In the News
In the News
122: Snow Glitches, Sandy Beaches, and Apple LifeSavers
Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/VjFEbnlifcc
The Essential Litigation Apps: https://www.litsoftware.com/
In the News blog post for November 10, 2023:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2023/11/in-the-news701.html
- The Essential Litigation Apps: https://www.litsoftware.com/
- Fixing the Snow Glitch
- Like Sand on a Beach
- iPhone from a Windows Perspective
- HomeKit 101
- Swiftie of the Year
- I Don’t Know if I Want an Adonit
- The Essential Litigation Apps: https://www.litsoftware.com/
- Where Y’at? Segment: Apple LifeSavers and CarTags
- Brett’s iTip: Limited Edition Veteran’s Day Challenge Badge
- Jeff’s iTip: iKlear
Zac Hall | 9to5Mac: Apple releases iOS 17.1.1 for iPhone with fixes for snow glitch and wireless charging
Zac Hall | 9to5Mac: Barbra Streisand once called up Tim Cook because Siri mispronounced her name
Paul Thurrott: Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max Review
Paul Lamkin | The Ambient: Apple HomeKit: Everything you need to know about living in an Apple Home
Andrew O’Hara | AppleInsider: Apple Pencil (USB-C) review: A new budget option in a temporarily confusing lineup
Rael Hornby | Laptop Mag: Adonit Note+ 2 review: An iPad stylus that’s a stroke of excellence
Jeff’s Review: TranscriptPad update lets you sync video, edit clips, and export trial-ready videos
LITSOFTWARE: Sync and Edit Video Depositions in TranscriptPad! (Part 1)
LITSOFTWARE: Sync and Edit Video Depositions in TranscriptPad! (Part 2)
Daniel Eran Dilger | AppleInsider: Apple's Crash Detection saves another life: mine
Ashley Belanger | ArsTechnica: AirTags are the new go-to tool for cops after spike in car thefts
Brett’s iTip: Earn your Limited Edition Veteran’s Day Challenge Badge in Apple Fitness by working out for at least 11 minutes tomorrow, Saturday, November 11 on Veteran’s Day. You can see your Limited Edition Challenge Badges by going to the Fitness app on your iPhone - Summary - Scroll down to Awards, tap Show More, then scroll down to “Limited Edition Challenges.”
Jeff’s iTip: iKlear screen cleaner for all your iPhone, iPad, and Mac screens.
Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com
Welcome to In the News for November 10th, 2023.
I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.
This is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.
Hey, Brett.
Good morning, Jeff.
We want to say thank you to our sponsor, Lit Software, for hanging out with us today.
We'll talk a little bit more about TranscriptPad, their fantastic app for managing transcripts
here in a little bit.
But first, let's get to the important news.
You know, sometimes Apple releases these emergency updates, Jeff, to iOS, such as 17.1.1, you
know, to fix things like zero-day security patches, you know, to update things.
But even more importantly, they released it to fix the snow glitch that everybody was
having.
I got this.
I didn't know what this was.
Yeah, let's not say everybody, Brett.
Suffice it to say that this quote-unquote snow glitch had zero effect on my life.
But I saw that, you know, it's funny.
Okay.
That's very fair.
That's true because you don't have it down there.
But I think I was traveling to Chicago and I'm showing the picture on the screen right
now and sure enough, I have a little weather widget on the front of my lock screen, right?
So it shows what the temperature is and sure enough, all of a sudden it had this weird
wonky little document, little icon on it.
And I was like, what in the world is this going on?
I thought the weather app was just, you know, being a little flunky or something.
And I tried rebooting that.
I tried rebooting the phone and it still was there.
Sure enough, I had no idea that this was something Apple was very keen to fix as soon as absolutely
possible.
So the idea is that it should have been showing a snow icon and instead was just showing a
generic document icon.
Wow.
That's a big, uh, I guess I don't have that much snow down there in Cupertino, California
either.
So maybe they didn't notice.
This is important, Jeff.
So 17.1.1 was just, I think I updated yesterday, right?
Everything's okay.
There's some other things as well, but the snow glitch, there is no glitch.
I'm glad that that has been updated.
What else did they fix in this?
I'm trying to figure it out now.
So there was the Apple, well in the, uh, in iOS, that was the only one we've been, I saw
was the snow glitch and then just some other little security updates.
And then they, they issued security updates for some of the other devices as well.
The Apple watch one looked like it could be interesting because apparently some people
were experiencing that their Apple watch was draining battery power faster than you would
expect.
And nobody wants that to happen.
I mean, Apple watches, unless you have a big ultra size like you do, you know, you want
your actual Apple watch to last all day long and anything that's going to interfere with
that is not a good idea.
So I'm glad that, you know, this is a perfect use of, like you say, Brett, this sort of
emergency let's get them up super quick, you know, point something, point one point, something,
point two, you know, get those things out quickly and get stuff, get stuff fixed.
Yeah.
I mean, to your point, this was, so this is watchOS 10.1.1.
And actually my son uses, I think it's still an Apple watch five right now, one of my hand
me downs.
And he was very excited about this.
I don't know how much it's going to fix his version.
I didn't tell him that.
Yeah.
To have an Apple watch that old, I'm sure the battery is gone.
But he was excited to see that.
Yes.
Okay.
It could fix any, if there's any kind of additional battery drain that doesn't need
to be on there, you know, that's something that we can, that can be fixed.
So that's iOS 17.1.1.
It goes very quick.
The update went very quickly for me, like a lot of these, you know, very small updates
do.
WatchOS 10.1.1.
And then you also linked to HomePod OS 17.1.1, or at least that's a lot in conjunction with
iOS, right?
That you want to update your HomePods as well, Jeff.
It'll make Siri more responsive.
Keep in mind though, that updating a HomePod, it's tough to do those manually.
You know, first you need to update the iPhone.
And then, I mean, if you want to try to trigger it manually, you can go into the Home app
and select your speaker and try to do it.
But I find that it's, you know, just letting it happen on its own accord is just as well
as, you know, it may take a day or two, but it'll eventually get over there.
Yeah.
That's kind of similar to like the AirPods updates, right?
I don't know if there was an AirPod update necessarily.
AirPods, yeah.
There's no way to trigger them at all.
You just have to wait for it to happen.
And you're right, there actually was an AirPod update this week.
I haven't even checked to see if mine was updated or not, because they don't tell you
what they fixed and they don't, but you know, you could go online and find out what the
new firmware number is and go into the About box on your iPhone and figure out if you got
the new one.
But, you know, it's transparent stuff.
I'm glad that Apple continues to fix this stuff behind the scenes.
Don't get me wrong, but you know, not much fanfare.
Well, that's it.
I guess on these AirPod updates, we've said this several times before on the podcast,
I know it's like, hey, just relax.
It'll update on its own.
Like, they got it handled and that's good on one end.
But I think just the nerdy, you know, side of me is like, wait a minute.
No, I want to know exactly what's going on and I want to know exactly when they're going
to be updated.
And there really isn't any way to follow that except exactly what you just said, kind of
manually figure out the firmware number and go into the About.
I don't know.
And you know, the AirPods have to be connected to the phone.
It's a little bit of a mystery of exactly how it updates.
And anyway, that when you were talking about the HomePods, it made me think about that
as well.
Yeah, I'm there.
You know, if Siri, by the way, happens to mispronounce your name, you can just maybe
send an email to Tim Cook, you know, pick up the phone, call Mr. Cook and say, can you
give a call?
Yeah, just, you know, hey, Siri, you know, if it's OK, we just I just want to like, you
know, it's it's Mac Adams and not McAdams, right?
You know, just just to change it a little bit.
That may not work unless you are the glorious Barbara Streisand with an S. I didn't even
really know this was a thing, but apparently it she insists that it is Streisand as in
the sand on a beach.
Right.
And not a Z as in Streisand.
But apparently she who shall not be named was mispronouncing Miss Barbara's name.
And so she said, what is this, an interview or some kind of from BBC?
She's like, yeah, I just I just connected with Tim Cook and just said, can you get Siri
to say my name correctly?
And it worked.
Yeah, it was just that I think she was being interviewed on something else by a BBC reporter
and she just happened to sort of throw it out there.
And it's funny because in the video, the reporter goes ahead and asks a question to Siri that
would trigger the response of Barbara Streisand and actually says it correctly.
So it apparently works.
I have to admit, it is sort of funny that, you know, the rich and famous live a different
life for the rest of us.
And, you know, when they need tech support, they just call Tim Cook, which is not something
exactly, not an option available to the rest of us.
But it is funny that it's out there.
So I'm glad that Siri will now pronounce Barbara's last name correctly.
Our long national nightmare has come to an end.
Not in the snow glitch over.
I think, you know, my life can go on today.
And that's good.
I do like in the video, she does recognize that she quotes, it's one perk of fame.
Yeah, she can connect with Tim Cook.
To be fair, if you haven't watched the video, she's good natured about it.
She realizes that this is sort of a special privilege that she has.
And she's not trying to be obnoxious about it.
She's very, she's very cute about it.
But it's a fun little clip.
We have no shortages of reviews for the brand new iPhone 15s, the 15 pros, the pro max.
And I like reading pretty much all of the reviews, Jeff, good or bad.
But when somebody like Paul Theriot reviews an iPhone, I kind of perk up a little bit.
For any of that, but they don't know, we've been following Paul Theriot.
He is a journalist that has been in the industry for many, many, many years, very well respected.
But he mostly focuses on windows and all things Microsoft.
He's been fair.
He's very fair.
I think in all these years that, you know, he does use some max just so that he can make
sure that he's very well rounded in this.
But I thought this was a really nice review that he did here.
And like you said, in your in your post today, Jeff, I don't agree with everything he points
out.
But I take that with, hey, this is Paul Theriot.
And he's kind of coming at this from a little bit of a different angle.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's intermediate for, you know, Paul, he sort of came to fame from running
the super site for Windows, I think it was called, but it started in the late 90s.
He's been doing this for forever.
And he was a very much diehard Microsoft person, Microsoft phones, when Microsoft was making
the phones and all this sort of stuff.
And so but it was a couple of years ago that he started to use Apple iPhones just because
they were so dominant.
And I believe iPads as well.
And he has now gone back and forth.
In fact, he reveals in the article that he had been using another iPhone and then he
switched to the Google Pixel, right, and then he switched back to the 15 Pro Max to see
it.
And so I always enjoy reading reviews from people that not only have a different perspective
of using both Android and iPhone, but also come from a disparate different perspective
of the Windows world versus the Mac world.
I mean, obviously, I would guess that there's probably more people using iPhones that have
Windows as their primary computer than use Mac just because of the Mac small, smaller
market share, or at least there's probably certainly a whole bunch of them.
I mean, there's people like me that use both.
I use Windows at work and I use Mac at home.
And so, you know, when you come from sort of a Windows focus, you can't help but being
a little more focused on things like feeds and speeds.
I mean, so for example, he's curious how much memory the iPhone has, which is something
I mean, to be fair, Apple does sell computers that have different memory amounts.
But when it comes to the iPhone and the iPad, Apple doesn't talk about how much RAM it has,
because from Apple's perspective, it doesn't matter.
You know, it has what it needs.
But you know, he wants to focus on the fact that last year it had six gigabytes of RAM
and that this year it has eight gigabytes of RAM.
And I'm sure that that does make a difference, you know, for certain tasks, when you have
more RAM, it's going to work better.
But again, Apple, it's not like Apple sells two versions of the, well, actually, other
versions of the iPhone may have less RAM from that standpoint, but you can't get like the
15 Pro Max with eight gigs or the 15 Pro Max with 16 gigs, you know, there's no differentiation
from that standpoint.
So it's an interesting perspective that he offers there.
And the other thing that I thought was interesting was his comparison of the cameras, because
the, you know, the iPhone cameras have been good for a while now.
They're really just best in class to the point that so many people just don't see a need
to use a DSLR, except for very specialized uses.
And the big news this year is that for this bigger model, you get the 5X lens, which I
have been having just such great use with so many different times.
It's not something I use all the time, but when you're in a circumstance, when you need
it, you're so thrilled to have it.
And so I have seen really nothing but really good reviews about it, but Paul's review was
a little more subdued.
I mean, first of all, he said that the, he found that the colors were more washed out
in his 5X pictures than the regular ones.
And you know, I have to admit, I haven't really noticed that, but the, I will tell you, and
admittedly he doesn't have an outdoor picture, although it's a hazy day, but the time that
I've really been using the 5X a lot is when I'm outdoors on a sunny day.
So I have to admit, they've been really good conditions, but those have been the times
where I often want to get really close.
But then again, I just, the other day, my daughter was playing basketball and I was
taking some video using the 5X camera and I have to admit, I almost got too close to
it.
So I didn't do a lot of it, but just to have like a little bit of video that was really
close.
I mean, because you focus on the players so much, depending upon where you're sitting,
you know, you can't see the overall action of the basketball court, but for just, for
just a couple of shots, it was fun to have some of those.
And and that was an indoor environment and I didn't really notice any problem with the
color or anything.
So, but to each his own, it's just worth the notice.
And then another thing that's worth noting is that by coming from the pixel cameras and
stuff although I don't know about the pixel specifically, but I know that many of the
Android phones go even beyond 5X.
They have 10X cameras and, you know, Samsung has one of these, it's even more.
And of course, when you get to those really, really big numbers, you talk about compromises.
I mean, you have to hold your phone so ridiculously steady and, you know, there's lots of other
things too.
But the fact that Apple feels that the best magnification that they could get without
it being too annoying is 5X doesn't mean that there won't be a time in the future where
Apple does some wizardry to optical image stabilization that they feel that can go even
higher than 5X.
But I think that's as far as they feel that they can go today.
And so maybe someone like Paul Theriot that's already used cameras that claim to offer 10X
and everything else, he's not as impressed.
So again, everybody has a right to their own opinion.
It's just interesting to see his because it's one of the few of the big iPhone reviews that
I've seen that is a little nonplussed about the camera improvements.
Whereas for me, that's actually one of the big improvements.
Overall, though, he's a huge fan of it and he concludes, you know, the best, best, best
smartphone that's out there.
So, you know, I enjoyed reading his review.
Right.
Well, he even said he's like when he saw what Apple was doing with the iPhone 15 Pro Max
camera system, he says, I knew I had to give it a shot.
So like that's what drew him in.
Good point.
Because I yeah.
And I followed Paul for so many years like you have.
And it's like we know how fair he is and how thorough he is and his reviews.
He reminds me a little bit, you know, or at least I think of the reviews from like Marquez
Brownlee, right?
MKB, HB, DHD, whatever it is, Marquez.
But he's just so because Marquez uses so many different.
He's everything.
Right.
He has such a good perspective on some being able to compare that.
And that's what I enjoyed, I think, a little bit about going through here is that like,
well, I don't agree like one of the pictures here that caught my eye, which I think is
a great looking picture, by the way.
I don't even know where this is, but he says this is a typical iPhone photo and it's outdoors.
It's like it looks like a little sidewalk path or something.
He goes, it's accurate, but a bit dull to my eyes.
And I looked at that.
I'm like, I think that's a great picture.
But I think I am not.
Some people like their cameras to sort of pump things up a little bit.
But I will tell you, though, I do often, even though I tend to like the the way that the
iPhone pictures look very often when I go into the photos app on my iPhone or my iPad,
I will use, you know, that little magic.
I don't know what it's called.
It's the it's the little the the magic something.
But it's like a little magic wand, right?
Magic wand.
Exactly.
If you just have that's what it's called, but whatever it's called, if you just tap
the magic wand once, it will often it does a whole bunch of changes, but it often sort
of makes things brighter and more to life.
And for some pictures, I actually think, oh, no, no, no, that that goes too far.
But for other pictures, I'm like, oh, yeah, that gives it a little bit more life.
And you can, of course, go in and adjust the individual sliders if you want.
But if you do feel that there are pictures that are perhaps a little bit too flat for
your just just try the magic one button, because oftentimes just hitting that one button will
solve all of those problems.
And then if you want to go in further, you can.
Another thing, you know, while we're on that topic, you know, if there's one and I'm curious
to hear about from you to Brett, but if there's one slider that I use more than others when
I'm adjusting pictures in the photos app, it's the shadows slider, because although
the iPhone does a fantastic job versus just five years ago of having both the person that's
in the forefront and the things in the background, you know, getting good range, you know, sometimes
you will have a brighter background and the people that are in the front of the picture
look a little bit darker than you might want, like their faces.
And I find that sometimes if I go into the shadows feature and again, the magic paintbrush
often takes care of this on its own.
But if I want to go a little further, if I just use the shadows lever, I can often bring
out the light a little bit more on the person.
If you go too far, it looks unrealistic.
But that's that's probably the one that I use the most if I make changes.
What do you ever edit photos to anything that you use more than?
Well, that's the thing.
Honestly, I get in here and I see the magic wand and I'm like, that looks great.
I think I'm counting 15 different sliders that you can change.
Yeah, Jeff.
And that just overwhelms me.
I just you know, I know I know brightness and I and I could probably figure that out
and I could maybe figure out like contrast.
To me, those are two terms that mean something to me.
But like tint and saturation and black point and warmth and sharpness.
I mean, OK, sharpness, I could kind of get the point is, is like I get in there and I
see those and I just like, oh, that's just too much.
But every once in a while when I do have a little bit of time, it is fun to kind of see
how you can really just make that picture.
I say sharper, but I mean that in a bigger context and like, wow, that just really pops
like the colors pop.
It's you know, it is a little it makes for a better picture.
And we've talked about this, I know a little bit on the podcast as well.
But yeah, I just don't use those pretty often.
But I am always thrilled that they are.
I'm glad that they're there.
And what it also makes me think of is I remember back in the day, Jeff, would we would have
to pull a photo into like Photoshop, right?
Like we didn't have any of these on board tools to be able to do this.
Or if we did, they were very minimal.
And it just it continues to amaze me how much power that we have even on board on the phone
to be able to just make those simple little adjustments and they make it look even better.
Yeah, you know, I should say before we move on that, you know, I say that the shadows
and the magic wand are my number one adjustments.
You know, actually, my number one adjustment is just the cropping tool, because I find
that sometimes you take a picture and just by make just by making a slight crop, just
coming in just a little bit or maybe just getting the focus a little bit.
It often makes a huge difference in the power or the usefulness of a photograph just to
have a little bit more tightly cropped.
You know, you don't see it when you're in the field taking the picture.
But then once you look at it on your iPad or your iPhone, you see, oh, you know, I don't
really need all this extra stuff around.
So that's probably the number one thing I do is crop.
Something else that I don't use a lot of my phone is the home app.
We've talked about automating your home.
We've talked about HomeKit quite a bit.
You are into this.
The only thing that I do have in my home app right now is my smart thermostat.
Right.
I can access that even though there's a separate app that I typically will go and do this.
But because of that, I was thrilled to see this link today, which I pretty much call
HomeKit 101.
Seriously, this was what is this?
It's the ambient dot com Apple HomeKit.
Everything you need to know about living in an Apple home.
I have saved this and bookmarked it already.
Yeah, it's worth reading.
If you if you know that you have an interest in doing something with a smart home in the
future, but you really haven't gotten very far with it, like you, Brett, maybe just have
one thing or maybe two things.
This is a great because this is a fantastic overview of the technologies.
He talks about the distinctions between HomeKit and, you know, the MatterStandard, which is
coming out in the future.
And he makes recommendations for some of the best manufacturers, you know, people like
Lutron and Eve and Belkin, you know, companies that we're familiar with that do a very nice
job with some of their HomeKit stuff, because some companies don't make things that work
with HomeKit, even though they make things for the smart home.
So I mean, if you just read through this article, like you say, it's a one on one article.
And even if you know a little bit about small HomeKit, that doesn't mean that you know everything
about HomeKit.
So I enjoyed reading through it just to like hear about some specific devices that I haven't
used.
So it's it's it's it was it was a good read.
And it's it's a nice resource to have available or to recommend to somebody else.
Yeah, there was one quote in here somewhere.
I just remember looking that he just he just made a comment like, you know, it's not it's
not the easiest standard to deal with Apple HomeKit that I think I know that quote you're
talking about.
Yeah, he says it's not the easiest standard for manufacturers because I meet Apple specifications,
including the specifications.
They have to do a lot for security and stuff like that.
Right.
When somebody just driving by the front of your house and turn it on and off your conditioner
or your lights or stuff like that.
And so it's as I understand it, if you're a manufacturer, you actually have to do your
work in following these standards.
But what he says in this article, what I agree with is the flip side of it is from the user
standpoint, it tends to make things easier to use.
Now, don't get me wrong, HomeKit can still be confusing at times.
But because so much complexity is required by Apple to get that certification that it
works with HomeKit, it means that from the user perspective, you know, it will often
just work.
It works for the Apple way.
Yeah, right.
Right.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
And the other thing I loved about here is that he goes through I think you already
mentioned some of this, the individual manufacturers like the Philips, the Ecobee, Smart Thermostats,
the Eve, like this is just great to be able to have a lot of this in one place.
So thank you for for linking to that.
The announcement that we have been waiting for for quite a while.
I am Apple apparently had a blank space in their listing.
And now finally, we in pure Apple style, we are now out of the woods that we know Apple
Music's Artist of the Year, and that would be, of course, the indomitable Taylor Swift.
What's the last thing Swift Swift Swift Swift is Swift.
I'll have to look at it.
Yes.
Yeah.
Taylor Swift, as it is.
I actually saw this.
I knew this because it popped up on my phone screen.
I don't know if you got the same thing, but, you know, I don't know if it was Apple Music
Plus as a subscriber or not, but they were like pumping this out pretty big.
And I didn't know they had a press release about this.
I would say that I have also added to a few of the the the plays over the last couple
of weeks because my daughter, just like I think yours as well, Jeff, they were very,
very happy that this was coming out.
This is Taylor's version that was most recently released, right, of 1989.
But who boy, man, it's just like the Taylor Swift craziness is not over yet.
Yeah, I think it's actually deserved to, you know, she really is a good, you know, so much
of the younger people like her, my daughter loves her and stuff like that.
But I have to admit, I will sometimes put a Taylor Swift song on too.
I mean, she's the real deal.
She's a good artist.
It's catchy.
Good stuff.
You know, just the other day I noticed somebody had a video of when Taylor Swift did the Saturday
Night Live and her monologue was a song.
It was very clever.
And she's really smart and, you know, give her all the credits.
Have you ever seen, by the way, Brett, they've had the Apple Artist of the Year for a number
of years now.
Have you ever seen the award that they give to the artists?
It's interesting.
If you do a search for like Apple Music Artist of the Year award and you'll see it, you know,
traditionally someone, if they had like a gold record or a platinum record, they would
get like a big poster that would have like the actual record that would be like in gold
or in platinum or something like that.
And what Apple has done for a number of years now for the awards is they have, it's a circle
of an Apple, like the Apple chips, like the M3 chip or the, you know, I don't know if
it's the computer chip or the iPhone chip, whatever it is.
And they actually have like a huge circle that's about the size of a traditional record.
And it's within glass and or some sort of a sort of a see-through thing.
I'm trying to see if I can find a picture of it.
It's not on this page.
If you just do a search for Apple Artist of the Year award and you'll see a picture of
it.
They're pretty stunning because they look cool because they're computer-y because you
actually have the actual computer chips in there.
And you know, they haven't given away too many of these over the years.
This is probably only on the fourth or fifth year that they've done it.
Oh my goodness.
That's pretty big.
Oh, that's right.
Okay.
I remember it now.
I see it over here.
Yeah, it looks like a big chip, but yeah, people are very happy about that.
Apparently they pose with them.
I don't see Taylor Swift posing with hers.
I don't think that she's been presented with it yet.
So I think that's why, you know, she's got a little going on right now with her tour
and stuff like that, but we have the announcement.
It just occurred to me that this is such a perfect opportunity that Apple has a, what
would you call it?
A development language?
What is Swift called?
It's their development language called Swift, yes.
Yes.
Can't we do something here?
Come on, Apple.
The Apple Taylor Swift Student Challenge.
Well, actually, maybe Apple does have the money to actually afford the naming rights,
but...
We need to have this happen.
You know, I tell you what, if Taylor Swift would start developing with the Swift language,
I bet there'll be a lot more kids that'll be coding for something like that.
That's great.
Apple pencils, good and bad.
I love my Apple Pencil second generation that has the magnet for my Apple iPad Pro.
But we talked about this, what, a few weeks ago that Apple released a new pencil called
the Pencil USB-C, and it really looked like the first generation pencil.
It was such an odd option that Apple pulled here, Jeff.
We talked about this already.
We don't need to belabor that, but we're not alone in kind of looking a little squirrely
at this.
Like why in the world, other than it was kind of a shot at sort of a, maybe, I don't want
to say lower end in a negative way, but the lower end market of just like, hey, if people
just want the basic iPad, but they still want a pencil, this could be an option because
it is a little less expensive than the current second generation Apple Pencil.
Yeah, sure.
You get what you pay for.
If you want to have the deluxe model and pay more, go for it.
But if you don't want to spend that much because you don't know how much you're going to use
an Apple Pencil, you can get the Apple Pencil USB-C and it's only what, $79, I think.
This week we actually have people that have actually held one in their hands and done
reviews and the one new thing that I've seen this week is people like this review that
you have on the screen right here that Andrew O'Hara wrote, he describes, and this is no
surprise because you know that Apple sweats the details.
The way that this pencil works is if you pull the top, the end of it, like what I would
think of the eraser side, if you pull it back, it exposes a USB-C port, but it's not just
something that slides up and down.
As this points out in his video, if you pull it, it sort of has magnets, sort of snaps
open and sort of snaps close.
And it seems like it's a very satisfying snap that I have no doubt that people that have
these pencils be playing with that all the time, just opening and closing it, opening
and closing it.
And again, you know that if Apple is going to do it, they're going to do it, even though
it's a less expensive product, they're still going to put the engineering hours into it
to have it done really, really well.
So there's nothing, you know, chintzy about it.
It's nicely done.
And you're going to get all the features.
Yeah, this little video here from Andrew is great to watch because he compares it to his
first generation Apple pencil, where the cap does come all the way off.
And in fact, he's lost that.
He's lost that cap a long sense ago.
So he does a good job of showing how this little retractable cap, you know, stays on.
It's like magnetized, I think, but it's also spring loaded, he said.
So it like snaps right back on.
That's genius.
Like you said, that's just really nice that even on kind of a lower end type of a product
like this, that Apple is putting that much time and effort into it.
So that was good.
Yeah.
So that was the new details that we learned this week about this pencil is that we learned
about how the the cap at the back works and it works very well.
But you link to another review about another product, a name that I haven't that I have
not actually heard from in a long time.
This is a Donnet that we used to use the Adonit stylus size stylized back in the day, Jeff,
before Apple had the stylus themselves, the Apple pencil.
And I'm thrilled to know that they are continuing to kick really hard in this market.
But now there is the Adonit note plus two that you link to a review, which, wow, this
is not a bad option here.
No, it really is a pretty good option.
Adonit's been doing styluses for a very long time.
And although I'm sure their business went down considerably when Apple came out with
the Apple pencil, they haven't stopped.
And so the newest version of the note, which is nice because it's there, there's it's very
similar in size to the Apple pencil in terms of the width and everything else like that.
And the new version has the same trick as that low end Apple pencil we were just talking
about that, although it doesn't charge, it does have magnets in it so it can attach to
the top of an iPad.
So it's not going to charge while it's up there, but it's a nice place to just sort
of put your iPad when you're working so that it doesn't roll around your desk and it's
conveniently available.
So you have that same feature with both the low end Apple pencil and this new Adonit note.
Both of them charge via USB-C. So that's the same.
It doesn't, I don't think it has quite as elegant of a solution as the Apple pencil,
but you know, it does work.
But it has some things the Apple pencil has an advantage in that you can take this new
low end Apple pencil and hover it above the screen and it will actually give you a preview
of what it's about to do, which is something that, that that mine does not do.
Cause I don't have the newest iPads to support that feature.
My pencil does it, but not my iPad.
But on the flip side, this Adonit product has some interesting features as well.
Like for example, it's pressure sensitive, which the low end Apple pencil is not, and
it has a little rocker switch on it.
So just like on an Apple pencil, you can double tap to change the tool.
You could do something with an actual physical switch, which I could imagine some people
might prefer that even over the high end app, even over the high end pencil, just to have
an actual physical switch to, to change tools.
So I do think it's a legitimate thing to consider.
The last time that I reviewed one of these products, it was sort of in the, in the pandemic.
In fact, I think I have it right in front of me that it was an Adomic note that had
a built-in feature to to have something in it that it has, it has like a little filter
that you could like UV rays and the idea is you can clean things with it.
And I did a review of this a couple of years ago, but so this is an older version, but
it works well.
And you know, the tip on these, on the Adonits work really well.
Now I'll note that I have never, you know, Apple pencils come with replaceable tips.
I have never in my life replaced the tip.
Have you ever replaced the tip on?
Yeah, I just, I mean, I use mine so extensively and I've just never really noticed the tip
wear down.
I've heard some people speculate that maybe the Adonit tips will wear down over time a
little bit more than the Apple ones, but they come with replacement tips.
That's fine.
And in fact, this new product that we're talking about, it comes with three levels of tips.
So you have like a real soft one or a medium or a hard.
So if you have a preference over how it feels in your screen, you can actually adjust the
tips to change for that.
So so again, I mean, Adonits are true, good alternatives to Apple pencils.
They work really good on the screen.
I, you know, something about me always feels like you get the absolute best results on
the screen with the Apple pencil, but the difference between that and the Adonit is
so slight and some of the other advantages or even just the cost, it's $10 cheaper.
It's the, you know, one of the cheapest, but really nice stylus styluses that you can buy.
So I'm glad to see that Adonit still out there as an option.
Absolutely.
I'm just going to put in another quick word for the original Apple pencil first iteration.
I was watching my son yesterday.
He was writing some notes for school.
He's got an older iPad that does have a lightning port in it still, and he is still using that
first generation Apple pencil, Jeff, and he was doing great.
I mean, he's just basically taking basic notes, right?
He's not doing anything crazy, not drawing or not doing anything that, you know, he needs
pressure sensitivity necessarily or anything.
But he loves it.
I mean, it's just, it's doing exactly what he needs.
And I, when I looked at him yesterday, I was like, just amazed again, how that these products
will continue to live on.
You know, somebody was asking me like, do you need another iPad?
And I'm like, well, if you've got one in the last year or two, you probably not.
I mean, the iPads are just so good.
And we've talked about this a little bit too, almost the detriment of Apple, like people
aren't going to upgrade necessarily all the time.
Hopefully that'll change.
Like we'll hopefully see one in the next year, but I'm still so happy with my iPad pro that
I've had for now almost about two years and it just continues to work anyway, just that
he was using that first generation Apple pencil.
That's still an option.
I don't know if Apple is necessarily selling them still, but I know that you can find them
in other places.
Apple is still selling them because they still have that one model of the iPad, the cheapest
iPad available that still requires it.
So I mean, you have, in fact, before we leave the topic of styluses, Brett, if you want
to really walk down memory lane, you know, the early days of the iPad, and this was before
Apple made the iPad work with any, with any stylus, Adana came up with this fantastic
stylus idea that it has.
Yeah, I mean, I know you remember this, but for folks listening, I'm holding up to the
camera.
It had a clear disc at the end of it and that was attached to a very, something that looked
like a pinpoint.
And so you have the illusion of writing with the fine point pen, but because the iPad wasn't
made the original ones to accept anything like that, it had that thick, clear circle
at the end of it.
So the circle would be about the size as the tip of your, and I got so much work done with
this stylus way back when I loved it so much.
So that's, and this is an Adana product too.
So that, you know, from the very beginning days of the iPad, they have been working hard
to help you to use a stylus with my iPad.
That is so funny.
Yeah.
I think I still have mine around somewhere, but I remember when we've been together at
conferences before that, that what we have actually used that.
That's great.
Well, let's take a moment to thank our sponsor, Jeff lit software, which is somebody that
we've known for a long time, almost as long as the Adana stylus that you were just showing.
In fact, I remember being at conferences.
We were talking about both of those lit software is a developer that we've known for a long
time that basically provides apps mostly for the iPad.
So most of these apps work on max as well.
They are mostly for attorneys, although as we talked about before, they can be used by
anybody.
You're not restricted to just having to be a lawyer of some kind, but some of the ways
that they're designed are specifically meant for like trial presentations, right?
In a courtroom there's doc review pad, which is for reviewing documents.
If you have to produce them in a litigation matter, a trial pad is the presentation app
that they have.
But one that I know you and I have talked about quite a bit is called transcript pad
and transcript pad is basically for managing, reviewing, tagging transcripts that may come
out of like a deposition or a court hearing or some kind of a proceeding, which is important
for us to review things that people have talked about and discussed.
And that is extremely important for a lot of litigators that they use.
And one of the things that they announced not too long ago, because you about a month
ago now reviewed the transcript pad app that now has an update to let you sync video, edit
video clips and export the videos out of the transcript pad app.
Here's your review from October 16, which I thought you did a fantastic job of going
through what are the new updates and features that you can anticipate from this app?
You know, for the longest time when lawyers worked with depositions, you would always
have a court reporter there who would write down everything that was said and that black
and white transcript would be the Bible.
I mean, that would be what was said, but we all know from real life that, you know, sometimes
it's not just what you say, but it's the way that you say it or it's the pause, but you
know, how long did it take for you to think of an answer to a question or make it look
like you were trying to come up with something that was not the answer because you didn't
want to have the answer, you know, so those nonverbal clues can be so important.
And so that's why, you know, for years now people have been doing video depositions,
which are more expensive sometimes because you have to get a perfect.
I guess you have to get a professional videographer.
I haven't really looked into the legality of just, you know, setting up an iPhone and
recording it yourself and how that would work in terms of authenticity and stuff like that.
But the point is that oftentimes you have these video depositions, but then you want
to be able to work with them.
And what I love about transcript pad is I just right here on my iPad, much like I have
all of my documents associated with a lawsuit, I can have all of my depositions associated
with the lawsuit, everybody's name, and now I can easily import the video that's associated
with those depositions.
So as I'm reviewing depositions, I can not just see the words, but as the words are scrolling
on the screen, I can at the very top, see the video synced with it and I can watch the
person talk.
And so I can hear them and I can find those instances in which the way that they said
something makes a difference.
And so I'm like, gosh, you know, I want to have this clip ready for trial because if
this person tries to give me a different answer at trial, I want the jury from an impeachment
standpoint, not just to see what they said before, not just to see the words they said
before, but actually see them on the screen saying it.
So with transcript pad, not only can you have the video, but it has these great export tools
that you can say, okay, I want to take these clips and I can, much like for any transcript
use, you can cut out the parts that are irrelevant, like when lawyers are putting objections in
the record and stuff.
You just have the relevant part that you would present to the jury or to the judge or in
a mediation or wherever else, or just to your client, wherever else you're going to be using
it.
And you can say, I want to start here.
I want to end here.
And although frankly, I thought that that's all that software was going to do is just,
you know, you could start here, you can stop there.
They went one step further and they made this even better because you can then fine tune
it that when you go into an editing screen at the very bottom, they have like waveforms
so that you can see when a word starts and when a word stops just from the little, you
know, waveform action.
And so I can actually say like, I want to precisely start the clip right here.
So you know, either right before or right after an arm or a cough or whatever.
And I want to go until right here.
And so you can make these incredibly precise clips that are exactly what you want and then
export it to a video and then just right there on your iPad, just like in your photos app,
or you can save in your files app, wherever else you want to have it.
Then you have this video that's just ready to go.
This is ready to play.
And it's got the person at the top.
It's got the words at the bottom, because I should have mentioned that one of the cool
features of this add on is that it does speech to text changes.
And so it's got the words, it's got the person, you can see what they say, it scrolls as they
speak.
I mean, this is really cool stuff.
And it's the sort of stuff that you used to have to pay a professional a lot of money
to do.
Plus they would do it and then you want to change your designations for trial and you
got to hire them again.
If you're like me, you're in the middle of a trial and you're making changes the night
before, you don't want to have to go wake that person up at 10 o'clock at night and
pay them to make a change.
You just want to do it yourself and get it done or have your paralegal do it and get
it done.
So this is an incredibly powerful tool that it's like so many things in life.
Once you have this, you're like, why did we not have this?
I mean, of course we want this.
This is like so amazing.
And it's just like another feature that they've come out with in transcript pad, which is
an app that's been around for forever and it just continues to get these major new features.
So this is a cool new feature, but I also hats off to the company because it shows how
they just continue to enhance their products in incredible new ways.
Yeah.
We'll put the links here in the show notes to two blog posts that they have about syncing
and editing and also your review, which I think is just good.
But yeah, their blog posts are good though, because I walked through them and that totally
teaches you how to do it.
So you have a good overview and then that these blog posts are like you said, there's
even the screenshots here about using those way forms and getting a little more specific.
So thank you lit software for walking alongside of us and supporting the podcast.
This is great.
We're pretty big fans of that.
If you have any questions about using any of the apps in the lit software suite, which
is about four apps right now, and hopefully more coming soon, be sure to reach out to
us.
We're very happy to always talk about anything and our friends at lit software.
So thank you for the support there.
Where are you at segment?
Where are you at?
Wow.
I think we got four or five here.
There's a lot of them today.
Three on the Apple watch.
Las Vegas man credits Apple watch for saving his life.
I think this gentleman unfortunately was a diabetic.
He fell and sure enough, the Apple watch and only called 911, but he couldn't talk or he
couldn't speak.
It's out.
It looks like it sounds like.
And so, but because of his Apple watch, the 911 dispatcher was able to target through
GPS exactly where this man was and they were able to come and help him out.
Yeah.
So this is an example of the Apple watch talking for you.
You know, it's your, when you couldn't do it yourself, it calls emergency services.
It lets them know exactly where you're located and it gives you, it gives them an indication
of what's going on.
And again, we, we see these stories all the time, but you know, every single time it happens
is another person who potentially could have died, but for the Apple watch being there
at the right place at the right time.
Number two, I think this is from that first one, maybe Las Vegas.
I believe this, this lady is in Oklahoma, right?
And the Apple watch said, Hey, things don't look exactly good for your heart rhythm.
I think it basically told her she was in a fib, right?
Uh, but she didn't think too much of it.
Apparently she's like, Oh, you know, I'm just not feeling good.
Sure.
You know, the Apple watch says that, but okay.
I, you know, it's not, it's not a doctor.
I gotta get some work.
I got us some meetings to go to.
Unfortunately, her boss was like, uh, you should go see a doctor.
And she did.
And thank goodness she did.
Yeah.
The doctor says that if you had waited the entire weekend, you know, you may have died.
I mean, it was, you know, he had some serious heart issue here that they wanted to take
care of right away.
And so this is the other great example of the Apple watch.
Just give you a warning of something that something may just be off here and, uh, and
you want to take a look at it.
So, um, it's, uh, you know, whether it's, whether it's an emergency type situation,
like the one in Las Vegas, or whether it's just a really important heads up like this,
um, good reasons to have an Apple watch, but those are just the backgrounds.
I mean, so the, the, the next one I thought was the real stunning story.
Incredible.
Like those are stories about other people.
This is a reporter actually telling his experience in crashing and the Apple watch saving his
life complete with gruesome, bloody pictures and all.
Yeah.
So Daniel Aaron Dozier, who's been doing Apple review.
I mean, he writes the stories that I linked to all the time.
Um, he's written for a number of places, including here, Apple insider, which although he actually
hasn't written something for about a year or two for them, but it was nice to see him
back, but he's been writing for them for gosh, a decade or something.
And, um, you know, he was just describing that he, he had, he had a car somewhere, but
he wasn't using it.
He had rented a scooter to try to, you know, get from wherever he was to his car and, um,
to just going along and something happens.
He doesn't exactly know what happened because all he knows is that he, you know, one moment
he's using a scooter and then he wakes up and he's in the hospital and like, what happened?
And apparently there was a crash.
Did a car run into him?
Did his scooter hit the curb and he flipped over, but apparently, um, something happened
on a bridge that was over an overpass and he's on the ground bleeding out, which if,
if, if nobody had gotten to him, he would have died from bleeding out.
And fortunately the watch detecting the crash called emergency services, got the police
out there, got the ambulance out there.
They put him into it.
And so he comes to in the hospital is like, where am I and what in the world happened?
And of course it's a, it's a successful end for him and hopefully he will be okay.
But you mean if he had been out there for hours without anybody doing anything or knowing
anything, you know, that would, you know, that would be the end.
So, you know, we all hope that we're never in one of these situations where you get into
a car crash or crash on a bike or, or this type of a situation, but gosh, it sure is
nice to know that your Apple watch is just right there looking out for you in case they
ever need to call nine one one.
As I noted in my article, you know, my, my daughter got an Apple watch for her birthday
just a couple of weeks ago.
And so now all four people in my immediate family have Apple watches and I hope that
we never have to have one of these stories, but it's, you know, I, I wouldn't wear an
Apple watch just for this.
I mean, it has all the other advantages of course, but this certainly is a nice a nice
reason to be happy.
You have an Apple watch.
I know when I was reading the story, I remembered other stories we've talked about where this
crash detection has false alerts on ski lifts and roller coasters.
And at the very end he says, you know, I'm actually glad that Apple doesn't restrict
crash detection to just car accidents because he was on a scooter and he was going to, he
talked about the, in the story here, how I'm just glad that it's just not restricted to
cars.
Like I'm glad that there, it's a little bit more expansive than just car accidents.
And I thought the most telling photo was at the very end here.
This isn't a bloody one, so you can look at it.
But he's showing a picture of his Apple watch on his wrist with all of the scratches.
Like he obviously hit the pavement or the ground or the asphalt or something so hard.
Well, you can see the other picture of his face up above if you want to, but this looks
just as gruesome to me is the Apple watch is all scratched up, but it's still worth
even with it all getting all banged up.
That's just an amazing story.
So if this happened to you, Brett, would you get the new Apple watch to have a nice clean
face, or would you keep the scratches as a badge of honor?
Like, you know, this, this shows that it saved my life.
I don't know.
I'd have to think about that.
Well, I just, I like the story, you know, he's talking about how, you know, he woke
up and he's getting stitches up in his, you know, his upper eye because you know, his,
his, his eye got busted open and I'm like, I just want people to protect my Apple watch,
you know, like I'll make sure that I'll get stitches later.
Like, Hey, I just want to make sure my Apple watch is okay.
That's how bad it would be for me.
One more thing before we leave that story, he mentioned in there that, you know, there
are sometimes false alarms for the Apple watch.
And he mentioned the examples of what ski lifts and stuff like that.
I remember in the very earliest Apple watch days, when they had crash detection, I received
maybe one or two false alarms.
I forget what I was doing.
One time I was just walking to my car.
I didn't understand it.
It's been years.
It's been a very, very long time.
It's gotten, I have gotten any false detections.
I mean, I'm not saying that they don't happen, but I really think that Apple knew that false
positives and false negatives was a problem and they've tweaked the algorithm.
Oh, absolutely.
I don't think it's an issue anymore.
I mean, not, not for most people.
So that's great.
I agree.
I agree completely.
And I would say we, I remember specifically that we talked about this when we laughed at
those stories about roller coasters and stuff, because all it took was for the Apple watch
crash detection to get out into the wild and Apple gets all of this feedback, probably
anonymous.
I'm I trust that.
And once they get this feedback, they can tell the differences in this.
Right.
So we knew that that was going to be even better.
And Oh, Oh my goodness.
I forgot.
I can't go from this story without like this public service announcement down at the bottom
that he says, because he had emergency contacts in his Apple watch.
Not only does the Apple watch, you know, they'll call nine one one, but they'll also connect
with your emergency contacts.
And he said he had his emergency contacts set up, but they were old phone numbers.
Right.
Isn't that what he said in here, Jeff?
They were old phone numbers in here.
So he says Apple isn't going to go through your Rolodex and say, hey, is there an updated
phone number for John Smith?
No, you need to make sure that you go in.
And that's what he says in the PSA here.
Go into your emergency contacts.
Make sure that they are up to date with the right phone number, the current phone number
for the emergency contacts that you have.
I thought that was a brilliant way to end the story on this as well.
Agreed.
Last, where you at?
We're moving from Apple watches now to air tags.
I thought this was good.
It's almost like this is going to be something that police departments, you know, they'll
hand out like stickers, you know, come see the canine dog.
But hey, also, here's an air tag that you can put into your car.
We just wanted you to be safe with your with your car and belongings.
I am almost a little upset that you posted the story today because it led me down a rabbit
hole for several minutes going through this crazy.
What is it?
Tick tock Kia kids or car kids or whatever.
What a crazy, crazy story through all of this.
But yeah, that convinced me immediately.
I'm going to have air tags in my cars as well.
Yeah.
Six months ago, you and I talked about a similar story, Brett, where the New York City Police
Department was handing out air tags because of a wave of car thefts.
And now the Washington, D.C. Police Department is doing the same thing.
And as you say, they say it because of some tick tock phenomenon that there was a bunch
of videos where, you know, stupid kids were showing on tick tock how you could relatively
easily steal a Kia and maybe also a Hyundai.
You know, if you break into the car, you could do something to the drive shaft and expose
a USB port.
And even if you didn't have a key, if you just put power to the port, you could get
the basically jumpstart the car.
And so, you know, stupid people that didn't even know what they were doing didn't even
know how to drive or steal in cars.
And of course, I mean, they're crashing them, lots of property damage and stolen cars.
So so at least with an air tag, you can help to recover a car if it's stolen.
And I have not been keeping an air tag in my car in all the years I've had one.
But when I saw this, I'm like, you know what, I'm going to start doing it.
So I have I was going to buy another air tag.
But then I realized that one of my air tags, I sort of keep in a place that I wasn't really
using it very often.
So I'm going to put it in my car.
I have now put it in my car again, much like crash detection on my Apple Watch.
I seriously hope I never need to use this.
But should my car get stolen, it's nice to know that I can figure out at least I have
a chance of figuring out where it is.
My only complaint about air tags now is I keep needing more.
I had four, I got a four pack.
I've used them all.
And if you remember from last week, I had this amazing story where the air tag helped
me to get my suitcase back.
And it's like, I've got it in my wife's purse and my daughter's purse.
And it's like, I'm out.
I need more.
I need more now.
And by the way, I don't know if you saw this past week, it just be on the lookout, right?
Black Friday's coming up.
I saw some of these four packs going for like it was, I think it was less than $80 Jeff,
which is amazing.
So they, they keep going down.
There's some pretty good sales.
So if we have convinced you over all of these episodes that you might need to get some air
tags, be on the lookout for some good pricing this, this holiday season.
If you need more air tags, Apple is happy to sell you more.
They, the, the, the normal price for a four pack of air tags is, is a hundred bucks.
So $25 a piece.
You can often find discounts of 90 or 85.
If you see them at 85, that is, that's about as low as they get.
I think that the most I've ever, ever, ever seen a discount is like 79, 99, just, just
below $80.
But you know, the difference between 80 and 85 bucks, we're just talking about, Oh, you
know, once you get to that $85 level, that's sort of the magic, that's going to be a really
good price.
And again, you're only saving a few bucks, but if you do want to save a few bucks, if
you see it get to that 85 or lower level, you know, that's, that's worth it.
And the only thing is, I would also say if you're at Amazon or somewhere else, throw
in an extra little pack of your two Oh three, two or 2023, whatever the batteries are 32
batteries, the CR two Oh three, two batteries, just because you never know when that's going
to go out.
And if you've got all these air tags, you like them, it'll tell you when the battery's
getting low, right?
I think you reported on that before as well.
So just get it a little packet of those with the, with, without the bitter and codon codon
there.
All right.
In the know, in the quick in the know, uh, this is Friday, November 10th.
Tomorrow is Saturday, November 11th, which is veterans day.
I think today we kind of acknowledge veterans day, but tomorrow is veterans day.
I am a sucker for these limited edition challenges that apple fitness puts out.
Jeff, I love these little things.
Uh, every, every Thanksgiving day, there's usually a little challenge that says, Hey,
if you go run, you know, for a mile, we'll give you this little special badge, which
means absolutely nothing to the rest of the world.
It's just, I love to collect them on my iPhone.
Uh, so tomorrow there is a veterans day challenge.
I believe you only have to work out for 11 minutes.
So whatever workout you enjoy doing, if you have an apple watch, you have your, your iPhone
with you, you can go into your fitness app and you can just do an 11 minute fitness and
you will get this veterans day limited edition, little badge.
I call them a badge, but they call them the challenges, right?
Uh, you can also, apparently they also come with, um, uh, these little animated, uh, stickers
that you can use like in messages, which looks so cute.
Uh, if you wanted to go and see if you have any of these, if you go into your iPhone is
where I go, go into your fitness app and then you go to summary down at the bottom left,
they're really kind of buried in here.
But if you scroll down, you'll see a section called awards.
You say show more.
And then if you go all the way down in your awards, there should be a little section called
limited edition challenges.
And if you jump in there, I can see, I have done the veterans day challenge last year.
I did it in 2019 so I got to do it this year.
So you can see if you have apple fitness, if you have an apple watch, you probably have
already gotten a little notification today that says tomorrow, just do a workout on Saturday,
November 11th for 11 minutes and you will receive the limited edition veterans day challenge
badge.
And I just love, they're so cute.
I mean, I've got like the whole little collection here on my phone and there's so much more
colorful than the regular ones.
Yeah.
I like the little badges.
They're, they're fun.
I see the first one that I got was in 2017.
I got the veterans challenge.
I got it in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2022.
I did not get it in 2022.
I got in 2021.
Um, I'm going to try to get it tomorrow and you say it doesn't matter, Brett, but I think
that if you share your activity data with someone else, because you and I share with
each other, I think that I might get a notice if you get it and you might get it.
So I'm going to be looking out for you, Brett, tomorrow.
I'm going to try to get mine.
Let's see.
Okay.
So now it's a cop.
It's on, it's on Brett.
Let's see who gets it.
Who gets it first.
I love it.
A great tip.
Um, my tip of the day is, uh, is I actually have to thank my brother for this.
I had a birthday recently and you know, what do you get for the person that loves apple
products and has, you know, and has all of them.
He got me this thing called the I clear the company.
I clear itself out forever.
There's a company called, um, in the late 1990s, they decided, you know, if you want
to clean equipment, but you want to use something that doesn't have alcohol in it, it's not
going to damage the electronics.
They came up with this formula, um, and they sell it under two brand names for people that
use apple products.
They have the eye, you know, like iMac and iPhone.
So it's called I clear and it's clear with the K.
So I, and then capital K K L E A R.
And then if they also sell it under something called clear again with the K clear screen,
I think it's the same product.
It's just one of them has more of an apple focus.
So it tells you all the apple products it works with.
And if you buy clear screen, it's perhaps more of a windows, you know, type focus, but
it's the same product and they come with their microfiber cloths and they come with their
spray.
You know, I always have a microfiber cloth around for cleaning my glasses or wiping down
my iPad, but sometimes, especially on like a monitor, you need more than just a dry cloth.
You need something that's liquid, but you want to use something that's safe.
And I've used this, I clear stuff over the years and then I didn't have one.
And my brother gave me a box for my birthday and I was so thrilled to have it because suddenly
I was cleaning my apple display at home.
I'm going to clean my display here at the, uh, at the office.
And it's just nice to have this.
And so you can get big bottles, you can get little bottles.
They last a super long time.
And if it's just something good to have by, they're not very expensive and you can keep
your stuff clean.
And it's not just with a big display, although you can use it with a really big display,
like you're because they're safe for electronic screens.
You can use it like with your big television in your living room or whatever.
But they also, you can use it to just, just to sort of polish off and clean your, your
AirPods, your iPhone, your iPads, uh, all the Apple stuff.
Um, so again, this has been around for a very, very long time, more than 25 years and it
is time tested and works great.
So I'm thrilled to have some of this.
I do.
I use it for a lot because I like using it.
It, you know, some people would say, well, Hey, you just have your eyeglass cleaning
solution, right?
I'm not really sure that has some of those have alcohol in them.
Yeah.
Right.
And the eye clear, you can see it says ammonia and alcohol free, and that makes a difference.
I'll tell you the way I use this exact, almost exact product.
And so thanks to your brother for bringing this up and I, I will spray some on a rag
and then I'll wipe that wetness on the screen.
Right?
And then it doesn't get smudging, but then you use a dry corner of that rag or the little
cloth that they have and you can buff it out and it really makes a big deal.
I remember I got my first bottle at an Apple store.
Like they were selling it.
I don't know if they still do, but that's where I got my first bottle.
This is what they, this is what they recommend.
If you need to clean your screens, I'm so glad you brought this up.
And it's just so funny to see that.
One more thing about it.
I mean, there's a million different kits or different versions you can get, but the one
that I got, and I think it's one of the screen, the microfiber cloth, there's two different
microfiber cloths in there, but one of them that the one that's more gray, it actually
has different sides.
I don't, one side is smooth and the other side is a little rougher and they do that
on purpose so that like, you know, if you have a screen that, you know, maybe it's got
some food on it or you sneezed on it or something like that.
You might want to use that just when I say rough, believe me, it's not sandpaper or anything
like that.
It's just, it's got a little bit more edges.
And so you might use that to sort of clean it with the solution.
And then when you wipe it dry, use the flip side of it.
That's that's dry and that's flatter.
And so, I mean, it's just, it's a silly little thing, but it's a nice little touch and it's
a really well thought out product that works great.
We, we, we all use it because I keep it downstairs because everybody has an iPad or a laptop
or something for exactly what you're talking about.
And you know, it just does a great job of getting the fingerprints off and everything.
A good, good pick.
I like that.
Thanks bro for mentioning that.
That's good stuff.
Well, we want to say thanks again to also our sponsor for today, Lit Software.
We talked about the transcript pad app, but as part of their litigation suite, their lit
suite, they have the trial pad app, transcript pad, doc review pad, and exhibits pad.
If you are welcome to, I'll put the links in the show notes so you can go and find out
more.
But if you have any questions at any time, feel free to reach out to me or Jeff and we'll
be happy to talk to you about it as well.
Jeff, thanks again as always.
And we'll talk with you next week.
Great.