Welcome to In the News for July 5th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey, Brett, good morning.

Good morning, Jeff.

It's another week, a little bit of a fun week for us here in the United States, at least since we celebrated the birthday of the country, July 4th.

But it's good that we're right back into it here on July 5th.

You know, I pulled into my office building this morning, Brett, and like there were no cars.

I think a lot of people have extended the vacation to both the 4th and the 5th.

Well, hey, if you're on vacation here, we've got a great podcast for you lined up today that you can listen to it on your vacation for the weekend or so.

We'll start with what's on everybody's mind, of course.

No, not the debates.

It's AI.

And in fact, so you had a couple of great articles today.

This was one of my favorite, I think.

Hey, the Olympics are coming up.

Wouldn't it be great if Al Michaels could cover the Olympics?

Uh, but not the real Al Michaels.

How about the AI Michaels?

That's what I'm calling him right now.

This was a fascinating story that you linked to in Vanity Fair that we're going to be able to get Al Michaels covering the Olympics, but it's not really going to be him.

It's going to be an AI generated Al Michaels, which is just really messing my mind up here a little bit this morning.

I have to admit, I think this is a very interesting idea.

And of all the things that we've heard about using, you know, there's so much in the news about using fake voices and stuff like that.

Right.

This is actually sort of interesting.

I actually cannot wait to try it out and see.

Al Michaels, of course, is a very well-known sportscaster, very distinctive voice.

He has done the Olympics for NBC for years and years and years.

I mean, the infamous, you know, 1980 Olympics and stuff with that.

I mean, he many people will associate his voice with the Olympics.

Among exactly among other sports.

And so I like the idea that they're trying to have lots and lots of coverage because that's a fun thing.

I mean, you may have an interest in a sport of the Olympics.

I know that I've done this in the past, that it's not like a marquee sport.

And so they're not going to have their A+ announcers doing the retake.

But, you know, you might be interested in this one particular event.

And it's wonderful that in this day and age, you know, often if you pay for it, you can like see the updates and stuff.

But what if you just want to see the highlights?

You don't want to see the whole thing.

So they have I mean, one part of this is that they're going to be using AI to create highlights on a daily basis of different sports.

And so even if you're the only person in the world that cares about this one event, that's fine.

They'll put together a little highlight reel for you.

They're putting it together using AI.

So I guess it's like whenever something is exciting in it, it's going to somehow figure that out or from the rankings, however it's going to do.

So it's going to put together a package.

There's going to be some humans involved and just sort of double checking it.

Right.

But it's put together by AI.

And then the description of it is going to all be AI generated.

So the text will be generated based upon, you know, what the text is on the screen and the final scores and stuff like that.

And then they have a familiar and this is the interesting part to have a familiar voice reading that text.

It will be the voice of Al Michaels.

And the Vanity Fair article is funny because they said that they went to him about it and he's like, you know, this is crazy.

And then they played a sample of what his voice would sound like.

And he's like, that's pretty good.

And it's funny because he says it's like about 2% off.

But I think that's funny because I know that and I'm sure you know this, Brett, anytime that you listen to your own voice, you always think that you sound a little different than like in your own brain you sound.

Right.

So when he says it's 2% off, that actually might mean that it's pretty much 100%.

And so.

It could be.

You know, I actually think it's a pretty cool idea.

You'll be watching a little recap.

It's tailored to your specific interests.

They said that there'll be millions of these that are theoretically possible.

It'll be a voice that's familiar to you.

It's a licensed voice.

Right.

He's agreed to this.

I mean, there's no issues or anything like that.

I am, I mean, I literally, I will, I'm going to actually probably watch the Olympics more than I otherwise would just out of curiosity to see what this is all like.

This, this story in here, just like you said, they actually went to Al Michaels and they talked with them about it.

And just obviously somebody at NBC kind of turned him around and turned him onto this to where he gave his blessing basically, right.

For them to do this, which is amazing.

But then as I was reading this, you know, we hear so much about AI, Jeff.

And for me, I guess, I don't know if this is because I'm a nerd a little bit.

I just, I, I try to break it down.

Like we, I feel like so many people think about AI sort of like this black box.

It's magic.

Like it's amazing how it's going.

But if you think about it, there are hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands and thousands of hours of Al Michaels on recorded.

Right.

And so if a computer can just listen to that over and over and over, no different than a human, if they're trying to be an impressionist, right.

You're going to listen over and over and over and over to Trump or, or, you know, who Obama or whoever, and you're going to mimic what they're doing.

And in the same way, that really is what we talk about, like a large language model.

But in this case, it's just a large audio model maybe.

And it's just thousands and thousands of hours that the computer has been listening to.

And so now we basically can recreate almost any scenario of the way that Al Michaels, you know, says a certain word or his inflections or anything, because it's got all of this time that it has trained on it.

And so then I start thinking to myself, this is fascinating because what else do we have thousands of hours, you know, recorded on and like Ronald Reagan or, you know, any kind of like political speech.

I mean, this is the reality of where it's going to go today.

Now I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I'm just, in my mind, I'm just breaking it down to like, how is this going to work?

And once I was reading through this, and I'm so glad you linked to it because it makes perfect sense.

Like there's so much recorded material that is just basically being trained upon it there.

Are you pulling something up right there?

Yeah, no, what I'm looking up is, you know, the other article that I linked to today was with the 11 labs, which is the company that released this app called Reader, which is the same technology.

And, you know, the idea that you can actually choose voices and stuff like that.

You know, I was just choosing, and I don't know what this can be, but I was just choosing the Burt Reynolds voice, which is something that we all know.

And if I go like this and I hit play.

This is Burt Reynolds.

Thank you for listening to the In the News podcast.

So Burt Reynolds has just said, thank you for listening to our podcast.

And, you know, it sounds, thank you, Burt.

Appreciate the endorsement.

It sounds like Burt Reynolds, you know, and that's just something that's generated on my iPhone, which makes me think that the stuff that NBC is going to do with Al Michaels, which is going to presumably much more, I mean, it could actually sound perfect.

It's really fascinating.

It's fascinating stuff.

You know, this stuff has been around to a certain degree for a long time.

I mean, I remember, gosh, in the 1980s, when I, my computer I was using was a ZX81 Sinclair computer.

And I remember purchasing this little external thing, maybe a company that was called Zoom, which is long since gone, that would actually have speech synthesis.

And when I say it was speech synthesis, Brett, it was so basic.

But the thing is I could type something and it would, it would almost sound like a spoken voice.

We've had this type of technology for such a long time.

And then, you know, fast forward.

I remember in the, I want to say it was the late 1990s when we saw the first television commercial with Fred Astaire dancing with a dirt devil vacuum cleaner that they had sort of.

I remember that.

And it was the first time they had done sort of an AI that, you know, he had been dancing with.

I want to say it was a broom in the movie and they replaced it with a vacuum cleaner.

And that was, you know, and of course they got the rights.

But like, you know, we're moving from the stage of this is sort of an interesting thing that we could spend lots of time and make a single commercial to, to now in August for the Olympics, they're going to be generating this stuff pretty much in real time.

And we'll see, but it could sound or my iPhone.

I'm basically generating stuff in real time or, you know, how many years away in the future from, I mean, you're just not going to be able to tell it's going to all be, you know, but between the face and the video and the voice sounding perfect, it's, you know, if I was an actor, I know that was a big thing during the actor strike a year or two ago of them being concerned about their likeness.

And, you know, can you make a living as an actor if somebody just, you know, scans you and just reproduces you as an actor in the future?

It's very, very complicated issues.

And, but, but just putting aside the legalities of it and the moralities of it and all those, this just from a pure technology standpoint, gosh, this stuff's fascinating, really fascinating.

Yeah.

And one of the things that we are going to continue to talk about is not just artificial intelligence AI, but Apple intelligence AI.

Yeah.

And, you know, just, just to go to that, because obviously we could just keep on talking to just about, you know, the Al Michaels story and Burt Reynolds, which, you know, in the news endorsed by Burt Reynolds, that's great.

But another story you linked to was Phil Schiller is joining the open AI board as a quote observer role.

So open AI is a company that has chat GPT.

So a lot of this, you know, that people think about an AI today is really this chat, you know, this, this, this generative trained I guess, new created information is really, I'm trying to make sure, like, I always like to say, it's like, this is trained information, right?

Anyway, the point that Apple, we've talked about some of the partnerships between Apple and open AI and the fact that Phil Schiller is going on the board.

It could be a safety mechanism, I think in one way, but it could also be just another, indication.

I think that the two companies are at least trying to more formally partner together.

I don't know.

What was your take on this?

I think it's more of the former Brett.

I think it's adult supervision is what it is.

This is adult supervision.

This is, you know, open AI has had some controversies over the year about how they put together stuff that they're moving a little fast and loose.

You know, they had the infamous thing where they kicked out their, their leader and then they brought Sam out on back.

I mean, it has been a controversial company that has an incredibly fascinating technology.

And so I think it's nice that Apple has partnered with them.

So, I mean, and as we described in the past, in the future, when you ask Siri a question that involves like world knowledge, you know, events that, you know, some, not, not something that's personal to you from your calendar, but just sort of some general information that's out there in the world that they're going to, you know, Siri will send the request to open AI, open AI will give Siri the answer.

And then Siri will give you the answer, letting you know the entire time that they're getting the answer from open AI.

And Apple has also said that they're absolutely open to work, to working with other large language models too.

So if Google wants to do it or somebody else, they're, they're absolutely open to that.

But for now, open AI is the one that they're starting with.

But in light of the controversy at the company, having someone like Phil Schiller, who is technically, you know, used to be in charge of Apple marketing, but that doesn't really tell you much because to say he was in charge of marketing and Apple in other companies, that's a much more limited role.

In Apple speak, Phil was just as powerful as any executive at the company, you know, subject to either Steve Jobs or now Tim Cook.

And now Phil has technically his title, he's an Apple fellow, which basically means semi-retired, but still around to do whatever he wants.

He still works on the WDC stuff every year.

And so I think this is a good job for him, someone who has been around for decades with Apple, who truly understands the way that Apple wants things done the right way.

And so he can be, you know, as a non-voting member on the AI board, open AI board, he could just sort of see what's going on.

And if he sees something that starts to smell wrong, that he's like, gosh, I don't know if Apple wants to be associated with this.

He will have the ability, one would hope to do something about it early on, as opposed to Apple finding out after the fact, oh my goodness, look at what chat GPT is doing.

If only we had known that it had done X, Y, Z to get this information or whatever it is.

So I think it's a very smart move by Apple.

And it's a little, you know, I think it's a little bit of a, I don't know, it's a little bit of a put down to open AI to tell you the truth, to say that you need this, but you know, it's, I don't know, keep your, keep your friends close and your enemies closer on or however you want to say it.

You know, it's, it's interesting.

Speaking of Apple intelligence and even Siri, one of the people that I have really started enjoying following more so than ever before, Jason Snell, when it comes to Apple intelligence, I just feel like Jason's really got a very good balance on what this could mean and where this is going, which is why I was interested to see the story you'll link to today about Siri fragmentation.

I hadn't even thought about this.

This is what I'm saying is like, Jason's so good about thinking about what's coming up next, but you could probably do a better idea explaining this, but it's just the idea that some of the newer devices from Apple are going to be able to take better advantage of the Apple intelligence aspect.

But some of the older devices are going to be stuck maybe with a sort of an outdated Siri or not as cool Siri or something.

I don't know.

I thought this was just a really good article here.

Yeah.

We've seen this already in a limited form, but you know, a perfect example of it is if you ask S I R I something on your iPhone, you'll get a pretty good answer.

As good as, as good of an answer as, as Siri can give you today.

Right.

But if you happen to have like a home pod or a home pod mini, have you ever had a circuit or a car play?

Have you ever had a certain car plays a little different?

Cause it works with your phone, but have you ever had that happen where you ask a question and it comes back and it says, I can't answer that.

Like, but if you open up your iPhone, I can give you the answer there, you know, basically saying you got to get it from somewhere else, which is frustrating.

Cause you're like, why is that?

And so Apple has this technology that they've, they've, they started for that.

That's it's called personal requests that allows you to have another device.

Like for example, a home pod actually connect to your iPhone so that if you ask you something that's personal to yourself, like about your own calendar, your home pod has no idea what your calendar is, but your iPhone knows it.

And so with this technology, your home pod could talk to your iPhone and could actually help you just as if you had asked your iPhone directly.

And so what, what Jason is to a certain degree speculating about is that, you know, maybe in the future, you know, right now there's just a little bit of distinction, but in the future, it's going to be a huge distinction because when you have the artificial intelligence version of Siri, it's going to be much more powerful in answering questions about yourself, doing things that are far, far beyond what it can currently do.

And then it has the component that you and I just talked about a second ago, that if it doesn't know the answer, if it's more of like a world information thing, it can tap into something like open AI to get you the answer.

So that is that, that version of Siri is worlds beyond what we have today.

And yet it's going to only work on the very, very latest devices, including for example, only the iPhone 15 pro and 15 pro max.

So even the most expensive version.

So, you know, many people are not going to have, maybe they'll just have one device in their house that is sophisticated enough to use the new version of Apple intelligence.

And they'll have a whole bunch of older devices, iPads, iPhones, computers, et cetera, that can't use the new version of Apple intelligence.

Jason speculating that maybe that Apple can use this technology that as long as you have one of your devices that can use the new Apple intelligence, it can sort of share the wealth to the others.

And that would be a pretty smart way to make it work.

But again, I think it's, he's as much spit balling as anything else here, but it is going to be an issue.

I mean, there's definitely going to be, when you ask a question to, to, you know, who you would, you know, but for Apple finding a way to make this all, you know, work in a integrated fashion, you're going to get vastly, vastly different answers, depending upon which device you ask any, or even depending upon which device hears you.

I've had times in my house, Brett, where I sort of say something out loud.

And sometimes my home pod hears me.

Sometimes my phone hears me.

Sometimes my watch hears me, you know, you never know what's going to hear you.

Right.

I know.

Sometimes I like, if I just want my watch to do like a timer, I'll put my watch like right up to my mouth, even though my phone is in the pocket.

And sometimes the phone still hears it, even though I'm like, I'm trying to just tell my Apple watch.

Another piece of this, which you kind of already have alluded to is that private cloud compute component, right?

Cause we talked, we've talked about Apple intelligence.

Like there is going to be some aspect that's on device.

Then we have private cloud.

And then like you said, we can go to the open AI at some point, but I mean, that to me is one of the things I think the aspects of like having specific hardware is this private cloud compute and how that's going to work with obviously the broad, the right processors.

Yeah.

Just interesting.

I, again, I hadn't thought about that.

So Jason, thank you for at least pointing that out.

And yeah, I don't know how, how, how they could resolve some of that other than just tell people to upgrade.

I like his last little section here.

The duck keeps paddling.

How does he say it here?

That, you know, on the, on the surface, it looks really nice.

Like Apple's really doing it, but under, under the water, he's saying they are paddling like crazy to kind of catch up.

I don't know how that much is true, but I'm going to take it from Jason because it sounds like that.

It could be that they are paddling furiously beneath the surface which is, which is interesting, but anyway, we'll see at least, at least they're making roads and we haven't even seen some of this where it's going to be.

We saw the announcements, but we haven't seen how the applications on that, which is interesting.

In fact, one thing, Brett, that you just mentioned the private cloud compute, where is the stuff that's too powerful to happen on device.

And it's going to happen on Apple servers.

What's interesting there is when you think about it, just for me, just a lay person, I'm thinking, well, okay, if you've already got the ability to take something that you know, you can't do on device and you're going to do it in the cloud.

Why does it have to be my, my brand new iPhone?

Why can't last year's version of the iPhone say, Hey, send this up to the private cloud.

But Apple has so far said, no, that that's not how they're going to do it.

You have to have a high end machine just to even have access to this technology.

And then even then for those machines only, if they decided it needs to go up to the private cloud, they will do so.

I'm sure Apple has a good reason for all of this.

I guess that that initial gatekeeping aspect needs to have a sufficient oomph of the processor to even handle it.

Even if a lot of the answer is going to come from the private cloud compute.

But, and then the last thing, like you said, Brett, we don't know when this is coming.

This was one of those rare cases where, normally at WWDC, Apple announces stuff that we expect to see maybe in September, October, but certainly not much more later than the end of the year.

But I really get the sense that with this AI stuff, Apple announced it earlier than they probably otherwise would just because it was, there was some pressure to announce something.

I think we're not going to see some of this stuff for a while.

I mean, it might be coming to year 2025 before some of this stuff comes out, but at least it's on the roadmap.

We know that.

Yeah.

They'll keep talking about it, you know, in the way that they normally do.

Right.

And like rolling it out, but yeah, you're right.

I have some doubts.

I mean, they they've obviously got to start talking about it because whatever the iPhone 16 theoretically is going to come out with, right.

And if they have new iPads or whatever else that they might be coming out with, you know, although they just did that, but anyway, just interesting how some of that's going to work.

Let's go from artificial intelligence to something a little more manual.

How about a manual, a manual hardware keyboard for your iPhone?

What?

I'm so glad you linked to this.

I remember we talked about this device, this hardware keyboard called Klix.

Back, I believe, I looked it up.

It was in January of this year.

So that was when they announced it, like it was coming out.

But this is Fernando Silva at 9to5Mac, who I've just really enjoyed watching his his reviews over the years.

He's reviewing the Klix keyboard case.

There's both a video here as well as a kind of a nice comprehensive review, which is just interesting.

I don't know still that this would be something that I'd be interested in, Jeff.

But, you know, for those folks that are still bemoaning the fact of their BlackBerry keyboard, this could be something to look at, at least.

Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head right there.

But the reason that this even gets the coverage that it does is so many of us who've been using smartphones for long enough remember the BlackBerrys or even the Palm Trios, if you want to say that, too.

But, you know, we remember it like it was nice to have that.

That's I don't know.

We say it was nice.

The reality is at the time it was a little bit of a pain.

But I think that we perhaps look with a little bit more fond remembrance than it deserved.

But, you know, we at least remember using our thumbs to type on these tiny little keyboards.

And, you know, his review is, you know, it's a complicated review.

It's not like it's not an overall yes or no.

But he points out that on the one hand, thumb typing on this little keyboard, it's a little bit of a pain and perhaps not better than typing on the onscreen keyboard in terms of the typing experience.

But on the other hand, he says one of the nice things is that when you shift the keyboard to below your iPhone, it means you have your entire iPhone screen.

And that's true.

And frankly, it's the same advantage that you get by using any external keyboard, not even not even one that's connected to the bottom of the screen, but just like a Bluetooth is it is nice to have the full screen.

And goodness knows the iPhone screen is only so big.

So to be able to remove that keyboard from half the screen, you have a lot more typing space.

And it's nice.

I thought it was interesting that he actually said one of the reasons he liked it, perhaps even more than the typing, was that to like things like scroll through web pages and stuff you can do.

I think it's just hit the spacebar.

I'm pretty sure he said, which I think is universal, actually.

I guess you can do that.

But he said that that was actually sort of a nice way to browse through content just by hitting a little button at the bottom of his screen.

So, you know, I think the bottom line is it's it's it's got some good.

It's got some bad.

It makes the device really long, you know, and a little unwieldy in your hand.

Keep in mind that this thing is form fitted for a particular device.

So, you know, if you get one today and you get a new iPhone this fall, because, for example, you want to have support for Apple intelligence, this is not going to work anymore, right?

Because, I mean, this is form fitted to a very specific iPhone.

So but I do think that for some people, this will be an interesting little gadget.

I think he concludes his review by saying that he's not using it all the time, but that he likes having it just like a tool in his tool chest.

But every once in a while, right?

Yeah, for every once in a while.

And if you don't mind spending some money on something that's useful every once in a while, you know, it's interesting.

He has an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Okay, so I like what he was talking about at the right at the beginning of the video.

He's like, well, this makes the Pro Max even bigger.

I mean, this adds one another, like two and a half, three inches kind of at the bottom, you know, for the keyboard and everything else kind of wraps around it.

But I'm like, that's a massive that's a massive device.

Also, this is neat in the little pictures that he's posted here.

At first, I looked at this.

Can you see this right here?

I'm like, yeah, how did he make those, those apps go in that pattern?

And then I'm like, Oh, I bet he has the new version, right?

Because look at those icons down the below, right?

He's been able to customize those icons.

Anyway, I just was curious looking at that, because I'm like, wait a minute, how did he get his icons, his app icons to look like that and be arranged?

And that's like, okay, I know, Fernando, you probably got you're running the beta, man.

And that's okay.

Somebody like Fernando is, is that's perfectly fine.

You know, speaking of the beta, Brett, we've talked about the fact that right now, it's only the developer beta that I think it's the second version of the developer beta.

But we're now in the month of July.

And I do think that at some point this month, if if if the past holds truth, Apple will come out with the public beta, which is usually the slightly more safer, although you're still running some risk.

So if you haven't put on the developer beta, but you still sort of have an inkling for a beta version, you know, maybe next week could be soon.

That's for the iPhone.

But I love this other article you linked to today.

That means it's talking about any external keyboard.

So while we're that clicks keyboard is something like you said, form fitted for the actual iPhone device, you can actually use any Bluetooth keyboard with your iPhone.

And so when I saw this, because at first I was like, wait, it's an external keyboard, another external keyboard for the iPhone.

But I'm glad that you linked to this because we've talked about this before you've got a keyboard I know that you use between your Windows computer and your iPad and your iPhone.

I I have you know, my keyboard, magic keyboard from my iPad, so I don't ever use another Bluetooth keyboard.

But every once in a while, every once in a while, I will use an external keyboard on my iPhone.

And this I learned several little nifty little additional tricks and tips here from this article today.

So thanks for linking to it.

Yeah, now, although the title of this article is the iPhone and the keyboard, as far as I can tell, Brett, I think that every part of this article applies to the iPad as well as the iPhone.

I think as far as I know, the shortcuts are the same.

But I will tell you that if you ever use an external keyboard with either one of your devices, either iPad or iPhone, I would actually encourage you to find this leak and to read through it because, you know, there's the I mean, of course, we all know you hit the key, you hit the G key and it shows up at the screen that that's the basic ones.

But there are all these advanced shortcuts that you can use that they use the command key and the shift and the control and the function keys.

And, you know, there's so many of them that you're never going to remember them all right.

And the nice thing about the iPad, and I think the iPhone can do this, too, but the iPad definitely in some apps, if you sort of hold down the command key, it will actually come up with an onscreen reminder of what shortcuts work.

So that's actually a good thing to know, is that get used to just holding down the command key, wait for a second, and it will come up and it will come up with like a list of shortcuts.

In fact, I'm doing it right now in Fantastical and I see that it's got many screens worth of at least two screens or the shortcuts that I can do.

So that's nice to sort of remember those.

But the thing is, you'll never remember all the keyboard shortcuts.

So that's why I always like to look at these lists and remind you, oh, yeah, it can do this.

It could do that.

And maybe you'll internalize one or two of them today and maybe six months from now you'll learn another one, but they're all very useful and they help you to be much more efficient.

You know, much like we all know that using a PC or a Mac, you know, when you learn things like control tab or command tab to switch between screens, you just internalize that gesture.

It becomes something you use so quickly.

So you could really be more efficient with these.

So that's why I love this list.

That's the first place that I start when I use an external keyboard, Jeff, is exactly what you say.

Like there are several keyboard shortcuts that I've used for years, decades on my computer, right?

Alt tab or command tab on the Mac and then, you know, control C, control V, like even just some of those basic ones, even control Z, all of those keyboard shortcuts that I use on an actual PC, a Mac or Windows, they will usually work on my iPad or on the iPhone as well if you have an external keyboard.

At the top of this article, by the way, and I'll make sure we have it linked in the show notes, he does a great rundown of what kind of external Bluetooth enabled keyboards that you could get, which I just thought that this was really good.

This Logitech K480, I remember my wife had this one for a long time because she only uses an iPad for her computer.

And she had this Logitech keyboard, which, you know, you have to make sure you get the right one for the right iPad.

But it was a really nice aspect here.

And she used that for a long time until she moved on, got an iPad that didn't fit in there.

So anyway, great article on that.

So let's move on.

Okay, yeah, let's do a where you're at segment here.

I don't think that I put it as a where you're at, but this is a pretty good one here on here.

Apple has been very careful never to introduce the Apple Watch as a health product.

Right?

I mean, they may be alluded to it, obviously, it's very aware that it can be used for a lot of good health aspects.

But they always have that disclaimer at the bottom, right, where they talk about this is not going to detect a heart attack.

This is not going to put something in for, you know, telling you when to go see the doctor or something like that.

But so many people start using it that way, Jeff.

And I feel like that's just there's just a there's some kind of a regulatory, you know, wall there that Apple has to get over, I'm sure, governmental aspect.

And, and people could use it.

But here now we have a cardiologist where in, in Denmark or, or somewhere, where he is actually saying now, as a cardiologist, he used the Apple Watch and the little ECG function, not the EKG, right, but the fact you can put your thumb on the little digital crown, or your finger, and you can take a quick little, you know, snapshot of your heart, that he used it to actually find himself that he needed to go in and have a procedure done.

Yeah, amazing here.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, like you say, Apple itself is, you know, they haven't, you know, gone through the regulatory requirements for them to actually themselves advertise it as a device like this.

But the reality is that it really can detect a lot of things.

And we see these stories all the time that, you know, the Apple Watch warned me to go see a doctor.

And sure enough, I'm glad I did.

Because the doctor said that, you know, you were, you know, one step away from your deathbed.

And so this is just another example, instead of a person happening to it, well, I guess he is the person that happened to, but this is the actual cardiologist that understands it all saying, yeah, there actually is really a role here.

And it's just, you know, another reason that, you know, having an Apple Watch can give you just that little bit of extra protection for heart attacks, specifically, and I know that there's other types of diseases as well.

So it's interesting to see the science behind an article like this.

This is I'm going to do my best at saying this as cardiologist, it has saying that he was able to detect myocardial ischemia in good job self, a lack of blood and oxygen to the heart muscle, typically caused by blockage of coronary arteries.

And if I read through this, if I remember, it was something like at the tail end of this ECG that he would do, like after he worked out or something like that, that just gave him a little bit of a pause.

And obviously, he knows what he's looking at.

But he went and showed it to some of his other colleagues.

And sure enough, then he went in for a much bigger, more formal official procedure, right?

And that's when they found that like, yeah, yeah, you need to have some some some work done on this.

And just even the fact that at least the Apple Watch was giving you a heads up to your point that you were saying, you know, I mean, I can't say enough great things about the Apple Watch and just this aspect.

And it's funny, I see more and more, more seniors or elderly folks, even at church and other places around Jeff that are wearing the Apple Watch.

And I look at it and I think to myself, you don't, it's not like Apple is like going after, you know, above 65 year olds or something, but we know that they're using it.

I'm even looking into it for my own mother, who's who's 80 now.

Yeah, because it's like the fall detection, you know, just being able to like, call 911 if if they fail, for example, or if something was going on, or if there was some kind of an anomaly, like in the heart and everything.

And just just pretty amazing that it continues to be as impressive as it is.

Yeah, you know, Tim Cook of Apple likes to say that the Apple Watch is the most personal device Apple makes, because it's right there connected to your body.

And you don't have it on the list today, Brett, but I mentioned in today's post that there was a podcast interview with Johnny Ive, you know, former Apple design executive.

And he also mentioned the same thing in that podcast, he talked about how it was worth listening to, by the way, but he talked about how, you know, the Apple Watch was one of the things the designs that he loved the most of all the time at Apple.

And that was what he did after Steve Jobs, because, because the same reason that it's connected to you, it's always there.

But it has this advantage of when you have something that's always on your body, always monitoring you, the possibilities that that gives rise to through this health stuff and other stuff.

It's it's pretty cool.

Last week, we talked about a firmware update for your AirPods.

And I love this story that you linked to today that there could be another firmware coming.

But this is going to vastly improve using the AirPods with your Mac, for example.

And it sounds like using it through zoom meetings or team meetings or something like that, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, I did this.

I did not know about this.

So what it's talking about is that if you're using your AirPods just to listen to music or podcasts or whatever, it has a very nice quality to it.

But apparently once you start using the AirPods to to be both a microphone and a headphone, for example, like you said, during a zoom meeting, I guess, because of the limitation of the bandwidth for Bluetooth, traditionally, what it would do is the auto quality, what you can hear as a speaker decreases and the microphone quality, you know, is what it is, but it's not full quality.

But I guess I never really noticed that before that it's trying to manage.

I hadn't really noticed.

Right.

And so what they're saying in this upcoming it's now in beta form, this upcoming version of the firmware.

And I don't know if it has to be the AirPods Pro or it's the regular AirPods, they don't say in the article, but that if it's connected to a computer, they're using some sort of focus, focus, focus.

Maybe it's like Apple's version of the Bluetooth standard that goes beyond what Bluetooth actually supports.

Or maybe they're using a little bit of something, you know, whatever, whatever it is they're doing, they're getting or maybe it's just through compression.

They're getting a lot more out of the bandwidth than you have in the past.

And the end result is that the way that you will sound to other people when you're using your AirPods is much better.

And I've seen this.

I've actually seen this before.

It's every once in a while I'll be listening to a podcast and somebody will be talking and then something will happen to their microphone.

They'll say, okay, my mic's not working.

It became unplugged.

I'm going to start using my AirPod mic and you can hear the difference.

And I've had that happen to me once before a long time ago.

So we all know that the there's a varying mic quality for the AirPods, but the idea that Apple could solve this through software as opposed to hardware, it's very impressive.

So again, this is just, I mean, this is not theoretical.

This is not a rumor.

I mean, it's in the beta software.

So apparently Apple has figured it out right now.

Apple's not saying precisely what it does, but my hope is that at some point later this year, whenever it comes out, Apple will tell us officially, you know, here's the deal.

You're going to see better quality under these circumstances.

And I can't wait to find out when that is.

So cool stuff.

I have no idea.

This is a surprise.

It's in beta right now, just to be clear.

Like, and as we talked about last week, when it does get released to the firmware, we just trust that it will be updated when it gets updated.

And it will.

And typically they're talking about just here with the Mac, like with Mac OS Sequoia, which was not even on some of this.

But I wonder like, is this going to improve things even on the phone or if you're using it with the phone or the iPad?

I'm not really sure.

But anyway, just really cool stuff.

And I think the big takeaway is what you're saying there is just the fact that we could be improved with software is pretty amazing on that.

One of the questions I almost always get, Jeff, and I'm going to bet you do too.

Whenever somebody buys a new Apple product, an iPhone, an Apple watch, a Mac, whatever.

The next question is, do I need to get Apple care for this device?

I've got my answers.

I know you've got some of your answers, but I thought this was an excellent article from iMore.com today that he goes and breaks it down actually by each device, right?

Whether or not that you need it.

And what's important to know is that this gentleman, John Anthony DeSoto was an Apple genius.

He worked at the genius bar for many, many years.

And so he's got that perspective of like, why, you know, when people come in, like what kind of a repair is that would happen?

And I thought this was a good breakdown in this article here.

Yeah, this is a necessarily subjective answer.

There is no right answer to when you should get Apple care.

It's always a risk.

You know, do you want to pay money now that you may not ever need, or do you want to not pay money now and just keep your fingers crossed that nothing ever breaks?

So, you know, it's not like he's giving you the quote unquote right answer.

It's just a perspective.

But like you say, because it's a perspective of someone who has seen many people over the years, bring in the devices for repairs, at least he has a little bit more of a sense of when it's necessary.

So I think that there's some good advice here and, you know, the types of products, you know, that he does it.

I went for a very long period of time, Brett, where I did not use Apple care for years and years and years and years, and it was fine.

And I never needed it.

It was all good.

And then, and then lately I've sort of changed a little bit.

Like my daughter had a phone that she broke and did not have Apple care.

And I was upset that I didn't have it.

And, and as I mentioned in my post today, when I got my Apple vision pro, because that thing is so ridiculous as the expensive and because the repairs were supposed to be so expensive to it, I'm like, gosh, you know, something that I'm putting over my head and could slip off.

I could just so easily see this thing.

So I'm paying like $25 a month, which is about as expensive as you can get for Apple care.

I mean, that's a lot of money, but I figured, you know, if something breaks, I'll be happy.

I did it.

And if nothing breaks, then who knows, maybe I'll be upset at myself for wasting that money.

But it's just like, I mean, it's just like say, asking somebody how much insurance should you get?

Well, I don't know how much insurance should you get?

There's no right answer.

But, and of course, Apple care is a little bit more than insure.

It's a type of insurance.

It's a little bit more than insurance because it gives you some more safety, safe of mind.

And if you have Apple care, they're more willing to do things for you than if you don't have Apple care.

So there's a lot of good reasons to have Apple care, Apple care plus technically is what it's called now.

But, um, I think about it all the time.

He does a good job breaking it down because there is Apple care plus, which is just, you know, you, you pay extra for the two years because every device has a year warranty.

Right.

And then this is when it was first introduced.

I remember it's like, you could pay for two more years of the warranty coverage basically.

Well, now that was the basic version, right?

That's right.

This is brilliant.

And when Apple did this, you can do a monthly Apple care plus now, which basically can go on for as long as you monthly charge.

And I got to say on some of my devices, I do have the Apple care monthly.

Um, I want to say on my iPhone, I know you put in your post today that you don't do it for your iPhone, but I have started doing it for my iPhone, even though I'm technically going to upgrade my, my iPhones.

And I know in this article, I think he says for his max for the Mac, he says, typically he doesn't suggest getting Apple care plus if I, if I remember in here, uh, but I got to tell you, that's one of the things that I do always make sure I get Apple care.

But that's the only time that I've really used it to be honest, Jeff.

In some cases, I remember there was like either a screen got busted one time, or frankly, my screen stopped working altogether.

In fact, I remember specifically, we were up in Maine and there's only one Apple store in Maine and that's in Portland anyway, as we were driving through, because I had Apple care plus I was able to call ahead and say, I'm coming in and I needed it to be repaired.

And we were driving, you know, on a road trip.

And so I was able to stop there and get it repaired.

And ever since then, just to your point, right?

Sometimes it just comes down to a personal experience.

Should you get it?

You know, was it worth it in the past?

And you know, I think it only takes a couple of times.

It's like, yeah, this was worth it.

And it's worth paying for, especially for the price of these devices.

And now this doesn't mean everything gets repaired, you know, automatically, even with phones today, there is like another category.

You can get it where they call it Apple care plus with theft and loss coverage on there, which is even over and above just the repair hardware repairs, you know, kind of a thing on that.

Uh, so, you know, I feel like we're not really giving listeners an actual answer here, but this article does a good job on that.

I think one of the takeaways he does say is that if you are, if you have a device where you're regularly going to be taking it out of your house or your office or wherever, and you're going to be carrying it with you like an iPhone or an iPad, I think he says in this article here, he usually tends to say, yes, get it, get an Apple care plus for that.

Right.

Cause just like you said, Jeff, there's more chance that it's going to fall or, you know, get dropped or something like that.

And, uh, interesting, uh, uh, take on that.

And I kind of agree with that.

Good, good stuff on that.

Apple TV.

I don't think I ever got Apple care for, for my Apple TV.

I don't think I need that.

Uh, interesting.

Another interesting article that you linked to today, the eight weirdest unreleased Apple products.

This was fun to scroll through here.

I like this, uh, the Apple eight craziest Apple prototypes.

Yeah.

The title does a little disservice.

I'm not sure they're the craziest, but they are on the list for sure.

There's lots of that in here, but you know, if you do yourself, nothing more than just look at the list and scroll through it and see some of these designs.

It is fun to see some of these Apple designs over the years, especially back in the nineties, uh, of things that Apple, you know, contemplated doing maybe put together a prototype and then never ultimately did.

Um, and I'm sure that there's lots of fun examples like this from more recent history that just haven't quite leaked to the outside world.

But you know, one day we're going to see all sorts of, you know, Apple watch prototypes and all sorts of iPhone prototypes and stuff like that.

But, um, but there it's fun to look at some of these things that Apple considered and then said, no, we're not going to go that direction.

Well, I even liked it in here.

They talk about the iPod team and how they worked on the iPhone when that was coming out.

I thought that was great.

And I remember this little picture that Steve jobs put into one of his presentations.

Now, one that this article did not cover, but you linked to is separately was the Apple ring or the Irene.

I always kind of think of Lord of the rings when it comes into this, but you know, I've seen some of these, what is like the aura or something like that?

People have these rings, right.

That will track, but it's a ring as opposed to a watch or something like that.

Um, I don't, I don't know.

I, you know, I haven't seen a whole lot of this.

Apparently there have been some, uh, prototypes that, you know, have been around for a while.

Uh, but this could be interesting.

I guess I could see where it could be maybe something that goes along with an Apple watch.

Apparently Apple has a bunch of patents that they took out, uh, for rings a while back.

That doesn't really mean much because they're constantly getting, uh, patents all the time on stuff.

But, uh, I don't know that that could be, this could be an interesting addition to the Apple, um, the Apple ecosystem as it were.

I'm sure that if Apple thought that there was something that it would be a real value add, you know, you already have an Apple watch and how would a ring add, you know, true additional value just because of the way that it could detect things from your finger in a way that the Apple watch can't detect as well for your wrist.

I don't know what those things are, but I'm sure that Apple is looking at that.

I mean, the funniest thing to me was the title of this that mentioned that it's been 20 years that people have been both a combination of rumors and speculations.

And it wouldn't surprise me if it has literally been 20 years that Apple has been looking at this and deciding not to do it, but just because they haven't done it for 20 years, doesn't mean that they won't necessarily do it in the future.

It's, you know, and again, I would hope and expect that Apple would look at this, you know, before they came out with the watch, I am sure they looked at rings.

They've looked at ankle bracelets.

They looked at everything, you know, it's like, what are all the different ways that we could use this sort of something connected to your body.

And here is the best one being the watch, or at least the one they liked the most, but maybe one day the ring will be something.

Um, and you know, I don't, I've never actually seen a person use an aura ring, but I do know that they're out there and I do hear people write reviews of them.

And I do hear from people that actually say that they like the information that they get with it.

The battery life's good.

You know, you can wear it all night long and stuff like that.

Um, so, you know, there are some advantages to it and, uh, and who knows, maybe Apple will come out with the ring one day.

Back in the day, I feel like if you were playing games on your PC, it was going to be one of two things.

It was either going to be solitaire or minesweeper.

You bet it.

So thank you for linking today to a new modern version of minesweeper.

That is what doesn't come from actual, a game manufacturer.

It comes from Netflix, which I know Netflix was trying to get, is trying to get into this game, you know, a system here and trying to release some things, but boy, they started out with a, with an interesting one.

Minesweeper.

Yeah.

I don't think this is the first one.

I think they've had others, you know, I guess the Netflix idea was they don't want people canceling their Netflix account.

And so to, to, to confront churn, they would give you another value of being a Netflix subscriber, being that you could play these games.

And there's actually a number of games on the iPhone store.

I don't think that I've ever downloaded one of them before, before today or before yesterday when I saw this one.

And, uh, and it's, I have to admit, it's a fun little game.

I, I, you know, minesweep is fun and it's been a long time since I played it.

And so the, the, the game inherently is sort of fun, even though it's simple.

And then when you put on top of it, like the new graphics, it looks like it's, uh, it's like, you know, lakes and continents and stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, it just, it's, it's, it's just an interface on it, but it likes it makes it a little bit prettier.

And, um, I have to admit, I only played it for five minutes last night, but if I have some downtime, um, I could totally see this sort of game that you'll sort of bring out and just sort of play a little bit.

Um, and again, it's a nice game.

There's no ads or anything like that.

So it's, it's very clean interface.

If you're, if you subscribe to Netflix, I absolutely encourage you to download the game, check it out.

Um, if you've been using computers for a long time, you know, exactly how you play this game and Hey, if you're younger and you haven't played it yet, boy, have we got a new game for you down memory lane.

Okay.

So let me ask you, is that I didn't get it yet.

Do you get the, the app from the app store?

Okay, good.

So you download it like any other app.

And then as soon as you open up the app, it says, log into your Netflix account.

And so just like if you download the Netflix app, it says, log into your Netflix account.

And then once I logged into my Netflix account and exit, like for me, at least I have a, like the family account that I've got like little pictures of me and my wife and my kids.

So the next, the next screen said, who's playing.

And so I selected the little icon for me, if we're Jeff.

And then once I selected my own icon, uh, then I could start playing the game.

So yeah, you just, you just log in and you play.

So apparently you can't play unless you have a Netflix account.

I'm just assuming they won't let you go forward.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which makes sense.

I mean, you know, Netflix, obviously since they, you know, footed the bill to make the game, they want to track whoever's going to be opening and everything.

So that makes total sense, but just so that everybody knows.

Yeah.

In the know let's do in the know now, as everybody knows, uh, because you had a couple of links to that, that clicks keyboard and that external keyboard with the iPhone.

I wanted to do a couple of tips where I just, I have one tip that I want to share today.

Well, I guess it'll be two.

Cause if you don't know this, this is a good one.

Uh, this is on an iPhone keyboard.

So I'm going to pull up my notes app here just so that I have some text in here.

Now, most people, hopefully, you know, this, if you want to move your cursor around, you can tap and hold a finger on the space bar on your on-screen keyboard.

And that turns the on-screen keyboard on your iPhone into a track pad.

As long as you keep your finger on the, that space bar, you can basically all the keyboard goes away and it's just kind of a gray track pad is what we call it, which is really nice.

And you can then just move.

I usually just use my thumb on there and then I can move the cursor around.

If you wanted to put the cursor in a different place, I use this constantly throughout the day, Jeff, if I'm like, you know, you wanted to fix a word that got corrected in a text message or something, I'm constantly using that.

But here's another thing that I think I had known, or I had, had landed on this, but it was nice to remind myself, let's say you want to select text.

So anytime you have a blinking cursor and you want to select text in the past, we had a tap and hold on the actual text itself, and then it would select that word.

And then you could use the little bubbles, you know, to broaden that or expand the selection or so.

You can also, by the way, double tap on a word or triple tap and to select an entire paragraph or sentence.

And those good as well.

But here's something that I did not know.

If you want to select text, as if you were using a mouse cursor, tap and hold on the space bar so that the keyboard goes into a track pad, then put, I usually put my other thumb down so that I have two fingers now on the track pad, but now move the first finger and it will actually then start to select the text that you're moving around.

So I had to practice with this a little bit.

So tap and hold so that your track pad appears on the phone.

Then I put my other thumb on the screen and then I now will move my first thumb and you can see that allows me to select text as if I had a mouse and cursor on there.

Wow.

It's like a, it's like a two handed.

That works really well.

I know.

Isn't it pretty cool?

How did I not know that?

Thank you.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

It's like, I knew that there were a way that you could do some other things with that track pad, but I just didn't know.

And you have to have both hands to really do this.

I mean, I guess you could use two fingers on here, but if you, you know, tap and hold your track pad and now put a second, if you just start trying to slide a second finger on there, it doesn't work.

Right.

But you have to put the second finger on and then move the first finger.

So let me just say something on this.

You don't need to go.

If you don't go into track pad mode, you can always just double click on a word and it will be selected.

And then you can click on the little things and extend that out.

But if you're having difficulty getting that initial cursor in space, this chip that you've just described, if I'm understanding it, it allows you to be very precise and exactly where you want that person to be.

Yeah, that is interesting.

It's something to play with.

Huh?

Interesting.

Good.

So just, I mean, to me, the onscreen iPhone keyboard has so many kind of hidden things in there, you know, that over the years I know you and I have experimented with it.

You know, they've got hidden symbols under there and characters and stuff.

And it just, to me, I always have to go back sometimes and read through and remind myself of so many things.

And this was a, this was an interesting one.

So that's my tip for the day.

Good tip.

I like it.

My tip for the day is to find an app that you use a lot with an external keyboard and learn some of these external keyboard shortcuts.

We talked about that article earlier today from Gadget Hacks that has it.

One of them, for example, is if you're in the Notes app, which is an app that I use all the time.

I love the Apple Notes app.

There are some great, if you have an external keyboard, whether it's an iPhone or an iPad, the Notes has got all these cool functions to it.

One of the functions that I like in the Notes app is very, I will often make a list with like little check boxes next to them, you know, like a little circle that you can click off.

Right.

Or sometimes I will create a bulleted list just to make things look organized.

And there are shortcuts that you can do that.

And so if you sort of internalize them, you can just very quickly do it.

So to quickly do a checklist, if you're typing, you know, you're using your external keyboard and you're typing in the Notes app, if you do shift command L, it will get like L, like think of the word list.

It will immediately give you a checklist so that as you're typing, there's a little box next to you for the checklist, and then you hit return twice to get out of it.

But that way you can make a list of things like a grocery list or whatever else you're going to later go check off.

That's really useful.

And then another one, sometimes I don't want to check things off.

I just want to have the organization of having bullets on a list.

And the way you do that is shift command seven and shift command seven may not make sense if you're looking at a PC keyboard.

Like when I'm looking at the keyboard that I have right now, I just see the number seven and the ampersand sign.

But I know I don't have it.

But if I have an, um, on the Apple keyboard, traditionally the way that you would create a bullet on an Apple keyboard is option seven.

And so because people have been doing that for decades, since the 1980s, Apple has decided enough people in their brain associate the number seven with a bullet.

I certainly do that.

If you do shift command seven, it gets you into a bulleted list mode in the notes app.

So it's just a quick thing.

If you're, if you know, it gives you a little bit more of a power user.

I'm typing something in the notes app.

I say, you know, here are four things to consider.

You do a quick shift command seven in the bullet mode, type in your four things with your bullets, hit return twice, and you're back into the regular text.

And that's a lot faster than pausing, tapping on the screen, change in the format, go over to select bullets, everything else.

And so it's just an example of what we were talking about before that you just internalize a few of these.

There really goes.

And I mentioned one last one too, because it works across lots of platforms.

If you want to insert a link, like, you know, like a web link or whatever, command K, command K does it in the notes app.

And that should be somewhat easy to remember because I'm pretty sure on my PC and Microsoft word, I want to say it's control K or control shift K or something like that.

But the word K is often used for a web links.

So if, and in fact, this is actually a useful thing.

You can use a notes app to like, this is my note on a subject.

And yet for this particular subject, I'm going to include a link to an external webpage so that when I later go back to it, it's almost like keeping like a list of bookmarks, but instead of keeping it listed in Safari, you can have it in the notes app.

And I often find that's useful because I might be planning a trip and I'm like, okay, this is a webpage for the vineyard that I want to go visit, or this is a webpage for the hotel or whatever else.

You can just take those links and you can put it right there in the notes app.

And when you do command K, a little pop-up thing comes up.

In fact, I'll do it right now.

And a note, I can do a little pop-up and it will say, command K, and it's got a place link to.

And so that's where I paste, you know, my URL.

And then if I want to put a name on top of it, I can.

So that way, instead of seeing the long URL, it will just have like hotel and you can click on that word hotel, you know, just like a, a, a, a, a.

That's what I do with all the time.

On a webpage.

And so it's so easy to do.

So just, again, there's a million of these commands, but those are a couple, if you use the notes app a lot, as I know many of us do, if you can just internalize one, two, or three of those shift command L for checklist, shift command seven for bulleted list and command K for adding a link.

Those are really great shortcuts.

Yeah.

I use that command K or I guess control K I think is what it is on the PC.

I do that in, like you said, Jeff, many different things for like, even like you send an email.

If you, I call it an embedded link, right?

Just so you said, it's like, here's the link to the hotel instead of copying and pasting, you know, that huge link that might, you know, go for like a couple of lines or so you just select the word hotel.

You can do this in notes or email or whatever, and then you do the command K and then it's, and then you can paste the link into that box then that pops up.

And then it just has that word hotel as the link.

And that works out so well, you know, just as a much cleaner interface and you can click the word hotel and instead, you know, it just goes to the link that you had in there.

But anyway, that's a great, great tip on there.

Great stuff all around.

Lots of keyboard stuff today, which I like.

We're always using the keyboard.

We are.

That's fantastic.

All right, Jeff, I think that's, that's great.

Lots of good tips today.

Lots of good stuff, even though I didn't think it was going to be that big of a, of a news week, but man, there's always more stuff to talk about.

And I always enjoy talking about it with you, Jeff, and we'll talk with you next week then.

Thanks, Brett.

Bye-bye everybody.