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In the News
116: Max Reactions, Finely Woven Criticisms, and the End of the Red Envelope Era
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In the News blog post for September 29, 2023:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2023/09/in-the-news695.html
- Today’s Sponsor: SaneBox! www.sanebox.com/inthenews
- Max Reactions & Finely Woven Criticisms
- Multi-Action Button
- Hidden iOS 17 Tips
- Adaptive AirPods
- ID on Your iPhone
- Mighty Mini Flying High
- No More Red Envelopes
- Today’s Sponsor: SaneBox! www.sanebox.com/inthenews
- Brett’s iTip: Adding Widgets to the Lock Screen on your iPad
- Jeff’s iTip: Mini-Window for Extreme Digital Zoom
Jeff’s Review: iPhone 15 Pro Max -- titanium, 5x telephoto, and so much more
Arthur Shi | iFixit: Unweaving the Mystery: Apple’s FineWoven Case Under the Microscope
John Gruber | Daring Fireball: Talk Show Podcast - “Who’s Heef?” with Matthew Panzarino
Jason Snell: Take Control of Photos Book
Federico Viticci | MacStories: Introducing MultiButton: Assign Two Shortcuts to the Same Action Button Press on iPhone 15 Pro
Nelson Aguilar | CNET: 17 Hidden iOS 17 Features and Settings on Your iPhone
Brian Heater | TechCrunch: Apple executives break down AirPods’ new features
Zac Hall | 9to5Mac: Here’s where you can use your iPhone as your digital driver’s license or ID so far [September 2023]
John Voorhees | MacStories: The Mighty Mini Returns: Productivity Powerhouse at 34,000 feet
Nicole Sperling | The New York Times: Netflix Prepares to Send Its Final Red Envelope
Brett’s iTip: Adding Widgets to the Lock Screen on your iPad
Jeff’s iTip: Mini-window for extreme Digital Zoom
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Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to In the News for September 29th, 2023.
I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.
- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.
Hey Brett.
- Hi Jeff.
It is good to talk with you
because you have had your brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max
for exactly, well, maybe not, maybe an hour.
- Almost exactly a whole week.
That's right.
'Cause it was during our show last week that I got it.
That's a good point.
Quickly, we just wanna say thank you
to our sponsors today, SaneBox.
We'll talk a little bit more about them in just a moment
and even maybe some of the subscriptions
that are available to you.
But if you go to sanebox.com/inthenews,
you can learn a little bit more.
You, my friend, wrote a fantastic review on iPhone JD
about the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
And wow, there's so much I wanna ask you about in here.
But where would you like to start?
Now that you've had a week to have this in your hand
And the pictures you've been taken have been amazing as well, Jeff.
Yeah, I mean, I guess the two things that jump out at me is number one,
if you're like me and you've never had the really, really big iPhone,
this is a great year to make the jump because with the titanium,
it definitely weighs less.
And, you know, you and I did the on the air test last week
when I had both phones in my hand.
And it was amazing to me that the big one seems to weigh less,
even though it's technically was a little bit more.
But from a hand feel standpoint, it seems to weigh less.
than the non-max version of last year's phone because of the switch from stainless steel to
titanium. And so it's great. So if you're not getting a bigger phone, you're going to be
thrilled with this year's phone because it's going to weigh less. And if you are changing sizes like
I did, this is a great year to do it because it weighs less. And so you don't feel like you have
something bigger. It's also technically, it's a little bit smaller than last year's Max 2,
but only in a very tiny amount. I mean, it's like a millimeter. It's very small.
What you really notice though is the curved sides of it just feel great in the hand.
So I love the new design of the iPhone.
And if people make the upgrade, they're going to feel, you know,
you're going to feel like this is something new, which is nice.
But the camera system is just the thing that, you know, makes a big difference.
We all know that the camera is the number one use of the iPhone for so many people.
And I've just been having so much fun with the camera.
The, you know, I've been taking test pictures.
I was traveling to Washington DC this week.
So I was taking pictures of the Capitol and stuff like that.
You know, it's just you have, it's almost like there's two big things.
There's the regular camera.
If you're just going to take normal pictures, anywhere between a 1x to a 2x zoom range,
right?
And I'll come back to talk about that in a second.
It just takes fantastic pictures better than ever.
They're now 24 megapixel instead of 12 megapixels.
You've got more details.
They're beautiful.
And then the big thing, of course, is for this Pro Max that I got.
If you really want to zoom in this 5x zoom, this is the real deal, Brett.
I mean, it really is.
the picture that you're showing right now that I took from my office window.
The boat, right, the tugboat.
When I'm looking out my window, I'm looking at the Mississippi River and I see a boat going by,
there's no way in the world I could ever pick out the words on the side of the boat just using my
eyes. And sometimes people that when they work in an office tower like I do, you might see they have
a telescope in the corner of their office just so you can sort of look out and see something in the
distance. But you basically have a telescope in your hands with the 5X, you can get so close
And you can get so much detail that it's it truly blows my mind.
And, you know, part of it is because of the the lens being 5X.
But Apple deserves a lot of credit because they have, you know,
you know, when you zoom in that much, even if you try really hard
to keep your hand still, you know, you're going to shake a tiny bit. Right.
And like a tripod or something. Right.
But they have this incredible image stabilization.
For the first time ever, Apple calls it a three, a 3D image stabilization
because it's not just left, right and up down, but it's also back and forth.
And so whatever little bit of jitteriness your hand may have,
the lens seems to compensate just fine.
And it wasn't that many years ago, Brett,
when I was using Zoom on an iPhone,
and like when you zoomed in even just to 2X or 3X,
you know, it was so jittery,
it might make you get a little nauseous.
But now with the 5X, it just works great.
So it's this whole new tool.
I mean, whether you're using it for photography
or whether you're just using it
because like you're sitting in a room
and you want to see something,
Like I was in the airport yesterday at Reagan National
and I wanted to see something like all the way
on the other side of the kernel.
And I'm not gonna get up because you know,
you get up, you lose your seat in the airport,
you're never gonna find a seat again.
- Right.
- So I'm just using the telephoto lens
to see all the way across.
And I'm like, oh my goodness, I can totally read this.
It's really, really, really fun.
So those are the two pictures.
- This picture here, yeah, this picture here,
'cause you've done this before
where you've done like out of your office window.
But I don't know, are you like a mile away from the river?
- I don't know.
you gotta be pretty far away
'cause you can see this first picture you took here
is I can barely make out that's a tugboat.
Then you go to like, what is it, 2X zoom.
- That's the 2X zoom.
- Okay, yeah, that's a boat with a whole pontoon
or whatever that is pushing here, the 3X zoom.
But then this picture here, Jeff,
like the fact that at 5X,
you are reading as almost as clear as day
the name of the boat.
You know what I thought of?
Do you remember that movie with Will Smith?
Was it "Enemy of the State" or something?
You know, when they had the satellite images
and they were going down,
they wanted to read the license plate
on a car or something like that.
That's what I thought of here, Jeff,
or maybe the Bourne conspiracy movies, right?
I'm like, wow, you actually have the ability now
that you could zoom in, literally,
if you're across the street or miles away from something,
maybe you could actually read something this far away.
And even this lamp, this oil lamp that you had a picture of,
or the book for "Crying Out Loud."
That's an amazing feat that you're able to read the text,
the little tiny text on that book
as clear as you can at 5X there.
- I've heard people refer to this as the CSI effect
because in the TV show CSI, you would often have a picture
and they would zoom in
and of course it's very blurry and pixelated
and then their computer within like a second
would instantly make it clear.
And you're like-- - Clear that up, clear that up.
- In real life, it does not work that way.
I know there's some-- - It has it.
- Sophisticated Photoshop like tools
that can do a tiny bit of that
but not nearly what you see on TV.
But when you have a really good 5X lens, you can sort of do the same thing of zooming in
and getting good pictures. So I think that people that get at this phone, you know,
that if you want the zoom lens, and again, if you never use a zoom, that's fine.
But you know, this is a 120 millimeter zoom. Think about like if you had an SLR camera
with an 120 millimeter lens. I mean, that's not the biggest zoom lens that you might buy for
a prosumer or a consumer, but it's, I mean, we're talking about many inches of lens and somehow
Now Apple is reproducing that just in, you know, right here.
It's really amazing.
- I'm thinking of like at a sports game, right?
You see those poor photographers on the sidelines
that have, you know, like the lens is like half
the length of actually the actual person.
What if they just start using iPhones now?
On the sidelines.
- Yeah, it's funny you say that sports games
because, you know, right now my daughter's big sport
is basketball, but it used to be for many, many years
when she was younger, she used to play soccer.
And when you're a parent on the side of a soccer field,
soccer fields are big.
And so when your kid, you know, you might be close on one side, but when your kid is
all the way on the other side of the field and you want to take a video of them, you
know, you need to have an extreme zoom.
And I never had it with my older iPhones.
So like I have these videos of her shooting the goal, but like you can't really see it.
And then you can crop the video, which is a pain to crop video anyway.
But even if you use something like iMovie or Final Cut Pro, it's blurry and it's fine.
You know, I would have loved having these sorts of tools at my disposal way back when.
and parents are gonna love them now.
And, but again, it's anything that you wanna see
something close, you want a good view
of something that's far away, it's 5X.
So again, the 5X is the standout feature,
but it's definitely worth mentioning.
It's the number one thing you're gonna mention.
If you don't get the bigger phone, you get the 3X,
which is the same as last year, which is nice.
But I think that 5X, if you wanna Zoom,
you really wanna Zoom.
- Now, okay, so quickly, we're talking pictures mostly,
but does all of this apply to video as well?
- All of it applies to video as well, absolutely.
- Wow.
You get nicer and you know, you have to be careful
with 5X video because even with the stabilization,
it's hard to hold it.
'Cause you know, video, the movement is sensed more,
but the iPhone does a really good job with it.
And I've been trying out some of it and you know,
you wanna be more careful about how shaky your hands are,
even with the compensation or what you could use
is Apple has the fantastic action mode for taking videos
where you lose the bit of your images.
Right, you crop in a little bit.
You lose the far reaches of the edges of the screen.
It's zoomed in a tiny bit more.
But as a result, Apple compensates for the shakiness really, really well.
So so yes, you can take advantage of this and it works really well.
And again, the five X camera, it's not as good as the regular one X
to two X camera where you have the 48 megapixel, but it's still a 12 megapixel
camera, which is still pretty good.
And if you're like outside where you've got good light and stuff
or inside in a store that's got good overhead lighting, it's going to be fine.
- Well, kudos to you for writing this up
because I got completely lost in your calculations.
(laughing)
Swapping back and forth between 24 megapixel with the 1X,
but then the 3X does a 48 megapixel,
but times 24 or something, and the 5X.
I mean, you did a great job explaining it.
I just have to go through and reread it again.
But it's pretty amazing how Apple is kind of flip-flopping
back or, you know, they're kind of going around circle here
and just making it work because you're explaining why,
you know, the 3X looks almost worse than the 1X
in some cases here, like this oil lamp
that you're pointing to, but then the 5X is better.
And anyway, you do a good job in there.
So I wanted to let people know,
just go through and read it.
Unless you're like me, you just like,
"I just want a good camera."
And then just get the good camera.
I know one of your commenters in the bottom,
you convinced him to get the Pro Max here,
just even for this.
And darn it, if you aren't almost convincing me as well.
You know, I've gone the Max,
but just, we've talked about this before.
You know, I like the smaller size
for the hand and everything,
but man Jeff, you are making a really good argument
that you're comfortable moving up a little bit,
even the fact that it fits in your shirt pocket.
- Yeah. - Which is very important.
That's very important.
- Yeah, it doesn't fit as well.
There's no question.
You know, when I was wearing a suit before the other day,
you know, it's a little bit bigger, it's bigger in the hand.
I thought I would dislike the size a lot more.
Do I notice it?
Yeah, it's a week later,
I'm still noticing that I have a bigger thumb
in a way that I would prefer it was not.
I would prefer it was a little bit smaller,
But I can't say that it's so obnoxious
that I don't think I'm gonna get used to it soon.
And you know what it reminds me of, Brett?
Gosh, it's been so many years now,
but when I moved from the regular size iPad
to the iPad Pro 12.9 inch.
- 12.9, right? - When I first had it,
I think when I wrote my review, gosh,
what has it been, 10 years ago, a long time ago,
I think I called it like a cafeteria tray.
You know, it's like, this is so big.
And then, you know, after two weeks,
I slowly stopped noticing it.
And nowadays, the iPad that I have sitting right here
next to me, this to me is the correct size for an iPad.
And if I pick up a quote unquote normal size iPad,
like my wife's iPad, I'm like,
oh, you're so small, how cute you are.
And I really think that in a few weeks,
I'm gonna be in the same place with this phone.
I'm no longer gonna notice the size difference.
The weight difference is not an issue because the titanium,
and I think I'm just gonna be used to it.
And so it's been really great.
- Well, real quick before we move off the photos,
a couple of other resources that you mentioned,
I just wanna jump ahead real quick.
Here is another podcast, it's The Talk Show,
which features John Gruber from Daring Fireball.
And I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet,
but you say it is absolutely fantastic
'cause he's talking with Matthew Panzarino.
Yeah, I love the name of their podcast, Who's Heath?
Referencing like the HEIF format, right?
Anyway, it sounds like that's a great podcast to listen to.
And then you also linked to Jason Snell's
take control of photos book.
The take control books have always been fantastic
for years and years and years.
And I did not realize actually that Jason Snell
authored this particular book, "Take Control of Photos"
but apparently he's already updated it
for iOS 17 and everything.
So that looks like it's another great book as well.
- Yeah, there's two things you mentioned.
If you wanna get deep on the photography aspects
of the iPhone 15 Pro, the podcast that you just mentioned,
the talk show with John Gruber and Matthew Panzuino,
it's really great.
It's totally geeky.
They get super deep into it.
Both of them really know what they're talking about.
And it's just a delight to listen to the other extreme, this book that Jason
snow has, and I just read it this past weekend.
Um, he he's been updating this book for years and years.
It's it's, it's, it's the full gamut.
If you're looking to give your mom or dad, if your mom or dad says, you
know what, I'm not a very techie person, but I just want to be able to do more
with the photos on my iPhone or iPad or Mac, give them this ebook.
And it explains it.
Having said that, I, and I consider myself
a little bit more of a pro person,
when I read the book, I mean, I just sort of skimmed it
'cause it was an update to the version I'd read in the past.
I learned all sorts of details in here
that I just did not know about.
And I'm like, oh, wow, Jason.
I mean, just to pick one that jumped out at me,
I didn't realize that if you have like,
you know how if you have a specific photo
and you wanna change the location that the photo was taken,
maybe you took it with another camera
and it doesn't have location data,
or maybe you just wanna adjust what your iPhone was
for some reason it was off. You can do that on a picture by picture basis. Likewise, if you wanted
to, and this part I've always known, and likewise, if you wanted to adjust, what is it? Not only
location, but some other aspects too. You can do it in a picture by picture. I did not know until I
saw Jason mentioning it here that you can actually select multiple photos. And then I think you use
like the share button and you can adjust it all at once. For years now, I've used a third party
app called Metapho, which we've talked about before on this podcast, which I love for doing
doing that because it does a really good job about it.
I just never realized somewhere along the line,
Apple took a feature that used to require a third party app
and put it into photos.
And that's just an example.
When you go through his book,
you'll see little details that it's written
for a general audience, don't get me wrong,
but he's got some pretty advanced features
he describes in here.
So anyway, whether you wanna listen to a podcast
for truly geeky things,
or whether you want a good general interest,
those are both good.
- Okay, still on the camera,
because I think these are iCameras now
that can also make phone calls.
That's pretty much what we're saying today.
But what other link that you had today
was from Gadget Hacks,
and it's 18 new features that are hiding
in your iPhone's camera app on iOS 17.
So I still have a 14 Pro, haven't upgraded yet,
but any of the tips in here,
in fact, the first one here was your tip from last week.
Right? - Yeah.
- This little, what do you call it?
I don't even know if it's a level necessarily,
but it's like a little line here
that I turned on last week because of you.
And I loved having it this past week
when I was taking pictures, Jeff.
Line up your shot with the horizon.
I thought that was really good.
But there's a few other tips in here
that I thought were really nice that I wanted to try.
This is specifically iOS 17.
So even if you don't have the 15 yet,
you can still take advantage of some of these tips
in here as well.
These were really good.
- Yeah, if you do, however, have the new phone,
at least the new pro version of the phone,
they point out using the action button
And I should mention that I actually really like
the action button on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max,
what used to be your mute switch is now a button.
And when you hold down the button,
you can change what happens to it.
And I've had it set to my camera for the last week, Brett,
and I really like it.
Yeah, it works great because you can just jump
to the camera so quickly.
I know there's other ways to get to the camera,
but having a physical button that you know where it is,
it just works really well.
And so, and they mentioned that in here too,
And I like that too.
A lot of the other tips that they have here get into the super advanced things that I'm
not going to do like shooting pro res and all these other shooting in raw and everything
else.
Right.
Right.
So in fact, which reminds me there.
Yeah.
There was a quote that I pulled it out in my post today.
And it was from that podcast that we were just talking about from John Gruber.
John mentions that when you have a traditional camera, you are the photographer, you control
the aperture and the settings and the blues, you know, you're the ones, if you really know what
you're doing, you're going to get a great picture. But with the iPhone, any of the modern iPhones,
it's like the iPhone is the photographer. It knows how to take the best picture. It will adjust it
so that the HDR is perfect. It will adjust it so that the focal, you know, it makes those decisions
so that you just concentrate on what do you want to take a picture of and the iPhone does the rest.
And that's the type of photographer that I am for the years and years that I used a DSLR camera,
I didn't know what I was doing half the time.
I used it as a point and click.
And every once in a while I would fit it around
with some things and change some,
but I had no idea what I was doing with that thing.
Yeah, exactly.
Whereas, and I know that a professional photographer
could use the same equipment that I was using
and produce a much better picture.
But I just wanted to take good pictures
and make it real simple.
And with the iPhone, that's what I love about it.
Is you know, yes, it's got these fiddly things
if you want to get into it, but you don't have to.
you can just take a picture and it's gonna be great.
- For all of the fantastic reactions we have seen
about the new iPhones,
here are the criticisms about the new iPhone cases.
So you have one.
I didn't really know this was a thing
until maybe about a couple of days ago, Jeff.
All of a sudden I started seeing stuff in my blog feeds
and I'm like, okay, I remember Apple had
that whole mother nature little vignette that they did,
like, "Hey, we're getting away from things
"that we believe are harmful to the environment."
And one of those things was leather.
In place of the leather iPhone cases,
they offer now the fine woven cases.
And I thought at the time, which was a few weeks ago,
when Apple announced this, I'm like,
"Okay, well, I've seen Apple do plastic cases
"and rubber cases and silicone cases
"and very beautiful cases.
Surely, surely this is just going to be another fantastic offering from Apple.
Little did we know that, boy, some people do not like these.
In fact, I think I heard one podcaster, it was Micah Sargent, right?
Was saying that, you know, he doesn't like it's almost like how people don't like
to see fingernails on a chalkboard.
People don't like the look and feel or I guess the feel more than anything
of these new cases, but you have one as well.
Jeff, right? How do you see it, sir? So I think it's sort of like to a certain extent, I understand
what people are saying. I also think it's a certain degree of the scandal of the week and then move on
to something later. But I will say this, you know, if I have the leather case, because I used to buy
Apple's leather cases every single year. And if I have the leather case in one hand and the fine
woven in the other hand, the fine woven doesn't feel as good. It just doesn't. I mean, leather
feels better. There's no question about it. Even if you scratch leather or if it gets worn,
you know how leather sort of takes on character like it. Yeah, yeah. It almost exactly. It sort
of adds to it over time. And this fine woven thing, it's not as nice. And so if Apple had
charged $20 less for this, I would have felt okay, fine. This is a little bit cheaper. It's not as
nice, but you know, it's better for the environment. But Apple charges the same amount for them as
leather case. And I, it's not quite as good. Just it doesn't feel as, as the quality doesn't feel
as good in your hand. Having said that, it's also fine. I'm one of these people that I don't use a
case a lot. And some people are like, "Oh, how could you not use a case?" Well, I just try to
be safe with my phone. But there are times like when I was traveling to this week to Washington,
DC, you're in an airport, you're taking your phone out a lot and stuff. I didn't want to drop my
phone. And so I had this case on the whole time and it did what I wanted to do. It gave me a little
bit more grippiness, so I wasn't going to drop my phone and it gave a little bit more protection.
One thing I do like about the Apple case is that they actually have real, this is just like the leather case,
you know, it's not like a cutout, they actually have real plastic buttons on the side here that push through.
So, I mean, it's a decent case, but I will admit that feeling the fine woven, it's sort of soft,
I mean, I don't even know exactly what it was, you were showing before the iFixit folks that have these extreme microscopes that got super, super fine.
uh... some sort of re i mean that that pictures bizarre brett because that
black line
that is a hair that that is that is a single castration here
and here which in this picture looks like it is you know to but it's you
are not
but uh... so that's extreme of six four hundred and ninety time magnification
that is what i thought of the iphone can do that yet
uh... quite yet
We don't have that lens quite yet.
Not yet, OK.
The optical stabilization you would need for that
would be crazy.
You know, it's some sort of recycled material
that's woven together.
And it feels-- I've heard some people
say it feels like plastic.
I don't know.
It feels like something.
Well, even the iFixit here, they compare it to--
the fine woven is on the left.
Here, they have an Arcteryx jacket,
like a Patagonia type of--
or no, there's a Patagonia jacket,
has a bigger, looser weave.
I mean, they look extremely similar.
Like what you would get like a puffy jacket
is what they're compared it to.
Now, you know, that's again, magnified 440 times.
But then they even go so far as to like try to scratch it.
I mean, they're putting hot sauce on it.
- Yeah, now I have heard this.
That if you, yeah, if you like,
if you're having like a piece of pizza
with all that, you know, oil and grease on it
and then you take your hands without wiping them
and you touch the back of your phone,
you're gonna stain your phone.
Although I think you'd do the same thing
with the leather case too.
Maybe it's more here. I don't know.
So, I mean, the bottom line is, look,
this is not as nice as Apple's previous leather cases.
If you want a leather case and you don't care
about the environmental effects of it,
go ahead and go to a third-party case.
On the other hand, it's a fine case.
It fits the iPhone perfectly.
Yeah, it's not as nice as what I used to use,
but it does the job.
And it was Apple's first effort out of the gate
to move away from leather.
They don't get everything right on the first try.
Maybe in a year or two, they'll find a way
to make it better somehow, but it's fine.
But I totally understand why people are upset
because it's not as nice as what they had before.
- I guess, yeah.
They have other cases though, Jeff.
I guess I just don't understand why Apple felt like
that they needed to come up with some kind of a new,
fine woven, I mean, it sounds fine,
but I don't know why they felt like they needed
to come up with something
because they have other silicon cases,
they have other cases,
they could have just stopped doing leather
and maybe not trying to replace it or something.
- I mean, the answer to that, Brett,
is that the leather cases are always more expensive, right?
These are $60 cases.
- That's true.
- Versus the other ones that you're talking about
are what, like $30 cases.
And you know, Apple knows that they can make more money
when they sell the iPhone, if they sell you a case.
You know, the third parties,
they don't know for sure what the size
and the new phones are gonna be until Apple announces them.
Whereas Apple has all this lead time
that it knows exactly what it's coming out with.
So, you know, Apple, they make money, it's a fine case,
and they wanna sell something at $60,
and this is what they came up with.
- Well, somebody else may be making a few more bucks
this year, right?
That are making leather cases,
because if Apple doesn't offer them,
there will be, even if they have to catch up,
there are definitely other cases that are gonna come out
that are gonna be full on leather, right?
So if you really wanna go that route,
you'll be able to find one.
Okay, you mentioned the action button,
and I wanted to come back to that quickly,
because I haven't even felt it yet.
Can I first ask you, have you noticed
that you press it too long or not long enough?
Like, have you been able to adjust to that,
you know, in the way that you press it on the side?
It comes up just fine, it sounds like.
- Yeah, like the very first day
that you use the action button,
when you first press it, you won't press it in enough.
And it's right there on the screen.
As soon as I press it really short, it says, hold to open.
And so it's sort of giving me feedback
that I need to hold it a tiny bit more.
And then once you learn it,
every single time since then, I've had no trouble.
I mean, it's not like you're pressing down
the action button for two seconds.
You're pressing it down for a fraction of a second,
just a tiny bit longer than you would than a quick press.
But no, you very quickly learn how easy it is to use.
And I had no problem at all.
- So I've heard many people talk about this
because apparently in the setup there,
what Apple offers like what, five or six different,
you know, the defaults, right?
Like camera, I guess, or mute,
you can keep it as a mute button,
or flashlight or something like that.
but obviously we know a lot of,
or we follow a lot of techie nerdy people
that have said, oh my goodness,
now we can customize what the action button can do.
And I know that people have attributed shortcuts
to that action button,
which is great that Apple allowed that,
but not until you link to this today
that I see the Frederico at Mac stories,
you can assign two shortcuts to the same action button.
Now, is this like a little thing that he created himself
or he's doing some hackery on the back end with shortcuts,
But he's he's masterful at doing this.
Yeah, I mean, it's just you can assign the action button to open up a shortcut, any shortcut,
any shortcut you create.
And so he created a shortcut that basically, the first time you trigger the shortcut, it
does one thing.
The second time you trigger the shortcut, it does the second thing.
The third time it goes back to the first thing, the fourth time it goes to the second thing.
And so just with that simple little back and forth, he makes it so that if you basically
trigger the button twice in succession, it will do the second thing, not the first thing.
So he's found a way to do two different things with the same button.
I haven't tried this shortcut yet, but I think it's fascinating.
And one is just as fascinating.
That was again mentioned in that podcast from John Gruber.
And it's also mentioned on the Daring Fireball site is he came up with a quick shortcut that
I think, I think John Gruber linked to it in his review of the iPhone 15 pro.
But what his shortcut does is if your iPhone is in any position at all, and you press the
action button, it goes to the camera, except for one.
If your iPhone is face down as if it's face down on a table or if you're holding it with
the face like this way, cause you can from the, um, the gyroscope, the iPhone can tell
what position it can tell.
If your iPhone is in this position and you press the action button, it will do the mute
switch like just like the old style mute switch.
And I'm like, well, that's sort of interesting.
You know, it's a little complicated, but it just shows that because of the shortcut that
he created, that it knows if it's, if it's in this position, do X, if it's in that position,
do Y.
I haven't yet tried these yet, but I am going to soon.
And there's just been too many other features I've been trying out on the phone.
I know. I love, you know, once you connect any button to shortcuts,
the world is your oyster. You could do anything. Right.
And so, you know, just within the first week, people have come up with these creative ideas.
Who knows what we're going to have? Who knows months from now? I think it's awesome.
I'm very excited about this. It's totally geeky, but, you know, that's who I am.
So, so I know we're going to keep on talking about the new iPhones.
However, even if you have an older iPhone, you hopefully by now, maybe or maybe not,
okay, have upgraded to iOS 17, right?
That came out last Monday.
I have been loving the new features in iOS 17.
In fact, I can't think of anything specifically that, you know, I'm not happy with.
You had a great link here today from CNET about 17 hidden iOS 17 features and settings
on your phone.
I only wish this article would have gone into a little bit more detail on like how to enable
some of these, but this was really good.
A couple of these I did not know that you could do.
For example, the visual lookup options here.
I remember, I think there was an app that I either used as one of my tips was called
like, oh, I forget the name of it, but it was basically an app that you could open up
and you could point it at a label on your clothes
because there's all kinds of little, I didn't even know.
There's all kinds of little laundry codes
that come on your clothes label.
And I've just never cared or paid attention to it.
But this app would tell me what this means.
Like if it's cold cycle or whatever.
Well, now that's all built in, in iOS 17.
Like you could just point your phone at it.
Not only that, the other one here
is pointed at your car dashboard
and it'll tell you what the lights mean
that come on the dashboard?
Are you kidding me?
- I didn't even realize that those were uniform,
but I guess they are.
I guess those uniform little icons,
I never even realized that, wow.
- That's exactly what I thought of the first time, Jeff.
I'm like, okay, do I have to put in my car's make and model
in order to like get the exact,
but anyway, this was a great little article.
I'm glad you linked to it because some of these,
some of these I knew and some of the others were just like,
really?
I did not know that was available in there.
- Agreed.
- Yeah, very good stuff.
Okay, we talked about the AirPods Pro last time
and the new AirPods Pro V2 USB-C edition,
which is different than the AirPods Pro V2
lightning edition.
- Exactly.
- Right?
That's the only thing that was different
in sort of the hardware.
There's a couple of other things
with the way that they're doing some of the audio
and I think even some of the dust resistance
that you can get in the brand, brand,
brand new version two AirPods Pro.
But this was a good article from TechCrunch
that I thought we did a good job of talking about
some of the features we talked about last week too.
Adaptive audio, personalized volume,
and conversational awareness.
How have you fared this past week in using these, Jeff?
'Cause when you're traveling,
I find that's when I really use these features
a little bit more.
- Yeah, and it's actually sort of neat
because the sort of the brand new in-between feature,
in-between mode that I'm still forgetting the name of.
- Yeah, adaptive audio.
You know, I had, it's interesting, I was on an airplane and you know how you have the
white noise, but you know, airplanes are notoriously loud.
And so if I go into complete noise cancellation mode, it tries to cut that out as much as
possible.
But even when you go to the adaptive mode, this brand new mode, it's still cut out most
of it, but made it so that at least I could hear the announcement that the flight attendant
or that the pilot was making over the plane.
And I thought that that was actually sort of interesting.
Of course, in any mode that you're in, if your AirPods sense that somebody is talking
to you, if it's loud enough, it will actually lower the volume of what you're listening
to so that you could hear them too.
So that's sort of a cool feature too.
It's neat.
One of the things that I loved about this article the most is whenever you interview
Apple executives, sometimes they go beyond just the marketing speak to actually tell
you something interesting.
Give you some details.
And here, they were describing how when they were trying to figure out what to do to come
up with these new modes for AirPods, they explored all sorts of options.
I mean, one of the things they described here is they said, they explored, what if we look
at your GPS location so that if you're at your home, we'll do these things.
But if you're out in the world on the street, we'll do other things.
And they ultimately did not act upon that because they said, just because you're home,
it could be a very noisy home.
And just because you're outside, it could be a very quiet outside during the park.
So it, but, but at least it just shows that these are the sorts of things that they looked
into to see if it would make sense to take this into account for a future for the AirPods
Pro.
So I thought that was actually sort of interesting.
Not only that, the article was just, yeah, the number of calculations that apparently
are being made inside these little tiny AirPods all the time, you know, to like balance out
the noise from the outside, the noise from the inside, to understand if you're like actually
talking yourself from that conversational mode.
I mean, there was one place in here that were saying,
there's actually a microphone inside the AirPods
to kind of listen, what was it?
Like it was listening to the noise
even on the inside of your ears to understand the volume
that you're listening to music on.
I mean, there's so much going on
inside these little AirPods that,
I think I just take for granted now
because I am really enjoying the adaptive audio.
I mean, I always love the transparency
versus the noise cancellation.
And sometimes I will go back and forth
between those two extremes, Jeff.
But I just exactly what you're talking about.
I love having the adaptive audio so that it does
at least close out a lot of some of the extraneous noise,
but exactly the same thing you did.
When I get on a plane, I like to have that
so I can talk to the flight attendant
or I can hear if the pilot comes over
and has an announcement, but I still cut out
the vast majority of that crazy loud noise.
I did not realize how loud airplanes were.
So I've been loving these new things.
just getting used to it a little bit,
that conversational awareness.
Apparently the AirPods even look to see
if your jaw is moving to know that
if you're starting to talk in that aspect.
I gotta tell you, sometimes that will trip me up
because I get annoyed.
I think I said this last time,
I'm listening to music and either I just sing out loud
or I just, you know, I'm by myself.
I was running a trail the last week
and I just exclaimed like,
"Yes, I can do it!"
Or something like that, right?
And the music went away and I'm like,
"No, no, no, no, no, no, I need the music.
"I wanna keep pumping myself up."
So sometimes I might wanna turn that off,
but for the most part, I do like having it on.
Yeah, good stuff there, AirPods.
Speaking of travel, one of the places
that I went this past week myself was Arizona.
And while I was there, one of my friends,
we were talking about, they had just moved,
and so they were talking about changing their license
from the old state to the new state.
And since we were in Arizona, my friend said,
"Oh yeah, I'm thinking about getting
the digital version of the license."
And I looked in my eyes and went,
"Oh yeah, Arizona is one of the states
that allow you to actually have your driver's license
in your Apple wallet."
This was a good story.
I'm glad that you linked to this
because the 9to5, Zach Hall at 9to5Mac will update this.
Apparently it's updated for September, 2023.
And this is good to know that there's Apple wallet IDs.
And then some states, I believe like Louisiana,
will allow a digital ID app,
'cause you've been using that for a while too, Jeff.
- Yeah, and it's really nice.
I mean, it's nice to not have to worry
about having my license with me when I drive.
I normally do, but I don't have to.
I used it just this week when I was at the,
I was asking for something when I was at my hotel
and she asked for my driver's license.
And I realized that I had run downstairs,
like I didn't even pick up my wallet.
You know, I had nothing but my room key and my iPhone.
And so I just brought up my ID,
my Louisiana driver's license on my phone.
And I guess for her purposes, that was official enough.
And she was like, okay, she could see I was who I was.
And you know, that could change something
about my room and stuff like that.
So it's just nice having a digital ID
with you all the time.
What I have not yet tried is I know
that more and more airports, you know,
we're getting to the point that when you travel,
you don't have to always show the TSA people
your boarding pass, whether it's digital or analog.
Usually you're getting to the point
where you just show them your ID
and they know who you are.
- And that does it, right.
- And that's all that you need.
And I see this article was pointing out,
in fact, it points out that it was at the airport
that I was at this week, I didn't even know it,
that many airports will now take these digital IDs
instead of your physical ID,
which is nice 'cause you're often,
how you have your phone in your hand anyway,
and so you could just show them your phone.
So it's a shame that it's taking a while
for this to become a thing.
- It is.
- But it is rolling out more and more over time.
And this is gonna be one of these things
that five, 10 years from now,
I'm hoping everybody in the country can use a digital ID.
So four states so far do Apple Wallet IDs,
which apparently means that you can actually incorporate
your identification into Apple Wallet,
and Arizona is one of them.
But then I love how Zach Hall in the article here says,
there's digital ID apps.
So in Louisiana, you can't put your ID
into your Apple Wallet, right Jeff?
You have to pull up a specific app from Louisiana
to show your driver's license.
Okay, so there's a few more of those on there,
but I want it all incorporated into the wallet.
- It would be nicer if it was all in one app
because that's where your boarding passes are,
that's where everything else is.
- Right, exactly.
- But you know what, it's really not that big of a deal
to open up a separate app.
- Yeah, that's true.
- So, you know, it's easier.
- I want more though.
I do, because sometimes when I go through TSA,
just to your point, like I'll do a clear check, right?
And I used to have to scan the boarding pass there.
And then every once in a while, of course,
you know, I'm flagged as like, okay,
you know, you're randomly selected to show your ID.
And I'm like, oh, I gotta get my ID out of my bag,
like the physical card.
I'm like, come on, I'm in Ohio.
I like how Zach says it's at the bottom,
like if your state doesn't have it,
it's gotta go through the legislative body.
So I'm like, I'm thinking,
should I write my state congressman?
Do I need to do that?
Like, let's get going, Ohio, come on.
Let's make something happen.
I'm glad Louisiana has it, but you're right.
I want it to roll out a little bit quicker on there.
Well, we're still in the travel aspect here.
So one last article that you linked to,
which I just thought was really great.
John Vorey's at Mac Stories, which I love reading.
I was just on a plane, and if you're in economy,
you know how teeny tiny those little desks are.
And you cannot even do a laptop.
I wouldn't even say, sometimes I'll make a laptop fit, Jeff,
but I am constantly nervous that the person in front of me
is going to recline in a snap.
And what happens?
My laptop screen will snap,
'cause it'll get caught sometimes in there.
And I just, I'm constantly nervous
that that's gonna happen.
John Voorhees is brilliant.
I love this little trick that he came up with
using the iPad mini.
- Yeah, you don't even have to read the article.
Just look at the picture.
- I know, I know, that's it.
That says it all.
- He's describing a plane that has a ledge
on the back of the seat in front of you
for you to put your phone on,
which I have to admit,
I've actually never seen that before.
I don't know what airline it was on.
- Yeah, I have.
This is Southwest, I think.
- Southwest.
And he noticed that not only would an iPhone fit
in that little platform ledge, but an iPad mini,
because it's so small, it also fits on the ledge too.
So he put his iPad mini up there
and then just has a keyboard, but it's a cute little setup.
- I'm sorry, he says it's American Airlines.
It looks to me like American,
but I have seen these little trays here because,
it's like, yeah, come on airlines, catch up.
It's like, you know, that's what we're gonna have.
We have a phone and a lot of times I'm gonna,
do I put it in my lap?
I gotta tell you, almost every time that I get on a plane,
I hear the sound almost every time, Jeff.
I can tell immediately somebody dropped their phone.
Like it sounds like there's clunking around
down in the cargo hold, but no,
I can tell the sound immediately now
that somebody dropped their phone.
And it's like, I love it.
Instead of putting it into the seatback pocket
or something like that, I wanna have a little place
where I can set my phone,
and I'm glad that some airlines do this.
But yeah, thanks, John.
That's a wonderful little tip there.
It is a sad day that we have to say goodbye
to something that many of us have known
and held near and dear to our hearts for many years, Jeff.
Apparently Netflix is going to stop sending
the red envelopes of DVDs.
This is a fun story you link to today from the new-
- Yeah, 25 years that Netflix has been doing this,
which is, you know, I'm certainly of an age,
I know that you are too, but that, you know,
we remember, you know, when I, in college,
used to all hop in the car and go to the blockbuster and have to pick out something.
Oh, yeah.
But it was such a transformation when Netflix came around 25 years ago,
and you could have the DVDs delivered directly to your house.
To your house!
And it's always so exciting when you got the red envelope, you're like,
oh, I wonder what I got today. And so, you know, it's obviously run its course.
Netflix is obviously now a digital streaming company. But today is the last day that they're
shipping out DVDs if you're still a member of the service.
Incredible.
And in fact, to get rid of their supply, I think everybody that's still a member,
they're just shipping like 10 DVD, just 10 random movies. So just so you know,
that they don't need them anymore. So people are getting all sorts of movies that maybe you'll
enjoy. Seriously.
This New York Times article though, was great though, because they talk about when the Netflix
was at its peak, they had so many of these distribution centers and you can get to the
point where depending upon where you were living, you would often get a movie like the next day,
which is pretty amazing. You know, there was a time period when Netflix's DVDs were some
major percentage of the US Postal Office total, you know, circulation or whatever. And so anyway,
we're no longer at those days. But we can all look back fondly and remember when Netflix DVDs were a
big thing. And yeah, it was fun. It's the end of an era now. But yeah, a lot of fond memories.
This story is so great. And this is I mean, they really do a little profile of some of the workers
there that have been there for like 10 or 13 years. And they're sad too. I mean, really,
that's what I like it when stories kind of profile the actual individuals that are there.
But in fact, I got to tell you quickly, I was just talking with another friend yesterday,
and I still didn't even know that Netflix was still sending these out, to be honest with you.
But this friend of mine says, yes, they just got the notice that they are no longer getting... I
I think they were getting maybe two DVDs a month still, or whatever it was, right?
They had just not completely switched over to the streaming.
And they still had that excitement when the red envelope came in the mail and it was,
"What did I get? What did I get?" I remember those days, Jeff, but they are no more.
And the thing is, I mean, Netflix's collection was huge. The number of movies that Netflix had
available for DVD is far beyond what you can get from streaming services nowadays. A movie may...
That's a great point.
As long as a DVD was made, even if it's something that was now out of print, you could often get it
on Netflix. Whereas there are times nowadays that like, I might want to watch a movie with my son
that I remember from years ago. And you look, you just can't find it. You go to these, you type in
a movie title on Google and they'll show you the services. And it's like, and the answer is nowhere.
I can buy it for 10 bucks or whatever. Sometimes you can rent it, but I'm like, I don't want to
buy it or rent it. I've already paid for all these streaming services. One of them is the movie.
But Netflix would pretty much always have stuff.
So that's great.
Well, farewell, red envelope.
It was a good journey while it lasted.
It was.
Before we get to the in the know segment,
let us just talk briefly about SaneBox.
We thank them for being a sponsor for us today.
We have talked about them for several times.
And I think I sort of beaten that insane horse already
in the sense that I can't do without it.
Like it's just now become part and parcel of my workflow when I check my email.
And even to the point where I'm considering, you know, I've got four or five other accounts, Jeff,
that it's like when I go to those accounts, I get annoyed. Like, wait a minute. I don't want to have
to parse through all of this junk. SaneBox is a service that you can go and get some more
information about. SaneBox.com/inthenews. S-A-N-E-Box.com/inthenews. If you go there and
and use that URL, you can get a free trial.
So you can try it out.
And in fact, some people say,
well, I don't want anything messing up with my email.
It's not gonna do anything.
It creates a couple of additional folders,
but as you probably have heard us talk about
over and over again, these folders help
that it kind of automatically sorts out some of your email.
We've talked about the same black hole.
We've talked about the same later.
The same news is my favorite folder still,
and that it just takes all of those newsletters
and puts them in one folder that doesn't delete them,
doesn't do anything with them.
It just puts them in a place where I can go and look at them
maybe one time a day,
as opposed to me checking my mail multiple times a day.
And all of those, that junk is sort of kind of
slotted over to a different folder
that I can look at later.
How about we talk about today,
maybe just some helping folks understand
like the different options
that you could get a subscription for,
because not only can you get a free trial of SaneBox,
if you go to SaneBox.com/inthenews,
but you get $25 off a subscription.
Once you realize you can't do without it,
and you need to actually get a subscription here.
And I love how SaneBox offers these different options here,
Jeff, you can get a snack subscription,
you can get lunch, or you can get the full dinner.
And the difference here mostly is the number of features
that you can select to be included with your subscription.
- Yeah, so like if you just wanna,
You know, if you want to try it out, you can try it out for free for 14 days.
But then once you actually go to subscribe, if you do the snack version, which is $7 a
month when you pay annually.
And so for $7 a month, what you get to pick is only works with one email account.
And then you just pick two features.
So let's say for example, you know, I think the top two features would be the black hole
feature to get rid of a bunch of nonsense and maybe the same news feature that you were
raving about too much.
And then you just pick those two.
But then if you want to get the, uh, the medium plan, the, uh, the, the, the, what is it?
The, the dinner plan was the lunch plan.
And this is the one that I use.
So it works for Gmail accounts.
So I have it for my Gmail and I have it for my iPhone JD and you can choose which six
features and they can be different features on different accounts, which ones you want.
So for me, two features would be a little limited because I like too many of the features.
I like having the same black hole.
I like having same later.
Um, there's a feature like for example, uh, there's, I think it's called saying no reply
that if you send an email, so I send you an email, Brett, and I initiated the email, it's
a brand new email I sent it to you and you didn't respond to it.
Same box is not looking at the content of the message, but it's just saying, because
it was a brand new email that I initiated to you and because you never responded to
it, it will say, I'm going to put a copy of this in this folder so that later on this
week I can just look and I can say, here's all of my emails I sent out that I did not
get a response to.
Now, some of them don't require response, so that's fine.
And if one of them should have had a response and I see that, I'm like, you know what?
I'm glad that you reminded me of that because I actually did want Brett to respond to me
on that.
And so that's just another, there's, there's, I don't know, 15 different features that they
have.
So for me, I've picked the six that I want and that works great for me.
And so that's why I like the lunch plan.
But then if you want to have the full plan that has, that has everything you can get
for the more expensive one too.
But I like the idea that you decide how much, you know, how much help do you want and choose
a plan that fits you.
me the middle of the road lunch sort of the Goldilocks. It's not too big, it's not too small,
it's just right. That's the one that I prefer. I do like the fact that it is customizable,
right? In other words, I'm not forced to go to the highest end subscription, Jeff, just because
like I want that one feature, right, that I can only get if I pay the full, like they've done a
very good job here at balancing in just the sense in that you can basically make the plan that's
that's gonna work best for you by picking the right features.
And you're right, this lunch plan, number one,
I gotta have at least two email accounts.
And I just really appreciate the fact
that I have these six features that I can select from.
And if you want all the features
and you wanna just try everything,
you can go to the dinner route, the full dinner,
or as my mom in the South used to say, supper, right?
You could get everything, all the features are included there
and that has four email accounts that will apply to.
- Did you see that they also have the appetizer plan?
- I did see that and that's only 7 cents a day.
Now that's one email account and one feature.
You know, hey, if you wanna start with that, that's fine
because what I also like about this is number one,
you can always upgrade or downgrade even if you need to,
although I don't see that you would be doing that.
And number two, the other great thing is
there's no obligation.
Like if you try it for a while and if, you know,
by something, by some reason, something is wrong with you
that you wanna cancel it, you can do that.
Like I just appreciate, I always appreciate companies
that just don't lock you into something, right?
And you can cancel at any time,
which is just really great.
But yeah, just having the ability that you can,
you know, if you wanna do the appetizer plan,
you can do that if you just wanna start somewhere.
But even just going for that 14 day trial is great.
And if you just go to sanebox.com/inthenews,
all one word, you can just sign up quickly,
You can even get started right there.
The buttons have you start on your Google account
or your iCloud account or any email address.
You'll have to put in some of that information there
so that it can just access the fact that it's like,
what are newsletters, like it looks into it.
But you and I have both kind of looked at this intently,
vetted it in the sense of security
and completely comfortable with what they're doing on here,
which is really great on there.
So sanebox.com/inthenews.
and now in the know.
So I just had upgraded my iPhone and my iPad
to iOS 17 a week ago, just like we talked about before.
And one of the things that I have been enjoying
on my iPhone for quite a while, Jeff,
what this was maybe at least a year ago,
maybe two years ago, where I would do that lock screen
and add widgets on my iPhone.
And it wasn't until finally tonight, last night,
that I opened my iPad and thought, oh, wait a minute,
I can customize my lock screen and add widgets on my iPad.
So I just wanted to remind everybody
that you can do that now.
I wanna say I wasted about an hour last night,
but no, it was an enjoyable time that I sat there
and created all kinds of additional new pictures,
some of the animations and added widgets on my iPad.
The thing that struck me out so much
because I've really enjoyed the different lock screens
you can create on the iPhone.
The iPad, of course, is just such a much bigger palette.
Right?
I mean, I can see the picture even grander.
I mean, almost too big sometimes.
I had a picture of one of my kids and I'm like,
"Yo, that's a little too big on the screen there."
But I really just enjoy and appreciate the fact
that you can just go in and create these widgets.
Now, if I'm not mistaken, Jeff,
I don't think the widgets on the lock screen
on the iPad are interactive yet.
They might be, I gotta tell you,
I don't know if I fully tested that,
but I just love being able to tap the screen
and I can immediately see like the battery levels
of my AirPods or my phone
or the actual battery level of the iPad.
I love having that little calendar app on there
just 'cause I like to see like, okay, what's the 14th?
Is that a Tuesday or a Thursday,
something along those lines.
Just being able to have access to those widgets
on the lock screen on my iPad,
is it was just really, really useful.
So if you haven't done that yet,
just simply because, you know,
hasn't been that obvious
because we've been doing it on the iPhone for so long,
try adding the widgets on your iPad lock screen
and you can customize that thing.
Similar to the way you've been able to customize
on the iPhone,
you can now customize the lock screen on your iPad.
And that's my tip for the day.
- Yeah, I haven't played around with it yet,
mainly because my iPad screen doesn't stay on all the time,
unlike my iPhone screen.
So I find a widget on the iPhone screen that's persistent
to be so much more useful in the standby mode.
But regardless, it's there.
And I haven't tried it out yet,
so I don't know all the details,
but I do know that it's something that's there.
The tip that I was going to share today,
and it goes back to another photography tip,
and it has to be, it's a photography tip
for when you're using the brand new phones.
If you have the new, the pro version of the iPhone 15,
I have the Pro Max, but I think it also works with the Pro.
If you zoom, we talked before, Brad,
about how the new telephoto lens is 5X zoom.
But what if you want to get even more than 5X?
That's fine.
Just like on the old phones, you can reverse pinch
and you can go five times more.
So on the 5X zoom, you can go up to 25.
On the 3X zoom, you can go up to 15.
But the problem is when you are really zoomed in,
and again, this is a digital zoom,
so you're going to lose a little bit of quality,
But when you are super, super zoomed in,
let's just say you're trying to read something from far away.
Sometimes you lose track on your screen
of where you even are.
It's like, what is, you go back and forth,
like, well, am I to the left or to the right?
You're just so extremely zoomed in.
And so there's a new feature that Apple added this year.
It's built-in automatic that anytime you go beyond 5X,
6X, 7X, all the way up, or if you have the 3X camera,
I think it's the same on the regular Pro,
there's a little window that appears
in the bottom corner of your screen
that shows what things look like
just through the regular One X camera.
And there's a little yellow box
that shows the part that you're zooming in on.
And it makes it so easy
because if you're zoomed way, way, way in
and you're like, "Okay, I'm trying to see
that sign over there, where is it?"
You can just look in the little mini display
and you can say, "Oh, I see.
My zoom box is too far to the left.
I need to move over to the right just a little bit."
And then you move yourself over and it's there.
It's a really cool feature.
It makes a ton of sense.
I think it's great that Apple has it.
Frankly, I wish that Apple would bring it
to some of the other models, the older models too.
I don't know if maybe they think
that they need the newest processor
to make it work for a picture in picture.
I don't know, but it's a really, really useful feature.
And I suspect you don't know about it
'cause I haven't seen Apple even describe it.
In fact, before the podcast today-
- I haven't heard anybody else talk about this.
Yeah.
- I was trying to find out what does Apple even call this?
Like, you know, sometimes Apple comes up
with a name for something, you know?
If they have a name for this feature,
I haven't even found out what the name is yet.
But whatever it is, it makes-
- Mini window.
- Yeah, mini window for extreme zoom, for digital zoom,
and it's really, really helpful.
So again, if you have one of the newest phones,
once you get into the 5X or 3X, if you have DirectView Pro,
zoom in even more and you'll see this window
automatically pop up
and you'll see how incredibly useful it is.
It makes a huge, huge difference.
- So it's only when you go past that 3X or the 5X, right?
Now you're talking about reverse zoom,
but I wonder Jeff, you know, sometimes what I do is that
if you tap and hold on the area where you can go like 1X
or 2X or something like that,
it comes up with like this little,
this little scroll wheel, right?
So you can move your thumb up and down.
Does that make sense?
I wonder if that box comes up when you-
- It does.
- Oh, it does.
Okay, great.
- Yeah, so I'm doing it right now.
So as I use that little scroll wheel,
as soon as I go past the 5X point, the little window,
actually, that's funny.
It doesn't come up at the 5X point.
It comes up at around the 10X point.
when you're using the scroll wheel.
But regardless, you'll get there.
And again, if you don't use that little scroll wheel
to zoom in, if instead you just use your fingers
to sort of a pinch or reverse pinch,
then it does the same thing.
So it's really, and when you do the reverse pinch,
it comes up a little bit sooner,
but it's really, really cool.
And it makes it so much easier to find out where you are.
- Oh, that's great.
So that's for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.
We don't think it's on the 15 normal.
- I don't believe it's on the 15.
- Yeah, yeah, well somebody let us know.
Somebody write to us, leave a comment, let us know.
That's great, that's a good tip.
And I'm just even additionally extra jealous now
that I don't have my new iPhone 15 Pro yet.
I keep trying, I should have,
I think I tried looking in it if I wanted to pre-order
or order it now, not order, pre-order, but order it now.
I think I'm back up to October 27th or November 1st now.
So you did good, my friend.
You got it, you got on the bandwagon
soon as you possibly could.
Good talking with you as always, Jeff.
We want to thank our sponsor again, SaneBox.
You can learn more going to sanebox.com/inthenews and we'll talk to you next week, Jeff.
Thanks, Gregg.