In the News
In the News
98: Apple’s Canary Trap, The Final Cut for iPad, and Classical Music Magic
Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/vPCQ1kdoCCg
In the News blog post for May 12, 2023:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2023/05/in-the-news675.html
- Apple Can Sting!
- Final Cut on the iPad!
- Not Yet 17 … but 16.5
- An $89 Pencil
- Where Y’at? Catching Bank Robbers
- Ivory Polish
- Classical Music Magic
- Mapping the Tips
- Extra Entertainment - Silo’s Foundation
- Brett’s iTip: Sort by Distance on Maps
- Jeff’s iTip: Displaying Siri Text on Apple Watch
Ed Hardy | Cult of Mac: Apple busts major iOS 17 leaker with spycraft ‘canary trap’
Jason Snell | Six Colors: Final Cut and Logic arrive on iPad: Questions and (some) answers
Chance Miller | 9to5Mac: iOS 16.5 to be released next week; here’s everything new
Glenn Fleishman | TidBITS: AirTag in the News: NYPD Recommends, Apple and Google Propose Industry Tracking Standard
Chance Miller | 9to5Mac: AirTag credited with helping investigators locate $1.1M in cash stolen from armored truck
Chance Miller | 9to5Mac: Apple Watch helps save woman’s life after collapsing in a hotel room from a ruptured aorta
Filipe Espósito | 9to5Mac: Ivory for Mastodon gets updated with Safari Extension and other enhancements
Joe Rossignol | MacRumors: Shazam Now Supports Apple Music Classical
D. Griffin Jones | Cult of Mac: 8 secret features in Apple Maps
Brett’s iTip: When I search for a restaurant in either Google Maps or Apple Maps, I usually select “Sort by Distance” so I can see what’s closest (default is “sort by relevance”). Wish I could set this as default, but haven’t found that setting. Also in Google Maps, I use the “Measure Distance” tool that lets me drop multiple points to get an accurate measurement of the total distance from point to point.
Jeff’s iTip: Words to the Wise: Displaying Siri text on the Apple Watch. In the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, go to Siri - Siri Responses. Or on the Apple Watch: Settings app - Siri - Siri Responses. You can “Always Show Siri Captions” ON / OFF (Show what Siri says on the screen) or “Always Show Speech” ON / OFF (Show a transcription of your speech on screen).
Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com
Welcome to In the News for May the 12th, 2023.
I am Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.com
And I'm Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.
Hey, Brett.
Good to see you, Jeff.
You know, one of the one of my favorite things watching on Apple TV is like a lot of detective stories, you know, spy thrillers.
And reading your blog post today made me think, you know, Apple doesn't really have to look outside of their own internal office to come up with the next spy thriller.
What an incredible, weird, but amazing story today about a sting operation that Apple basically had inside their offices today.
Just crazy.
I learned a new term too.
I don't know if it's a real term, but the article that Ed Hardy wrote for Cult of Mac uses the word canary trap.
And apparently he says that Tom Clancy, who of course knows a little thing or two about espionage, right, right, coin the term.
And the idea, I guess, is that if you're trying to figure out who is your leak, you and you suspect 10 different people, you tell 10 different versions to 10 different people.
And then whichever version gets out there, whatever canary is released, I suppose, then you know who your leaker is.
And apparently, and again, even I guess this, like I said, is a rumor, too, because we don't know for sure this is all true.
But according to what somebody posted it on, on Reddit or something like that, Apple had somebody that was leaking information, and they wanted to to find out who it was.
And one of the rumors that's been a rumor for a while now is that Apple was gonna release new versions of Final Cut Pro and of Logic Pro for the iPad.
Everybody's thought that that might be coming sometime soon.
And so what Apple did is the people that they thought may have been the leakers, they told each one of them different release dates.
And you know the funny thing about this, I saw this rumor last week, Brett, and you may have too.
- I think I did too.
- I saw this rumor last week and it said that Final Cut Pro was gonna come out this year and that Logic Pro would come out next year.
And when I saw that rumor, I thought to myself, hmm, it seems weird to me because if they're ready with one, why would the other one not be out at the same time.
To have a full year later, it just seemed, I mean, again, what do I know.
I have no idea, but it just seemed a little odd to me.
But I saw that rumor, but it turned out that, of course, that was fake because both products were announced this week as we'll talk about in a second.
But they told different dates to different people with an apple.
So as soon as this rumor got out there, they're like, we know where this came from.
It came from this one woman.
And then apparently they figured out that it was her, her, her, her, her brother who had linked the rumor, which is interesting to me because in the posts that he writes on Reddit or whatever it was, he's like, you know, my sister hates me because she got fired.
You know, basically she lost her job at apple, which is a company that many people would love to be able to work for.
She lost her job because her brother decided to squeal post on the internet, which she had told him in private.
So it's an interesting tale, but I mean, it also just shows you that Apple takes this stuff seriously.
And again, you know, as a, as a lawyer, you know, I completely understand, you know, the idea of privacy and confidentiality and that you, you know, you can't have people leak stuff.
You just can't.
And so I, I totally get where Apple's coming from on this stuff.
You know, they're doing it just because they love to hold all the surprises for themselves because they want to be able to surprise people and control the narrative and tell the stories they want to tell it.
So so yeah, it was a fascinating story.
As many of our listeners know, anytime that somebody has some kind of a scoop or dirt on Apple, that gets a lot of eyeballs on the interwebs.
And so anybody that could glean something from that.
And I feel like, just like a brother and sister, I have no idea how this played out, but the brother's like, "Hey, so what are you working on.
What's new.
Can you tell me.
" It's just the way the siblings interact.
She must have been just saying some things maybe that she was working on.
The other thing in this, this is a screenshot in the story that you're referencing here where the leaker basically posted, I think you're right, it's on Reddit or somewhere.
- Here we go, MacRumors, that's where he posted it, MacRumors.
- Exactly.
He was just saying, "Hey, it's not going well.
Apple is bringing lawsuits against both of us individually.
" This is what he says.
We don't know the truth of it.
I guess one thing that the legal mind in me, Jeff, he said, I'm going to, I'm going to delete this account and, you know, delete everything right now.
And I'm thinking, Whoa, Whoa, wait, wait, wait a minute.
Now, if there's a lawsuit involved, you might need to preserve some of that information on there.
And I feel like discovery, I know I've always got your eDiscovery hat on there, Brett, but it's like, you know, it's just to your point that you're saying it's like, if you are working at Apple and sure enough, this, uh, the sister here did sign a non-disclosure agreement, right.
when you sign your employment agreement, there are very specific terms that are very well known that you are not allowed to share information, confidential information outside of the company.
And hey, if you thought that, you know, maybe that's just part and parcel of a regular employment agreement, you might wanna think twice if you're going to be working for Apple there.
What a crazy story, but interesting.
Because that leads us into the next story.
I mean, some of this is true, just like you said, they actually did release Final Cut Pro on the iPad, which like you said, I think many of us kind of knew it was coming.
We just didn't know, I didn't know it was going to come this early, but it's amazing.
This is like a professional grade piece of software, Jeff, that has never been on kind of like a mobile device.
It's always been made for the Mac, Mac Pro, hopefully.
And now it's on the iPad Pro.
That's some big news.
- Yeah.
The announcement is big news and the implications, I think are even more interesting.
So just in terms of, let me just start on the announcement itself, totally looking forward to it because I have used things like iMovie and clips on my iPhone and my iPad before.
And they're nice ways to do some quick things with video.
And you know, sometimes I take a video of my daughter doing some sporting event and I put a little quick video together and post it on Facebook or something like that.
And it's fun to do stuff like that.
But having the power of Final Cut Pro, even if it's not a hundred percent the same as the version that's on the Mac, but if it has like a large number of the features And it sounds like this is not going to be completely a feature complete, but it's going to have a lot of good ones, plus some new features that don't even exist on the desktop version.
So that's going to be great that you'll be able to do some real powerful editing right there on your iPad.
And I have, you know, I learned this through photography that I can edit photos on my Mac and sometimes I do, but I actually enjoy editing photos on my iPad because I can use my Apple pencil to very specifically clean things up.
It's very precise.
And there's just something about holding the screen in my hand and I can sort of zoom in and see it.
And so all the reasons that I really enjoy working with photos on an iPad, I think working with videos on an iPad, although a different skill, I think, I think it will be interesting.
I think it'll be equally satisfying.
So I'm really excited for this announcement for Final Cut Pro.
I don't use logic, although I mean, I do enjoy playing music on the piano.
I don't record music and anything like that.
So but I understand how people that are into recording music and recording different, different instruments to layer one on top of the other and different tracks, you know, final cut, I mean, logic pro will be very exciting to them for the same reasons that final cut pro is interesting to me.
So great announcement.
I can't wait to use this stuff.
It comes out on, what is it.
The 20, um, I put it in here and I forget it's, it's very soon.
It's this month that they, that it comes out, um, the 23rd, so I cannot wait.
So that's interesting.
Okay.
Implications here.
First of all, this is the first time that Apple has released professional software for the iPad, really of any kind.
So that's really interesting.
We've had, I mean, you can argue about whether things like pages, I guess Keynote would be professional too, but in terms of its professional stuff and second of all, just, and related to that, it's a subscription.
So this is new for Apple, you know, right now, Keynote, pages, numbers, those are all completely free.
And now Apple is saying, and on the computer, I should mention it for people who don't know, Final Cut, for example, has been interesting because you had to buy it on the computer, but it was a one-time purchase and Apple has never in the history of the product charged for upgrades.
I think that when Final Cut first came out, it was like $500 or something like that.
And then a couple of, a number of years ago, very number of years ago, they changed it to $200.
And that's when I bought it because I figured for 200 bucks, this is something I'm going to try.
And I've now used it for so many years that I've way beyond gotten my $200 out of it.
But now Apple is doing subscription prices, which of course we're seeing, you know, all over the iPad for things.
And so now you'll pay 50 bucks a year for this.
And I like the idea of subscription pricing.
You know, maybe it doesn't worry me for Apple as much as other companies, but I, if I like a product, I want to pay for it continually so that the developer has an incentive to be improving it continually.
So that aspect of it is interesting.
And then one more thing I'll say is that this announcement totally could have been announcement at the WWDC conference next month.
And the fact that Apple said, we're just gonna put this in a press release a month before makes me think, wow, if this big story is not big enough for WWDC, it gets me excited that they've got even bigger stories for next month at WWDC.
So it's just a, you know, lots of implications here.
- Totally agree on that.
Honestly, that was probably one of the most surprising things, I'm like, the crowd at WWDC in just a few weeks, It was a perfect opportunity to release something like this and get a lot of buzz.
A lot of people talking about it now is still getting a lot of buzz, but it's just like, hmm, why are you know, I heard somebody else say, you know, that Apple is, quote, clearing the decks, right.
They're just kind of getting some things out there so that they will have some extra time, maybe to talk more about some other devices or things that are coming out.
And I know for those of us that follow Apple, that's that's a that's a little exciting.
And to your point quickly on the idea like we've always had iMovie on the iPad like you mentioned we've also had GarageBand on the iPad and iPhone right.
And so just what you were talking about like on the professional versions of that you know I've seen people do amazing stuff with iMovie and amazing recordings even with GarageBand and it's like I assume those apps are still going to be available why wouldn't they be you know, for both the iPad and for the iPhone, and maybe even for some, you know, lesser iPads, right.
'Cause this really only works on iPads Pros here, iPad Pros, but it's like, now you have the option that if you want it to upgrade to something that's gonna be a whole lot more on the quote professional grade level, then you can use Final Cut Pro and Logic now, which is just amazing.
- And I'll tell you, Brett, as someone that's made that transition, 'cause I used to use iMovie for years and years and years and years and years on my Mac.
I mean, I want to say going back to the late 1990s and when I made the transition from iMovie to Final Cut Pro on my Mac, it was a little rough going at first because it is far more sophisticated and I found myself lost a lot.
But then once you get over that hurdle and you get a little bit more familiar with it, the things that you can do, I mean, iMovie is great because it's quick and easy and you can use a template, but in Final Cut Pro, like it's like, it's like Photoshop.
I mean, it's almost limitless in what you can do and it just, it just opens up a whole new world.
So it's great that we've had GarageBand, it's great that we've had iMovie and the iPad, but if history serves as a prediction of what we're gonna see, I suspect that this is gonna open up a whole new wave of things that you can do on the iPad.
- You know, another quick thing I wanna mention, I didn't wanna wait for professional movie apps on the iPad.
So I went out looking, and I think I've mentioned this in the podcast before, I found an app called LumaFusion, L-U-M-A, Fusion, LumaFusion.
And I gotta tell you, on the iPad, it was amazing, Jeff.
I loved using it for a lot of the things that I know, another story you linked to from Jason Snell talked about, just having that touch interface with being able to drag little clips around or being able to use your fingers with the Apple Pencil to be a lot more precise and like, you know, the timeline as it were.
And I'm a little nervous because LumaFusion was like, I think it was a $30 app, one time, $30, right.
And that was it.
Like they didn't have a subscription that you could pay for some additional professional things, but I didn't really need them.
And I'm like, okay, well, that's wonderful.
I don't know why Apple would, you know, wanna do all that work to bring maybe Final Cut Pro when LumaFusion is really good.
But we've seen that before as well.
We sometimes refer to it as Sherlocking, right.
Apple's gonna have a fantastic app, but LumaFusion was really good.
And then the other thing quickly, just my only quick gripe on this, Jeff, and maybe this just goes to my cheapskate proclivities.
I see that it is a subscription.
it's 499 a month, which I guess you could start it and then stop it rather if you only needed it for one or two months or so, or like you said, $49 a year.
I'm a little upset that this isn't included in like an Apple One subscription, Jeff.
I don't know, I mean, I get it, I understand why.
And I can see that this is like you said, this is where everybody's going and Apple is just following the trends as it were.
And it's worth it, I'm not saying that it's not, but it's like, man, I'm already paying, what $32 a month now for Apple one.
And I love it.
I would even pay another one or $2 a month, you know, an Apple one, just to be able to have access to some of this on there as well.
But anyway, - Well, I don't know about one or $2, but I mean, who knows, maybe there could be an Apple one pro in the future.
That would be, you know, instead of paying $50 for each of these, you pay $75 more and you get both of them.
Or who knows, I mean, who knew what the numbers are.
So is, you know, that's certainly a possible possibility in the future.
- I'll link to this other story too, from Jason Snow that you linked to today.
I don't know if there's anything, just some good questions that he answers.
This is somebody that's been working on a professional level on the iPad for a long time.
And I thought he had some good insight on this too.
- Yeah, good, good questions and answers.
- So we're not quite ready for iOS 17, but we may see some hints at it at WWDC.
Typically, I think Apple does start talking about it 'cause that usually comes out maybe in the fall or something like that.
So while we don't have iOS 17 yet, You did link to a story that 16.
5 is set to be released.
What in just a few days, maybe a week or two or something right before WWDC.
- Exactly.
Because, and I guess the only reason that Apple announced this is because they announced that they had some new watch bands, some new pride watch bands, which of course come with different faces that work with them.
And they said that, you know, the watch band and the associated face will be available when iOS 16.
5 comes out next week.
And so I have, Hey, I was 16.
5 is coming out next week.
It doesn't look like it's got any big changes.
The one big change is that the way that the Apple News app treats sports.
I'm sure there'll be some other updates.
I mean, as you said, Brett, we are getting so close to iOS 17 that nobody expects to have big new features on iOS 16.
It would not surprise me if this is the final release of iOS 16, you know, the 16.
5, 'cause we're only a month away, but then again, well, actually I shouldn't say that because iOS 17 won't come into the fall.
So we may see more iOS 16, but I don't expect a lot more, I don't expect many more features to be.
It's gonna probably be bug fixes and, you know, little, you know, fixing things at the edges and stuff like that.
- Yeah.
- So, but anyway, look out for your phone, your watch and everything else to get an update next week, someday, you know, they usually do it on like Tuesdays in the middle of the day.
- Yeah, it says May 16th, next Tuesday.
- Oh, I didn't realize that at the actual date.
- Yep, yep, they had a date on there.
- So what day is it.
- Yeah.
- There you go, Tuesday, that's what I guessed.
- Yeah, exactly.
If you are as excited about Final Cut Pro coming to the iPad as Jeff and I obviously are, then you're gonna need an Apple Pencil.
Well, you don't have to have one, right.
but an Apple Pencil, especially the second generation is an excellent addition tool to have with you.
And I love it always when you point out there's links when it goes on sale.
It retails for $130.
It is on sale right now on Amazon for $89.
And it looks like it's still on sale.
Every time we talk about this, Jeff, I go to the page and it's like, everybody's already gone and bought everything out.
But it looks like it's still on sale for $89.
That is a great deal.
- I'm always afraid when you click those links to see that the sale that I noticed last night is now gone.
One more thing about the pencil that I'll mention is that in the context of Final Cut Pro on the iPad, Apple said, and so let me back up a second, the most recent version of the iPad Pro, which I don't own, but which came out, I think last year, it added a new feature that even if your pencil is not actually touching the screen, if your pencil is just hovering above the screen, it could do certain things.
And at the time, there were, at the time of the announcement, it was limited.
There were a few things you could do, like you could preview what a brushstroke would look out in the screen.
But I've always been curious, when are people gonna do even more with this hover feature.
Well, Final Cut Pro for the iPad has a cool feature.
When you're dealing with clips in a video editor, like Final Cut Pro, you often wanna sort of scrub through the clip just to sort of see, you know, here's what's going on in this clip, here's what's going on in the next clip.
Two thirds through is when the person, you know, drops the ball.
So that's what I wanna focus on or whatever you wanna do.
And so apparently you'll be able to hover with your pencil over the clip.
And as you're not touching the screen, but just hovering, you can scrub through it.
That sounds like a cool new feature.
I don't have the new iPad Pro.
And so for the first time, I'm gonna be really jealous of wow, I wish I had the newest iPad Pro because I've got the generation earlier than that.
So, you know, I guess at some point in the future, I'll get a new iPad and I'll have the hover feature and it'll be great.
And then I'll be like, oh, well, of course, everybody has to have the hover feature.
But for right now, I will be jealous.
So bravo to Apple for finding a new use for the Apple Pencil.
I'll say one more thing too, that this Apple Pencil sale is a great price.
If you don't have one, you should get it.
I have heard zero rumors about this.
And of course we all know about rumors as we just talked about it.
But I would love just, I can't even tell you what I would want it to do, but I would love it if there's a third generation Apple Pencil in our pipeline.
You know, maybe one that has a second button because right now, well, I guess right now you could, you could hover, that's one thing.
You can tap and that's another thing.
But maybe if there was like a button on it so that I could do a third type of thing, I don't know what it would do, but I love the pencil so much that if it had even more features in the third generation, I'd be interested.
And you know, part of me would love to think that the reason that Amazon's selling these cheaply is they're clearing them out because new ones are coming out.
I seriously love that Amazon has any idea at all what Apple is doing.
They're probably just, you know, having a sale for their own reasons.
But anyway, those are my thoughts on the pencil.
- It's time for our, where are you at segment.
- Several stories here, I love this.
First of all, last week we talked about that Apple and Google were, and maybe some other companies, right.
There was a few other companies in here that were really just talking about, "Hey, should we collectively get together "and talk about, you know, "what about people using some of these trackers, "whether they're AirTags or, you know, some Android devices.
" Like, what if people are using these for the wrong reasons, right.
Even going quasi-stalking aspects.
You had a great story here from Glenn Fleischman at the tidbits where they're giving some additional details about this.
I'll make sure that we link to that in the show notes.
We talked about that quite a bit last time.
I remember.
Yeah.
All sorts of details.
I mean, just for one thing, he was pointing out that there's lots of different devices that can track you.
And as part of the new standard that Apple and Google are going to agree to, and then everybody in the industry will follow, I'm sure is, you know, if the device is a certain size so that it would be hard to spot, then it's got to have these features.
And if the device is a little bit larger, like, you know, something like an iPad or something, then it's not required to have the features.
But I mean, it would be great for them to adopt these standards.
And then all the third parties that make accessories, even if you're not buying the air tag from Apple, that, you know, they would want to take advantage of the features.
So they would, it would be great if a couple of years from now, everyone in the industry has these agreed to standards to make them even safer, reduce the risk of these devices being used for stocking.
Also at the flip side, maybe make them even useful for other features because they'd be more cross-platform.
So this is one of those times where I love to see that the industry is working together.
And Glenn Fleischman had some, some great details that I did not know when you and I spoke about this last week.
If you do have some Apple air tags and you want to know some additional uses for them, know that now they can help you track down bank robbers.
What a crazy story this was.
It's like a, what is, these are Brinks armored truck, right.
They got held up by a couple of folks, but apparently Brinks, good for you, hid some air tags in some of their money bags, right.
Exactly.
And so they were able to track the robbers to their location and recover, arrest them and recover the money.
Amazing.
Air tags for the win.
I mean, that's the thing.
It's the, you know, you said money bags, which is what I saw too.
I think the article actually says money bins, but I have to admit, when I imagine this story, my imagination is that there are bags that have a dollar sign on the outside, just like the cartoons.
Exactly.
- Exactly, exactly.
And they're full of cash, exactly.
But how clever that Brinks had dropped some air tags into some of those.
And so they just watched the, I guess it was two brothers that were the thieves here.
They just watched them go back to their house.
And once they were at home, they called the police and said, "Hello, police, these guys have our money.
" - It's just like, I mean, it's Brinks, Jeff.
And I'm thinking to myself, okay, I love air tags, but there are some other much more sophisticated tools out there to track money, but yet they're resorting to air tags.
I mean, I think that's cool.
And honestly, just a little weird at the same time.
- It is a little weird.
You would think that they would have some other technology to use for that.
- Couple of other stories you mentioned, which again, amazing and really beefs up the reason that you might want to consider wearing an Apple watch, especially for, well, I was even going to say for your elderly relatives, but I don't even know if that was the case here.
One story you linked to here.
- Both of those stories.
- There was a son was talking about how his mother was in a hotel room on a business trip, fell down from a ruptured aorta.
And while she was, I guess, unconscious or non-responsive, the Apple Watch detected the fall, right.
And already called the paramedics so that when she was found, I think by a friend or somebody else in the hotel, the ambulance was already on its way.
Incredible.
- Yeah, I mean, that's a story.
It turned out that she was able to regain consciousness enough to text one of her friends who was also in the hotel.
But by the time the friend got there, like you said, the ambulance was already on its way because it's not his job.
And you know, that's one of these situations where, you know, you don't think about it, but I mean, I go on business trips.
I know that you do it even more than I do, Brett.
And you know, when you're in a strange city, you're by yourself, no one's checking in on, you know, have you reported, you know, have you talked to your wife yet today.
People don't think about it 'cause you're doing other stuff.
And so it's nice to know that if you just fall down in a hotel room, the Apple watch can be there to protect you, that's great.
And as you might imagine, the doctor said that she had a ruptured aorta, and one of the keys to treatment, and to saving her life, I guess, ultimately, was the immediate transport to the hospital.
And in a similar weird story, this was out of Minnesota, I think, on that, that this gentleman was out in his, looks like it was like a cul-de-sac in his area where his house was, and there was this car that was doing donuts or something.
He goes out, he gets hit by the car, falls unconscious, but yet his Apple watch calls emergency services because it detected the fact that he was fallen.
And I think if I'm not mistaken in the story, it even texted, sent a text to his wife, right inside the house so that they were able to come out and make sure that he was okay.
And then ultimately he had to go to the hospital.
He ended up being okay.
He's got some, some ribs that are probably a little sore, but, uh, just incredible again from the Apple watch.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the thing.
You're in front of your own house.
I mean, you think it's safe if you hear a noise to like walk out the front of your own house and just sort of look into the street to see what's going on.
And then the load does, you know, this teenager who was, you know, driving crazily hits him and stuff.
But yeah, I mean, we've mentioned this before, but you can, you can control your emergency contacts so that if you fall, you know, is Apple watch going to call nine one one or wherever you are in the world, it may be a different number.
And is it going to call your wife.
It's going to call your kid.
you know, you can configure all that stuff and you should configure it because nobody ever expects to be the person who falls in a hotel room because of aorta or, you know, gets hit in front of their own house because of a crazy teenage driver.
So it's nice, you know, that you can get some protection from that stuff.
Goodness.
- That's the end of our where you at segment.
I love these stories that you have.
Now to a totally different topic on here, but in the ever weird story, the ever increasing weird story of Twitter, if you're still using Twitter, good on you.
I still follow it quite a bit, but you and I, Jeff, have talked several weeks ago about Mastodon, which is another service that you can switch to, and a lot of people are doing that right now.
But one of the best apps available for getting on the Mastodon service or servers is called Ivory from a company that we used to love anyway, from TapBots, right.
They used to make TweetBot, which I love, by the way.
I still have that icon on my phone.
And do you see it.
I still have the app, even though when you open it, tells you it's no longer available, but they changed the picture to like a little halo over the head of the Tweety bird.
But anyway, Ivory for Mastodon, it's a great app, beautiful app.
They're doing a fantastic job at Tapbots and you link to a story today where Felipe Esposito was just talking about what's new and sort of the updates.
Yeah, and the big updates is the way that it handles media.
You know, a big thing when you're looking through your timeline is people link to pictures and videos and some sort of stuff.
It's got much better of things for handling that.
It also does a better job of linking to other posts.
We're getting to the point where the ivory client for Mastodon is slowly but surely getting to be just as good as Tweetbot was for Twitter, which is great.
And if any of y'all are on Mastodon, we have an account for the In the News podcast that you can follow if you just wanna get like an update when there's new videos.
And I've got one for iPhone JD.
There's still a very, just a small portion, a small fraction of the number of people on Mastodon that are on Twitter.
But if it's something that you're interested in, it's there and we're using it, so.
- I remember one of the first like party tricks that I would love to show off on the iPhone, Jeff, was a little app called Shazam.
- Indeed.
- And you could open it up, it would be listening to whatever song was playing on the radio or something, and it would tell you what the song was.
And I just remember everybody was, wow, that's amazing.
It was so good, in fact, that Apple subsequently acquired Shazam and they kind of, it's still a separate app even, right Jeff.
But you can, I invoke it from Control Center.
Like it's sort of baked in now into the iOS system which I still love.
But it was always good for mostly like non-classical music.
Like I did it for jazz, I did it for pop and rock and everything, but you link to a story where Shazam has now been updated by Apple so that it can support Apple Music Classical which was a different app that was released not too long ago we talked about.
I'm just thrilled to see that Apple is continuing to put some resources into Shazam and the capabilities here.
- In some ways, you can even argue that it makes more, I mean, not more sense, but it's a good thing because I guess if Shazam hears something that's a rock tune or any other type of genre, it will know that it's an Apple music.
But if Shazam hears something that's classical music, it will open it up in the Apple classical app, which is good because a lots of times, you know, we all know that there's this classical music that we all, you know, I joked today, you know, dum dum dum dum, which I always think of as Beethoven's fifth.
But of course, that's not technically the name of it.
It's Beethoven's Symphony No.
5 and whatever it is.
And the only reason I even know that is because Shazam would then bring me there and say, oh, here's the actual title and stuff like that.
So many of these times, there's this classical tune that, of course, we all know, because it's been repurposed for movies and commercial jingles and everything else.
But if you actually listen to it, you could then open, say, oh, that's what song this is.
And this happens to be by Chopin or this happens to be by Mozart.
So I actually think it's pretty useful.
I will tell you that when I wrote this last night for this post, it then got me thinking about classical, the Apple classical music app again, because I hadn't used it in about a week or two.
And I noticed that there was a playlist.
They have like a list of essentials.
Okay.
The essential playlist.
And there was one called classical film score essentials and it's great fun.
The very first track on it is the 20th century Fox fanfare, you know, you know, the movies, it has like the main title, the star Wars theme, it's got the Franz Zimmer theme for interstellar.
It's got the godfather theme, American beauty.
I haven't heard the American beauty theme song in a long time.
That's a great theme song.
Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings that I haven't even gotten to this far, the Joker, the hours, Schindler's list.
So if you want just songs that I guess technically they're classical music, but I just just think of them as being like great movie themes.
This is a fun playlist.
And what I mentioned before, what I like about classical music is I can listen to classical music like this.
And because there's no words, I can work at the same time.
Whereas if I'm listening to music with words, I hum along and it distracts me from getting work done.
So, so this is just sort of another plug.
If you subscribe to Apple music and you haven't played around with the Apple music classical app yet, there's some, there's some cool stuff in there.
- I'm looking through here.
I need to move the, it's a separate app, right.
So I have an Apple Music app and I have, I mean, this one, they just call this classical, but I feel like I got to move this icon now back to like my first or second page just so that I don't forget it exactly what you're talking about, Jeff.
And I'm glad that you mentioned that because in Shazam, when I listen to any kind of a music, I go in a restaurant, I'm like, "Ooh, what is that.
I like that.
" - No, I do that all the time, yeah.
- It gives me the ability to say, I can open in the Shazam app and it gives me some information, but then I can say you can open in the Spotify app, which I use a lot, or I can open in the Apple Music app.
And I'm glad that I have that capability.
But now, so what you're saying is with a classical piece that Shazam will hear it, and I can open that piece in Apple Music classical.
And I love that because now it just kind of comes full circle so that I can add that to like a playlist or something similar to that.
That's really cool, I like that.
From music apps to map apps.
This is a nice little set of tips that you included from a Cult of Mac.
This was who D Griffin Jones, eight secret features in Apple Maps.
Very nice.
- Yeah, and again, some of these you may already know about, but new things like, you know, navigating city and augmented reality, which you could do in some cities, switching between the satellite view and the sort of the map view, just because sometimes one makes more sense than the others.
I mean, some of these are things that have been out there for a long time, but it's a nice sort of reminder and different traffic views.
I mean, that's one that you may not realize that there's one view that gives you information on traffic and train, one view of the map that makes sense for driving, but a different view of the map that would make sense for walking around and a different view.
- Absolutely.
- And then they also had Lincoln here to some pictures of there's a couple of locations around the world, like airports and some malls where the map, they've actually mapped the inside of the building, not just the outside of the building.
- Absolutely.
nothing new here, but good reminders of things that are in the Maps app that you may not have remembered.
- And I will just say, I'm usually one on the side of going to Google Maps.
I know you go with Apple Maps, but two things quickly that I use that apply to both of these here, that first of all, I use that switching between the traffic kind of map, you know, for cars, for driving and the transit, 'cause I go to a lot of large cities and many times I would have to switch to a different app, like whatever the app would be for the San Francisco, you know, or the Chicago RT, whatever it is.
And it's like, now I just go in and say, no, I wanna see the layer of the transit.
And it literally tells me so that I know what train that I can take, you know, to downtown or whatever the case may be.
And I really enjoy having that.
And then second, I'm gonna say also, in fact, I see one of the pictures he's got here is Beachwood Place, which is very close to where actually I live at Ohio.
This is-- - Oh, I've never heard of it before.
- But maybe here in Ohio.
But I do love that indoor maps.
I used to have, when I would go down to an airport, I'm, you know, if I land and I want to see, well, okay, I'm hungry.
Like what am I, what can I eat.
Like what's going to be close to my gate.
And I used to have to go to like the United app, right.
Or I'd have to go to like a separate app that has the maps, the detailed maps of the airports.
And now it's pretty amazing, both in the Apple maps and in Google maps, I can just zoom in to the map with the airport aspect.
And it shows me everything that's there.
And I feel like that's even maybe a little more updated than some of the other apps.
So I'm glad that you linked to that.
It's good stuff.
In fact, speaking of Google Maps, which although I use Apple Maps a lot, I certainly use Google Maps too.
Google had its big conference this week.
Is it called Google I/O still.
I forget what it is.
- Something like that.
- I remember that they, I saw some of the news articles that they actually announced some new features for Google Maps.
And in fact, one of them was this thing that we were just talking about, about different views.
Like I think Google's got a new view coming out for Google Maps that's sort of designed for sort of a quasi between a satellite and a driving for something to make it better for driving and seeing around.
So you gotta love Google, that they've done such fantastic things with maps over the decades.
And I love that they're continuing to make it better.
So it looks something to look out for.
- Let's go to an entertainment segment.
We gotta think of a good name.
That's our homework for this next week, Jeff, because you are always good about linking to several of the things, mostly things that are happening on Apple TV+, but I've always enjoyed your recommendations for different shows, whether it's on HBO Max or just Max now, I guess, right.
or Disney or Netflix or any of these.
I know we talked about Foundation, which was a science fiction thriller that came, what, about a year ago now.
A lot of people were excited about it.
And then a lot of people were not so excited about it.
I remember when it came out.
I enjoyed it.
I liked the science fiction aspect.
But now they've released a trailer for season two.
I thought the second season was gonna come a little sooner than that, but this looks really good too.
And I'm looking out for that.
That's really cool.
- Yeah, this'll be a fun one.
And I really enjoyed watching that one.
And then the other sci-fi thing that I linked to was the show "Silo," which is a brand new one that just started a few weeks ago.
Have you watched any of the episodes yet, Bill.
- I haven't, no spoilers, because I've read through some of the books and I've been so excited about this one.
I can't wait.
- Oh, that's so good.
People have told me that the books are fantastic.
I had never heard of the books before.
And the show is, in fact, I think Apple may have released, they either released the first two episodes at once, or maybe by the time I got to it, there was already two episodes out.
But I watched the second episode and I was like, "I want more, I wanna binge it all right now of course, I have to wait.
So I'm very excited.
So far, it's been excellent.
It's been really, really good.
So and you mentioned that here, this is going to Netflix.
We're looking for a new show.
And again, you never have failed me on your recommendations, Jeff.
So maybe a next one on, you know, I love Kerry Russell so much.
I mean, I really love that show, The Americans that she was on years ago.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
But this show, The Diplomat is really great because it's in other countries.
So it's sort of fun to watch other stuff.
She's a fabulous actress.
I don't want to say too much about it to give it away.
But let's just say it's got some political intrigue.
It's got some sort of spy stuff.
And it's got Kerry Russell being here, Kerry Russell Best.
It also stars, her husband is the guy who was the star of a show on Amazon Prime, the name of which is, it was an alt history show where imagine the Germans had won World War II.
What was the name of the show.
I'm blanking on the name of the show.
It was a great show and I very much enjoyed watching it.
So I enjoyed watching it.
It's always fun when there's an actor that you enjoy in something and then you haven't seen them in a while and then you see him again.
It's like, hey, I get to see that person again.
So it was great.
So the actor is Rufus Sewell.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, what was the show.
Now I want to know what.
I'm sure I know the legend of Zorro.
Okay, that's not it.
That's probably not What was the one that he was in I know the show you're talking about Oh the man in the in the high man from the man from high castle in high castle man from a great show Yeah, that was a great show.
And then the last thing quickly you link to the story.
This will be interesting I just got recently got Disney Plus and and Hulu Um, I forget it's some kind of a package with a credit card or something I can't remember, but I got to tell you, I think we're hooked.
In fact, we've just been doing all of the Star Wars movies with my kids.
Like we finally watched.
Well, what I consider I think I mentioned this last week, we watched what I consider to be number six, but it's actually number three.
Right.
It's revenge of the anyway.
It was great.
And now we want to keep on going because they haven't seen all of the Mandalorian stuff and everything yet.
But interesting that Disney Plus and Hulu might merge into a single app.
Like you said in your post, doesn't make a lot of sense because I do also kind of consider them two different services, but we'll see.
I mean, the package that I have right now, at some point it became cheaper for me to sign up for a package that I get Disney plus and Hulu and ESPN plus.
I watch ESPN plus approximately never, absolutely never.
And to me, if somebody told me that they were going to merge the Hulu app and the ESPN app, I would be like, what are you talking about.
They're different things.
Hulu is Hulu and ESPN is ESPN.
So it's not that bizarre, but saying that we're going to merge, you know, Disney and Mickey mouse and star Wars and all that stuff with Hulu, because Hulu has often been low edgy.
It's got FX stuff in it.
I mean, I realized that there are places where they get close to each other, but I have really considered them to be separate services and I mean, whatever, I'm not getting paid the big bucks to make these decisions, but why someone thinks it makes sense to, to, to merge the apps.
It seems like it's going to make it harder for you to find what you want.
You'll have to go like different menus down to find things.
Right.
So, oh, wait, again, it seems bizarre to me, but they don't ask me these questions in the know.
Let's do it.
And because we were talking about maps, I have two quick ones.
First of all, sort by distance.
So when I whenever I travel, I go somewhere or, you know, we're out running errands and it's like, OK, we're hungry.
We want to get to a restaurant.
I love both in Google apps and in the Apple maps.
You can just go and say tap restaurants.
Right.
and it shows you restaurants, but most of the time I'm using Google Maps and the default listing is by what they call relevance, which means it's just like, here are like, I guess the highest rated, here's what most people are looking at, and that's nice sometimes, but really what I want many times is I want, what's the list of restaurants that are closest to me in order of closeness.
Does that make sense.
So that's sort by distance.
So I wish I could set this by default, but I haven't been able to find how to do this.
When I do it in Google Maps, I say restaurants, and then I immediately, there's a little dropdown that says sort by, and I just go sort by distance and done, and then it gives me exactly what I want.
And the same can be done in Apple Maps, by the way.
I think you just slide horizontally to the left, and there's like a sort by option and you can sort by distance.
So I love doing that all the time.
The second little tip that I have is only for Google Maps that I've been able to find here at least.
And I do this a lot when I'm in a different city and I can always say, I wanna walk from my hotel to this restaurant, right.
And I can obviously say, get directions and it shows me the directions, which is nice.
And typically it'll show me how far of a walk if it's 0.
2 miles or something like that.
But in Google Maps, I love this little tip that I have, that you can pull up a map wherever you are and you can tap and hold on the map and it basically drops a pin, right.
is kind of like the map nomenclature that you use.
It has just a little pin that it points in there.
But if you scroll up a little bit, there's a little tiny button called measure distance.
And I love this because it gives you like a little black dot that you can simply move the map around.
And I can do a very precise measurement like block by block or turn by turn, 'cause I'm just following the map.
And you can add points as you go.
So if like if I wanna walk to the library, I can say, okay, well, how far is it from my house, you know, to three houses down and then from there to the road, right.
And then from that road to the next driveway or something like that.
And I can drop all these little pins and that measure distance tool just tells me the total distance, usually in miles, 'cause that's what I'm looking at all there.
But again, it's not so much different than the directions button, which I'm using constantly.
But if I wanted something a little bit more precise where I couldn't, you know, they didn't have like a specific location where I was measuring a distance to, then I just use this little tool called measure distance.
That is in Google Maps.
I haven't been able to find something similar in Apple Maps, but those are my tips for the map tips today.
- Those are great.
I didn't know about either one of those.
And the first tip that you said, you mentioned it for Google Maps, but like, as you were talking, I did not, I had no idea this was in the Maps app.
We were just talking about here.
- Oh, good.
- So like what I did is I did a search for the word pizza, you know, to show pizza restaurants.
And I have a list of pizza restaurants, But I'm now seeing that there's a thing called, I can filter it and there's a bar that goes vertically and I can tap on open now, I can tap on all rated, top rated but one of these is called sort by and by default, it's sort by best match.
But I see that I can change that to sort by distance and sort by ratings.
Now, I don't know if I trust the ratings from Yelp or where they're getting it from, but distance is good.
So that's how I'm doing it.
So you do the sort by, you change it from best match to distance and you might get a pizza place that perhaps is not quite as good that is a little bit closer.
And if you're walking, maybe you don't care.
That's a cool tip.
I had no idea you could do that.
- Yeah, that's good.
And if somebody knows how to set that by default, like that's what I want almost every time.
I don't want relevance.
I don't want like the ratings.
I just want sort by distance, but I haven't been able to find that in the settings, how to set that by default, but it's just a couple of more taps.
It's not a problem.
- Cool feature.
So what I'm gonna talk about is, it makes me wanna say words to the wise.
So when you're using an Apple Watch and you're talking to Siri, there's two things happening.
First, you're gonna say something to Siri, which you hope is interpreted correctly.
And then Siri is going to say something to you.
But when I say, say something to you, I often, I always, in fact, a lot of people I know do the same thing.
I have sounds turned off on my Apple watch.
So when Siri speaks to me, I will hear her if I'm wearing AirPods.
But if I'm just using my Apple watch, I will see the result on my Apple watch without seeing the response.
And so let me give you an example.
Let's say that I say to my Apple watch, "Hey, you know who, what time is it.
" I mean, I guess I could look at the time too, but let's just say that I just say it out loud.
- Right, of course.
- Do I actually want to see on my watch screen, hey, you know, what time is it.
And by seeing my words, it's a way to double check that Siri got it correct, but it also sort of takes up space.
I mean, I know what I said, I don't need to see what I said.
So do I want to show that or do I not want to show that.
This setting I'm gonna talk about, you can do it.
And then likewise, when Siri shows the response to you, Siri is going to say, it is, you know, 922 AM, but then it's going to also show a clock that says 922 AM.
So do I need to see the words and the result, or do I just need to see the result.
So I didn't realize this, but as I was digging around, you can actually set this and you can set it in one of two ways.
If you use the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, you go to Siri and then Siri responses, or if you're on the Apple Watch itself, You could go to the settings app on the Apple watch and you can go to Siri and go to Siri responses.
And when you're in there, you'll see two options.
The first one is called always show Siri captions.
You can turn that on or off.
And that is showing what Siri says on the screen.
And again, if your volume is muted on your Apple watch, you may want to always see Siri's words on the screen 'cause otherwise you're not gonna see them at all unless you have AirPods in.
Second option is always show speech.
And you can turn that on or off.
And that shows the transcription of your speech on the screen, which is, like I said, it's useful for double checking that I got it correctly.
But sometimes it's actually, I don't want it on the screen.
In fact, one thing that's been bothering me sometimes is sometimes I will turn on Siri by accident without realizing it.
And then I look at my watch screen and it's got like the last two paragraphs of my conversation with my wife on there, which is a little freaky.
Not that it's gonna make it any less freaky if I don't see it, but maybe it won't bother me as much.
So anyway, just, you know, I don't have a recommendation for which setting is correct.
But what I do have a recommendation for is that you think about what makes more sense for you because I discovered this feature recently and now I'm thinking about which one I prefer.
And I'm sort of going back and forth.
I don't know where I'm gonna settle.
I've sort of gone back and forth, but I like that this is something you can control.
And I didn't realize until I found this setting that you can control it.
- I just, I like the fact that I know that it's there.
I have Siri captions turned off, but I have always show speech.
But I guess I just had never thought about it.
Now that you brought this up, I'm gonna be paying attention to it.
And maybe I'll turn that off too.
I'd like to be a little minimalist if I can, you know, on some of these things.
- Yeah.
- I just don't need to see that extra information, but.
- Exactly, exactly.
- Yeah, Jeff, excellent.
Like that.
Well, thank you everyone.
Hey, we are just so always so thankful for everyone that listens.
And if you like it and you're interested in helping us out, think of one person you could just forward the In The News website to.
It's inthenewspodcast.
com, I think is our website, correctly, Jeff.
And it just has a listing of all of the episodes that we've released.
So anyway, we just are always thankful for you guys listening.
So thanks for sticking with us.
And Jeff, always thank you as well, my friend.
We'll talk with you next week.
.