149: Best Albums, Best Apps, Best TV+ and Even Better Pencils✏️!

Welcome to in the news for May 31st, 2024.

Wow.

The last day of May.

Who knew?

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett.

Good morning, Jeff.

Good to talk with you and good to hear how your Apple Pencil Pro is doing.

When you posted this earlier this week, what, just three or four days ago now, three days ago, I was like I immediately stopped what I was doing.

I wanted to read through it because I've been waiting for you.

To put all of your thoughts down about using the brand new Apple Pencil Pro.

It's like now it's so confusing to talk to people about the Apple Pencil, Jeff, as you know, but now this is the Apple Pencil Pro with all of the updates that come with it.

It sounds like you're pretty happy with it.

Yeah.

You know, I think it probably says something that I posted my iPad pro review pretty quickly after I got it.

But the Apple Pencil review, that's the one that I wanted to wait like 10 days.

I wanted to actually really use it.

That probably tells you something about where my brain is.

But I really love that.

I've been using styluses for so, so, so long.

I really enjoy using them.

It's a big part of my practice.

I'm always writing stuff down and annotating cases.

You know, a big part of my law practice is I'm downloading cases from Westlaw and I'm highlighting them and I'm annotating them and everything else.

So I use the pencil a lot.

And so I really wanted to get to know the new Apple Pencil Pro.

And it's funny because, you know, from on camera right now, unless you unless you read that little thing that says pencil pro, that's your Apple Pencil.

Yeah, there's no way to tell because it looks exactly the same.

And one of the interviews that I linked to this week was interesting.

It was from a French publication.

And some of the designers of it were talking about that because it's such a different device, it's got so many new things inside of it.

The haptics and the fine line, everything else that it was actually an engineering challenge to make it fit in the exact same, you know, size and to make it weighted the same way, because it doesn't feel like there's got, you know, extra stuff at the front or extra stuff at the back.

It just it just feels normal.

You don't even think about it.

So that in itself is sort of interesting that that it it, you know, it's.

Part of you can look at it and say, oh, it looks the same.

That's not impressive.

I see it as just the opposite.

The fact that it has so much more inside of it and yet it looks the same.

That that is the hard part, because that's what you you don't want to mess up.

So you don't want to mess with something that's already good, which is the form factor.

You know, now that they have the flat side in it, because we always remember the original original Apple Pencil, which was completely round, that didn't work as well because it would roll around.

I don't even know where my is my roll off the table.

Exactly.

I rolled off the table onto the floor and it just like the the old song about me.

Balls.

I love the picture, by the way you put in here.

You actually you took a picture of both the Apple Pencil normal, regular and the Apple Pencil Pro.

And truly, Jeff, like I cannot like there is no other way to tell visually a difference there other than one has pro.

Can I tell you a secret about a secret about this picture?

Don't tell anybody else.

OK, between you and me, in order to get that picture, I couldn't get it because, you know, the flat side, it wants to roll onto the flat side.

But and yet for the picture I needed I needed to show the flat side because the flat side is where it says pencil or pencil.

That's right.

And so I have to take a little bit of scotch tape and sort of, you know, you know, you double over scotch tape and put it underneath it to get them to stay in this position.

This is not the natural position that, you know, an Apple Pencil in this position.

This is the little secrets of a hardworking blog.

I feel like I'm telling you that, you know, the picture that Burger King shows of the of their burger is not exactly what you're going to get when you go to Burger King.

That's not real meat.

Exactly.

That's plastic.

Right.

But anyway, thanks for doing that.

Yeah, but I appreciate the picture does show that it really does look exactly the same.

But just to sort of go through the features and what's interesting, you know, and again, many people know about them, but the haptic feedback is so nice.

Haptic feedback is something that Apple has been playing with for so many years.

We have it on the iPhone.

We have it, of course, in the in the AirPods, AirPods Pro.

And I mean, I mean, I love the fact that on my AirPods, if I squeeze down onto the AirPods Pro, it pauses or plays.

But the haptic feedback, I honestly feel like I'm squeezing it.

And I know that I'm not because it's a piece of plastic.

It's not moving.

But your brain is tricked into thinking that you really are squeezing it.

And the exact same is true with this.

When I squeeze it down, I honestly feel like I'm pushing it and like it's got like a little play in it.

So it's it's it's both good for creating the illusion that you're pressing a button that doesn't really exist.

And then also, as I notice, like if you double tap, which you've been able to do for a long time, but it now tells you, yes, you've switched tools.

And so it's great.

It's a silly little thing, but it's so much nicer that if, you know, if there was nothing else that the pro added, but the haptic feedback, I would still feel like, oh, this is a great step forward.

But that's just the first feature, which is really what it's called.

Yeah.

So I love that.

Yeah.

The squeeze feature, as I mentioned, was something that for a while, like for the first couple of days, I was like, gosh, I don't think I like this because I was squeezing it by accident and the little palette was coming up.

And I would be like, oh, do I have to stop writing?

But then once I learned that if the palette comes up a mistake, just ignore it.

Just keep writing.

It was fine.

Just keep.

And then I got to the point where I actually do want to switch tools and I would switch them via the palette as opposed to going up to the top of the screen and choosing different pens there.

And it really does save time and it's convenient.

And it's just it just makes it easier to work with.

So I like that.

You know, I just got to say I love the fact that you talked about that, because I know you use the GoodNotes app for like handwriting notes.

I like the Notability app.

The only thing sometimes in Notability, I wasn't so happy with this.

They played around with where they put my little annotation toolbar, Jeff.

Oh, I didn't know that at some point it was up at the top, like in GoodNotes.

I think.

Right.

I think it's right at the top.

So if you wanted to change to like a red pen or a black pen, you would have to go all the way up to the top and tap it.

Now, Notability, at some point they had it all at the top and I had to go all the way to the top at one point.

I think in a previous version, they had a little tiny annotation toolbar that you could slide over on the left side.

And so I wasn't like I could just like it wasn't quite as far for me to go over and tap and go to a different color.

But then they now today it's over on the right side and I can it's still not very far, but I have to do two taps.

What used to only take me one tap, if that makes sense.

I can do some favorites, but it's not as big anyway, since I have seen this.

And I was so glad to see that you address this, too, that the fact that I can pull up that annotation palette, that little toolbar right there under the pen.

Now, as long as GoodNotes and Notability and other apps support that, that it's right there.

I'm very excited about that.

I was very, very excited to see you write about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's really nice.

My one critique of of GoodNotes right now is that the undo feature, as I mentioned, they're not using the very nice, very cool Apple undo feature, which allows you to bring up this little arc and you can go to to to to to to to and as you go through it, you can like undo once, twice, three, you know, as many as the app supports.

And that is so useful.

But for whatever reason, GoodNotes doesn't have it.

In fact, I say for whatever reason, I actually I have no insight information on this, but just as a pure prediction.

My guess is that Apple probably let the GoodNotes developers know that this was coming like just a little beforehand.

Enough for them to be in the store on day one.

But I suspect that the GoodNotes people did not have access, complete full access to it yet.

So, you know, my my theory in my head is that the GoodNotes developers didn't even realize that Apple was going to have this cool undo feature.

And so they just came up with their own thing.

And now that they've come out with it.

Yeah.

On the other hand, there's another app called Procreate, which when Apple was showing off the new iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil Pro, they actually did take advantage of it to like undo a whole bunch of levels of.

So my guess is that Apple probably only, you know, Apple likes to keep things close to the vest before they're publicly announced.

Sure.

So maybe they told one or two developers, but not others.

So that's my hope, at least.

So my hope is that now that GoodNotes has seen how cool the Apple undo feature is, that they'll simply incorporate that into what is otherwise a very cool little a little pop up palette, a tool palette.

So I'm excited about that, too.

Can I just ask quickly, so so those little that you could undo, are you twisting the barrel of the pencil to get to the undo's or you just you're actually going down?

So, for example, I would.

So if I'm in an app like like PDF PDF, what's the PDF app that we use?

PDF, PDF, PDF, expert.

So if I'm in PDF expert, which, by the way, doesn't yet really officially support squeeze if I'm a PDF expert and I squeeze my pen, all I see is the palette that allows me to do or undo.

I don't see anything else.

I don't have a thing.

But when I when that when you squeeze it and you tap on the little undo, then the picture that I'm sure that you're showing on the screen right now pops up and you have a notch based upon how many things you've done.

So if you have made three changes, there'll be three notches.

If you've done, you know, 12 changes and maybe over 12 notches.

And so then you actually just sort of use your pencil to go around the arc.

And again, that that haptic feedback, you know, the reason I say that is because as you move the pencil around that little arc of changes, you will see on the actual screen the changes, you know, be undone or redone as you go the other direction.

And you will feel the haptic feedback so that you I mean, you completely understand I'm undoing one thing.

Now I'm doing two things.

I'm doing three things.

And so that's how that works.

And in fact, I say that I tap on it.

Actually, I think about it.

It might be that you mentioned PDF expert.

They don't have it in here now.

But I remember when they first several years ago, Jeff, that at the bottom of your annotation toolbar inside PDF expert, they had the little undo arrow, which everybody knows is like the arrow that goes back to the left.

But if you held if you tapped and held on that undo button, I remember that PDF expert at one point had like a whole line of the different places that you could back up to.

I used to love that.

And they took it out.

I'm not sure exactly when they took it out.

But now it's just simple, you know, undo, redo one step at a time.

But I am thrilled to see this undo feature that you're talking about.

And I am very hopeful that it will come more to to more apps on the iPad.

And in fact, now that I'm showing it and I'm doing it.

So in the picture that you're looking at, you see that at the very top, there's the there's the undo icon, which is the arrow that has like a thing.

What I'm actually doing is that becomes movable.

So once I bring that up, I actually tap down with my Apple pencil and I slide that little circle.

And as I slide it, I go back and forth between undoing all these things or redoing them.

And you can see it as it goes back and forth.

Yes, you go halfway through.

Halfway through the gone.

It's totally intuitive.

It is it's fast.

It's intuitive.

It's so much better than just randomly doing.

You know, you don't even know how many levels deep you could do.

Undo, redo.

It just it's just it's one of these perfect.

It's a I mean, I hate to gush too much about the undo feature because how exciting is that?

But when it works well, I mean, we've all been in situations where you need to do an undo.

And when you have a really, really good undo, redo feature, you're just like, wow.

Why wasn't it always this way?

And that's just one tiny little thing.

So I absolutely love it.

The other things that are cool, it's got the hover feature, which, again, is not new.

It had existed with the the last version of the iPad Pro.

It's just not a feature I used before because you and I both had used the two the two generations back version of the iPad Pro.

But hover can be a cool little feature when you do it.

Find my is, of course, nice.

I'm hoping I don't have to use it in real life.

But I did sort of, you know, play with it at my house.

I left my Apple pencil in one room and then went to another room.

And I'm like, where is my Apple pencil?

And sure enough, I was able to find it, as you can see with the pictures there with my iPhone.

And it's sort of like, you know, you're getting hotter, you're getting colder.

You move around your iPhone, around your house, and it gets a bigger and bigger circle as you get closer and closer.

Almost there.

Within reach.

Yeah.

Reach out and you'll touch it.

The barrel roll feature is the one that you were talking before.

And that's the one that I really don't find myself using that much, because what it really does is it changes the shape of a brush.

And I don't really use brushes.

I mean, I'm not a painter.

So it's probably not something that I'm personally going to be using, at least for now.

But it could be in the future that developers come up with something interesting to do with the barrel roll besides changing brushes.

I don't know what.

And so I'm hoping that some creative developers will say, hey, now that this is a feature, you know, let's let's allow it to do something.

So so there and then the shadow, which is just sort of an extra thing.

One of the things I should mention, and I mentioned this in the review, and this is, I guess, a hover feature.

But I actually like the fact that sometimes I use my Apple pencil not for writing, but just to navigate my interface.

You know, I'm just using my iPad.

I'm using a web browser.

I just tap here just because it's in my hand.

It's just sort of fun to sort of do it.

And I like the fact that with hover, if you're on a website that has something that when you would hover a mouse cursor over it, it brings down a little menu or something like that.

You could do the same thing with the pencil.

So you can just hover without selecting.

And that's cool.

It has nothing to do with writing.

It has nothing to do with using it as an art.

And it's just using it as a interface device.

And it's a cool it's you know, it's a silly little feature, but it's a cool little feature.

So I'm a huge fan of the Apple pencil pro.

Haptic feedback enough would have been great for me to have all these other features.

And then the cost, I mean, it's one twenty nine, which is the same price that we had always been paying for the nicer Apple pencil.

And and then, of course, if you do want to pay less, you can get the the USB-C, you know, the less expensive one that they came up with last year.

But I think it's great to have these options.

Oh, and I guess I should also mention that the squeeze as you're showing right now, by default, the squeeze option brings up the tool palette.

But you can actually have it right.

Whatever you want.

Yeah.

Including shortcuts.

So, I mean, if you had some really interesting shortcut and I have a silly example of just, you know, open up my Safari app or something, but you know, you can assign it to the squeeze function.

And so I can definitely see time in the future that depending upon what I'm doing in certain circumstances, I might want the squeeze function to do something completely different just to to make it faster for me to use my iPad.

And, you know, there's a bajillion shortcut.

So truly limitless options.

It's just a great, great, great product.

I have a question for clarification quickly, because as you said, I've always done double tap on the pencil to switch between like for me, it's just between my writing instrument and the eraser.

Is the double tap still there, Jeff?

And then the squeeze is in addition to that.

OK, so you can squeeze or double tap.

In other words, I can assign I can keep my double tap the same as I've always had it.

And I get haptic feedback now, which would be amazing.

But then I can assign something else to the squeeze or frankly, I guess, because I could do the squeeze as between switch between current tool and eraser.

I can see on this picture here.

But in other words, you still have both of those.

So really, they've added kind of an interactive element to the Apple Pencil Pro.

In addition to the double tap, you can do the squeeze now.

I should have made that more clear.

In fact, the picture that you're looking at right there, that is the settings for squeeze.

But there's a similar one for double tap that has all of the same features here, except except for shortcut.

And so shortcut you can only do.

But if you wanted, for example, you could have double tap be switched between the current tool and the eraser, which is what I have my down to.

And you could have squeeze be switched between the current tool and the last use, which is both very similar.

You know, it's just do you want to just go to the eraser or the last use?

Right.

Both both.

You know, so you could have that or you could switch it up.

You could say everything I used to always do double tap in the past.

Now I'm going to make that my squeeze function.

And instead, I'm going to have double tap do something like show the color palette or something like that.

So you have like a little bit more control, you know, in my brain, the double tap switching between the current tool and the eraser.

I've just been having it that for so long now that for me, that makes perfect sense.

And so I didn't want to change that.

So I'm going to leave that with the regular old double tap feature.

And the only difference between now and what I had before is I could have to feedback when I do double tap, but otherwise it works the same as before.

My brain is ready for that.

So that's just what I'm used to.

It's for me, it's the squeeze feature that I'm currently using with the tool palette.

But again, maybe I'll change it to a shortcut in the future.

We'll see.

But cool.

And the whole interface like that in the settings app, this is brand new, too.

I don't think that there was a there was a settings feature like this in the past, or at least not certainly as nice as this.

But this one's got like an animation and it it shows the squeeze and all the different things you can assign it to.

Same thing for double tap to all the different options.

So it's a it's a nice, a nice improvement.

And last question, you find that the the the place where it docks on top of your iPad, you had any issues with that?

Like, is it the same?

Because I was at an Apple store last week and I and I looked at it.

And sure enough, the Apple pencil is just a little thicker than the actual thickness of the iPad pro.

Yeah, it seems like it all works the same on there.

Right.

And I know it's just a little bit.

But you haven't found any issues with that, even with your folio cover and anything like that.

It all fits on there just fine.

It all fits on there.

Great.

And in fact, I know, you know, intellectually that it's all different because the top of the iPad pro is now housing a camera, which it never had before.

Right.

And so I know that the that the the the the magnets are in different places.

In fact, if you take your old Apple pencil and you try to attach it to a brand new iPad pro, it won't it won't go because the magnets are in different places.

So it will sort of reject a little bit.

So but even though Apple has changed the positions of the magnets, the function is exactly the same.

You stick it on the top.

Good.

No, nobody would really notice the difference unless you go hunting for it.

It does everything.

You know, everything that you used to love about that feature in the past is just as good, even though it's doing it a little differently behind the scenes.

Thank you for your review of the Apple pencil pro, my friend, Jeff.

That is really good.

As I said, I've been waiting for that because I know you have been sitting on it for a while, thinking about it, contemplating it, being deliberate about what you're going to write about.

But that was a very, very good review.

And I appreciate you clarifying some of the questions that I have on that.

There have been other departments at Apple that have been very busy, not just the Apple pencil pro people.

Apparently, the Apple music people have been busy coming up with the best 100 albums ever made in life.

I saw this come through and actually I saw it first on my phone and I started scrolling through the website and I was just mesmerized not by the actual albums, because some of these I do and don't agree with.

I was mesmerized more by by the way that they presented this.

This is one of the really great, the prettiest, the prettiest presentations of albums and just a list that I think I have ever seen.

I just love the way this goes.

And I'm glad that you linked to it today.

Yeah, it's funny, because as you're scrolling down the website, instead of albums appearing from the bottom, they appear from the side and they go across at this angle.

So it's a very it's an interesting way to to bring that out.

So but that's why I wanted to make sure I linked to it, my article, too, because you should go check it out.

Nothing else.

Just to see some flying album covers.

The of course, the content.

I mean, it's impossible.

You know, you can't ask anyone.

I don't care how, quote unquote, credentialed you are.

You know, what are the best songs?

What are the best albums?

It's like saying what are the best paintings of all time?

Yeah, it's completely subjective.

And I think it's funny because, you know, the top you would think of the top 100 albums I've been listening to music for a long time.

You would think that I would know just about all of these.

But there's so many albums on here.

I don't know.

You've been just in the top ten.

I mean, this probably people can laugh at me for this, but the number one album of all time, according to this list, is the Miss Education of Lauryn Hill, which is an album, Brett, that I had never listened to in my life.

I was playing really.

I was listening to some of the songs last night and I'm like, I don't think I recognize these songs.

I'm sure I should.

But so what one person thinks is the best album of all time.

Jeff Richardson says, never heard of it.

Now, the number two album of all time, Michael Jackson Thriller.

That one, I actually that one, of course.

And I probably know it by heart.

Every every album, every song.

Abbey Road, of course.

Abbey Road.

I have heard of the Beatles before.

Yes.

Purple Rain.

You know, how can you argue with Prince?

Right.

Right.

You know, Frank Ocean Blunt.

I mean, yeah, I go.

Sure.

Yeah, I do know that album.

But I mean, I don't know that I would call it the best of all.

One of the best of all time.

Number five.

You wonder you can't argue with Stevie Wonder.

What is this next one?

Mad City from 2012.

I'm Kendrick Lamar.

I know.

Well, I know Kendrick Lamar, but I don't know that.

I mean, that's from 2012.

Oh, goodness gracious.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, these are all fun.

And these are it's just these are great link bait, right?

Because just like you said, your point, maybe the flip side of that is everybody's going to check this out because everybody wants to agree or disagree or see it's like, hey, what you know, what's my top album?

But nonetheless, all of that aside, I still just I have been enjoying so much going through this list because even as you scroll through them, as you said, they kind of scroll left to right, but you can click on an album.

It shows you.

Oh, yeah.

Because then it shows you it gives you a little bit of information about the album here, which I think is showing me that.

Oh, that's very cool.

Oh, absolutely.

And then here's what I like about it at the bottom.

If you remember back in the days of when we had to buy songs on iTunes, Jeff, you couldn't listen to the entire song, of course, but you could listen to like 30 seconds of the song right before you buy it.

Well, they've done the same here.

If you look in the upper right corner, it says you can sign in to hear full tracks and add the albums to your library.

I I don't even sign in because I just like the fact that I can go down here and sure enough, I click on a song and it'll give me like that 30, you know, 40 second that is cool, which is I like the fact that they give a few paragraphs about it.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, exactly.

And as you keep on scrolling this way, then it's more like a traditional scrolling website because you can go down to the next album, next album.

Anyway, I just like that they did that.

And then you can just, you know, jump back a little bit if you wanted to scroll, you know, left and right on this.

But I've just been enjoying personally scrolling through this website, even if I don't agree with some of these albums or I do agree with some of these albums.

It's just been fun to kind of go through and some of them, to your point, that if I didn't recognize some of them, I you know, I may not want to hear the whole song, but I'll definitely jump in and listen to 30 seconds of it or so, even if I'm not like logged in, which I just think is.

Well, you know, it was just last week and we had the long weekend.

I was sitting downstairs in my house and I was just doing something on my iPad and I wanted to put some music on on the HomePod minis in my house and I wanted to listen to something different.

I didn't know what to listen to.

And I was just thinking about the fact that the Rolling Stones had recently been in New Orleans for Jazz Fest.

And so, you know, Apple Music just play me the best Rolling Stones.

And I mean, of course, I know Rolling Stones songs so well, but some of them I had not heard in a while and it was just fun.

It was like, you know, I haven't listened to like an album of.

But I mean, again, I'm a Gen X or talking about Rolling Stones.

Big deal.

But with this list, I mean, that's what I like about it.

It's like this weekend, if I'm doing the same thing, I'm going to go through and find an album that, you know, maybe I don't know much about.

And if somebody thinks it's one of the best of all times, give it a listen.

And, you know, I'll either find some songs that I'm like, why have I not been listening to this album?

Or I will very quickly say whatever, you know, this one's not for me.

So I like it's fun to have lists like this.

I just no matter if you agree or don't agree or whatever, it's so obvious to me that somebody at Apple, a group of people are so passionate still.

Absolutely.

Continue to be so passionate about music, Jeff.

Even from the time, you know, when we we've watched this with Steve Jobs and going into the music and the iTunes and the iPod.

I mean, it is still so obvious that there are people that are so passionate about music that they are willing to put the time and effort into creating something like this.

And it's a fun list.

Genuine.

Yeah, it's really genuine.

Absolutely.

People love music.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's also the Apple App Store team at Apple that have released the twenty twenty four.

They call it ADA, which that acronym usually means something else for me from a legal perspective.

But ABA for Apple Apple is announcing their Apple Design Awards, the twenty twenty four Apple Design Award.

These are the finalists, because I believe in June in the week of WWDC, right, they will actually announce the winners of this.

So this is a good article you link to on Mac stories from John Voorhees, which is a nice list.

And I agree with the comment that you made.

Some of them I'm like, of course, those that should be on the list.

And others I'm like, I haven't even heard of that one before.

But now I want to go and try it as well.

Yeah, yeah.

There's some great things on the list.

The and this is an example of a list where I actually prefer the list of finalists to the list of award winners, because whoever wins the award, bravo for you.

But what I'm more interested in is I want like a larger number of apps that I should consider checking out.

Right.

In fact, at the very top of this Mac stories article, Brad, if you go to the top and you click on the link that says Apple has announced, if you click on those three words, you'll actually see the Apple version of it, which is nice because they have the app pictures and stuff like that.

So this is a fun way to sort of go through them.

But, you know, as I go through these, it's interesting, you know, again, a list of somebody's top top things, just like we talked about with music.

It's going to be subjective.

Right.

I was a little surprised and then not surprised to see that one of the games on the list is the New York Times games app.

Now, I use this app literally every day because I play wordle.

I love to do the crosswords and stuff like that.

In fact, I've mentioned before, like my wife and daughter do the crosswords at the beginning of the week and then come like Thursday, Friday with the hardwoods come out.

I get to do those.

And so I love this app.

But would I have considered it for an Apple design award?

You know, is there something about the user interface or the design that's so special to make it rise up above the rest?

I don't know.

I mean, because the app works for me, I guess so.

And it does have a nice interface for going into like the archive and the New York Times and stuff like that.

But I don't know that I would have given it a design award.

So I think it's interesting that Apple saw something in here that I didn't.

I mean, maybe you just give them credit that they've expanded between just the traditional crosswords into all of the different games that New York Times has, right?

Packing it all in one app.

But so like that's an example of something that I love the app.

I don't know that I would have included on the list.

And then there's other.

That's even interesting.

I'm just going to say quickly, that's even interesting for me, because we just talked about a new game that Apple put into their Apple News app.

In other words, they're putting a lot more effort into doing their own games and their own crossword right in the Apple News.

It's just it's interesting to me that they would that they would pick New York Times games in the app that they're copying.

Right.

Right.

And so anyway, but but hey, great.

I'm glad that they are expanding on that.

I mentioned a couple more in here.

The the Procreate Dreams app's got one of their awards for innovation, and that is the app that you can use to create like animations on the iPad.

I mean, this is so far beyond anything that I would ever do.

But when I see examples of what people have done with it, I'm just like, wow, that is that is really, really impressive.

The Apple Pencil Pro now, Jeff, you can try Procreate.

That's exactly right.

That's exactly right.

I'll I'll be a great artist, I'm sure, just because I've got the pencil in the interaction section.

They have this thing called Arc Search, which I have not seen before.

But I know it's been available for web browsers.

And now there's an app for the iPhone.

It basically it takes AI artificial intelligence and it works it into a search feature so it can.

It's much like Google is doing nowadays.

It can give you, in theory, better search results.

But another that's and this is perhaps why I got a design award.

So let's see if you use the app.

Have you used this app before?

Do you have you tried it out?

No, no.

No.

OK, so when you download it, if you it's like a web browser, right?

And then once you find a web page, let's say that it brings you to a web page and like, you know, I don't feel like reading this whole web page.

What you do is you pinch on it, you squeeze down and it uses AI to summarize the web page.

And I'm like, well, that's sort of interesting that it's, you know, in theory, it could save you the trouble of reading a web page.

Now, the problem is that's the theory.

I used it just as an example.

We were just talking about my review of the Apple Pencil Pro.

So I've got it in.

I have the Arc Search app open right now, and I've just squeezed my review.

And so it instantly gives me a summary.

But the summary is not that useful.

The summary has three parts.

It says compatibility designed for the latest iPads features boost, improved precision, responsiveness and a comfortable grip, making it a top choice for creative professionals and students.

None of those words were in my review.

And it doesn't mention any of the new features.

Where's where's the discussion of haptic feedback?

Where's the discussion, please?

And then it says price available at a premium price point reflecting this advanced technology.

So this summary of my web page sucks.

It's horrible.

So, you know, this and this is the thing with AI.

Sometimes these AI summaries can be really useful.

And sometimes it's like, what are you looking at?

What did you read?

Did we read the same article?

Like what's going on here?

So but it's still it's it is an interesting idea.

And I and from a design standpoint, the idea that you pinch a web page to make it tiny and have a small summary of it.

Very cool idea.

It's just that it doesn't really work very well for me.

But maybe others will have more success with it.

There's a couple more here that I was going to talk about.

Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to pick one real quick while you look for yours.

Yeah, you got this.

There are ones called Complete Anatomy 2024.

It's from reading to sell your CV, which you and I know from like the legal world.

But I'll tell you, they make several apps and another one that I like, which is very similar, called Essential Anatomy five.

That's the one that is called.

The reason that I got into that app, Jeff, is because I work with lawyers that are like personal injury lawyers or that are working on, you know, with folks that have had, you know, tragic health issues or broken bones or something like this.

And this app is so amazing because it allows you to basically strip away like the skin or only show veins or only show muscles or only show certain bones.

And it's just amazing and how you can like get down and show people exactly like what kind of a bone or what kind of a of a of a of a body part that you need to focus on.

It's so good, in fact, because I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it.

But I'm glad that they have one of these apps in here, Complete Anatomy.

It's so good, in fact, that I got the app for my daughter who's going to nursing school, Jeff, because, you know, when you are trying to understand like, you know, what is what is the pancreas look like and how is that connected with other?

It's like you can go down and say, I only want to see the pancreas and I want to see where it fits in the body and connected with the nervous system and blood vessels.

And you can do all of that.

And then you can zoom in and zoom out anyway.

Really, really cool.

And I'm glad to see that as all those apps.

Yeah, really cool stuff on that.

It's another one from very, very cool.

So I'm going to mention two more.

One of them is in the in the category called Interaction under the games category.

The last one they have is called Finite.

And Finite is it's an Apple arcade app.

So in other words, you may already be paying for it if you have Apple Arcade.

So otherwise it's free for you if you have it.

And it's an interesting app.

It's one where you it's you basically you match three tiles.

And I'm trying to think of what it's how to describe it.

There was an app that was very popular years ago called Threes, where you would connect, you know, you take two files like you have two numbers and you put them together and then it's a double number and you put them together.

So it's the idea that you're moving around tiles and you're sliding them.

It's that type of an app where you slide things around.

But it's got some interesting features to it that sometimes you can slide one way and sometimes you can't slide another way.

There's a limit.

It's a beautiful it's a beautiful designed app.

It's fun.

It's no pressure.

It's not like you're working against a clock or anything like that.

So it's just if you're looking for one of these fun little casual games, I think it's worth checking out Finite.

And especially if you already have Apple games because you pay for Apple one or something like that, then it's free.

So you might as well check it out.

So that's one that I recommend.

And then another cool one.

They have the last category of apps is spatial computing, which makes sense because the Apple saw that you think, you know, there's not a ton of apps for the Apple Vision Pro right now.

But there are a couple of good ones out there.

And I love the fact that they're highlighting them to sort of give them some.

The last one that's on the list is called Luna Cozy Puzzle Games.

And so this is to even describe this.

It's going to be hard for me to put into words.

What it is is, you know, we all know what a jigsaw puzzle is.

You have you take your pieces and you snap them together.

And it's a 2D puzzle.

Imagine a 3D puzzle.

And so what you have is when you start this app and you're wearing your Apple Vision Pro, you have like a circle that will sit there right in front of you, a big circle.

Like it's something that will be sitting on like a like a coffee table in front of you.

And you can spin the circle around, you know, all virtual, of course.

And it will have a design on it that will be like the first one you have is like like a pirate treasure island.

So it's like a tree and it's got like a treasure chest and it's got like other things.

And then you can sort of see in a grayed out version what you're looking for.

And then you go off to your side and there's all these little things and you pick it up virtually and you need to spin around and find a place that it goes.

And it starts off very simple.

And then it grows into something more complex.

And the puzzle itself is not hard.

Don't get me wrong.

This is not going to challenge your brain.

It's a totally easy puzzle, at least the free one is.

Maybe if I haven't paid yet for the more advanced versions, maybe some of the more advanced ones are more hard to get.

The free demo model is very simple.

But the reason that this app is worth checking out if you have an Apple Vision Pro is it is beautiful.

I mean, when I when I'm playing with this thing, I mean, after about 30 seconds of me getting into it, I completely believe that there is this circular thing in my living room with all of these colorful animated things.

It's it's just it's because because it's this augmented reality.

I'm look I mean, I can see my living room around me.

It's just like I'm sitting in my living room and I just happen to have this big four feet, three foot high, you know, game in the middle of it.

And as I'm sitting there looking at it, I'm like, this looks so realistic.

I can't believe this is all virtual and it's beautiful.

And it's a little cutesy, too.

It's like cutesy animations.

So it's fun.

It's it's just a feast for the eyes.

So and you know, it's such a cute idea to come up with.

So I'm going to give that one a thumbs up.

Anyone that has an Apple Vision Pro, which I realize is very, very few people right now.

That's a cute idea.

Speaking of the Apple Vision Pro, we'll come back to maybe a couple of their apps here, but you talked about the last week.

We talked about the new parkour in Paris radio.

And you will link to a story where Davis Parks was talking about that.

But I wanted to ask you quickly about this.

There was something else from Marvel.

I'm the right understand that you can describe this a little bit better.

I think Jason Stel was talking about it, too.

It's the what if apparently this is a world that I am not familiar with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is now come to the Apple Vision Pro.

And it sounds like Jason still liked it.

And you were able to experiment with it a little bit.

Yeah.

So the series that's on, if you have Disney Plus and if you go to the Marvel section of Disney Plus, you can see all of these what if cartoons and what they are.

Yeah, sort of alternative takes in the Marvel universe.

And so, for example, you know, if you know the Marvel universe, you know that Captain America was a big deal in out of coming out of World War Two.

And one of the characters in the Captain American movies is Peggy Carter, who had her own series.

But like there might be a what if that says, what if instead of Captain America becoming the hero, what if Peggy Carter became the captain, like the Mrs.

Captain America or something like that?

And so wouldn't that be cool if she was the one?

And then you could explore stories in that.

Or wouldn't it be cool if this this villain that we know from this series is going to be fighting against Dr.

Strange over here?

And it's just a little one off things.

And it all comes out of a comic book series that's been out for a while.

So it's a fun way to basically play with your intellectual property and mix and match and come over things.

So with that background, they came out with this.

It's an app that you download that it's basically a cartoon that you are actually inside of.

And it came out yesterday.

Jason Snell had had an early access to it, so he saw it last week.

I played with it last night right before I went to bed.

It is it is it's fascinating.

What it reminded me of is there was a movie that came out when we were younger in 1988 called Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Have you ever seen that movie?

Of course.

Yeah.

OK, so way back in the day.

Exactly.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The main character is the Bob Hoskins plays this private detector named Eddie Valiant.

And, you know, he suddenly goes into the world of the cartoons.

Right.

And so, you know, imagine, you know, when you're watching the movie, Bob Hoskins is interacting with the Looney Tunes characters, you know, Bugs Bunny or whoever else.

Yeah.

It's as as if they are.

I got that same feeling when I watched this last night.

Because I'm sitting there just in in the room in my house and suddenly standing there next to me is this cartoon character.

But the cartoon character is 3D.

And I'm like, it's totally convincing that they're sitting there in the living room and he's looking at me and he's talking to me and he's showing me how to do spells.

He's like, hold your hand up like this and you can you can turn it this way to do a spell and I'm turning it.

So it's interactive.

And I'm like, this is just bizarre because these are cartoon characters.

And I'm sitting here interacting with them as if they're in real life and they're in 3D and they're around me.

And so I thought it was fascinating from that standpoint.

Parts of it are augmented reality where like the characters are in my living room.

Parts of it, it becomes the complete virtual reality where I'm like in the middle of this cartoon watching it happening.

But instead of watching a cartoon on a screen in front of you and even instead of a 3D movie where it's 3D, but it's still within the four corners of like a screen, it's completely around me, but it's still a cartoon.

And so I'm looking around and it's like things are moving.

You feel like I am like I'm Bob Hoskins in the middle of the of the Looney Tune.

I'm literally within this world with all of the Marvel cartoon characters moving around me.

And, you know, it's, you know, Captain America is next to me and these other people are next to me and and Thanos.

And I'm and I'm there and I'm like, this is just too wild.

And it's a beautiful animation, as you'd imagine.

Now, so from from screens like great from being a feat, just a feast for your eyes, it's totally amazing.

Now they have this interactive element that like I said, you can use your hand to do spells.

That part worked OK for me.

Sometimes I couldn't use I mean, maybe it's because I'm not very talented, but I couldn't make my hands go the right way to make the spell happen.

But because it's it works fine.

Like if you could do the spell, great, it works.

And if you can't do the spell after a little bit amount of time, it just moves you to the next level.

So it's no pressure.

You know, the story itself was OK.

I mean, it wasn't the most engaging story.

It's not going to win any, you know, Oscars for being best story of the year or anything like that.

It was just a fine, silly little story.

I maybe it could have been better, better made.

Maybe it's just as good as all the what a stories.

I haven't watched many of them, but it was fine.

But, you know, so that part was whatever.

But it lasted about an hour and it was completely immersive.

And I totally bought it.

And again, I've never seen a cartoon like this to even use the word cartoon seems inappropriate because we know what cartoons are.

You know, you turn on your TV and you watch Bugs Bunny or you watch Fred Flintstone.

That's a cartoon.

The idea that I'm sitting there with the cartoon characters around me and I'm interacting with them and they they feel like I can actually see them and and be a part of the world.

It's just, you know, I want more of this.

And this is every time I talk about the Apple Vision Pro, things that are these spatial worlds that you're part of, whether it's the game that we were just talking about that won the Apple, that's a finalist for the Apple Design Awards, where I'm moving around this this object, you know, it's just so fun.

It is so fun to be in these immersive worlds, augmented reality or virtual reality.

They're both just as cool.

I think it's so it's a free app.

I mean, if you have an Apple Vision Pro, you absolutely should download it and play it.

And I hope that we see more of this in the future.

And I'm sure people, you know, Disney is doing this as just sort of to let's try one version of it.

And, you know, maybe in the future, they'll come out with other ones you can purchase.

And I would totally like I would absolutely pay money for these things.

Now, it is a one hour thing.

And once you've done it, you've basically done it.

There's there's there's two different endings of it.

And so I did it one way and I went one ending and then I went back and changed my choices and did the second ending.

So I saw both of the endings and I liked one of the one of the endings better than the other one.

But they're both cute.

But otherwise, there's not a ton of replay value.

But but it's definitely a cool, a cool experience to go through.

In fact, I say there's no replay value.

I might do it again just to see it again.

So it just seems to me like a skunk works, right?

Like, let's see what we can do, because just hearing you talk about like what we think of cartoons, it's like the Flintstones and sort of like that 2D environment.

I feel like in the next two generations, Jeff, like this is what, quote, cartoons are going to be.

And it's almost going to be like those folks, you know, several years from now that when they talk about cartoons, that's what they're going to mean.

It's going to be that immersive aspect.

Anyway, really just think that that's yeah, that's amazing.

I'll say one last thing about this, Brett, that if they had taken the immersive element out of this completely so that I wasn't doing spells with my hands, if it was just sit there and watch it, but it be a spatial movie, it would have been, in my mind, 99 percent as good as what it actually was.

Because for me, the cool part was not the interactive part of it.

It was more of just the idea that I'm there and that everything's around me.

So I just offer that, you know, my hope is that in the future, we see more stuff that's heavy on the immersive stuff and whether you actually interact with spells, I could care less.

Well, good news, there are still some non-immersive content that's coming out that's going to be good.

This quick little article you link to from Cult of Mac, all the comedies and dramas coming to Apple TV Plus in summer 2024.

And I got to tell you, normally I'm not that interested in like what shows are coming out, you know, necessarily because there's so many different.

You got to follow, you know, what platform or what network that you're following.

But I am very excited to see when Apple is announcing some of their new shows.

Here's one with Jake Gyllenhaal, Presumed Innocent, which I think this movie looks really good.

I know the story behind that.

So that looks really good.

This is a couple of more.

I know that we were talking about some animated features.

This fancy dance movie looks good.

Some science fiction.

I think what I'm struck by, number one, is just the range of different content that's coming out, which is really cool.

One of my favorites coming out is Vince Vaughn.

I'm a big fan of Vince Vaughn.

What is this called?

Bad Monkey.

Let's see.

I don't know when this is.

Oh, August is when this one's coming out.

But yeah, I'm definitely going to be there for anything Vince Vaughn is in.

And let's just say I'm still a swingers fan.

Vegas, baby, let's go.

And before you move on, this Bad Monkey movie or TV series, it stars Vince Vaughn, which is, you know, has the potential to be cool.

But this movie is being I think it's directed by Bill Lawrence.

It's by written and directed by Bill Lawrence, who, you know, he's been around television forever.

He did scrubs and other things, but he did Ted Lasso.

So just because Ted Lasso was such a hit doesn't necessarily mean this is going to be a hit, but it could be.

And so if it's if it's as good as Ted Lasso and it's starring Vince Vaughn.

Oh, my goodness.

That's going to be so much fun.

Right.

And so many other things.

Good.

He does look like I mean, come on, man.

That's great.

I'm excited for that one.

All right.

What else is that you mentioned?

Presumed Innocent, which was starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

I mean, that that book, the Scott Turow book, Presumed Innocent, came out right around the time that I was getting ready to go to law school.

So for me personally, it was a very influential book.

It was like before I actually studied being a lawyer, it gave me a view of what it might be like to be a really cool lawyer.

And then years later, it was a really good movie with Harrison Ford, if I remember correctly.

So it was a great movie.

And so now they're coming to make a TV series out of it.

I'm very excited.

I hope it's good because I I love Presumed Innocent so much because it was such a big part of my early legal career that don't screw it up, Apple, you know, do a good job.

Right.

Right.

I'm excited about that.

The I think they'll do pretty good.

I hope so.

I hope so.

There's I mean, when you scroll through this list, there's so many cool things coming out.

And in fact, one that's not even on this list, there's there's actually a a movie called I think Wolf or Wolf, actually, because that's a movie.

That's not a TV series that's coming out.

That's going to have Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

Suffice it to say that if you have an Apple TV Plus subscription, there is a lot, a lot of good original content.

We hope it's good, you know, promising original content coming out this summer.

So I can't wait.

Apple firing on all cylinders.

We got the music people.

We got the App Store folks.

We got the Vision Pro.

We got the Apple TV Plus and even more exciting, the Apple credit card.

You know, this continues to just fascinate me, this whole thing with the Apple credit card, Jeff.

You and I talk about it quite a bit just because we know that we use it because you and I spend quite a bit of the Apple stores and we use it because you get a good amount.

You get three percent back any time you use it.

But, you know, the last thing I remember that was sort of newsworthy on this is we were going to do the buy now, pay later kind of a thing.

And I think that's kind of rolled out.

I wasn't all that interested in some of it.

But you link today to three new commercials that are featuring the Apple credit card, which they're very cute.

You've got to watch it just to just to enjoy them yourself.

But it just it's one of these things like I use the Apple credit card still quite a bit throughout throughout the month, every month.

And I have my recurring Apple charges on there.

But it's just interesting to see how that continues to play out.

There's been rumors that maybe it was going to move from Goldman Sachs to different banks and stuff like that.

We haven't seen too much movement, but I'm glad to know that Apple is still doing some investment in the Apple credit cards as well.

Yeah, they're they're clearly all in with the credit card.

They like the idea of having it.

I like the idea of using it.

The article that you link to shows three new short videos that came out.

They're each like 30 seconds ads.

And each of the videos highlights a different aspect of the credit card.

The first one that's called the ladder highlights the fact that you can pay your Apple credit card so easily because you just do it with an app.

And you can just, you know, say, take this money because it's already set up with your like your your checking account.

So you basically tap one button and it can I mean, I have it pay automatically every month, but you can also like if you want to pay it right now, you can just click one button, choose how much you want to pay on a little spinning dial.

It's super easy to pay the Apple credit card.

The second one, which is called SOC, basically highlights the idea that you get money back, as you said, 3% for Apple purchases, 2% and 1% for others.

And then you build up that money.

And the next thing you know, you've got like an extra 50 bucks.

You're like, hey, 50 bucks.

What am I going to spend this on?

And that's pretty cool.

And the last one called Sweater highlights a feature that I actually hadn't paid attention to that much.

But apparently when you purchase items using an Apple credit card, it it keeps like a list of all your purchases that apparently has a nice search interface.

So if you wanted to go back, I mean, I know that when I, you know, most of my purchases are on my Amex card.

And when I go to the Amex website to try to find a purchase, it's hard because sometimes the merchant name is different from what you would expect it to be and everything else.

Whereas at least based upon this commercial, I have to try it out myself and see that the Apple when you search for prior purchases, it's much more visual and nice and stuff like that.

So I haven't I haven't even played with that myself.

But so I mean, it makes sense for Apple to show off three of the things that Apple believes that they are doing well with the credit card.

And I think that they're I think that they're right.

Just that last thing quickly, I'm going to I'm going to add to it.

It's not just a credit card to me.

It is the entire experience with the Apple wallet.

Right.

Yes.

Good point.

Because all the credit cards, just to your point as well with American Express, all of the credit cards offer apps, but they're all a little bit different.

And some work better than others.

Some have good features.

But every time I jump into the Apple credit card in the Apple wallet app, Jeff, it's like it's so intuitive, like I know exactly what I'm looking at.

It gives me all the information I need right up front.

And it just is so user friendly.

Some of these other apps that I jump into, to your point, it's like I know that I want to go and see like what's my current balance.

And sometimes it'll be right there.

Sometimes it'll be in another place and I got to click through.

And I just I like the fact, you know, to me, it's not just a credit card itself and getting the three percent back.

It also includes that experience with the Apple wallet app, which is which is really nice.

Very much.

Last thing quickly that I just I want to encourage everybody to go and vote for.

This is fantastic.

So I've seen this happen before where Lego will come with different ideas from folks and they'll say, hey, we want the community to vote on whether we will actually make this product.

And one of these you link to today is an actual Apple store, which, by the way, I got to tell you, as soon as I saw this, I'm like, oh, that's the store in Chicago and Michigan Avenue.

That's sort of what this store looks like.

I don't know if that really is or not, but it's all glass on the front end.

This is a fantastic Lego set.

So I think what happens is that fans will build these themselves and then they'll submit them.

And then now people can go and vote on whether they want to have Lego actually create this set.

And I got to create a Lego log in just so that I can support this.

Yeah.

Oh, yes, we want a Lego Apple store set.

Please, please, Lego, you got to do this.

I think I actually do have a Lego log in for my kids are younger, so I have to go.

I agree.

Although this is a generic Apple store, it is heavily influenced by the Michigan Avenue store in Chicago.

So for anyone familiar with that, that's definitely the main inspiration here.

And it's been a while since I looked into this Lego stuff because my kids are older now.

But I remember from the days these Lego ideas.

I want to say that if something like I think it's a 10000 people vote for it, then it goes to the next level where Lego actually starts to look into the feasibility.

And, you know, here, for example, one of the feasibility problems is Apple may never give them the rights to make an Apple.

But then again, you never know.

But, you know, Apple is so protective of its logo that.

But at the same time, if there's any company that is good, iconic enough for Apple to consider licensing the logo, maybe it would be a company like Lego.

But it's definitely, you know, regardless of whether folks will ever be able to actually purchase this.

It's so funny.

Look what you're showing off right now.

It's so fun to look at all the little details.

And, you know, like a vision pro right there.

It's just too, too funny and all built out of, you know, Lego pieces.

Heck, even just the fact that they were to get like the curves of an Apple logo.

Yeah, right.

You know, those white flat Lego pieces that I remember using.

So it's it's fun to even if it never goes anywhere.

But this Web page, it's still fun to look at on the Web page.

Very cute.

Very.

I I absolutely think Lego should do this.

Apple should partner with them and then Apple can sell this in the Apple store on.

Oh, wouldn't that be awesome?

That would be awesome.

I'll use my Apple card to go get three percent back on it because I got I got to have one on this.

That's so fantastic.

All right.

In the know.

In the know.

Jeff, today has been a revolution for me many years coming.

OK.

Like many people, I have had a library card.

I think our library, I've probably had this card from 21 years.

I got to say, right.

It's just up the street.

We have used it over all the years of my kids being being young.

But my actual library card has shown that it's 21 years old.

So I'll just show it.

It's green.

So now I've got my green screen messing up.

It is so dog eared and tattered.

But here's the here's the problem, though.

Every time I want to go and rent a book, sometimes we're just passing by and I'll jump in.

I don't carry my library card with me.

I like doing a slim wallet.

Right.

So I don't have the actual card.

And if you don't have the actual card, that means I can't go to the self checkout lane, if that makes sense.

So I got to go all the way up to the front now and I got to find an actual librarian.

I got to give them my actual driver's license, my ID.

And I'm like, this is such a pain.

What I would love is if the library would support me creating my library card in my Apple wallet.

Sure.

And finally, today I found a way to do this.

So I've seen this reported.

This is an Apple insider that I've done.

And it's not just for my library card, but this is what I use it for.

This is an app.

It's a free app or you can pay two dollars if you wanted to upgrade.

But you can do all of this for free.

The app is called Pass to You, the letter you.

So PASS, the numeral two and the letter you pass to you.

And so what you can do now is in this past to you app.

I went ahead and upgraded because I'm like this.

This works.

I went and tried this today and it worked perfectly.

I don't have to carry my physical Apple, my physical library card any longer because it now lives in my Apple wallet.

You get this app.

You can go in.

You can either create a template or you can just create basically it's what it's what Apple calls a passkey.

That's like what the back end is working.

Right.

Because I use Apple wallet all the time for my boarding passes.

I have like Panera Bread and my Starbucks card and all of those.

They support creating an Apple card for the Apple wallet.

Right.

But this app is what I needed when the service or the local store, they still have a card like my library card, but they don't support creating a passcode or a card for the Apple wallet.

So I go to the past to you app.

I go in and since this card is so old, I can't even scan the barcode on here.

But there's a number at the bottom of my barcode, which is basically my library number.

I type that in.

It generates the same barcode for me.

And it puts it on the card.

And then through the past to you app, you can customize the color of the card.

You can customize what the language is.

You can put a little picture on it, which for me, I just put a picture of my library card and it added the card to my Apple wallet.

So the key for you, Brett, if I understand correctly, is yeah, when you don't.

The reason that having your physical card was useful at the library, it's not because of anything special about the card.

It's just that it had the barcode on it and you want to be able to scan the barcode.

I see.

So this is basically allowing you to create a digital barcode.

So if any vendor requires you to have the actual card, this may not work.

But if all they're looking for you to do is to have a barcode.

Yeah, I see what there you go.

You're getting another use on there.

Yeah.

So my Costco card, right.

My wife has created she's the primary member of Costco.

So I there is a digital app and a digital card that you can get in the Costco app, but she has it on her card.

So I can't because I'm not the primary member.

I'm like a family member.

Right.

But the point is, that means I had to carry my Costco card, physical card with me all the time.

But now that I have this, I can just scan this.

I can put it in.

And I did this in my Apple wallet.

Now I have a Costco card in my Apple wallet because I just generated from the past to you app so that it had the barcode in there.

So now when I go to the Costco register, instead of pulling out my physical Costco card and I can't use the app because I'm not a primary member, I can now just have them scan this little barcode.

So it generates the barcode, whether it's a QR code or a barcode.

You've actually done this successfully?

The Costco cashier would accept that?

I haven't done the Costco yet, but I did successfully use it in the library.

In fact, I did it this morning to where I just walked up.

And instead of having my physical library card with me, I just pulled it up on my Apple wallet and I had it all designed and everything.

And it scanned it right in and it recognized exactly who I was.

Now, I had to put in like an extra pin code because that's what that's the way my library works.

Yeah.

Let's say like you have, again, quickly a local store like we've got a local grocery store, right?

That's not nationwide.

They're not that fancy on the technology side, but they do have a member card.

Right.

Which is great.

I always have to look it up every time by using a phone number.

Well, now what I can do is I'm going to generate that local grocery card as an Apple wallet card through the past to you app so that now I can just show that and it'll be able to scan it just as if I had the physical card with me.

Very cool.

Well, I just downloaded that as you were discussing it, and I'm going to have to play with it because I agree.

I mean, I every piece of of plastic that I can remove from my wallets that I want to carry around and put it into a digital form.

That is absolutely what I want to do.

And so I like the idea.

You know, in the past, what I have done is I have taken membership cards and I have put in the information in my one password app, which allows me to have like a number, which is good.

But this goes that one step further and allows you to create the barcode, the barcode, which depending upon what the company or the services, if they if they accept it, you know, part of me where is it like a Costco?

The cashier might look at me like I have horns on my head and say, I'm not going to take something that doesn't look like a cost.

True.

That's true.

Yeah.

But very cool idea.

I did not know this exists.

I see that it looks like it's a it's a free app.

But you can if you pay, would you say two bucks?

You get rid of the ads or something like that.

You can do everything.

That's exactly that's all it does.

In fact, I paid the two dollars because I'm like, I support this.

But you can do everything I've just described with the free version of the app.

So try it first.

Make sure it works for you.

And as soon as I realized that it worked and now I have my library card in my Apple wallet, which is just absolutely fantastic.

I want to do more of this.

So pass to you.

I'll have a link in the show notes.

Very cool.

OK, my tip of the week has to do with text messaging forwarding.

This is a feature that Apple has supported for a long time.

But I make it my tip of the week because I always forget about it.

I got a new iPad Pro recently, as you know.

It's been four or five years since I last got an iPad Pro.

So I had or since I got an iPad, so I had completely forgotten about this.

But when I was using my new iPad Pro for about a week, I noticed, you know what, some of my text messages are showing up over here, but not all of them.

And like the ones I wasn't getting, for example, is, you know, when you like log into some websites and they say, we're going to text you a code and like paste it in, like those codes weren't showing up.

Of course, the differences I realized is because those codes were coming over via SMS, not my message.

And the problem is, is that although I message was automatically working in the messages app, SMS messages were not because you need to tell.

So here's the thing.

If you have a new device that's not the iPhone and you want your text, your SMS text messages to show up on that device, it could be an iPad.

It could be an Apple Vision Pro.

It could be something like that.

What you need to do is you need to go to your iPhone, the place that you actually receive the actual text messages over cellular and stuff, and you need to tell your iPhone, I want you to forward text messages to this device.

And even though I had restored my iPad from the backup of my prior iPad, you would think that this would come over.

But no, because it's not an iPad setting.

It's an iPhone setting.

So here's my tip.

You need to go to your iPhone settings and go to messages.

And then there's this thing called text message forwarding.

And then when you tap on that, you can select which of your devices and it will list each of the devices to which you could for it.

So for me, for example, it gives me the option of my my iPad pro and for my brand new one and my Apple Vision Pro.

Those are the two devices that I have that I can forward to.

And so for me, I decided, you know, for my Apple Vision Pro, I really don't need to think I don't think I need text messages there.

So I turned it off from my Vision Pro.

I may turn it on in the future if I decide that I need them there.

But for my for my I my iPad pro, I turned that on because it had not been on by default.

And then, of course, once I turned it on, now I'm getting all those text messages on my iPad.

Everything's the way that it should be.

And I'm sharing this tip today so that the next time that somebody listening to this upgrades, hopefully they remember, because four or five years from now, when I get my next iPad, I'm going to forget this completely.

So I'm going to have to once again teach myself.

Wait a minute.

Why are there no text messages?

And then remember to go turn it on and manually forward it.

It's a cool feature, though.

I mean, it's nice that Apple gives you this ability to I mean, my iPad is not a cellular iPad, but it can pretend like now.

One thing I did notice is on my list of devices to which I could forward.

It does not list my Apple watch.

My Apple watch, of course, does get those things.

It's just that there's something about the Apple watch that Apple has decided.

And maybe it's because they share phone numbers or whatever it is.

That's right.

Apple has just decided, of course, we're going to send your SMS messages to your Apple watch.

And it's not even a choice in text message forwarding.

I just thought that was interesting for me.

But, you know, why Apple made that decision?

I don't know, but it is what it is.

Yeah.

In fact, on the Apple watch, you can go into messages and say, mirror my iPhone, right?

That's probably the reason why it's a different way of getting the same thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm so glad you had this tip, though, Jeff, because this has bit me in the butt as well in the past because the last time it was exactly what you said, either the last time that I upgraded my iPad, maybe it was the last time that upgraded my my Mac.

And I love this feature.

I love getting messages to all of my devices at the same time, including my Apple watch, because then if I want to reply to it, sometimes I want a longer reply and I want to type it as opposed.

Right.

I'm going to tap it into my iPhone.

And so I like the fact that I can see it come on my iPhone or my Apple watch.

But then I jump on my iPad pro with the keyboard or my Mac and I can reply to it.

And you're right.

At first, I remember the last time I got this Mac, it wasn't it wasn't sending.

I'm like, what's what's going on?

Like, why I want what would happen?

And sure enough, I had to go in and find this setting.

So I'm glad that you noticed this, because if you if you're not aware of it and you will forget, I'm I know that I will forget.

But now when I do get my new iPad pro, I will remember to make sure to go and set that up.

Good to get on there.

Oh, OK.

Lots of stuff to talk about today, Jeff, but always fun.

Thanks for your time.

And we'll talk with you next week.

Thanks, Brett.

Bye bye, everybody.