150: Monday Funday, Vision Pro Kitchens, Tracking Your Tools 🔨 and Cute App Pillows

Welcome to in the news for June 7th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com, and this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett, it's episode 150.

Seems like a milestone of sorts.

So there you go.

A little bit.

I think so.

And maybe understandingly so, since we are a mere three days away talking about some milestones here, three days away from the keynote presentation at WWDC, the Worldwide Developers Conference hosted by Apple.

It will take place on Monday, June 10th at 10 a.m.

Pacific, noon central.

So I know what you're doing during your lunch hour, Jeff, and 1 p.m.

Eastern.

We'll all be sitting there watching whatever Apple is going to decide to introduce to the world and to us.

I'm pretty excited about this already, Jeff.

I am.

Yeah, WWDC keynote is always a fascinating one.

You know, every fall they typically have the iPhone introduction, which is fun because that's Apple's major product.

It's what they make most of their money from and stuff like that.

But for the WWDC, I mean, this is the presentation that at least to a large part is geared at the developers.

So they want to give their developers a sneak preview of what's upcoming in the operating systems that they can start to modify their apps to be ready for it.

And so half of the intended audience is the developers, but then the other half is people like you and me that don't develop apps.

We just use apps.

We're just users.

Right.

We're the users.

And so it's sort of a mix.

In fact, the way that Apple has for years and years done the presentation is they start with their keynote, which is open to the world or in the old days was on stage, streamed to the world.

Nowadays, it's just going to be a pre-recorded presentation that we all see.

And then later on in the afternoon, they're going to have a second presentation, which is only for developers.

You have to be signed up for the conference to even just to watch the stream.

And that one's called something like State of the Union or whatever it is.

Industry.

Yeah.

That's the one that really gets into the code and really super, super, super technical stuff.

Sometimes those announcements end up having some incidental interest for regular users, but most of them, they're just behind the scenes for how do you actually write your apps and stuff like that.

But it's the third presentation that we're talking about that is, you know, you know, sometimes Apple has hardware to announce last year, for example, they announced the Apple Vision Pro, you know, pretty major announcement, you know, new platform and stuff like that.

But typically they don't have hardware to announce a WWDC.

And all the rumors are that there's going to be no new hardware this year.

It's just going to be a software announcement.

And the reason that that makes perfect sense is because, gosh, Brett, you and I have been talking all this calendar year now that so many times when someone sticks a microphone in front of an Apple executive, they say, we have something exciting coming in AI.

Stay tuned.

And what they're referring to clearly is Monday, is this upcoming Monday.

And so Apple is going to talk about AI in ways they haven't before.

And it's going to be it's going to be really interesting to see.

You know, I feel like there's two ways that can go with this, Brett.

Apple has been using AI for a super, super long time.

They didn't traditionally call it AI.

They traditionally called it machine learning, but they've been using it for so long and features and everything from, you know, memories app to a million ways, you know, face ID, the way that it can understand your face versus my face.

I mean, that all uses what is a form of artificial intelligence.

And they even have this special chip, you know, which they've had for years and years now, the neural engine to do some of this stuff.

So on the one hand, AI is nothing special for Apple.

They've been doing it for a long time.

They're going to continue doing it.

But because the entire market is such a hot topic nowadays, you know, it might be that Apple will have the same type of presentation they normally would have, but they will just be very clear to label, hey, by the way, this is AI and this is AI so that the the the mainstream press, you know, the Wall Street Journal reporters will be able to say, oh, yeah, Apple's doing something with AI.

But it's really just Apple holding up a flag, but doing the same type of announcements they would have done.

That's one way that they could go on Monday.

The other way that they could go is to do some of that, but to also have something really, really new in AI to announce.

And I certainly hope that that's what they're doing, because it would be more exciting for all of us users.

And that's the one that as I referred to in today's post, it's going to be threading the needle because, you know, AI can be incredibly impressive at times.

You know, we all know about the chat GPT type things where you have these conversations and it's incredible how lifelike it can be and how helpful it can be in certain situations.

But at the same time, sometimes AI gives you an answer that's just flat wrong.

People call it hallucinations.

And it can be the problem with these AI things is the chat GPT, just to pick one example, that engine seems just as sure of its answer when it's giving you an answer that's perfectly right as when it's giving you an answer that's perfectly wrong.

You know, is Apple going to want to release something that, you know, has Siri suddenly speaking about things that are just completely, absolutely wrong?

I don't think so.

I think that they consider themselves to be sort of, you know, above the fray on that stuff.

That's more like the high quality hardware, high quality software.

And so how is Apple going to do something that is revolutionary in the AI sphere without walking into the problems of hallucinations and errors and sample bias and all that sort of stuff?

I don't know.

It's going to be a tough one.

One way that people have suggested, Jeff, you and I have talked about this just a little bit is, you know, Apple has been doing AI, well, machine learning, you know, some form of AI for many years.

And one of the things I know we've talked about this, an example I've always said is Siri, for example, right?

Oh, sorry, I got to turn off.

But in other words, it used to be that when you gave, when you spoke to Siri, it would have to go up to the cloud before it came back down and did whatever you were doing, whether to launch an app or to dictate, for example, dictation.

Maybe that's a better thing to talk about, right, is the dictation part.

And some of us were a little nervous about that, because why does it have to go to the cloud?

Well, one of the reasons it had to go to the cloud is because that's where the processing power was to make sure that it was as accurate as possible before it got pushed back down to the phone and the dictation was accurate.

And today, when we talk about gen AI, generative AI or chat GPT, one of the things that always comes in with that is the large language model, which really that can be for the language side, but it could also be whatever large model for training that's going to be important, whether it's for videos or whether it's for images.

And the way that these platforms work today is because they're trained on massive, massive amounts of information, which, of course, is found on the Internet.

And so some people are at least considering if anybody can make this a little less open ended, maybe more private, maybe applicable to it.

In other words, what I'm getting down to is instead of AI depending on this massive amount of online information where it would be a big pool, a humongous pool, an ocean that they would pull from, maybe Apple could do something from gen AI locally on the machine, whether it's on a Mac or on an iPhone, on the iPad.

And to me, I think for those of us similar to you and myself, which we have concerns about that from a legal side, from an ethical component, from a privacy component, from a confidentiality component.

Could something really happen there that would be local on the devices that I could trust a little bit more?

Of course, the flip side of that is, is the hardware there to support that?

But that's one of the things that obviously people have been talking about with Apple, that this could be a game changer in the gen AI world overall.

Yeah.

And this is what I 100% expect Apple to do that.

I mean, Apple has, I mean, you and I talked months ago that there was some AI journal where Apple talked about running large language models locally.

I fully expect that to happen.

Apple has these, they're fantastic processors that are so fast compared to what Intel and other folks have been offering that I am sure part of the message is going to be on device.

And the reason that that's important, why does that matter for us is what you just referred to.

It's true that Apple used to do dictation off device.

And then many years ago, they moved that to on device and I became much more comfortable with it because if I am dictating an email to send to my client and I might use a word like settlement or something that is confidential that we're even considering settlement in one of my cases, it makes me feel more comfortable if that is being processed on device as opposed to going up in the cloud somewhere.

Not that they would necessarily know who I am because it's all anonymized, but I just feel comfortable.

And so I feel the same way with AI.

If I'm using AI, I would much rather for my queries to be processed as much as possible on device where things stay more private.

So that's one advantage is privacy.

There's also of course a speed advantage when you don't have to go up to the internet and down again.

Things can be much faster and so it seems even more responsive, which is nice.

So I am sure part of the story is going to be a lot more processing on device.

But as important as those two things I just mentioned, privacy and speed, as important as they are, neither one of those is a whiz bang new feature.

So I feel like Apple, because they've been building up the hype for this, they're going to have to sort of then go to the next level.

Yes, you're going to do it on device for the most part and maybe some stuff you'll save to go off into the internet.

But how does that turn into a feature that really captures the public imagination?

I should mention, by the way, that there have been all these news reports over the last couple of weeks that Apple has been talking to and perhaps even signing deals with companies like the OpenAI company, for example, who makes Jack TPG, the newest version 4.

And the rumor is that they have some sort of agreement that's been inked out.

And so, although I don't see how you would take OpenAI's infrastructure and put it on device, so there's going to clearly be some on-device portion and off-device portion.

And the off-device portion perhaps will be handled by OpenAI, or maybe it'll be handled by a number of folks, maybe some of it AI's, some of it Google, some of it other people, you never know.

But that's just all the back end.

That's just the mechanics of it.

What really interests me is what is going to be the thing that people will be talking about Tuesday morning of, "Hey, before yesterday, I never knew that my iPhone could use AI to do blank.

And I'm hoping that there's something there."

Maybe there won't be.

That's the thing.

It might be that this is just a bunch of little additional announcements.

Apple for a long time on the iPhone in the Photos app, if you take a picture and then there's something in the background that you want to erase, you haven't been able to do that on the iPhone or the iPad in forever.

Even though the technology of just erasing a little tree in the background that you don't want or a car, that technology has been around for so, so, so long.

It used to be that you needed to have fancy Photoshop software.

Now any $1 app that you get from the App Store can do that.

Why hasn't Apple done that stuff built into Photos?

That's a form of AI.

So maybe it's just going to be these little bitty additional features that use AI.

But again, my hope is that there's something more exciting.

One of the things that I've heard John Gruber at Dyer and Fireball speculate about is one of the sexy AI implications for really a year and a half now has been the conversational AI that Chat GPT exemplifies where I can type a sentence and it speaks back to me.

In fact, it would be even more realistic if I just used my words instead of typing and the AI spoke instead of printing something on a screen.

But that's pretty simple.

But having a conversation back and forth with Chat GPT, that just really seems interesting.

And as John was pointing out, Apple doesn't currently have a real interface for you to write something and get a response.

He thought that maybe you could have it in the Messages app.

Maybe one of the people in your Messages app, here's my thread where I talk back and forth with Brett.

Here's where I talk back and forth with my brother.

And here's a thread where I talk back and forth with Siri perhaps, or the chat bot.

And I have these conversations back and forth.

That would be one way to do it.

Because otherwise, what are you going to do?

Go to a special Apple Chat GPT webpage?

That just sort of seems like their version of the same thing that's already out there.

So again, I'm really- I would make mine how.

I would make mine how.

How can you- Yeah, there you go.

Either how, or the one that's been in the news lately was that Scarlett Johansson movie or Her that came out, which was a great version of it too.

So- Crazy story.

Yeah.

It's going to be fantastic.

And then of course, in addition to the AI, I'm sure that's not going to be the only thing for WWDC.

I'm sure we're going to see all sorts of other interesting new features of things that have been in the Apple Labs for a while.

One thing I will specifically mention is the Apple Vision Pro.

The Apple Vision Pro was announced a year ago, right?

And so- Correct.

Right.

And then people had, every once in a while, developers could have it.

And it was this calendar year, 2024, when it finally came out.

And the version that we got a few months ago was exactly the same version that was previewed a summer ago.

And so it's now been a year.

So pretty much everything that Apple has been working on with the Apple Vision Pro for the last 12 months, that has all been behind closed doors.

We haven't seen it.

It's not like there were any real new things in the shipping product that weren't predicted last year.

And so with another year under its belt of ideas, I would hope that the next version of the operating system for the Apple Vision Pro could have some pretty cool new things.

And again, it's such a new system.

And this is just the first real change to it.

Anything's possible.

We all know when the iPhone first came out, when the iPad first came out, those initial years had so many new features added because it was just brand new.

There was so much to do.

And I think it'd be really cool if we just see the same thing for Apple Vision Pro, even though I realize there's only a small number of us that actually have one right now.

But in addition to that, I'm sure we'll see lots of other changes for other apps and stuff too.

So I think it's going to be a very full featured presentation on Monday.

Well, one of the links that you linked to did show us a few things, five to be specific, and accessibility features that apparently Apple previewed last week.

I don't even know if I must have missed that.

We talked about this.

Yeah, no, we talked about this in the podcast.

This is World Accessibility Day that Apple for the last couple of years.

That's right.

Yes.

And they're using it.

And instead of saving them for WWDC, they exposed them in May on World Accessibility Day.

And it's a nice way to sort of let those features get some special attention.

But this article that you linked to it again, because this is great.

I must have forgotten about some of this, but I was reading through this article, Jeff, and I'm like, yeah, that's cool.

I like the eye navigation.

Yeah, that's cool.

Less car sick and car play.

I like that.

Yeah.

What I love about this accessibility stuff is, although it's designed for people that have some special need, so often anyone can take advantage of it.

And I mean, just this first one, for example, eye control by navigating your iPhone or iPad by gazing.

You know, as I was just talking about, the Apple Vision Pro watches your eyes, and that's how you select icons on the virtual screen and stuff.

But apparently, Apple can use the front-facing cameras on the iPhone and the iPad to do the same thing, to see which way your eye is facing.

And so if you have some issue that you can't use your hands, and so you need to use your eyes to look at different parts of the screens to select items, that's going to apparently be something that's baked into the operating system.

You're not going to have to have some special accessibility software that you add to it to give it that feature, like folks have had with computers for years, that adds that on.

And so that's something that might be useful.

I mean, who knows ways that developers could take advantage of that, or people could take advantage of, now I'm looking at the right side of the screen, now I'm looking on the left side of the screen, without actually reaching up and touching it.

That's really fascinating.

I can't wait to see how that one works.

I hope it's accurate.

I mean, I've heard you and others talking about the Vision Pro, how accurate it is, but then I recognize that there's 280 cameras that are pointed at your eyes.

So I don't know how that's going to work with like a single camera or so in the iPad or the iPhone.

But even if it's pretty close, I think that would be neat.

I got to tell you, I think I remember way, way back in the day when the iPad first came out, there was a PDF app.

I can't remember what it was called now, but I remember that it took advantage of something in the eyes.

And if I look to the left, it would like switch the page.

It would like turn the page.

No, I don't remember that.

Interesting.

It's been a long time ago and it was terrible.

It was horrible.

It was one of those fun things I like to show off to people because I'm just like, "Hey, look, I could do this."

Or maybe it was just my, maybe it was turning my head.

Maybe it wasn't the eyes.

I think it was turning the head.

But that was kind of cool.

Like I could sit there instead of having to tap the screen and everything.

But anyway, it would just, it's got to be coming.

I mean, the fact that they have it with Envision Pro and they've learned so much, I'm sure about it.

It's just for me, it's like a question of the hardware aspect on there, but that would be very cool.

And the other one here that I thought was cool, Music Haptics lets you literally feel the music.

I'm down with that.

I think that'd be kind of cool.

Apparently it just, I guess the beat or something like that, when you're tapping the music, that'd be really nice.

If you can't wait until Monday or you want to get in the mood for Monday, I'm glad that you linked to the Apple Music WWDC24 music playlist.

I didn't even know this.

I don't know that Apple has done this before.

Maybe they have, but I'm glad you linked to it, Jeff.

I just got to tell you, I had it on this morning and for me at least, every song made me feel like that the event was just getting ready to happen.

So you and I sit there, right?

Yeah, you and I sit there and there's like a video stream from Apple and they always have these songs, these upbeat songs playing before Tim Cook comes on and says, "Hello everybody."

And it's like every song to me sounded like that.

Like I was sitting there waiting for the video to start.

Any moment I expected it to go silent and Tim would walk on the screen.

But anyway, it's a cool playlist.

I'm glad that you linked to it.

I didn't know that.

But now, the other thing quickly I wondered in this is if I go back to this Apple event page, by the way, there's always people that look at the logo that Apple has in the announcement and they try to read from it, which by the way, looking at this, you can see it's animated and it looks to me like a, she who shall not be named little animation there, which to me tells me it's Siri.

But now that we have a playlist, I'm looking at the title of every single song, Jeff, and I'm like, "Huh, Birds of a Feather, the new Billie Eilish.

Are they going to be talking about, can you recognize birds?"

And then there's back on 77, Espresso.

Ooh, maybe we'll get some AI with coffee.

I'm looking at all these song lists here trying to figure it out.

But anyway, it's a fun list.

I'm glad that you linked to it today.

Yeah.

I mean, like you say, every year before they actually start the stream, if you tune in like 10 minutes early, you'll hear all this background music, which means that somebody went through the work of actually selecting the songs.

So I guess this is the first year that whoever does that work every year, they're like, "You know what?

I'm doing the work anyway.

Let's just make a playlist."

And of course, there's many more songs here than they have in 10 minutes.

Now, when I look at the artists, I mean, I guess I'm just not very hip, Brett.

I think there's only a single artist here I recognize, which is Billie Eilish.

But even though I don't recognize the artist's names, I'm sure there will be some groovy tunes.

But you've listened to it already.

I haven't put it on yet.

But when I'm doing some work this weekend, I'm going to put it on the background.

You know, why not?

Do it.

You'll feel like you're there on Monday morning.

I mean, that's the whole thing.

It's like every time, only because geeks like us sit there 10 minutes before the announcement and we're listening to this music coming on.

Because I follow live blogs as it's happening, Jeff.

And it's like, "Hey, the music is still going.

The music is still going.

Nobody has started yet."

Anyway, it's kind of funny.

Because there are going to be journalists, by the way, there.

You and I have listened to that podcast, I think Jason Snell was talking about that Apple is going to have people live on the Apple campus.

But as Jason Snell put it, "Yeah, we're all going to be sitting there together at the Apple campus, but we're just going to be watching the same video that everyone else is watching online."

Which, you know, sometimes that makes me think, why would they have journalists come there if they didn't have some kind of a hardware thing?

Because normally that's what they do, right?

They have the announcement, and then they have like a special room where all the journalists get to go and they get to hands on and look at it and make their videos and stuff like that.

But if they don't have any video, why would they go to the trouble of having journalists there?

So obviously, there's some advantage to that because everybody gets there and talks and sees everyone.

But anyway, just interesting.

It can be some press briefings and stuff like that.

But you're right.

Yeah, I mean, other than a few press briefings and stuff, without a hardware announcement, there's far less for people that show up in person to do.

It's very interesting question.

I'll be curious to see what the people that are there are talking about that they will be doing on Monday afternoon.

One other announcement that you linked to, which I didn't know about, but it comes almost as no surprise to me.

John Gruber talked about the fact that Apple may be releasing, he calls it a standalone password management app.

You and I are both huge fans of one password.

And I like the way that you put it in your post today.

I don't, I can't see myself moving away from one password.

Even though more and more people that I work with these days, Jeff will be using the built in password manager that Apple already has within the Mac and the iOS, right?

It's like the key chain, I think the password key chain.

People just use it because it's already there.

It pops up and it asks the question in Safari, "Hey, do you want to save this password?"

And people like, "Sure, yeah, go ahead."

I like saving mine outside in one password.

You and I have been using one password for many, many years and I don't see myself moving from that, but I'm glad that Gruber pointed this out and we'll see.

I mean, maybe Apple is going to do something standalone different.

Like, would it be a separate app or are they just going to pull it out of the current settings is where it lives right now?

I don't know, it'll be interesting to see what they want to do with that.

Yeah, the Gruber article was based upon a report by Mark Gurman at Bloomberg.

Mark Gurman, of course, is the number one person in the world when it comes to getting leaks from Apple.

And so apparently he has a leak that says that Apple is going to take that same password stuff that you were talking about that's been there for a while and they're going to create a self-contained app probably called Passwords.

And I think that's going to make it more obvious because if you want to go, if you're using Apple's built-in technology to save your passwords now and you want to go find one of your passwords, it's a little awkward because you have to go into the Settings app and you have to dig down and find it.

Exactly.

You can do it.

And once you get there, the pain of settings that you're looking at, it's just like an app.

It's just that you have to, it's hard to get to that app.

So why not take that, yank it out of the Settings app, put it in a self-contained app and maybe put some additional features in it.

I think it's a great idea.

You know, it's so important that people use secure passwords and that you don't reuse your passwords from one website to another.

And I don't know how anyone has the brain capacity to do that, what you're supposed to be doing, unless you use a password manager.

So if this encourages people to use a password manager more, which makes it even harder for the bad guys to be taking advantage of people, I am so in favor of this.

I absolutely love it.

And my hope is that over the years, Apple makes it better and better and it pushes the third party folks like 1Password and LastPass and people like that, that they're going to have to do even more with their product to differentiate it from the built-in, which is something that's been true forever.

I mean, how many people use the built-in calendars app versus a third party app like Fantastical, the built-in podcast app, which has gotten so much better recently versus a third party app like what I use for Overcast.

And so I love it when Apple has good apps that still leave room for third parties to have additional features, but are good enough on their own that people can just use them.

That system has worked really well for many years now.

So this seems like an easy one and I look forward to it.

Go ahead.

I am interested to see how they're going to put this into iCloud, right?

Because one of the things you mentioned, two things in your post that I completely agree with.

Number one is I like using 1Password because I can access it from anywhere.

Windows computer, Mac computer, iOS, Android, like 1Password has, I mean, they used to be Mac only, right?

Back in the day, but they have really done a fantastic job of making sure that it's accessible from any of these services.

And the syncing to me is incredible.

Like truly, I will create a password on my Mac and in like the next five seconds, I'll pick up my phone and it immediately syncs.

It shows up there, right?

Because I might be logging in into my phone, whatever the case may be.

But I just, I really like that.

The second thing you mentioned was being able to share, like, just like I know you and your wife, just like me and my wife, we have like a 1Password share to where we put a lot of information there about, you know, bank accounts, you know, kid account, all kinds of stuff that we need to manage our digital world and our digital lives these days.

And 1Password just makes that so easy.

So the first thing I don't see Apple doing, I don't know.

I mean, Apple did iTunes for Windows, right?

But I don't know if there's going to be a password app for the Windows.

Maybe it could be.

Of course, I feel like their answer is going to be, well, you can always open up a web browser and go to iCloud.com and access it.

But I'm interested to see how this, if this happens, and this will be interesting from the password aspect, like how that's going to work within iCloud.

I know that I feel like I could share my passwords through this Apple Password Manager in something like iCloud, but I don't know.

It's going to have to be pretty darn good for me to beat out 1Password right now.

Yeah.

If they have a sharing function, if this app is announced on Monday, which will not surprise me, I think it's going to be announced.

If it has a sharing function between different family members, then I will be impressed because that will be something new and it will show that Apple is actually trying to add some of these more sophisticated features.

I don't know if they'll have that or not on Monday.

Like you say, I certainly do not expect them to have something that works on Windows.

And that's the very reason that I won't be able to use it because I use a Windows computer for work as many other people do.

But still, it'll be interesting to see how far they go with the additional features added to what's already there, besides, of course, putting it in a self-contained app.

A few months ago, Apple pulled the plug on the Apple car, but what about an Apple truck?

Okay, okay.

That may be a little bit of a stretch, but I'm interested to hear, apparently you got to sit in a Rivian truck.

Is it Rivian?

Riviana?

Rivian.

Rivian electric truck, right?

I guess it's Rivian.

Yeah.

Or SUV.

And I like this story.

Not only did you get a chance to hear what your experience was, but apparently Rivian is going to at least support some Apple car keys featured.

Doesn't sound like they're going to go all the way.

I mean, famously, Tesla does not support Apple CarPlay, which just blows my mind away, except I can understand it from a marketing perspective.

But it would be interesting to see if other companies like Rivian.

I mean, to me, truly, support for CarPlay would almost bend me one way or the other to a car manufacturer.

Yeah.

So two things to talk about here.

One is just the electronic car part, and the second part is the announcements of the car keys thing.

On the electronic car front, I mean, I really do hope that my next car is an electric car.

I don't know.

Right.

I've been using Honda Accords for many years now.

They've been such a simple car for me.

And who knows when Honda is going to have something that's at a consumer level that's a pure electric car.

I don't know.

But I've been interested in companies.

Tesla has its fans.

Tesla also has some issues with it.

The Rivian vehicle, when I was in Texas a few months ago for the solar eclipse, somebody there had one of the Rivian trucks.

And I was impressed.

I mean, besides the fact that it's incredibly powerful, I mean, this thing can go from zero to 60 in I don't know how many seconds, but it was super, super powerful.

And we may or may not have broke a few traffic laws for a few seconds to just take advantage of that feature.

But it's amazing how much pickup it has.

But it's also an incredibly comfortable vehicle.

But all the electronic features, no, it doesn't have CarPlay, but it's got its own dash.

And, you know, it's all digital.

It was everything that you would expect to be potentially really interesting about electric vehicle.

This one had.

It was really, really, really cool.

But again, the one thing it did not have was CarPlay support, although it did have support for Apple Music if you subscribe to Apple Music.

And so the big thing that Apple announced that's new is now CarPlay.

Now, the CarKey support.

Now, of course, Rivian has its own app.

And so I'm pretty sure that you could use the Rivian app to unlock it.

But if you have it built into CarKeys, which is part of the operating system, I think it's probably even easier so that you don't have to even worry about picking up any external keys.

I mean, as long as your iPhone is with you, you can unlock the car.

And I mean, that's what I would love.

I would love it if I could just take my iPhone with me and go to my car and I don't have to worry about having my wallet with me because I already have a digital ID.

States like Louisiana, which have them.

I've already got my car keys, my iPhone.

I mean, everything that I need would be right there.

So I think it's great that even though Rivian is not going to adopt CarPlay because they're going to want to have their own system that controls the whole car.

If Apple has these other features, OK, even if you're not going to have CarPlay, let's get some of our other really useful built-in features and have them be supported.

So it's great that they support it.

Rivian makes the trucks, by the way, that I was in.

They also make a vehicle that looks very much like the truck, but instead of having a flatbed behind it, it's got an extra seat.

And that's the SUV version.

But if you see the SUV version and the truck version, they're built on very similar chassis and stuff like that.

They're very similar.

And I tell you what, they are nice vehicles.

They're a little more pricey, but they're really cool.

It makes me think we're basically driving computers with wheels these days.

And I'll tell you quickly, just a little bit of an angle.

This past week, I was at a conference called the Techno Security and Digital Forensics Conference, Jeff.

And one of the presentations that I just happened to be sitting in, but I'm so glad that I stayed there, it was a detective in North Carolina County.

I forget exactly where.

They were able to solve a murder based on the information they gleaned out of the car.

And it wasn't a Rivian.

It wasn't an electric car, even though if you have that, to me, that just is, you're already lost with your privacy.

But there's several ways.

First of all, that ODC connector, up underneath the steering wheel, that's one thing from a diagnostic aspect.

But the way that they were able to track some of the location data and some of the phone calls and everything, Jeff, was they took the circuit board, basically the hard drive, out of the infotainment system.

Because you know, any time that you connect your iPhone, you get into CarPlay, and it's tracking all of that.

Or a lot of these cars have their own built-in ways that you can do Bluetooth phone calls and everything.

But not only that, Jeff, the other thing that just really was amazing is it tracks every single event in the car.

You open the door, it tracks.

You turn on the lights, you turn on the windshield wipers, you turn on the radio.

Everything was tracked.

And it just kind of blew my mind a little bit that there is so much information that can be gleaned from – I mean, and so many of these cars today, as you know, have like Wi-Fi, or they have some kind of cellular connection that you can get.

And a lot of times, it's to even upgrade the software on the phones or on the cars and everything.

But anyway, it was just blowing my mind this past week in some of that.

And when I saw the story from you today, it's like, just be aware.

Like, one of the last things that you said, like when you rent a car, you know how sometimes you can see all the other phones that are listed on there?

You can either delete them.

But when you get out of that rental car, make sure you delete your phone as well.

It doesn't mean everything is gone, but just make sure that you delete that – your phone out of the system there.

One of the other things I'm interested to see if Apple will even mention this maybe on Monday, sneaky here.

Apple apparently put in a Thread radio into the Macs and maybe I think even the iPads on here.

I have seen no official word from Apple about this.

Now we've talked about Thread, which is basically like it's sort of the protocol for the matter standard, right?

Which is basically – so you can do a much better job of describing it, Jeff.

But interestingly, that apparently the new MacBooks, the new iPads already have the Thread radio in it, but it hasn't been turned on or it hasn't been officially acknowledged.

How would you put that, Jeff?

Yeah.

So, a reminder of the terms we're talking about here.

Way back when, Apple came out with its HomeKit technology so the devices in your smart home can talk to each other.

Google has its own version.

And then all of the companies got together for the matter standard so that they could all work with each other.

And the use Thread is the technology that they use to talk to each other, which is a radio technology that's an alternative to Wi-Fi, an alternative to Bluetooth, something called Thread.

And Thread allows all of these devices so that you could have a HomePod from Apple and you could have a doorbell from Google or that works with the Google standard and all these different things would work together.

So that's what Thread is.

Okay.

And you don't necessarily need to have Thread on your device as long as your device can talk to something that has Thread like a HomePod and then it could spread the information to others.

And it's a lot nicer if the device that you're initiating your request from, like your watch or your iPhone or your iPad already had Thread support because that just takes out a step.

And so what this person discovered is that some of these newest computers that Apple's been selling, the latest versions of the Macs, the current versions of the iPad, the one that I have in my hand right here, the newest, another one they sent me was an iPhone 2, that they all have Thread radios in them, but Apple's not doing anything with them and they haven't even announced on their tech specs page.

Sneaky.

So why is Apple putting something in my device that it's not using?

So there's two possible theories for this.

One is they're waiting.

This is the exciting theory.

The exciting theory is they have something planned.

And so once they are ready to announce it, they're going to say, we can now do blank.

And not only can we do blank with our new devices, but if you bought a device as long ago as a year ago, it already has support for this because that's what will be exciting.

And that's what I hope is going to be.

Now there's another chance too, when the original iPhone came out, go all the way back to 2007, the radio inside of it that supported, gosh, I think it was the Bluetooth radio, but I'm not positive on that.

It also supported FM radio.

And you're like, wait a minute, does that mean that the original iFan was going to have an FM radio on it?

No, no, no.

It's just because the cheapest part that they could get happened to include, it was like a Qualcomm chip and not only did it include Bluetooth or wifi, whatever it was, but it also happens to have radio on it and Apple just never used that part of the chip.

And so what it might be is what the people have discovered here is the chip that they're talking about.

It's not a thread unique chip.

Apparently it's a chip that controls Bluetooth, wifi and thread.

So it could just be that Apple got the best deal as it were, or maybe they had the best tech specs for something that supported thread, even if Apple doesn't intend to support that feature.

So that would be the much, that would be the boring explanation.

Not exciting, right?

That's so boring.

I want it to be the exciting explanation, not the boring explanation.

Time will tell which one of it is.

Interesting.

Okay.

So we'll look.

Jeff, I'm excited that maybe the next week you'll take your Vision Pro to Lowe's when you're looking shopping around for some plywood or something.

I saw this story a couple of minutes ago, just because it's going to be so interesting.

What is it that exactly?

Some Lowe's retail locations are going to be offering a Vision Pro experience so that you can create your dream kitchen right there in spatial computing.

Interesting stuff.

So there is an app that's been available for the Vision Pro for a while.

I have tried it out.

It's called Lowe's Style Studio.

And when you create this app, it creates like a fake kitchen.

Okay.

And in this fake kitchen, you can say, you know, I want my entire kitchen to be like a modern theme, or I want it to be a traditional theme or whatever those words are that interior designers use.

And then once you select a theme, it will put all of the appliances in there that match that theme with all the colors and stuff.

And then you can say, you know, I like that refrigerator, but what if instead of having the, what if it was a side by side or if it was a top down or what if it was this?

And you can go and you can infinitely change all of the appliances.

You can say, you know, the sink that you got there, I don't want something that's silver.

I want something that's gold.

And so you can just go through.

And what's cool is that while you're wearing the Vision Pro goggles, you could like walk around and you could look, you know, go around this kitchen and you can actually see it in 3D.

And so the idea is that you have a much more of a realistic sense of, you know, what would it be like to have this over here and this over here?

So it's an interesting application of the app.

I guess only so many people have Vision Pros, not very many.

And so Lowe's had the idea of, well, since so few people have the ability to run this app, what if we actually took some Vision Pros and put them in some of our select stores?

We're going to have somebody there that walks you through how you put it on.

I have no idea if Apple has cooperated with Lowe's to somehow make it easier for people to put these things on, you know, or not.

But people can put on the Vision Pro and they can use the same app that I can currently use while you're sitting there in a Lowe's.

Now, you're going to have to have a big enough area that you can walk around the virtual kitchen.

And so, you know, this is not something that's at every Lowe's.

It's only a couple of them and they're trying it out.

North Carolina, California and New Jersey.

New Jersey, right.

So you know, if you want to go check it out, I think it'll be interesting.

But what really interests me about the story is just that this, I think, is the first example of what I could see more and more of.

There are applications in which having a Vision Pro, being able to look around you and it truly seems like you are in this alternative environment for so many companies that sell so many different products.

And Lowe's is a great example of one for kitchen stuff.

But I mean, I could think of so many examples.

You know, another one might be some car that you're interested in.

If you could like say, you know, the car dealer may only have so many models, but if I want to see what it would look like with this feature and with this feature and in this color and with this interior, you can just type the buttons and suddenly you're looking at a full-size version of what that car would look like.

Or you pick the product.

I think that there can be, you know, even for people that don't think that a $4,000 Apple Vision Pro is worth spending money on for them just to enjoy in their own home.

I could see people saying during specific buying experiences, having a device like this could actually be really, really useful plus sort of fun too.

And so I, you know, kudos to Lowe's for doing this.

I think it's very clever.

And you know, it is at least it's going to get some public attention and hopefully from their standpoint, they will sell some more refrigerators as a result of this and whatever else that they're selling.

And I would really hope to see more companies, you know, using the same technology because it's so, it's so realistic.

I mean, I've been using my Apple Vision Pro a lot more the last few weeks.

I mentioned this last week as well.

And it's just incredible that some of these environments are so, so realistic that when you have, well, whether it's a true environment, it's realistic, but some of these augmented reality environments, I mean, I'm sitting here and I'm looking at my coffee table and I'm looking at my couch and I'm looking at the chess board and I'm like, wait a minute, that's not a real chess board.

That's a virtual chess board.

You know, whatever it is, it, your brain just gets tripped into thinking it's really there.

It is so, so, so realistic.

So very cool that companies are taking advantage of it.

It's nothing new though.

Right.

I mean, I've watched home network for many years.

I see the designers when they like, you know, make this idea and then it kind of comes alive, you know, for us, the viewers, but it's still 2d.

And the fact that you can be inside that experience, what you were just describing around it.

Yeah, right, right.

Well, if you're in any of these areas, you can apparently go and book your online.

I had no idea.

Apparently Lowe's has Lowe's innovation labs.com and this is a whole section on spatial commerce.

So we have spatial computing and if they have a whole section here called spatial commerce, which is really good.

I had no idea that Lowe's was into a spatial computer on there.

Here's a nifty little tip.

If you use Apple notes, which I do pretty much every day, both on my phone, my iPad and my Mac, and I love the fact that it all syncs together.

If you don't want the first line of your note to be a bold heading, here is how to change it.

Thanks to Benjamin Mayo at nine to five Mac.

It seemed like I'd seen found this before.

I like started off my notes with that big, bold title at the very top, but if you don't like it, this is a nifty little app, Jeff.

Thanks for linking to it today so that you can always start your note with a normal body font instead.

Yeah, you just go, I mean, you follow the directions here.

You basically just go to your settings app and change whether the initial style is going to be the same style as the body or a title style or whatever.

But it never, it had never occurred to me in a million years that this is something that you could change.

And so I'm very, very interesting.

And like you say, I've actually seen this get dip into mainstream media for whatever reason that this is one that, that had gotten into the zeitgeist.

So people are interested in it.

It's a nice tip.

So there you go.

Now we know how to do it.

I feel like, well, the thing is notes, you and I've said this many times.

It's so easy.

Just like I want to capture some thought.

I want to capture something.

There's another app sometimes that I would use called drafts.

You and I have talked about drafts before, but the fact that I know that notes is there and it's automatically going to sink and Apple has continued to really do a good job of improving the capabilities within notes, but it still stays very simple that that's my first place.

I just pull it up knowing that I can capture it there, whatever I need to, and then I can copy it and paste it somewhere else if I need to, or, or share it with somebody.

But yeah, this is a nifty little tip on that.

And if you really, really like your notes app and you want to maybe cuddle up with your notes app at night, I'm glad that Mac rumors you, you, you link to throw boy here, which has been around for a long time.

You can actually buy a little throw pillow that looks like the app icon for the notes app or messages or Apple music, whatever your fancy is.

It's right there.

These are so cute that this company throw boy has been making Apple themed pillows for a long time.

Like if you want to get something that looks like an iPad or an iPhone or an iPod or something like that.

And so I think it's cute that they have these icons, you know, again, as I said, when I first looked at the icons, I thought they were iPhone icons, but then I noticed that one of them is the finder, the happy Mac finder icon.

So maybe they're actually supposed to be Mac icons, but you can, you know, call them whatever you want to call them.

But they're, they're really cute.

And you know, I'm not sure that my wife is going to improve having a pillow in our living room that looks like the notes and the messages app, but Hey, exactly.

It's wherever in your house, you have a place for that special pillow.

You can either buy them as a set or you can buy the individual pillows for something like, I don't know, 40, 50 bucks for each one of them, but they're not cheap $47, but you know, you're supporting.

I think I first learned to throw boy with Leo, right?

Way back in the day when legal was started podcasting, the report, and I think throw boy with syndrome pillows and everybody just thought that it was so funny.

I liked it there, Jeff.

We haven't done a where yet segment at a long time, but that has ended.

We're going to, we have two stories for where you're at today.

This was amazing.

So apparently this was a carpenter or some kind of a construction worker was getting fed up that his van kept getting broken into and his tools were getting stolen.

I mean, these are expensive tools, right?

He put some air tags in it, tracked him down and not just only found his tools, but apparently like a warehouse full of many, many other tools.

Thanks for the gift link to the wall street journal for this one.

Yeah.

He found the mother load.

I'll tell you what it was.

I mean, I can, I totally understand what this guy was going through because I had this happen at my house years ago, Brett, somebody broke into my garage and all they wanted to take was I think they took my drill and it was one of their power tool.

I mean, that's what they want, our power tools.

I guess you could sell those quickly or something like that.

And it was aggravating because I had a nice drill and then I had to go out and get a new drill.

Like, oh, I don't want to do that.

So it was very annoying to me.

But so I feel this guy's pain that if he is like a professional carpenter and has really nice equipment and over and over again, people are stealing his stuff, that makes you mad.

And so I could totally understand that he would take some of his equipment that he could fit it in there and put some air tags in there.

But that's the real surprise is that once he tracked it down, it went to this, like you said, it was a special storage unit and the storage unit had tons of tools.

And then once the police got a warrant and they went to that unit, they were able to piece together the evidence to connect.

And this part they don't describe in the article how he did it, but maybe it's through ownership or whatever.

This was, it wasn't just this one unit in the Washington DC area.

They found other units in the same area.

And I forget how many different that they found altogether.

But overall they think that there was a 15,000, 15,000 stolen construction tools between three and $5 million.

I mean, this was not some one-off somebody picks up your tool as they're whistling down the street.

Oh, here I go steal something.

No, this was a sophisticated criminal network that was targeting and stealing tools for a lot of money.

And so now if you live in the Washington DC area and you've been a victim, the police apparently have this website or something like that, that you can try to identify your stolen tools because I mean, they've got so many of them.

It may well, yours may well be one of them here.

How you find your saw or your drill among the 15,000 that are in these places, I don't know, but good luck.

At least you have a chance to try to get some of them back now.

And again, I mean, I love the guy who's like, you know what, I'm sick and tired of this.

I am sticking an air tag in here and he got justice.

So I tip my hat to you, sir.

Very nice job.

I still, I still enjoy these stories because I mean, we found lost dogs.

We found, we have found lost cars.

We have definitely found, now we have lost tools.

We've definitely found lost luggage.

This was interesting because it wasn't an air tag that was in some lost luggage, but a poor lady left her MacBook pro apparently in her luggage.

And that's how she was able to track down the luggage because she was able to use find my to track down her MacBook pro.

Let's see, where was this?

I think it's down in Florida was this story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think she's in Fort Lauderdale or something like that.

And it sounds like she really needed it because like she, I think she's a student or something.

And she, she had some, a paper that she was working on.

And so she does, I think it's like, she doesn't want to check the luggage and she has to check it.

So they checked the luggage and then she's at the baggage claim.

Her bag doesn't show up.

Where is it?

You know, typical airline.

Oh, well you have no idea where your bag is.

You know, we'll, we'll, we'll show up eventually.

We'll get it to you.

That's what they were telling us.

I mean, her iPhone has fine.

My, of course, as does her Mac.

And so shortly after she left the airport, she noticed on her iPhone, this is the house that it's at now.

She made the mistake, not the mistake, whatever.

I would say mistake.

She went directly to the house, which the police always say, don't do that.

Call the police first.

But it's amazing because she said she went to the house and she sees this house.

That's got all these like empty lug, empty suitcases thrown around the front yard, the backyard.

And apparently, yeah, they weren't exactly trying to hide the fact that they had stolen all of these suitcases and stuff.

And so they were able to catch that, you know, and won't it surprise you, Brett, that the person that lived at that house just so happened to work at the airport.

What are the odds?

And so she was arrested, et cetera.

But you know, now what I don't know, I don't think she actually got her computer back.

I think she said it had, the thief had already quickly sold it.

And of course the irony is, is that with modern security technology, assuming that she had her Mac configured the correct way, the default way, if somebody steals her Mac, they won't be able to wipe it without using her credentials and stuff.

And so nowadays stealing Macs is a lot less lucrative for criminals than it used to be in the old days.

But regardless, her Mac was gone.

But once she showed this story to the airline, Spirit Airlines, they apparently did admit some fault and reimburse, at least some responsibility.

And they reimbursed her for the cost of getting a new laptop.

So she was able to get a new computer and hopefully get up and running.

Obviously her story, whatever essay she was working on was saved on some cloud service.

She had a test that day, Jeff.

She had a test that day.

So I'm like, I hope that she got to be able to take the test without a computer or somehow, you know, give her some grace or something like that.

But just nuts.

You know, to your point, I think about this, Jeff, I don't know how somebody thinks they're going to get away with stealing any kind of an Apple product today.

If owners have taken the proper, basic, basic, proper features and the approaches to make sure that it's locked down, there's no way that that's going to be valuable to anybody.

There's no way that you can hack into that.

There's no way to get access into that.

Now unfortunately, most people haven't done that and they haven't taken those basic precautions, but just using a passcode, you know, locking it down to like, you know, turning on your encryption on your MacBook hard drive, you know, so that if, I mean, there's just no way around it today.

You'd have to wipe it or so, but even that requires a lot of iCloud logins and stuff like that.

So anyway, I just know, you know, it's not like a lot of criminals are, or thieves are that sophisticated, but I just feel like it's like, what are you thinking, man?

Like, I don't know, go try to get some tools, although you can't even steal tools today because you're going to get tracked on that as well.

It's like, we're going to stay ahead of you.

One way.

I don't have this on the show notes yet, but maybe you can add it.

I had, if you could pull up a iPhone JD, I actually had a post this week that there's a product that I reviewed earlier this year that comes from Eufy, which is an anchor company.

And I had posted a link on it because I noticed on Amazon that it was really, really cheap.

And if you are looking to stick, you know, like the carpenter that stuck an air tag in his products, you know, an air tag, it's a little thick, right?

So depending upon what your product is, you may not be able to put it in there.

But Eufy makes this thing called the smart track card, which is really thin.

It's about the width of like two or three credit.

It looks like a credit card, but it's about the thickness of two or three credit cards.

And if you put it in your wallet, I've got one in my wallet right now.

And so if you, it's in my wallet and if I leave my wallet somewhere, it works just like an air tag.

And so I could find it again.

But additionally, you don't have to necessarily put this in a wallet.

If you had some equipment that you wanted to stick something in and an air tag just wasn't the right size to go in there, this thin card might be perfect.

And when you buy it, it's actually made for that very purpose because it comes with like sticky tape and stuff like that.

So in addition to putting it inside of your wallet, if you wanted to put it inside of something or attach it to the side of something, you could do that.

And so just keep that in mind.

If you're, if you want to use find my technology, but you need something that's flat, unlike an air tag, this Eufy smart card, which is currently like, it's, it's nothing, but it's 17 bucks on Amazon.

It's so cheap.

That's right.

It's the inexpensive way for you to hopefully the sale is still going on.

They may be back up to $40.

No, it's still going on as you're talking right now.

So for only 17 bucks, you can get something that gives you, it's exactly like an air tag.

It gives you that find my technology, very inexpensive.

So keep in mind, this is something that's nice.

You fee security by anchor smart track card.

Yeah.

I'll make sure I put the links in there because yeah, that's, um, that's, that's really cool.

Well, we are, we are glad that this lady down in Florida was able to at least track her luggage because of the MacBook pro, but you know, it is good to know if you have lost your MacBook pro Apple even has a cute little video called found that you linked to today at the end of your post.

That just helps you understand that you can find your MacBook pro, even if you have not had it stolen, but I think more often than not, we simply will misplace it, or we don't remember where we placed it.

Anyway, it's a cute little video here that, uh, not only can you find your MacBook pro, but hopefully you can find yourself once you're finding your MacBook pro, you have to watch the video to understand that it's a cute video, but you know, I don't want to get away.

It's only 30 seconds long.

It's cute.

They tried to make it very ominous.

Something has been lost and she's like, ah, no big deal.

I've got to find my, I'll find my computer.

And I tell you what, I mean, I just used this here the day.

What was I looking for?

I was looking for my air tags and I had no, they were in my house somewhere, Brett, but I have no idea.

I said, your tags, my AirPods rather.

And I had no idea where my AirPods, my AirPods pro, I had no idea where they are and I'm looking everywhere and I'm looking everywhere.

And so finally I'm like, oh, well this is silly.

I just pulled out my iPhone and because the newest AirPods pro, you can actually say, make a sound.

The case itself has a loud sound.

And so I did it.

And I hear my, uh, my son, y'all from across the house, it's over here on top of the piano.

I'm like, oh, that's right.

I was playing the piano and I had to put my ears.

Cause I was trying to learn a song and there they are.

I left them on top of the piano.

I completely forgot that.

And so using find my is so useful.

Even, even if you're not tracking down criminals, even like you say, it's just cause you misplaced something and that's sort of the theme of this ad.

In the know, we got a couple of Microsoft word tips.

I don't know why I was thinking about this this past, yeah, this past week.

I don't normally create and edit word documents on my iPhone or my iPad.

Jeff.

I will, or sometimes I, if I have a word document that, you know, I'm sitting in a, in a conference somewhere or on a bus or something like that.

And I'm like, oh, I need to make that change.

Or, you know, how sentences or something just comes to your mind.

And I'm like, I will then pull up that word document on my iPhone or my iPad right there.

And if it's just a very simple kind of an edit that I want to do, but something that I've always appreciated on the iPhone and the iPad is that you can easily toggle between the mobile view and a print layout view.

Now most of the time when you and I use Microsoft word and we're looking at it on a computer screen, the vast majority of us are using a very specific layout that word has called the print layout.

And the only reason that print layout exists is because we want to look at the document as if it was printed out on an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper.

There really is no other reason for that because there are no pages to a word document until we hit print.

Right?

So there are other layouts that you can do from a viewing angle inside Microsoft word on your computer.

There's like an outline mode and a draft mode I think, and a couple of others like that.

But on the iPhone or the iPad, we don't really have a need for those other layouts except that you can get into print layout because again, that's what a lot of people are going to expect and anticipate when you jump into that.

That's okay.

But it's pretty hard to see like an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper on an, on an iPhone.

I mean on the iPad, you could turn it into portrait mode, right?

And it would kind of look good.

But what I typically do is I will pull up the document on my iPhone or iPad and I will go into this mobile view and what it does, it's, it's just a really nifty way that it squeezes all that information into the small screen format to where it's really helpful.

Like I'm not really sure the magic or the AI that they have behind there doing that.

But to me it just makes sense.

It doesn't look like anything like it would look like when you hit the print button for example, but it flows the text correctly I think for a small screen experience.

It's very easy.

It's usually just a little toggle that you can find at the top of the screen.

I think mine's usually at the top right of my Microsoft word on my iPad or my, or my iPhone.

And it, I don't know, it's got like three lines and a cut of, you know, square corners there.

And you simply, it's just like a toggle.

You can toggle between mobile view and print layout.

When you tap on that little button, there's a little indicator down to the bottom of the screen that'll tell you what view that you're currently in.

And then you can toggle back to the other one.

Certain now some actions will be available in different views or different layouts.

So like for example, when I want to edit the document, sometimes I'll go to the print layout versus the mobile view, but you can easily toggle back and forth.

So pretty simple tip, but I just wanted to bring it to everyone's attention.

Now.

In fact, I remember here, I'm going to bring this, this link up.

You talked about this actually several years ago on iPhone JD.

What was this January, 2018, you talked about the word mobile view mode, a better way to proofread Bruce on your briefs on your iPad.

I think that was the first time that I knew that there was a toggle because you reported on it, Jeff.

But I liked the fact that I've continued to use that over all of these years.

And it's just something to know if you were going to read documents or even maybe do a little bit of editing on word documents on your iPhone or your iPad, using that toggle between mobile view and print layout is absolutely important.

Okay.

I love this tip.

If throw a good one to take this tip and make a pillow out of it, I'm going to cuddle up with this stuff.

I use this tip all the time.

And so let me tell you, it's very timely that you actually brought up this tip this week.

Let me tell you why.

First of all, it's been almost exactly 10 years since a word for iPad came out, it was in 2014.

And so 10 years later, it's a nice time for us to celebrate the word app for the iPad and the iPhone.

Oh, good.

And it's also timely because it was just this week that I was looking at LinkedIn and you know how sometimes you have posts on LinkedIn, you can use LinkedIn like you would use something else and somebody who I know and you know as well from tech show, Maureen Blando, who's the president of a fantastic company called Mobile Helix that has great software for attorneys.

She was posting on LinkedIn, what do you think is Microsoft Word for iPad?

Is it good enough for prime time?

And I responded to it, said, absolutely.

And in my response that I wrote over this week, I said, in fact, one of the features I love about it on the iPad is this mobile view feature, which I use all the time.

So I was literally just talking about it just the other day.

And as I mentioned in this post, I like it because not only can you, you know, it makes it easy, like if you're on an iPhone, it's easier to read the document in mobile view because the words are bigger.

But another feature that I use is as a lawyer, I'm always writing Microsoft Word briefs and you're like, I will write them on the computer.

And sometimes if I want to edit my own work, if I'm just looking at the same document in the same format and it's words that I wrote, it's like you're not really paying close enough attention because I know my words too well.

And so if I'll take that same brief and I'll open it up on my iPad and I put it in the mobile view world view, which takes all the formatting out, the line breaks are in different locations, everything.

It's just it's the same words.

The words are the same, but it's a different format.

And I will often it just forces me to focus on the words even more.

And I will often because of that view, I will discover, oh, you know what?

I can say that sentence more succinctly or this concept.

Maybe it doesn't actually work up here.

Maybe I actually want to move that to the next section.

And so just as sort of something to sort of toggle your brain.

I love the feature for that reason too.

So I could not be a bigger fan of this feature.

I actually love it.

So since you brought it up, I thought that maybe I would make my tip of the week also be something related to Microsoft Word on the iPad.

And the one that I want to use is something called it's a relatively new feature called paste format.

Now I say relatively new because you are showing on your screen right now a post from Microsoft from January of 2023. 18 months ago, almost, almost 17 months ago, Microsoft said this new feature is coming out literally this morning when I opened up Microsoft Word on my iPad, I saw a little alert saying, hey, we have this new feature called format.

Now I'm not telling you that it came out today.

Maybe it's been out there in the past and it just decided to give me the alert today.

And I had not noticed it yet, but, but I do know that it's something that app that Microsoft initially announced last year and they've been rolling out.

So let me first of all, talk about what this feature is.

One of the shortcomings of Word on the iPad, and this has been true for 10 years now, I can't believe Microsoft hasn't done something else about it yet is the styles feature, which is so useful on the computer does not truly exist.

So when I'm writing a brief on my computer, I have one style that's for like a header.

I have another style that's for like a subheader.

I have another style for my paragraphs.

I have another style for my block quotes.

I have another style for my bullets, all these different things.

And so as I'm typing, when I want to apply those styles, I just use a little key shortcut on my computer to bring up my styles picker and I apply the style to it.

And that way I can very quickly format it the way that I want.

On the iPad, there's only limited support for styles.

Only some of them are there.

You create new styles and you can apply a style if it's already in a document, but if it's not in the document, you can't use it.

And so as a workaround, what I have been doing for years is if I'm working on a document on my iPad and I wanted to apply a style to a paragraph, I would find some other place in the same document or even a different document, I would copy the paragraph that had that style in it.

Just use the regular copy as if I was going to paste that paragraph.

Then I would go to the paragraph that I want to apply the style to, select it and instead of doing paste, which would replace the text, I do paste format and it applies the format of the paragraph that I had initially copied from.

And so it was a way to take a style that I had created on my computer and apply it on my iPad without using the styles menu.

So for years and years and years, this is how I've done it.

A different way that you would be able to do the same type of thing on the computer for a very, very long time is to use a feature in Word for the PC and the Mac called Format Painter, which has a little paintbrush.

And the way that it works on your computer is you go to the paragraph that has the format that you like, you click on the paintbrush and then you go to the paragraph where you want to apply that same formatting and then you just click once with your mouse cursor on that paragraph and it applies the formatting.

On the computer, if you want to take that formatting and apply it to multiple paragraphs, you go to the paragraph with the formatting you like, you double click on the paintbrush and that way the paintbrush sort of – it's like a caps lock key.

It stays locked.

And then you can just go throughout your document and everywhere that you click with your mouse cursor on the computer, it will apply that formatting to those paragraphs.

So that feature, which has been on the computer for a long time, is now in Microsoft Word on the iPad.

Oh, nice.

And so – and again, it's not really new because you were able to do something similar by using copy and paste format but the way that it works now is when you go to the paragraph that has the formatting you like, the first thing you do is you just select that paragraph or select the word within the paragraph and then you tap the brand new paintbrush, which is underneath the Home tab.

So the very first tab in Microsoft Word, the very first cursor, it has Undo, Redo and then the paintbrush.

So it's the third icon.

And I tap on that icon and then once I have it tapped and the paintbrush is grayed out so I know I have it tapped.

Now if I don't have any – if I'm just using my iPad without like an external keyboard or anything like that, I go into a new paragraph and the first thing I do is I select the paragraph by like double tapping on it to select the whole sentence.

Yes.

So it's triple tap.

And then once I have that paragraph selected, if I then just tap once in the middle of the paragraph, it will apply whatever formatting I had before to the paragraph.

So it's the same feature that I've been using for years by doing paste format but now I can just do it by tapping and stuff.

And so it's just a little bit faster because you're using the paintbrush.

And additionally, I believe that you can double tap on the paintbrush and then it actually copies the formatting in memory and then you can go through and select different paragraphs and apply it to multiple paragraphs like on the computer.

So that's the way that you do it if you're just using your fingers.

If you have your iPad in something like that fancy keyboard that Apple sells called the magic keyboard for iPad that you own.

Yes.

I don't know, Brett.

The one that's got the built-in trackpad for it.

That's right.

I believe that on that one, it's even better because when you first click on the paintbrush thing and you copy a paragraph's formatting and then as you go and you hover over a new paragraph, I think maybe the icon actually changes.

I'm not sure if the icon changes or the pointer but you can just single tap on the paragraph if I understand correctly to apply it.

And so, if you have an external mouse or an external trackpad on your iPad, it actually is even better than just using your fingers.

So again, ultimately, what we're doing, taking the formatting from one paragraph and applying it to another paragraph, this is actually something that you've been able to do I think since day one for 10 years now.

It's not really new.

It's just it's a new way of doing the same feature that makes more sense because it uses the paste format icon which people are familiar with from their computer, at least some people are, and it's using it in the iPad environment.

So now, they still don't have the full support for styles that I would love to see.

Hopefully it's been 10 years now.

I think it's been long enough, Microsoft.

Maybe you can put it in there.

But my point is that at least we know Microsoft has not given up on the iPad app.

They continue to add new features.

They have the sensor support, they have this.

I mean, Microsoft is definitely, they still have a team that works on this and they still bring out new features to the either.

By the way, there's two apps.

You can either have the standalone Word for iPad app or there's a standalone app called Office which has Word and PowerPoint and Excel.

It's all built into the same app.

It doesn't matter.

Both, once you get into the Word portion of it, they're both the same.

So it doesn't matter if you have the standalone app or the Office app that has the Word component.

Microsoft continues to add new features.

I'm glad to see this one.

Again, I say it's a new feature.

They announced it last year.

I saw it for the first time this morning.

But it is useful and it really is something that I have been using for a long time because once you have one paragraph formatted, just like you like it, you don't want to have to go through the trouble of adjusting, you know, on your new paragraph, change the font, change the font size, change the color, change the height.

You know, you don't, you just want to be able to apply that formatting with just one tap.

Absolutely.

This is such a great tip for anything in Word because you're right.

A lot of people probably seeing that little paintbrush there on their desktop computers or their laptops, but I'm glad it's coming to the iPad and the iPhone.

The way I've always described it to people, everybody knows how to do a copy and paste.

That's copy and paste the content, right?

You copy a paragraph, you're going to paste that same content, like the sentence or the paragraph or whatever.

But in this, I say you are copying and pasting the formatting, not the content.

And that's how I try to at least differentiate it for folks.

And once they have it, they grasp how powerful it can be.

To your point, Jeff, I mean, if you're manually going through and like redoing all of your headings to change the font or the change the color or something like that, you are wasting time.

You're wasting time.

At the very least, yeah, at the very least, do this, the paint, the format painter, I think it's officially what it's called, the format painter.

But even better, if you can use styles, you get multiple gold stars on that.

But hey, you only have a limited availability on the iPad or the iPhone there.

Excellent tips.

I should add, by the way, that I talk about this in the context of Microsoft Word because as a lawyer, I live and breathe in Microsoft Word.

But if you happen to be someone who uses PowerPoint on the iPad, this exact same format, the same formatting brush tip that we talked about also works.

And PowerPoint is another app where, you know, since formatting of text is very important in a presentation, right?

Because you want it to look really good for your audience, that it's a great, you know, you can use the same thing.

Once you have one slide and you have something on a slide formatted just the way you like it, you can use the same formatting brush on the iPad now to apply the formats to another, you know, another element on another slide.

Again, though, I don't use PowerPoint on my iPad very often.

I usually use Keynote on my iPad.

But Word is the thing that I use all the time.

So that's where I'm really taking advantage of this feature.

Excellent tips on Microsoft Word for the iPhone and the iPad.

And to your point, there is that standalone Word app and then there is the Microsoft Office app.

This works the same in both of those.

The apps are free.

And once you get the apps, then you log in with your Microsoft account, whether it's a free Microsoft account or you have a subscription to Microsoft 365 or something like that.

Whoo, very good.

Lots of stuff to talk about.

But guess what?

We'll have even more to talk about next week, Jeff.

I'll talk to you a little bit on Monday, not as a podcast, but I know there's gonna be a lot of things going on.

But we will talk with you next Friday and everybody hopefully will tune in and follow us because we will definitely have a good wrap up of everything that was announced over WWDC next Friday.

We'll talk with you then, Jeff.