bed, so it's like at her bedside table, but that's really kind of a nice, clean aesthetic.

And the fact that you can have the phone on the top, the watch kind of in the middle, and then you can even be charging your AirPods at the bottom there, that's actually pretty cool.

Okay, I take my words back, that's actually pretty cool.

I might like this form function after all, good stuff.

Last thing, a little video that you linked to, which this is unusual, I think, in the sense that it's the length of it, 'cause normally you're linking to like some Apple commercials, which are always fun.

This was, I didn't get a chance to watch this whole thing, it's like 20 minutes long, but it's, maybe you can explain it, it's a manga film, which I don't know the world of manga as much, but I know it's comics, but this is real life, but it's got comics mixed in, it just, if nothing else, it was just an amazing adaptation, it's like a crazy kind of a movie that I don't know that I'd normally experience, and I wanna go and watch the whole thing, just if nothing else for the lights and the colors and everything in this, it's pretty amazing. - So Apple does this every once in a while, where they will hire a director and say, use an iPhone, whatever the latest iPhone is, now the iPhone 15 Pro, and make a movie for us.

And Apple, I don't know how much direction they give to these people, but do whatever your style of movie is, but really show off how good the Apple iPhone is at taking video, and it really is incredible at taking video.

And so, like you, I'm not as familiar with Japanese comic books, manga, whatever it is, I pronounce it, but I presume that this was a comic book that was called "Midnight," that they have now turned into live action.

And as you pointed out, Brad, if you watch just a minute of it, every once in a while in the movie, they will show a frame of what looks like it's from the comic book. - That's amazing. - And then it will show it in real life.

So it's an interesting way of making it very clear that this is coming from a comic book.

But also, even when they're not showing the comic book page, I mean, just, we all have a sense of what comic books are like.

You often have that interesting angle, or something's really colorful, almost super vivid, and all of those things, when you have a POW, you think of the old Batman POW, and it actually says POW around it.

Those sorts of over-the-top effects are throughout this movie, and it's sort of fun to watch.

I mean, again, it's not that it's the greatest movie in the world, it's just sort of a simple story of a guy who's trying to save the day in his own way.

And it's crazy, he drives a car, but the car will do these ridiculous things, it's almost like "Speed Racer," a fourth wheel, or a fifth wheel from at the bottom. - That's what I thought, right. - It's crazy, it's over-the-top, it's fun, but that's, I guess, the point, is that it is a delight for the eyes to watch it.

And I say that because it's in Japanese, so you have to look at the subtitles, although, trust me, the dialogue is a very minor part of this.

This is much more of something that you are watching than you are really understanding.

It's just a delight to watch, and it really does have some of that character of a over-the-top, graphic novel, comic book, and it does a great job of showing what amazing angles, plus it's in Tokyo at night, so you've got all these bright neon lights, I say Tokyo, someplace in Japan, it's got these bright neon lights and darkness, and we all know that taking video at night can be really hard, but of course, the current iPhones do a darn good job of it. - It's amazing, yeah. - It's a fun video, 20 minutes, it's something unlike anything I've ever, I don't watch this genre of film very often, but it was fun to watch.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, so if you're looking for something different, I encourage it. - Well, that's it, I buried the lead there.

I mean, the fact that everything in this video is shot on the iPhone 15 Pro is, again, just amazing.

We've done this every once in a while, like you said, Jeff, where we've done little videos just shot on the iPhone completely, and it just, I mean, I forget about that.

I'm watching it, and I'm like, "Wow, this must have been a pretty high-budget film kind of a thing," and maybe it was, but they didn't spend the budget on the cameras, which is pretty amazing there, very good.

In the know. - In the know. - So I recently wanted to do some customization for my notifications on the Apple Watch, Jeff.

So for a long time, I had all of my YouTube notifications turned off, right?

Mostly on my phone, but something this past week, somebody was saying, "Hey, did you catch that video or something?"

Anyway, the long story short is that I wanted to turn back on my YouTube notifications on my phone just so that I could follow certain people, and I know that I could customize that even in YouTube, like which notifications that I get, but I've enjoyed that, even though it sends quite a number of notifications for me.

And again, I know I can focus and filter out certain notifications, but I like having that 'cause I like to know when certain people are posting stuff.

The point that was getting me annoyed, though, was I didn't mind having those notifications on my phone, but I did get annoyed that they kept pinging my wrist on the Apple Watch.

I'm sitting there working, I'm like, "What, what?

Like, what else is coming on my watch?"

And I just was like, "What, you dummy?"

I'm like, "Yeah, I can have it on my phone 'cause the phone just sits on the side and I can go and see the summary of those YouTube notifications when I'm ready, but on my watch, I don't want it to just keep pinging me."

So I remembered I have the ability that I can go into the Apple Watch app on my phone, and if you go into that app, there is the notification section in the Apple Watch app.

And in that notification section, actually, there's a whole series of things that you can actually customize in there.

At the very top, there are some specific apps.

I'm not sure really how these are grouped.

I thought maybe it was like the Apple apps versus all the other apps, but there's different ones that are available in here.

And at the top section, you can actually customize even a little bit, like if you go into something like, I think, the Calendar app, right?

You can do all kinds of where you want the notifications to appear.

And one of the main things at the bottom, though, is if you want to mirror your iPhone alerts, and then you have your whole list of apps, and I've got a ton of apps on here that as I was going through, and it's just a simple toggle to say, "I want the iPhone to have notifications on the iPhone, but I don't want those notifications to go to my Apple Watch."

And so I'm able to scroll down, and I just simply toggle off.

I was able to go down and toggle off the YouTube app.

Another one was the Overcast app.

I love getting notifications on my phone when new episodes of a podcast are downloaded, like ours, but I don't necessarily need them to be on the Apple Watch, right?

Just because the Apple Watch for me is like, I want that to be, I guess I have this kind of idea of like, those are for more important notifications, you know, messages from my wife or from our kids or something like that, those kinds of things.

So anyway, simple tip there, but it was just something a reminder for me is like, "Oh yeah, I can go in and I can customize which notifications from my iPhone that I actually want on my Apple Watch."

And really, I just turn off a whole lot of them on the Apple Watch, except for those very important ones where I still like to have them on the iPhone.

So that's my tip.

Customize your notifications for your Apple Watch. - Good tip, good tip.

I also have an Apple Watch tip today.

And even though up in the great white north where you are, and you still have snow, down here in New Orleans in the south, we are beginning festival season.

The weather is beautiful.

It hasn't gotten hot yet.

There's stuff going on every weekend.

This weekend in New Orleans, we have a big fundraiser festival called Hogs for the Cause, which has lots of barbecue.

We have the Pontifullis Strawberry Festival coming up.

We have French Quarter Fest, of course, at the end of April.

We have Jazz Fest coming for two weekends with the Rolling Stones coming down for it.

We have nonstop festivals.

And so there's gonna be a lot of opportunities over the next few months going into the summer when we might go to the beach where I'm gonna be, you know, everyone's gonna be outside in that bright sun other than for the eclipse for that minute or two.

And so the reason I wanted to mention today is a reminder that for your Apple Watch, everybody has their Apple Watch face that they use, you know, either all the time or sometimes you switch between one or two.

But there's an Apple Watch face that I never use except for this season.

And it's called Numerals Duo.

And what it is is it makes the entire screen, just the top half of the screen is the hour in digits.

And the bottom half of the screen is the minutes.

And although the version that you're showing on the screen right now is sort of like purple on black.

That's not what I recommend.

What I recommend is if you change the colors so that it's just a black background and it's just a pure white numbers, it's very simple, but it's very easy.

What I find is even if I'm outside in bright sunlight where it's hard to see the Apple Watch screen, and you know, some Apple Watches have more brightness than others, more nits, NITS, so it's easier.

But even on one with lots of brightness on it, it's still a little hard if it's super, super sunlighty outside to see it.

But if you have this watch on, this face on, I find that even on the brightest days, I can still glance down at my watch and see what time it is.

So that, for example, if you're at an outdoor concert and you know that the next band starts at 3.15, I can glance down and see it's 2.45, which means I've got 30 minutes, which is enough time to go to the food booth and get my crawfish Monica at Jazz Fest or whatever I'm gonna get.

So just don't forget about this particular watch face.

It's really only useful if you're gonna be outside a lot in bright sunlight, at least that for me, but Numerals Duo is a time-saver, is a lifesaver for me, shows you the time, this time of year.

So that's my plug today, the Numerals Duo watch face. - I see people having this on because it's very obvious if you're looking at somebody that has an Apple Watch and if they have this face on, you can see it.

And every time that I see it, Jeff, my thought is, why are you wasting all of that space?

Like there's so many more complications and little widgets and things you could put on the watch face but your scenario is perfect.

I mean, that's great.

I hadn't thought about that because you're right.

Sometimes when I am in the bright sunlight, because I've got so much information on my watch face, the actual time itself is so small, I can't see it.

So thank you, that's very helpful.

And once you go into the Apple Watch app on your phone, you can customize it, right?

You can pick which color that you want.

You can have the numerals filled in or not filled in.

I mean, there's just all kinds of little ways that you can customize this in here.

You can even have it in Arabic Indic or Divanagari, which I have no idea.

It looks like all the numbers are backwards, but I know for some people that's important on some of that.

All right, good stuff though.

I like that, Numerals Duo for the sunshine, which yeah, I might have to wait a few weeks before I can utilize that in the sunshine.

Thanks, Jeff.

Always great talking with you and we'll talk with you next week.

Thanks, Brad.