(upbeat music)

- Welcome to In the News for August the 25th, 2023.

I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Brett, this is episode 111.

That's a whole lot of ones.

We're number one three times over.

I like that.

- It would have been cool if it was November 11th.

You know, we can have a meeting

and do all kinds of stuff like that.

I'm just thinking.

Hey, real quick, we wanna say thank you

to our sponsors today at SaneBox.

We'll talk a little bit more about them in just a moment,

but you can go and find out more about them

at samebox.com/inthenews.

Really happy that they have been helping us

and I have been really enjoying the service.

If you're in the market for buying

any kind of Apple products,

you know, it's funny, the way I'm thinking about this, Jeff,

and people always come and ask us,

like, "Hey, should we get the latest iPad?

Is there another one coming out?

You know, people want to hold off sometimes.

Well, you link to a page on Mac Rumors

that I've pointed some people to in some cases

that it may be good to wait.

Anyway, you had another story on here today

where Mac Rumor was going through like four products

that are probably the oldest in the Apple lineup right now.

And if you're looking at one of those,

maybe you should wait for a little bit on this.

- To get back to the first point,

if you ever go, if anyone ever goes to macrumors.com

At the very top, there's a link called Buyer's Guide.

And it's really nice because it will,

whatever you're looking to buy,

and any Apple product,

Mac or iPhone, whatever,

and they'll actually tell you,

"Hey, the rumors are that a new Mac

"will be coming out in about a month or two,

"so maybe this is not the time to buy."

Or they'll say something like,

"This is a perfect time to buy."

So it's just, again, it's based on rumors,

so you don't know if it's right.

But if you don't keep up with this stuff day to day,

it's nice to have somebody

knows what they're talking about, sort of giving you tips. Just yesterday, Brett, one of my partners

walked in my office and said he needs a new iPhone. And of course, the first thing I told him

was, well, you know, new iPhones are going to come out in just a few weeks. And his response to me

was, well, I don't need the latest and greatest iPhone. So it doesn't matter to me if I get

whatever the new one is. And I'm like, well, that's a fair point. But also keep in mind that

when they come out with, and this is why the buyer's guide is useful, when Apple comes out

up with the new iPhone, which will be the iPhone.

I guess it'll be the 15 next, if they're right.

Right.

You can still buy an iPhone 14 because Apple will usually continue to sell

the previous model at a discount.

So as I was telling him, you know, even if you want to get last year's model,

cause that's more than enough for you.

If you wait a few weeks, you might save like, I don't know how much,

a hundred, 200, 300 dollars, you know, something like that.

So it's useful to know, even if you don't want to get the latest and greatest.

So I like this buyer's guide, but it was funny to see this article that

They were these products that are the oldest ones ever.

Um, you know, I was actually surprised to see the home pod mini was on that list.

It seems like it wasn't that long ago.

They came up with it, but I guess it has been around.

I mean, they changed the colors, but that's not really a

changing the, uh, the technology itself.

And then of course the Apple pencil, which, um, you know, I've been using

for so long and it's always right here next to me, I love my Apple pencil.

I would love to see something new.

You know, people have talked about maybe if it had like a physical

button on it, that could do certain things as opposed to just tapping it.

I don't know what it would do if it was new,

but I use it so much that I have faith in Apple

that if they came up with some new features for it,

I'm sure I would be interested.

But it's interesting that it's now one of the

oldest products out there.

- I was amazed, Jeff.

I would have guessed maybe 2020 or 2019

at the earliest that this came out.

They said the second generation Apple Pencil

was announced in October, 2018.

- I would not have guessed. - That's five years.

- Five years. - I know.

- Wow, that is a surprise. - I know,

that just sounds crazy.

Because I've been using it,

I've been at a conference all week,

and just like you, I've been taking notes on my iPad,

and using notes, and using OneNote, and Notability even.

And it has absolutely been fantastic.

I mean, to me, it's just second hand.

Anyway, I just can't believe it.

It still feels so new, and the fact that I'm using it,

and I'm always so amazed that I can write as good as I do,

and do all the things that I can do with the Apple Pencil.

So anyway, we'll have to see if that means

that they're gonna be looking at something.

It is fun to look at this buyer's guide

and just to underscore something that you said,

this is all based on rumors, right?

The only people that know when certain devices

are coming out is Apple, but I like on this app,

the Mac Rumors Buyer's Guide here,

they'll tell you, don't buy this right now

because there could be something else coming out

just like you told your partner, Jeff,

like don't buy the iPhone 14.

But they will say like the Mac mini,

that's pretty new, buy now.

Like that one is a good, that's a good bet right now

because it's more recent and you're gonna do okay

if you wanna come out with,

if you wanted to look at that on there.

So just really interesting little options there.

The AirPods Max too, December, 2020.

I thought that those were newer and I see so many.

My daughter just got a pair too

and she's loving it for college.

But wow, I thought that that wasn't three years old already,

but we'll see.

I'm interested to see if somebody,

if Apple's gonna do something with the AirPods Max

on there as well.

We know that Apple is doing something with the Vision Pro.

Still not available allegedly until early 2024

for I guess what could be the general public.

But I saw some stories and people talking about

Apple has been kind enough and generous

to let some developers get some hands on time

with the Vision Pro to start developing.

And this was a fantastic story,

even though it's Apple, it's from Apple here,

but it's one of our favorite apps from FlexiBits, right?

Fantastic Cal.

And it was just really cool to see his experience

and looking at the Vision Pro

and even seeing his apps in the Vision Pro,

I think for like one of the first times he said.

- Yeah.

The developers that are putting together apps

for the upcoming Vision Pro

have something that can run on their computer.

And so you can sort of like on your 2D screen

have a virtual environment

that you can pretend like you're moving around,

but that's not quite the same thing

as actually having on a headset

where you move your head around and look around.

And so what Apple's doing is they have these labs

around the world that you can book an appointment

if you're a developer and you can try it out.

But of course, the developers that participate

in the program are under non-disclosure agreements, NDA,

so they can't talk about it.

So what jumped out at me about this article

is that it's the first time that,

and again, this is put out by Apple,

so you know it went through Apple's PR

and they're only gonna put the nice things in here,

but they have three different developers

that we sort of know their products very well.

The first one you mentioned, a fantastic cow,

great calendar app that I've been using for years,

David Smith, who makes Widget Smith,

which is an app that so many people use

to customize the look of their iPad and iPhone

and stuff like that.

And another developer in here.

And it's nice to hear these developers talk about that,

you know, you can put something together

in a 3D environment using a computer,

But when you actually experience what it's like

to have these things all around you

with the boundless canvas that just goes every which way

that you look, that just how life-changing it is.

I'll tell you, Brad, I very,

it's so, they're gonna be really expensive,

but I am very much thinking that I might very,

I put all the little caveats in my voice you can hear,

but I really think I wanna try this.

And I know that when you get the first generation,

it's gonna be early and much like the first iPhone

gets updated over time, so like that.

But I am just so curious about the new type of spatial computing as Apple calls it and

what it would be like to have this environment that I'm just incredibly intrigued.

So I love being able to see reports like this that start to give you at least a little bit

of a taste of what's going to be around just next year, which is, you know, in a blink

of an eye, Brad, it's going to be here.

And so, um, and it's, you know, and again, maybe this will be a dud.

Maybe this will, maybe this will not be a big thing, or maybe it's going to be just

That's a super niche product that not many people use.

Or maybe it will be the next generation of computing, albeit one that takes a while to

come out.

I mean, I don't think it's going to change the world in a year.

The iPhone came out and didn't change a lot.

When the first iPod came out, it was already a small market.

Just Mac people, the first Mac.

All of these products that in retrospect have changed so much of the world, it takes a while

for that to happen.

This could be the next big thing.

Maybe it's interesting to think about.

- Well, Apple is in it for the long game, Jeff, right?

I mean, it's just like to your point,

another story that you linked to today

from Patently Apple, who, which is just,

there's always been a very curious blog to me

because he's following all the patents that Apple is filing.

So it's like, can we get some kind of, you know,

heads up on something?

But this was interesting that Patently Apple

was talking about Apple won a patent in 2007.

which is when the iPhone came out to your point.

- They just won it, I think this week,

but it was-

- But they filed it.

- Yeah.

I think I have that right.

I'm not a patent attorney, so I don't know how this works.

But the interesting thing is you said it's 2007.

They applied for this patent-

- 2007.

- Before, because what?

The first iPhone came out in the summer of 2000,

or at least announced in the summer of 2007.

So, you know, at the same time that the world

is first being introduced to an iPhone,

you have some smart developers in Apple

coming up with ideas and getting a patent on it for.

And when you look at this description,

I mean, but with the picture, it is clearly

- It's very close. - The Vision Pro.

I mean, both the way it looks

and the way that they describe what you can do

in a 3D environment or anything else.

And I guess you could say it's not surprising

because science fiction authors

have been describing things like this

for decades, stuff like that.

So I guess it's not that surprising.

And yet, Apple was coming up with a patent.

And we should also point out that companies like Apple,

they apply for patents on everything.

- Oh yes, of course. - You never know

what's gonna be the next big thing.

So for every 100 patents,

there might be one product or something like that.

But even so, I thought it was just so fascinating

that they found this patent

that had been initially applied for so long ago.

And here we see the fruits of the labor

coming out next year.

- Yeah, so anyway, just real quick to go back to your point.

The Vision Pro is going to be so expensive

and probably so out of reach for so many people

that right now, I know a lot of people

that I talked to that aren't really into the tech stuff,

they're kind of just like brushing it aside,

like, okay, whatever.

Like, I don't know if I'm ever gonna be interested in that.

But I think eventually it could,

like that's exactly what you said.

Nobody, there's only a few people

that had the iPod at the beginning or the iPhone,

and now it has basically taken over the world.

And so, as I said, Apple is in the long game.

And so this might be that first shot across the bow

for like we're doing virtual reality,

and they're doing it right.

I mean, the fact that they're getting developers

in there already, and we have excitement coming

from developers that we know and respect and are following,

and they're already understanding how they can take

advantage of this spatial computing.

I think that's just gonna have a huge bearing on that.

And it's gonna take some time, but you know, as I said,

Apple's in it for the long game on that.

- Well, it's funny.

I mean, imagine these developers that came up

with the patent in 2007,

and then the device is gonna come out in 2024.

So that's what, 10 plus, that's what, 17 years?

That's a long time between coming up with an idea

and actually seeing it being developed.

And that's just the first generation of it.

So that's a, that is a long game to say the least, goodness.

- When the Vision Pro does come out,

you might want to consider using your Apple card,

the Apple credit card.

We've talked about the Apple credit card several times.

I think everybody knows that I am a big fan of it.

This was really my, even my little introduction

into Apple Pay, which I got to tell you,

I'm almost exclusively, like I get annoyed now

if I have to actually pull a physical credit card

out of my wallet.

In fact, at the hotel I'm staying at,

I'm using my Apple watch, you know, to open

and it goes through the Apple wallet.

Anyway, just getting back,

there are many credit cards out there

that will give you like cash back,

or you know, you get a signup bonus or something,

but Apple's credit card, which is through Goldman Sachs,

right, Apple's credit card has historically stayed away

from some of these, you know, signup bonuses

or anything like that,

except that we just saw this week,

that there is now something that you can go in and find

that I think it's cash back on some travel and dining.

Now there's a limit on how much you can get,

but I just found this fascinating

that the Apple credit card is offering this now, Jeff.

- Yeah, no, not to everybody.

I mean, it says select people.

- That's true.

- I was just checking this morning.

In fact, I should check right now

because I have my iCloud account.

Yeah, it looks, I haven't, I do not see the offer in there yet, but if you are lucky enough

to get the offer that is described in this article on a nine to five Mac, you can get

5% daily cash back on travel and dining up to $1,300, which is pretty good because people,

you know, travel and dining is definitely categories that you tend to spend a little

bit more money on.

You can have a couple of nice meals or travel can add so quickly.

You know, for these credit cards, anytime that I can get 3%, which is usually the most

you can get cash back on Apple products and some of their partners like Walgreens and

Exxon and you know, three, 3% cash back is really pretty good.

I mean, as I understand from all the credit cards out there that you can buy when you

get 3% cash back, that's a pretty good deal.

1% and 2% are nice, but it, but 3% is where it becomes, you know, super competitive, frankly,

with even, you know, many bank savings accounts and those sorts of things.

Anything that's higher than 3% is going to be a really good deal.

And of course it's a come on a promotion type thing.

So it's going to be limited.

So if, if you have an Apple card and you're lucky enough to get this

offer to take advantage of 5%, that's, um, that's pretty good.

You know, it's why, why not?

And again, it doesn't no sweat off your back, whether you use your, your

American express or your, or your, you know, regular visa or your Apple card,

whatever, it's just another credit card.

So why don't you take advantage of it?

So, um, it's interesting to see Apple, you know, continue to promote all this stuff.

We have also these stories that, that I didn't link to today, and I don't

you haven't queued up, but we've seen over the summer that Goldman Sachs, who, as you mentioned,

is the partner behind the scenes, they signed up with Apple to sort of get into the consumer credit

space. And then they've decided in months, according to the stories and the rumors that

they're not as interested in being in the consumer credit space and they're looking to get out of the

business, but they're tied up with Apple for a period of time that they agreed to in the contract.

So, you know, at the same time that Goldman Sachs is probably like, ah, we don't really

necessarily want to be here. Apple is out there like, yep, let's keep, you know, promoting the

- Let's keep going.

- Yeah, yeah.

And you know, this story also reminds me

of what we were talking about last week, Brett,

where we talked about the rumors of, you know,

would Apple possibly buy Disney and as crazy as that is.

But it reminds you that, you know,

it wasn't that many years ago

that Apple was just about making computers

and then making iPhones.

And now between TV shows and movies

and credit cards and services,

there's just, there's so many different things

that Apple does.

It's not the Apple that we used to know.

- So if you have an Apple credit card,

let's just let people know how they can find this

or see if you actually are targeted.

Because honestly, I didn't know

about this like little bonus tip.

If you go into your Apple wallet

and you pull up your Apple credit card,

there's a little circle with three dots

in the upper right corner.

And if you tap on that, that's where you can see

like if you have monthly installments,

'cause I have several

with the different Apple products that I've purchased.

But there is a little option there that says daily cash.

And if you tap on that, that will tell you, first of all, you can elect if you

want your daily cash to go to your Apple cash account, or if you want to set up

the savings account now, um, that you can do that's from a, that's also Goldman

Sachs, you know, you can have like a savings account there, but Jeff, I scroll

down and sure enough, I've got not this, um, uh, offer here, but I've got a 6%

daily cash at Panera.

So as you said, I'm seeing it too.

Yeah.

And I didn't know about it.

Yeah.

I know that's, that's what I'm saying.

And so typically you get 3% back.

That's exactly what you were talking about.

You get 3% back on your Apple credit card.

And even if you used it at Panera, that's one of the partners.

But here right now, you can, if you have the Apple card and you turn on this, this offer

here, you can get 6% back up to $500.

So like I said, this wasn't one of the ones that they were talking about here, but it's

fairly similar, right?

It's a dining, but it's just a Panera.

And I just found that to be, I'm like, well, thank you.

I didn't know that there was like a page on here where you can go and find out.

And then at the bottom, by the way, if you go all the way down to the bottom, it has

those different merchants we were just talking about.

It has Exxon mobile.

It has, uh, you know, you can even get 3% back on Uber, for example.

So I just, I loved that the story put us into this.

This is how you do it.

Go to your Apple card, hit the little circle with the dots up there, and you can go to

daily cash.

And then if there are any updates, that's how, that's how you would see if there's any

offers there.

And if this offer is, if you're targeted for this offer, it would show up there, but there's

There's a few others there.

There's like a, you can get a bonus

if you refer someone to an Apple card.

So a neat little tip I think on there as well.

- I also see Brett, and this is a cool tip

that I did not know about.

At the very top of the screen,

it tells me the lifetime that I've received an Apple card.

- That's right.

- And you don't have to share if you don't want to,

but I see that I have received $940

over the lifetime of my Apple card,

which is not nothing. - Oh wow.

- That's pretty good. - No.

- No. - Almost a thousand bucks.

I can't argue with that.

- I got about 400 more on top of you,

but honestly, it's probably because, again,

this is like the almost exclusively the way

that I buy Apple products.

Because you get that 3% back on it,

obviously Apple products are a little bit of a premium,

but then, you know, you get,

if you pay with that Apple card,

you can pay over 12 months.

Like that's what those monthly installments are.

And I just think that that's brilliant.

No interest or anything.

And, you know, in fact,

sometimes we'll try to pay something off early.

And there's a little message that pops up on the credit card, Jeff.

And it says, you know, you can pay it off early, but.

You know, you're not getting paid, you know, you're not charging interest

and you could just leave it like you only have like, you know, five more

payments left or something like that.

I'm like, okay, you know, you make a good point.

Yeah.

This isn't there should have been a daily tip for the day, but the graph

it's interesting because right underneath where it tells me over the lifetime,

how much cash I've received.

It then is a sort of a color coded bar that tells you how much of that did you get?

1%, how much of that 2% and how much of a 3% and the irony is, even though there are

very few things, as you just mentioned, that you can get the 3% back on, it's like.

90% of my bar is the 3% stuff because that's what I use my card for.

You know, it's the 3% items like the new Apple computer that I bought for my

daughter, Verda, using school this year.

That's what I'm going to use my Apple card for.

So I tend to get 3% a lot.

And then the final thing before I get off of the screen is just below that, they have

what happens when you get daily cash.

And of course it used to be that you just came straight to you, money that you could

spend like, you know, using, you know, Apple pay cash or something like that.

Right.

I talked about this a few months ago that they came up with the new option of a savings

account, which is what I have turned on.

And so now when I get Apple cash, it goes into the savings account.

And again, the savings account doesn't earn a ton of interest, you know, but at least

earn something.

If I get Apple Cash today and I wait six months before I use it, it'll be a little bit more

in six months than it was today.

So and then, and what I typically do is I use my Apple Cash, you know, the next big

Apple product that I want to get for myself, you know, maybe you're not sure if you could

spend the extra hundred bucks for the additional RAM, but hey, I'm just going to use some of

my Apple Cash that I've earned to pay for it and therefore I feel better about it.

So, um, so I like that Apple has the credit card.

It's, it's nice.

It works for me.

One last hidden tip, Jeff, tap the color bar right there.

Okay, tap the color bar.

- And?

- Oh, and it actually shows you how much dollars.

Yeah, look at that.

Very cool.

- It's hidden, like it doesn't show.

I just, I tapped it there.

So like you said, it'll show like how much you've spent,

you know, you get 3% back or so,

but if you wanna see it in dollar signs,

you just tap it and it changes into dollar signs

instead of percentage.

- Good job.

- It's like the day of hidden tips.

I love it.

More tips.

How about some tips on using Apple Notes?

Man, we have, I feel like this is like every month,

like every other episode, we talk about Apple Notes

and it is well-deserved.

This was a fantastic article, I think,

that you linked to from the sweet setup here.

This is Josh Ginter, and he is,

he boldly has called this the ultimate guide to Apple Notes.

Although I think he did pretty good.

This is a home run.

I mean, most of this, I think we've talked about

and I knew about, although he even goes into some iOS

or iPadOS 17 tips on here.

So that's getting me even more excited for iOS 17 now.

- If you use Apple Notes at all,

I strongly encourage you to read through this article

because I challenge you,

if you can go through this entire thing

and tell me with a straight face

that you knew everything in here,

well then, hats off to you. - Right, true, true.

- But I use Apple Notes a lot

and I didn't know all of this stuff.

I mean, I'll give you one example.

is something it may seem small, but it's a relatively new feature that they added that,

you know, sometimes for me, a note is just something, you know, I just jot down something

quickly, you know, like a phone number or a number of data or something like that.

But then I have some notes that I've actually over time, you know, I continue to add things to,

and then I format it nicely and I put in a table and I, you know, and there are some notes that

are actually useful documents for me. And if you have a note that's developed to that point,

and you actually want to start doing something with it, there's a new feature that when you hit

the share button, one of the options that you have, and I didn't know about it until I read

this article this week, is that you can share to pages, which is Apple's, you know, app. It's like,

you know, Apple's version of Microsoft Word. And what's nice is that although there are lots of

formatting options in Apple Notes, you know, you can change it to like a header style or bold or

italics. It doesn't have all the formatting that you would get in a true word processor.

And so if you actually start working on something in the Notes app, and then you're like, you know

what, I actually want to turn this into a little bit more polished document and then maybe export

it as a PDF and share with other people. It's very, very easy now to transition from, excuse me,

transition from the notes app into pages. Once it's in pages, you can edit it like you would

edit any other word processing document, make it look all pretty as you want it. And then once it's

in pages, you could, I mean, you could share it in pages format, but it would be more useful to

export it in PDF. And then you can share it with other people or keep it for yourself and stuff.

So it's nice that you know things aren't stuck in notes forever.

There's a very nice way to sort of get things out of it.

I had no idea that this feature was added to notes until I read this article.

And that's just one of gosh 20 little tips he has in here of different cool things that you can do.

There's just there's so much in here.

Well I'll tell you quickly one of the things I'm excited because this isn't coming up until

iOS 17 right.

This is something he's talking about he's in the public beta right now.

And well no it's in there now because I actually tried.

Oh it is.

Although you know he does say.

He does say it's there.

Yeah.

He says right here that it's coming in iPad.

But I literally did it this morning when I saw the tip, but maybe it's going to be, maybe

there's going to be an enhanced version in iOS 17, but it worked for me this morning.

So it's an iOS 16.

Well, so I'm liking this from my standpoint, because what I do is I think of almost the

notes app is like my scratch pad.

Like if I just need to jot something down quickly or I need to make a list.

And so what happens a lot of times, Jeff, is I'll do that quickly in notes and then

and then I'll copy it all and then paste it into either a Word document or maybe an email

or so.

And I got to tell you, sometimes the formatting is just a little wonky, right, on there.

And so the fact that I can do this transition into pages, I think for me, it's probably

going, I mean, I'm going to like that just because I know it's going to be formatted.

But then I'll also just mention this, you know, we have seen notes evolve a lot over

the last few years.

And at first I was a little upset in notes because I like to bold things sometimes or

highlight or, you know, or even do strikethrough.

And what do you know, over the years, a lot of those basic, what we usually call rich

text formatting, that is now available in notes.

And in other words, it's pretty much, you know, most of what I need now these days.

And so I've been very happy, even just most of my things just stay in notes on there.

But yeah, I, that's, that's one thing you and I landed on the same thing there.

It's like, wow, I did not know that you could do that.

But just to your point, you know,

Josh here, it goes into great detail

about how you can edit PDFs in here,

or you can annotate PDFs in there.

I don't do that a lot.

I like PDF Expert and some other apps.

He talks about like the handwriting recognition,

which just still blows me away.

You know, you and I do that in Notability and GoodNotes.

You know, so I feel like there's a lot of overlap here

with some of the other, but to me,

no matter what other app I use, Jeff,

I will inevitably come back to notes at some point.

And since all of us, you know, my family, for example,

and we all have Macs and iPhones and iPads,

it syncs seamlessly through our iCloud account.

And so we're, you know, that's just,

it's now a repository for a lot of stuff.

In addition to what like Evernote used to be

or even OneNote today.

But yeah, this is a great, great article.

Thanks you for sharing this today.

- I'll mention one more quick thing in here.

And this is not a new feature, it's an old feature,

but the ability that you can put pictures within a note.

I actually do that a lot.

You know, just the other day,

I was at something at my daughter's school

and it was like a parent meeting

and they were talking about, I think it was like early,

getting ready for college type stuff.

And so I just wanted to jot down a few notes.

And so, as you say, I just opened up the notes app

and this was just on my iPhone even, you know,

and I was just sort of jotting down some dates

I wanted to remember some things.

And then the next thing you know,

they put something up on like a screen,

like a PowerPoint type thing that had a bunch of data on it.

And I'm like, well, I'm not gonna write all this.

take a picture of it, right? So I took a quick picture of it. And you know, in the, in the iPhone

app, the, the photos app, it's so easy to take something that's like skewed because you were at

an angle. So it's a little bit taller, right. You know, you can adjust that super quickly into

something that's just a regular rectangle shape. And then I just put it right there in my notes

and then put, took more notes behind it. And when it was done, like everything that I wanted to

remember from the meeting was there. A lot of it was just me jotting down a few words and a few

numbers, but then the few things I wanted to take a picture of, they were just right there in the

the notes. And so now if I want to go back and look at that six months from now, I've

got some nice little notes and it's nothing fancy, but you know, it does what I need to

do. And that's what notes is. It just, it does what you need to do.

It's great. And if I'm not mistaking the text in that

picture that you took is recognizable, right? It's not live Texas in there. So if you wanted

to search in that, I was using that at the conference that I'm at, I'm taking pictures

and that's exactly what I'm doing it for. Jeff. I'm like, okay, I know that if I need

to search for a word, you know, that I saw on a slide or something like that.

I'm taking pictures all over.

And I got to tell you, especially at this conference, I've been

at everybody was doing that.

They would either take a picture of the slide on their phone, even

though the speakers would say, Hey, you can, you know, download the

slides in your, uh, you know, in your app or so, but we were all taking

pictures and putting it into the notes.

There's lots of iPads and stuff like that.

In there.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

All right.

Here's our warning, uh, public service announcement for the day.

If you have an Apple watch, you might get sick.

(Jeff laughs)

No, is that?

(Jeff laughs)

If you have an Apple watch band,

you need to make sure that it's clean

because it can get bacteria.

No, here's the better headline.

If you wear any watch with any band at all,

make sure you clean it.

I thought, I heard somebody else

talking about these stories today.

Why don't you walk us through Jeff,

because it's a little funny the way you presented it today.

Well, the real public service announcement is not the dangerousness of your Apple Watch

band.

The real public service announcement is there's not much Apple news in August because that's

why when you find that you need to turn to the journal advances in infectious diseases,

not that it's not a page turner, you know, we all love our journal of infectious diseases,

but when that's going to have to be the source of your Apple news, I mean, again, I'm sure

the people at Apple are very busy right now getting ready for the new iPhones next month.

I saw a rumor yesterday that there was an Apple film crew down in Mexico city, and I'm sure they

were filming some video of somebody taking beautiful pictures with the next version of

the iPhone. We shall find out in a few weeks. But so as busy as Apple is right now, those of us who

were talking about the Apple news, it's pretty much cobwebs out here. So we have to turn to

the Journal of Advances in Infectious Diseases to see them discussing that when you wear a watch

band because it's on your all day and stuff like that.

It can get bacteria in there and all sorts of other things.

So, you know, it is what it is, but as you point out, you know,

you might as well keep it clean.

And so I think that the other PSA of the day is that Apple does have a fabulous page

on its website that talks about how to clean an Apple watch.

And this page is always surprising to me when I see it, because of course,

if you want to clean the Apple watch itself, not the watch band, but the Apple watch,

you can just put it underwater.

And whenever I do that, even though I wear a suit and stuff like that, part of me, you know,

just the part of me that instinctively knows that electronics don't go into water.

There's a part of me that recoils. It's like, oh, no, I'm putting it up a watch underwater,

but it's OK. It's actually OK. And so they go through in this watch, you know, how to clean it.

I've you and I have talked about this in the podcast a long time ago. There may be times

where something might get stuck into your digital crown and you can run under cold water and get it

that it cleaned out.

So if you ever find that, you know,

something you need to clean the watch or the band,

this is a nice page because it tells you what you can,

what is safe to use, what's not safe to use

so that you can keep it clean.

- Yeah, just so that everybody follows our laugh track here.

We had the advances in infectious diseases.

The story came out and it was called prevalence

and disinfection of bacteria associated

with various types of wristbands.

So that's very high level general,

but then somebody put a story out on Apple Insider

that says Apple watch bands harbor dangerous bacteria

because no one cleans them.

So a little bit of a stretch here.

It's true, Apple watch bands do harbor dangerous bacteria,

but so do every other watch band.

It's not just Apple watch on there.

But then now to get back to your story,

I wonder at the very top here, I don't know,

I've been to this page before

'cause you've mentioned it before.

I don't know if they had this section at the very top,

Maybe they have, but it just seems that in response,

they know that a lot of people

have been reading these stories.

It is the question, is it okay to use a disinfectant

on my Apple Watch?

Because the fabulous advances in infectious diseases journal

said that you need to use isopropyl alcohol or like a wipe.

They did mention that apple cider vinegar,

interestingly enough, does not clean as well.

So don't use apple cider vinegar on your apple watch band, but you can use.

And even apple says to your point, you can use a 75% ethyl alcohol wipe, or

even they say a Clorox disinfecting wipe.

So they get actually very specific on here on there and you know, it's okay.

Like clean things just like, you know, Hey, clean your underwear too.

Right.

I mean, it's, it's just things that you need to do in any kind of a watch that

you wear, but it's just funny.

Like you said, it's been, um, it's been a slow news, but yeah, that digital crown.

And I remember I used that as my tip several weeks ago,

because sure enough, I noticed, Jeff,

that it wasn't turning as lovely and smoothly

as I expected it to,

and it was almost gummed up a little bit.

And I'm like, I can't do that.

I kept trying to blow it, use compressed air.

I tried to just turn it real fast.

Nothing was working until I landed on this page,

and it says, "Run it under warm, running water."

And it worked, beautiful.

I've done it several times now,

even though again, I cringe every single time,

just like you said.

Good stuff.

All right, so if you have that Apple Watch,

here's one last little thing that you mentioned today,

which I thought was neat,

for if you're in the market for a gadget.

This is a little pocket sized Apple Watch charger.

It is called the Q Charge, I'm guessing.

It's K, Q, C, Charge.

Q Charge 2.0 from Sidious Systems.

kind of look a little more of a generic type of a name,

but this looks really good.

It's like a little pocket thing

that you can just put your Apple Watch on

and it'll charge it up, which I think is great.

- Yeah, it's so small and tiny, it looks really cool.

In a perfect world, of course,

you would not have to charge your Apple Watch

during the day, you could just charge it at night.

But you know, we've all been in a situation

where maybe you forget to charge your Apple Watch overnight

or something happens.

I have an Apple Watch charger right here

next to me at my desk and I don't really use it that,

I mean, the one that I have is just a cord plugged in

And I don't use it very often.

I mean, I'm sure I go months without using it,

but I do like having it there

just in case you ever need to charge it.

And so if you know you're gonna be out and about

and if you have something tiny like this,

you could just throw into a bag

or if you're gonna camping or something,

you know, I don't know, I can see lots of uses

of having just a little tiny charger,

or maybe, you know, you have a teenager

that has an Apple watch and they're maybe not as good

about always charging it.

But if they have something like this, you know,

either attached to or in their knapsack,

they can stick the watch on there during a class

and charge it up.

So I just thought it was a cute little device.

And it's not expensive, right?

What was it like?

- No, I think it was like $54.

- Oh, $60.

Okay, it's a little more than I thought.

I thought it was closer to a third.

But even so, it is what it is and it's small

and it looks like it's easy to use.

And I think it said that if it's fully charged,

you can recharge your Apple Watch like two or three times.

So it's pretty good.

- Yeah.

I think it is insurance, really.

It's like, okay, I never know if I'm gonna be out

and I just wanna, in fact, I picked this up.

I don't know if you can see it.

And this was like almost like a knockoff type of a brand.

It's a little charger here.

And I love this thing because it has, you know,

a lightning port so I can charge up my phone.

But there's a little dimple here

in the top of this battery. - That's awesome.

- And that's for the Apple Watch.

Like I got that specifically because in some days,

especially if I'm traveling for a lot

and I like to now wear my Apple Watch overnight

for sleeping.

So sometimes I like to find, you know,

little sections of the day

where I may not need to have it on,

charge it up a little bit.

So that way I know that it can last the whole night,

which is good.

Okay, let's talk a little bit about SaneBox.

I gotta tell you, I think you're gonna,

I wanna hear a little bit more about you, Sethi,

but I gotta tell you at this point, Jeff,

I feel like I've got everything set up on SaneBox

in the way that I want it,

and it's to the point now where I truly don't wanna go back.

Like, I don't know what I did before, if that makes sense.

Like my inbox now, I feel like it's so much more streamlined.

So we're talking about SaneBox by the way,

just because they have been very generous

to be sponsors with us.

You can find out more by going to sanebox.com/inthenews.

I have set up, I think I've talked about

my SaneNews folder, 'cause I get a ton of newsletters.

I didn't realize how many newsletters that I got, Jeff.

- That's funny, yeah. - But all of those now

go straight into that folder,

and I check it maybe one time a day.

And I can delete a bunch of them.

I didn't realize how many were junk

that I really didn't need to have anyway.

But I know that as I'm going through my day,

in at least this is my personal email account

that I've got it set up on.

I know that in my actual inbox,

it's only gonna be messages that I really need to see.

One other thing just quickly I'll mention

that I've been using

because there's a variety of different folders

that you can get set up on here.

But one of them that I have looked at,

I haven't quite done this yet,

but there is a sane attachments.

I don't even wanna call it a folder.

It's more of like a feature.

So there are some emails

where I get very large attachments on there.

This isn't necessarily because somebody is sending things,

but like in some groups that I'm in,

sometimes they'll have large documents or so.

Well, the sane attachments allows me to set up

a cloud storage service

so that those large attachments then

can get basically sucked out of my email host

and Sane Attachments will now store those attachments for me

on Dropbox or Google Drive or Box or OneDrive.

In other words, I'm getting ready to set this up

just 'cause I've got a couple of things that are very large.

You know, depending if you have a free Gmail account

or depending on what kind of an email host that you have,

a lot of us today have unlimited storage

and so maybe this isn't that much of an issue,

but there are a couple of things

that I just wanna set this up.

you can go into your settings and you can say,

"For this folder, I want you to save the attachments

into a cloud storage service."

'Cause sometimes I don't need to go back to the emails,

right, I just need the attachments.

But instead of like going in individually,

like downloading and storing those attachments,

you know, myself, the Sane Attachments service,

it's not even a folder, it's like a service.

Like they do this for me on the backend,

they can set this up.

So that's my little tip today.

Other than all the other things that I've been using,

but that's Sane Attachments.

So you talk a little bit more about SaneBox, Jeff,

and maybe even how to set it up there.

- Yeah, I mean, that's what I was gonna talk about today,

was just the ease of setting it up.

I originally set up SaneBox with my iPhone JD email account,

gosh, over a year ago,

and they have great step-by-step instructions that say,

you know, you need to change your,

even for someone like me

that doesn't really understand this stuff,

they say, go into your settings,

change your email host to this, you know,

it's very easy to follow the directions and go through it.

But depending upon the plan that you get, you know,

they have all these different plans.

They have like the snack plan, the lunch plan, the dinner plan.

They've got their cute little names, but the one that I have is sort of the middle of the

road one, which is the lunch plan.

And the lunch plan is nice because you can have six features for your account.

And you know, these things that we've been talking about, the same black hole feature,

same attachments, same reply later, those are all features and you decide which ones

you want to have turned on or turned off.

And for me, six is enough.

I think I still have some extras.

I could go back and put one more, two more, but it's for two different email accounts.

So for the longest time I had been using it just an iPhone JD and it was wonderful.

And then a couple of weeks ago I was like, you know what?

I have a second one.

I'm paying for a second account.

Why not put it on my Gmail account?

And my Gmail account is what I use if I'm purchasing something online.

If I'm, you know, you know, how lots of times like at a restaurant or something, they say

they'll send their, uh, the, uh, the receipt to your email.

This is the email that I give out to people in the world.

And I know that I'm going to end up on a mailing list and they're going to send me their monthly

offers.

because I don't necessarily check my Gmail

on an hourly basis.

But at the same time, it has gotten annoying over the years,

and I've had my Gmail account forever,

that when I open up my inbox,

there's just so much stuff in there

that on the few times when I'm actually doing something real

with my Gmail account, it's hard to find it, right?

But now that I have SaneBox turned on for it,

and again, I went through this experience over a year ago

on iPhone JD, but now I've gone through it again

on my Gmail account, suddenly it's like peaceful.

I open up my inbox and there's like the two or three new things.

And I'm like, isn't this lovely?

This is great.

And then if, of course, if I want to go look at the newsletters, I can do that.

And if I want to go into my sane later folder, it's going to have all the stuff that's it's

not that it's spam because it's coming from companies that I've signed up with.

So you know, whatever company I bought a shirt from, you know, their latest offers, but I

don't want to be seeing that right now.

I just want to see that.

Right.

So, and it was, they have a whole page that walks you through setting up with Gmail.

It's super, super fast and easy to do.

And so my point is, one of the reasons that you have not used SaneBox yet is because you're

like, oh, this just seems like it's so complicated to go through.

It's really not.

They have easy pages that go through.

I want to say that when I set it up with my Gmail, Brad, I want to say it took five minutes,

maybe.

I mean, it's so super easy.

I just followed their directions, their website.

They told me what to do.

I did it and it was done.

And now whenever I open up my Gmail inbox, it's just very nice and calm.

I can and it's not just that I mean I'm joking a little bit when I talk about it being peaceful but what it really is is it's productivity because what it means is I jump on my Gmail, I instantly see what I need to see and then I get back to work.

I'm not going to be you know stuck in there for 10 minutes because I got to go through all the stuff that I'm not interested in to get to the stuff that matters to me.

And that's what I really like about SaneBox.

And that's why I encourage people to check it out,

is it just allows you to be more efficient,

to get exactly what you want out of your email,

but not waste time doing the stuff that you don't want.

So that--

- It's pretty much, it's ruined me in the sense that

I wanna set it up on my Gmail too.

In other words, I had it just set up on one account, Jeff,

just like what you're talking about.

And now if I go to a different account,

like my Gmail account, I'm annoyed.

I'm truly annoyed.

I'm like, wait a minute, no, no,

I want all of this stuff to be filtered out.

And that's the way I've described the sandbox

to several folks.

It's like, it literally is like having an assistant,

a personal assistant, sit there and go through the emails

and say, hey, you know, these five are the ones

you need to look at.

Don't worry about the others.

You know, you can take care of that later.

And that has been great.

So to underscore your point,

this is the great thing about it.

Why not go and try it?

I mean, if you can at least just see how it works,

you can get it set up.

And by the way, I don't wanna mention this so much,

but it is easy to cancel it too.

Like in your settings page, if you need to cancel.

So what I'm trying to say is,

if you go to SaneBox.com/inthenews,

sign up for a free trial.

It's not gonna mess anything up on your email host.

You're gonna at least get to see some of the features

that Jeff and I have been talking about.

And if you do decide to keep it,

because I think you will, just like me,

I can't do without it now.

Then if you go to SaneBox.com/inthenews,

you can get a free trial for 14 days

and $25 credit toward one of these SaneBox subscriptions,

which I gotta tell you, that's really good.

I mean, the prices already are very good, Jeff,

but if you get $25 credit toward that, that's great.

Like, I don't know why you wouldn't take that up.

So sanebox.com/inthenews.

Thank you, SaneBox, for sponsoring us today.

In the know.

- In the know.

- My tip's a little lame today, Jeff, I'm sorry,

but we were talking about the Notes app,

And I just have to tell you, this is at the top of my mind.

We just dropped my daughter off about a week ago at college.

And already, there's like, oh, hey, mom and dad,

can you remember to--

next time you come up to see me, can you

remember to bring--

I think she wanted her bathrobe, and she

wanted some protein bars or something like that.

And how did she give us a list?

There's a variety of different things

you could do with a list.

But sure enough, we all have iPhones and iPads.

She started a list in Notes.

And so she shared a note with us

so that we could all collaborate on it.

So if we needed to check something off,

you know, one of us could.

But the interesting thing,

when I go into my notes just quickly

and you have a shared note,

you can actually tap,

there's a little icon up here,

it's hard to describe,

but it's like a circle with a person in it

with a check mark.

And that tells you that this particular note

is being shared.

But if you tap on that little icon up there,

there's all kinds of things that you can see

what your shared people are doing.

Jeff, first of all, you can turn on participant cursors.

And so you can see if somebody else is typing at the same time that you're

watching it, you can say show all activity and it'll basically tell you

like who joined the note, you know, when did somebody leave the note?

When does somebody make an addition to the note?

You can show highlights.

So there's somebody highlights something on there.

I just, I love the fact that you can get in there.

And see all the activity.

It's almost like an audit trail, right?

Of what, you know, some people were doing, or you can see what

somebody changed or somebody made a difference in there.

So I know the article we talked about,

talked about sharing notes or collaborating on notes,

but I just, I love the kind of the granularity here

that you can even go into a shared note

and you can watch the participant cursor,

you can see all the activity.

And then of course, if you need to,

you can unshare the note

or take somebody off if you need to on there.

But I just thought that that was neat.

That's in sharing notes.

And I've started sharing notes

with a bunch of different people.

I don't know if you and I have a shared note,

but I know several other friends that I have,

we're either book lists or if we're going to an event

or something, then we'll just share all the details

in that way and it's worked out really well.

- Yeah, my wife and I do it all the time.

It's super, super useful.

I'm a big fan of share.

I mean, shared notes are exponentially more useful

than just regular notes

and regular notes are incredibly useful.

So I love share notes.

It's a great feature and I'm glad you mentioned it today.

Very cool.

So when I was thinking about a tip for today,

thinking, you know, what is something that I'm using just about every day? And then I can talk

about, and it occurred to me, you know, what I'm doing just about every day, right? Is, well,

that's true, but, uh, it's, it's the silly little free game. Wordle. Wordle became back in 2021.

Everybody was playing Wordle back in 2021. And then in early 2022, the New York times purchased

it and, but they kept it free. And the fact that they've been very good stewards of the service

for the last, you know, almost two years now that they've been running it. And, and there's

also some world clones out there. And 18 months ago, a year and a half ago to the day, you and I

recorded episode number 40, as you may remember, I'm sure very vividly. And it was on February 25th

of 2022. And I recommended that if you like Wartle, there are lots of Wartle clones out there,

but they're not clones because they, they changed the game in different ways. And I represented one

that was called, I recommended one that was called Quartle, which gives you four boxes on the screen.

I do remember this.

And I recommended one called Octortle, which gives you eight boxes on one screen.

So I wanted to report back a year and a half later and say that these services are still fun

and they're in fact even better now than they ever were before. So Wordle, of course,

is owned by the New York Times. Quartle is actually owned by Merriam-Webster,

which makes sense because lots of times when they come up with a word, you're like,

that's a word I've never heard of before, and they very helpfully provide a link at the end.

Here's the definition.

And you can look at the definition in Merriam-Webster's dictionary. But it's not just

the Quartal game, they actually have a couple of different up sub games in here. And there's one

called the Sequence version of Wordle, which if you've ever done Wordle with multiple boxes that

you're solving multiple puzzles at the same time, it's nice because you can sort of solve them in

whatever order you want. But what's upping the difficulty level is to make it that you have to

solve the first box first, and then you can use the same words in the second box, and then the

same words in the third box. And so it ups the difficulty level in a way that I find really fun.

So I like both the regular version of Wordle, and there's a new one every day,

of Quirtle, and the sequence version of Quirtle. And then there's the Octortle puzzle,

which is owned by Britannica.com, as in the big encyclopedia Britannica. Now,

What I did not realize is that Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster are actually

the same company. Did you know that? Oh, I don't think I did.

And they have been since the 1960s. So it's been a long time that they've been the same company.

But anyway, I guess they bought both of these and they use one of them to promote the dictionary

and one of them to promote Britannica. And it's got the same ideas. There's the regular Octortal,

there's the sequence version. They even have something that I don't play it a lot because

it is purposefully annoying, but it's called the Rescue Game. And the idea is you're playing

Octurtle, but somebody else has done the first three or four clues and they've done a horrible

job. Imagine that somebody picks horrible words and then says, "I'm stuck, Brett. Can you finish

the puzzle?" And you're like, "Well, gosh, you've already used your first four clues on these

horrible clues." And then you have to sort of rescue them from there, hence the name of it.

So again, they're just different twists on the same genre. And I realized that I'm much

more into word games. I love the New York Times crossword puzzle and all that sort of stuff.

But if you're the sort of person that loves word games, of course, the original Wordle is the

classic. But both Quartle and Octortle and all the little permutations they've come with are fun. And

I can't say that I play them every single day, but I do play them several times a week. And they're

fun and you can do them quickly. And it's just a little time waster and they make me happy. So I

want to share with everybody today. - What is your progression, Jeff? Do you

You start with Wartle and then Quartle and then Octortle.

Is that?

- I am very type A like that.

That's exactly right.

You can't do Quartle unless you do Wartle first.

So I start with my Wartle

and then if I have a little more time,

I'll move over to,

and again, it's throughout the day, right?

So it might be in the morning.

- Yes, of course.

- I take 10 seconds or 30 seconds and I do Wartle.

And then over lunch, maybe I'll take a look at Quartle.

And then at the evening,

I might get to the Octortle and then the sequence,

but I do do them in order.

- You're just Wartling all day.

That's a, there you go.

Words are a lot of wordle.

Yes.

That's actually fun though.

You learn, you learn new words too.

Just like with the crossword puzzle, you learn new words and it improves

your education and all that.

You see, I can justify it to myself.

Exactly.

It's educational.

It's like school.

It's like I'm going to school.

Exactly.

This is actually, I haven't, like you said, once the, you know, the

fast edition died off, I haven't, uh, I haven't gone back, but, uh, yeah.

I mean, I can maybe handle the wordle, but the quarter of the

my brain is starting to hurt a little bit on there,

but we'll have links to the show notes

in case anybody else would like to, you know,

stay up to date and rescue Jeff if necessary.

That's great.

All right, good talking with you, my friend.

Thanks again to SaneBox for sponsoring us.

You can find out more information,

just like we talked about at sanebox.com/inthenews,

all one word.

We appreciate SaneBox coming alongside us

And thank you for the service, 'cause I'm loving it.

All right, Jeff, great talking with you,

and we'll talk with you next week.

- It was fun talking to you, Dave Rutt.