(upbeat music) - Welcome to In the News for April 12th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com. - And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Do you like my new version of the Apple Vision Pro?

Brett, how do they look? - Wow, I didn't know that Apple was gonna come out with a new version. - Exactly, yes. - This is like version two of the Apple Vision Pro. - Very cool. - It's much more streamlined.

It's almost like cardboard-ish, if you would. - It is, and you could actually get them for free many places in the country on Monday.

It was an eclipse, Brett. - It was the eclipse.

Just so everybody knows, Jeff had like two or three pairs of eclipse glasses on, and that's what we were talking about if you're not watching this on YouTube, which, by the way, if you are listening, I would say, I just know we've got some pictures we're gonna show from the eclipse, the photos and stuff, and so I would heavily suggest that you might wanna jump over to YouTube and see the video version of this podcast episode as well.

But yes, it was the eclipse, and Jeff, you did a little bit of traveling with your son, and came back with some amazing photographs. - We had such a great trip.

You were so lucky that the eclipse went right to your backyard without having to go someplace.

But we had to drive someplace, and so my son and I decided to drive to Dallas because I have a cousin that lives there, and I tell you what, on Sunday, Brett, we almost got in the car and drove another five hours to go to Arkansas because the predictions were that it was gonna be super cloudy in most of Texas, including the Dallas area, and we're like, "We've gone all the way here," but we decided to stick it out, and I am so glad we did because it was perfect.

It was wonderful.

The few clouds that we had just was something to make it a little bit cooler and even more dynamic to see the sun going behind those clouds as the eclipse started, and by the time the total eclipse came, it was amazing.

So we had a great time.

There is an iPhone angle here too, though, which was, and I've mentioned this before, that I was trying to see what could I do with my iPhone for the eclipse, and a lot of people tell you, I'd heard this before the eclipse, don't get too tied up in trying to take pictures of it because the reality is is that you need to have very specialized equipment to take, just experience it, that you have to have specialized equipment to take good pictures.

Well, what I had done is I had ordered this thing called the SolarSnap that was basically a little filter like this that you put on your iPhones.

You just put in front of the cameras on your iPhone.

It actually instructed you to attach it using Velcro to your phone.

I didn't do that.

I just held it in front of it.

But it allowed me, what I did like about it is, although the quality of the pictures wasn't great, it gave me something sort of fun to do during that hour when the eclipse first started, but before the totality, it was just something to do.

I could sort of take some pictures of my iPhone, and they paled in comparison to the pictures that my son took 'cause he had sophisticated equipment, but it was something very fun to do, and so that was one thing.

I posted a few of them to Mastodon here.

The second one, the one that shows it through the clouds, this one I took with my iPhone.

This one actually is not even using a filter.

This is just me pointing my iPhone because when the clouds came over, it was dark enough that I didn't need the solar filter.

I could just take a picture.

Now, mind you, I took 50 pictures, and only one of them came out somewhat clear, which is this one, but again, it was something fun for me to do while we were chit-chatting and watching the sun start to come across.

The other pictures there my son took with his sophisticated equipment, in fact, you've got the nicer folder of them and stuff, but we had so much fun.

It was a really, really cool thing to do, was to watch the eclipse, and so the ones that you're going through right here, some of those were just with my phone.

They're a little blurry, but it was something fun to see, and then we're getting into sort of, that was another phone picture that I took using this filter app. - I can almost immediately tell what is your phone, and then with your son's actual professional equipment here. - This one, of course, he had a telescope with a professional solar filter on it and stuff like that, and he took some stunning pictures that I think are just, I mean, you could see the sunspots.

I think they're just as cool as anything that the professional photographers took.

Yeah, these two are mine, the ones that are more blurry, but the ones that are clear are his. - This one. - And he was such a fun. - That's like the moon. - Yeah, I tell you, I mean, you saw it too. - He knows what he's doing, that's great, yeah. - You're used to the moon having an eclipse, and then this part, they call this the diamond ring, because it's sort of, especially if you had it at the top.

You know, one thing the pictures don't capture, were you able to see this where you were, Brett, the diamond ring? - Oh yes, yeah. - Yeah. - You know, at the very beginning to the very end, right?

It's just that little bit that looks like a-- - What was amazing is the one tiny point of light was so blindingly bright that these pictures don't capture it you would need to have some super HDR camera to factor it.

It was, you know, the actual part that was the diamond, so to speak, was much smaller that these pictures show and much, much brighter than these pictures show.

And that it was, so it was even more stunning in real life than it was here.

But these pictures are still pretty cool, you know, showing it happened in the sun. - I mean, this is what I expect, you know, the other point you talked about, you know, with the iPhone, like it's not gonna capture, you know, my thought was, is like, okay, there are millions more people that are much more professional at photography that I know are gonna be taking good pictures.

So, you know, I'm okay not capturing the one picture that, you know, that I took on that.

And it's like, already, like just with your son, these are fantastic.

I've got one behind me here, but it's just, I knew that there was gonna be so many pictures because it was such, you know, this just became a community event.

You know, for us, like you said, we only drove like maybe 15, 20 minutes away to our county fairgrounds.

They opened up, they had everybody like parking, and you know, there wasn't a Ferris wheel or anything happening there.

It was just all empty, 'cause this is a kind of a more of a rural area, but there was, I don't know, there probably had to be 600 people or so, you know, just all spread around, but just in being in that community, just everybody experiencing that.

And, you know, we've all seen some of the pictures this past week of, you know, people like going outside of their work, you know, into the parking lot and kind of looking up with the eclipse glasses.

It was just really more of a communal, like worldwide communal event kind of a thing as well. - It really was. - I mean, you know, I know it depends a little differently where you were.

Like I remember folks that I know in Chicago, you know, they had 93% coverage, I think, but you know, just being in the totality of that. - Oh, I'll tell ya. - But again, just that whole experience, you know, just the whole thing from going to like the beginning of it and just like what's happening and the difference of it.

And then the coolness as it started happening, and then just the awkward weirdness of it with the light, and even just that little pinpoint light like you were talking about. - Just really, really amazing. - The point of totality, which you're showing right now, when it was a complete, a total eclipse, you know, that was, and I put this in my post this morning, it was like, I felt like I'm in some science fiction movie.

It's like, this can't be real.

There is a hole in the middle of the sky.

How is that even possible?

It was in, but you said it was the social aspect.

You know, the thing that I did with my iPhone during the totality is I just took video of like basically the people around us and a little bit of the sun too.

But, and those memories, because everyone around us, and we didn't have a big group like you did, we just had a few of us, but we're all just sort of gasping at, oh my goodness, I cannot believe what I'm seeing.

Can you believe what you're seeing?

And you mentioned the temperature drop and the weird light.

It was just, ugh, ugh.

And then of course, with these pictures, with my sun got, you know, not only can you, you can even see some of the little, what are they called?

The sun-- - The solar flares. - The solar flares on the side and stuff like that, which, you know, I have to admit, I did not see those with my naked eye.

This was a fun composite that he did going through the stages of the eclipse. - Yeah, this was great.

I love this.

I mean, you know, some people were showing almost like a quote time-lapse or putting several photos together.

But I love this one from your son.

Most of the time I see this in like a landscape mode, but I like the way he's kind of organized them all together.

This is really cool. - So then speaking of the time-lapse, what my son did with his iPhone, he did not use his iPhone at all during the eclipse.

And so he borrowed from me, I have like a little iPhone tripod and I've got one of these glyph things that connects-- - Oh yeah, this other tab. - So that you can put it.

And what he did is he just pointed at the sun and just let it go for, you know, a little bit before the eclipse, all the way through the eclipse.

And so this is just using the iPhone's time-lapse feature.

So if you play this video and now when it gets to the totality of it, the brightness of the sun still overwhelms the iPhone's camera.

And so it gets to the point right here where, you know, for folks of us, for those of us that were there, this looks like a donut.

It did not at all look like a donut.

The bright part was much thinner in real life.

But of course it's just overpowering the iPhone camera.

But even so, this was a great use of the iPhone's time-lapse camera that you just sit in it's side.

I mean, I use it sometimes.

You get some really cool effects.

I've done it before where I'm like at the beach and I just set up my iPhone for about five or 10 minutes and let it do a time-lapse.

Or outside of my window here, I can see the Mississippi River.

It's fun to do a time-lapse and you see the boats moving around the river, like really fast.

So I love the time-lapse feature.

And I thought it was a fun thing for him to do with his iPhone during the eclipse. - This video is cool.

Here I'm just jumping back and forth between when the sun was fully out and how the iPhone was like coloring the sky versus once it was in totality.

And it's like the iPhone, just watching it compensate.

You know, it's like, wait, is this dark?

Now I'm in the dark.

So they had a different coloring on there.

But this whole video is just really cool.

Kudos to your son for doing this because it is kind of neat how it just makes that transition there.

And then, well, there's even planes flying around in the back and then it comes right back out.

Oh, this is really cool. - The iPhone compensation, it's interesting you mentioned that because I noticed that when I took videos of the people around me during the eclipse itself, during the totality of it, because the iPhone is so good at low light video and photography, it actually overcompensated.

Because when I look at that video, it makes it look like we're brighter than it actually was, which is normally a good thing.

You know, if you're in a restaurant or if you're in a bar and it's really dark, it's amazing.

It's very useful that the iPhone makes it a little bit brighter than it really was so that you can actually see the people in your video.

But for this one use, where I sort of wanted my iPhone to show how dark it was. - I know. - I sort of wish it had not.

In fact, I could probably go and vomit in a Final Cut Pro and do something to compensate for that.

But so anyway, the whole event was fascinating.

It was a fascinating thing to see in real life.

It was fun to see the different ways that iPhones can be useful in the circumstances and the pros and the cons and the limitations.

Everything about it was fascinating.

I'm so glad that I took the trip. - You linked to a couple of photos you put on your Mastodon account.

So I'm just reiterating that because for me, just similar to what we've been discussing, I did take a few pictures with my iPhone.

So I think I took a couple without any kind of a lens and then I put just the eclipse glasses over the lens of my iPhone.

They were all terrible.

They were horrible.

And it's like, that's what I'm saying.

It's like, okay, this isn't gonna work for me.

And I just don't wanna take the time to deal with it.

But I did take exactly what you said, Jeff, some pictures of people around me, or I did a video of that when it was in totality 'cause the horizon just looked so weird.

And it was different coloring, but the iPhone compensated.

Just like you said, I guess I didn't think about that too much, but I was almost more disappointed in the video.

I'm glad that I did it because I was able to talk to my son and it was a memory made kind of a thing.

But anyway, for those that didn't get any pictures, I love the fact that you shared these pictures here from your son and that's really, really cool.

Thanks for sharing that.

Well, let's go from no vision in totality of eclipse to the Apple Vision Pro.

A couple of stories that you linked to again, which I just thought was interesting.

First was the column in Macworld from Jason Snell, "Call Apple Vision Pro a flop at your own risk."

Obviously, we've talked many times about Jason and the fact that he has such a wide breadth of knowledge and experience to rely on.

In fact, he mentions the TRS-80 computer here as kind of comparing to some of the early moments of the computing world as a world, the personal computing world, and just some of those analogies he was making even to the Apple Vision Pro.

I think you've already said this several times along some of the lines of what Jason was talking about, Jeff, but it was a great article from Jason as well. - Yeah, I thought his analogy to early personal computers was pretty apt because I'm of an age, and you are too, Brett, to have lived through that.

And I very much remember in the 1980s when personal computers were starting to become a thing and you had things like the early Apple II, the Commodore 64, the TRS-80, the Atari 400, 800, and people were talking about, and people that were very smart were just like, "Is this just a toy?

Is this just something to get my kids or is it something real?"

And at the time, one of the first things that came out was a program called VisiCalc, and then later Microsoft released Microsoft Excel, and they were the early spreadsheets.

And it's the first time that people were like, "Hey, you can actually get work done in a way that without the computer, it's just so cumbersome to do a spreadsheet type analysis.

The computer changes everything."

And then word processing as well, it was a whole different thing.

I mean, I remember certainly when I was in college, I was, my first year of college, I was using a Commodore 64 with a word processor on it.

And those of us who had a word processor were at such an advantage over people that were still using typewriters, the same as in high school as well, because you could fix mistakes and all the obvious things.

I mean, now nobody would think about using a manual typewriter to type anything of length anymore.

But so those early days showed promise of what was to come, even though it was still early days.

And I think that's a perfect analysis to the Vision Pro, is that it's showing from these early days, it's giving hints of what's to come in the future, even though some of it is unfulfilled.

But at the same time, it is actually useful.

I mean, it's expensive for what it is, but I am using my Vision Pro many times a week, and I am enjoying it.

In fact, when I was on the Eclipse, at the Eclipse, one of the videos I took was an immersive video, so that it actually, when I watch it again on my Vision Pro, it's like everybody's there in 3D, and it's something that'll perhaps be even more special to have that memory 10, 15 years in the future, when things get more, when Vision Pro type technology becomes cheaper and more widespread.

But so, at the same time that people continue, there are some people out there that write articles saying that, "Ah, it's too expensive, blah, blah, blah, "nobody needs a Vision Pro," which is true.

Nobody needs a Vision Pro, but it is so fun to be playing with something that is clearly the future.

And I really do feel that it's just like personal computers in the '80s, and handheld computers, what we used to call PDAs, personal digital assistants, in the 1990s, in the early 2000s.

It was such early days, and yet now, everybody is using personal computers.

Everybody is using iPhones.

No one is even having a second guess as to whether a Palm Pilot was a good idea or not.

We're so far beyond that.

And I think that the same is gonna be true for this too, as the goggles get smaller and everything else.

So anyway, it was a good article by Jason, because it talks about what the Vision Pro can do today, but also places it in some historical context. - I like the fact, here he says, "Apple knows that if the Vision Pro-like devices are going to be widespread, it will require a decade or more of technological evolution to reduce the price and the size of things."

And when I read that, I'm like, "What, 10 years?"

But then I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

I would say, just like we've talked about the iPhone being around for as long as it has, or the iPad. - 2007, yeah. - Exactly, and I'm like, "Yeah, it does take some time."

And I guess I just had this expectation, like, "Oh, that's ridiculous.

We should be having exactly what we want."

But I just love the fact, simply what you were just saying, that Jason says, "It's a time period."

And of course, Apple has enough history now that they can look back and they can recognize that.

But it's just, I guess him putting a time period on that, for me, was just like, "Yeah, yeah, it is the long game."

I hate that phrase, but it is playing the long game, and they know that it's gonna take some time.

And but the fact that we've even seen what we have seen already, we talked about this last week, I think, just the improvements already is pretty amazing.

And then this last phrase I liked that he said here, the first few months of this, similar to, again, what you said, a lot of the critics are saying, "This isn't ready for prime time."

And I was like, "Of course it's not."

But the first few months is gonna be fitful and messy with potential, is what Jason said here.

And I thought that was great.

Well, that's great.

If you wanna look through the Apple Vision, that's one thing, but how about if you wanna look inside the Apple Vision?

This was cool, yeah. - I remember we talked about the iFixit, right?

I think they took apart the actual physical components of the Vision Pro, which was amazing to see all of that inside.

But what if we could just do an X-ray of the Vision Pro?

And we've done this before.

I think LumaField did this not too long ago with like the USB-C cords or something, right?

That you linked to, Jeff, which I just thought was great.

But this was really cool, just to be able to see how much technology is jam-packed into the Vision Pro.

And I like how they have these little interactive kind of things on here as well. - Yeah, I mean, they used, I guess it's a CAT scan to do sort of the 3D scan.

And so you can see where each of the chips are, which each of the, you know, and it just shows how packed the hardware is.

I've heard people that are a little bit smarter than me in this area have said that for the Apple Vision Pro, the hardware is actually in some ways more impressive and further along than the software.

And that's fine because Apple will continue to iterate the software over the years.

You know, a good example of that is last week, Brett, you and I were talking about the new spatial persona feature that if you're having a conversation with somebody else and if they have an Apple Vision Pro, you can appear like a little hologram type thing.

That's an example of something that the hardware supported that on day one.

And yet Apple had to wait, what, a month or so before, you know, clearly, there's no doubt that Apple wanted to have that feature on day one, but they just weren't quite finished with the software.

And as they continue to work on it, in fact, it makes me look forward to the summer with the WWDC as Apple shows us the next generation of what's possible using this hardware that you're showing in 3D right now with more advanced software.

'Cause I really do think there's a lot of potential.

But anyway, even if you don't understand all of the beeps and boops and stuff, just looking at these 3D pictures as you're showing them right now, you know, you don't have to be an engineer to appreciate that there's a lot of work that went into this and just, you know, incredible technology. - To be fair, this is not just a puff piece for Apple.

LumaField is a company that makes this Voyager.

I don't know if it's an equipment or software.

They just do these x-rays.

And I think this is a fantastic marketing angle here that they're using their equipment, which I'm assuming can be used for the human body and medical science, but you know, why not?

Let's do some x-rays of USB-C cords and the Vision Pro.

But they also do the MetaQuest on here.

They call it the non-destructive teardown, which I think is funny against the iFixit because the iFixit, of course, had to sacrifice a poor Vision Pro in order to get access to everything in there.

But anyway, they go through and some of these others that I think it's just really cool that you could interact with some of this.

And frankly, I didn't spend a whole lot of time on this, but you can certainly even see just in the comparisons to the x-rays between the Quest and the Apple Vision Pro, pretty amazing on that.

Okay, let's go to the software side.

A couple of apps that you linked to today for the Apple Vision Pro.

I remember that you've mentioned how disappointed you were that Netflix doesn't have an app that works on the Apple Vision Pro, which kind of cuts out some entertainment options.

But Zach Call at 9to5Mac found a solution for you. - Yeah, you can watch a Netflix movie in the Vision Pro, but you have to watch it in Safari.

And just like watching movies in Safari on a web, on your computer, it's a little lacking.

It's a little lacking on the Vision Pro too.

I mean, for example, you don't have the cool surround sound and all those sorts of things.

But anyway, a smart third-party developer found a way to basically put a wrapper around it and take advantage of whatever he did to tap into Netflix.

And so now you can get the full Netflix experience.

In fact, I think it also works with Amazon Prime as well for only five bucks.

I haven't tried this yet because so far there has been so many things that I have wanted to watch on my Apple Vision Pro from HBO and Disney+ and Apple TV+, that I haven't even gotten to the point that I wanted to move on to Netflix and Amazon Prime.

But if I do get to that point in a couple of months, I will probably, assuming that Netflix hasn't come around yet, I will probably to get this app.

I will say, however, that the fact that Netflix is not on the Vision Pro, I do think that's a good example of, Apple has fumbled the ball.

I mean, again, I'm just an outsider.

I don't know all the details, but I sort of feel like in an alternative universe, some executive at Apple would have sat down with Netflix and said, "This Vision Pro thing's gonna be really cool.

We really want you on board.

Maybe give them some incentive to do it."

There's an alternate universe in which Netflix would have been available on day one.

There's an alternate universe in which there would have been more immersive content from day one that I sort of think it'd be better.

Again, it's such early days anyway that who cares?

Five years from now, nobody will remember this.

But the right solution would have been to have Netflix from day one, just like Disney is there.

But since we don't have that, apps like this give you an alternative. - The app is called Supercut, and apparently it is from an Australian developer who is 19 years old. - Bravo. - Christian Privatelli.

So when I saw that, I'm like, first of all, that's so cool that a 19 year old is able to come up with an idea and put this on the App Store.

And number two, I feel like Apple, you should give this guy a free pass to WWDC.

I mean, if these are developers, right, these are people that are coming here, you should definitely make sure that he gets a seat at WWDC.

Then the other app you linked to is Seasons, a weather app.

I wonder how long it's gonna take before the weather app, just like when the iPhone first came out, how many flashlight apps could you have?

How about a weather app now for the Apple Vision Pro?

This is from John Voorhees over at Mac Stories.

It looks pretty cool. - The thing that's the shtick on this is that in addition to showing you the weather, you can have little widgets that basically exist.

For example, to show an example where you have like a little pot that shows like a cloud above it that you could sit on it.

I think that's a real table in the room, or maybe it's a virtual table, I can't tell. - Oh, really? - Oh, interesting. - You know, the idea is that you would interact with the objects in your real world.

Right now, every time you turn off the Vision Pro, things that you've put in a specific place go away.

But I'm sure eventually Apple will revise that so that you can say, you know, I wanna have this widget located next to the edge of my couch.

And then anytime you're wearing the Vision Pro, whenever you look at the edge of the couch, you'll see that widget there.

And that's what this Seasons app is supposedly good at.

So it's a good idea. - Nice.

So you can have like a little potted plant, which in my mind is the best kind of potted plant to have 'cause I'm gonna water it every day. - No watering necessary. - Just have to turn on the Vision Pro on there, which is good.

All right, so that's the Vision Pro.

We already have our iPhones we carry with us everywhere.

We already have the Apple Watch that we carry with us everywhere.

Now enter the Humane AI Pen, which immediately for me, I thought of Star Trek, The Next Generation, the little communicator pin, you know, (imitates pin clicking) like you tap on your chest.

This was a great video though from The Verge.

This is the editor-in-chief at The Verge, right?

David Pierce, great little video on this, which I don't know, I watched this video, Jeff, and I thought there were some things in here that were just really cool.

And some of the things that he kind of downplayed were like, well, yeah, this is a kind of a next generation.

Where did this come from though?

I wanna say there's some kind of an Apple tie there.

Am I right? - Yeah.

So it was people that used to work for Apple that left and they started their own company called Humane.

Now there's some things that are interesting about this pin and at the pin, P-I-N, by the way we're saying, and at the same time, I think it's doomed to failure.

You know, what's interesting about it is it's a cool looking little gadget and you wear it as a pin, you take a magnet and put the magnet underneath your shirt and then connect it to the magnet, hold it to your shirt. - It's cool. - And the idea is that it's always right there next to you.

You can tap it with your finger and talk to it and it talks back to you.

So just to pause right there, you can really only use it in environments where it's appropriate to have your pin talking out loud to you.

And you know, we know from Siri and stuff that sometimes that's appropriate, sometimes it's not.

You know, when you're around other people, it makes more sense to glance at your iPhone because you don't want to share with and disturb others around you.

So that's one limitation right there.

It's called the AI pin because they work with open AI, the same people behind chat GPT, so that the idea is that you can speak to it in just using plain language sentences.

And in theory, it would give you plain English answers because of its sophisticated AI.

The problem is that because those things have to go to the server, it'd be processed and come back.

It's very slow.

I mean, every time he asked a question, it took, you know, 10 seconds to get an answer.

Half the time it didn't work.

Sometimes the answers, much like AI itself, sometimes the answers were incredibly accurate.

Like it has a camera on it and you can tap it and you can say, "What building am I in front of?"

And it would correctly say, "This is a such and such building."

And then other times it would just be completely wrong.

And the problem with AI is that it says both sets of information equally convincingly.

So when he pointed it at a bridge and said, "What bridge is it?"

And it said, "This is the, what was it?

I'm forgetting my New York bridge names, but it was a different bridge in New York."

It would just say, "No, that's not what the bridge is.

It's a different one.

This is the Brooklyn Bridge."

And so, you know, it's just, but you can't tell as a user when is it 100% wrong and when is it 100% right.

Plus the battery life is at most five hours with an extra battery.

It gets hot when you use it.

Sometimes it overheats.

It's got so many flaws in it that, you know, part of me wants to, we were just talking about the Apple Vision Pro and how it has promise for the future.

And that I'm willing to give it a pass because there's so many things that it actually does do very well right now.

The problem with HumanePin is maybe this is just a showing promise for the future, but this current generation of a product just looks like it's half-baked.

I think that they released it way too early.

I also think that the original Apple Watch was released a little too early too, but it still was more useful than this.

And in fact, everything that the AIPin tries to do, it tries to say, "You don't need to use your phone.

You can just use this pin."

Every real world use I could think of for it, the Apple Watch does the same thing.

It's something tiny that I can get my notifications.

Plus the Apple Watch is, it's part of my iPhone environment.

It's connected with my phone.

This thing, you have to have a brand new cell phone number.

So you got to give all your friends a new cell phone number that it has to contact you.

And it doesn't integrate with your phone.

So it can't do, you know, the Apple Watch things that it can't do on its own, it could have the iPhone do, but this thing can't.

So if you tell it to set a timer, it just can't do it at all.

And it can't even pass that onto your iPhone.

There's, I just, I don't think that there's enough here.

And I don't think they're going to be able to sell enough of this generation to even make enough money for the company to come up with a second generation or third generation.

So I think that this is probably not going to go anywhere.

I will say though, that I do like the idea that they're trying to be creative in terms of technology.

They're trying to be creative in terms of AI.

You know, we mentioned that, I mentioned that OpenAI is behind this.

OpenAI, the president of OpenAI has actually teamed up with a little guy named Jonathan Ive.

Don't know if you've heard of him before, former designer at Apple.

And they're coming up with- - Sir, Sir Johnny Ive. - Sir Johnny Ive.

They are coming up with their own AI product, which is still in the early stages.

And, you know, maybe if you've got the person that really knows AI really well, and the person that knows so much about Apple design, maybe they will come up with something that actually will be the sort of little gadget that we want to use.

But I don't think this humane AI pin is it.

So, you know, give them some, give them some claps for trying.

Don't think that this is the one though. - But could it have some glimmers of the future, Jeff?

Just like we were talking with the Apple Vision Pro.

Now, obviously Apple Vision Pro comes from Apple who can jam pack it with all kinds of transistors.

And maybe a company like Humane doesn't quite have that capability on there.

But I saw little glimmers in here, Jeff, of things that were like, you know, I like that.

I mean, you mentioned that you can't do this outside maybe where, you know, the voice is gonna be heard.

But if I'm not mistaken, this, because it's based on AI, it's not like the entire large language model is on that little pin, right?

It has to connect to the internet.

So that's another reason that it has to go out over to the servers.

It does all the processing on the servers.

Again, very similar to the way that Siri used to work, you know, in the very beginning, right?

Before it was a lot on the phone.

Oh, sorry, I gotta turn off my phone.

I said her name.

I saw those little glimmers in here.

Like what if, what I really want is the child between the Humane AI pin and the Apple Vision Pro.

It's like, I want those things to get together.

The other thing in here that if you looked in this video, I know you watch this, which I thought was amazing because this little pin has a camera on it.

There was like, you could hold your hand in front of it.

I'm trying to describe this now that I'm showing it on the screen.

But you could hold your hand in front of this pin and it would like project a little picture.

And in the video, he's like interacting with a menu in his hand.

And the way that he would move around to the different menu options is that he would just simply move his hand or twist his hand.

Now, he admits in the video that he could never really get it to work.

But then he would just like put his thumb and finger together to like select whatever menu once his hand was twisted to the right location.

I'm not doing the greatest job of explaining it.

You have to watch the video.

But when I saw that, I'm like, yeah, that's what I want.

I want somehow of a screen to interact with when I wanna just be able to look up maybe in the corner of my glasses or something like that.

Anyway, you can tell I got excited just from some of those little glimmers of possibilities.

But I think what you just said a couple of minutes ago, they are probably not gonna get enough funding to come out with 2.0, right?

They just don't have the back.

I mean, this is just the economic realities of our world today.

But it was like, I saw just enough in there.

And even the fact that it was something small, it just sat on his lapel with a battery pack that was in it.

You know, and he always said, the battery pack would get warm and it doesn't last long enough.

I get all of that.

But this could potentially be another first generation type of a thing, similar to what we were talking with the Apple Vision Pro.

So I saw enough that I was hopeful.

I agree with you.

It's nowhere near ready for prime time.

And I don't think they're gonna have enough runway to probably make it to get ready for prime time.

But it was so cool just to see some of this interaction, knowing that this is where we're gonna go.

Because basically all those questions were answered by AI, which we can do if you go to chatgpt.com, right?

If you go to these services, you can ask these same questions.

It's just that they're trying to put it into a tiny little thing that sits on your pin, on your lapel now.

And we're not quite there yet, but man, we're getting closer every day. - Yeah, I think it's less like this particular product probably won't make it, but some of the ideas that it tried out, I think it will inspire other to take those ideas and use them elsewhere.

You know, one that we've talked about in some ways in the past that I think that Humane is on the right path here, the idea is a good one, is because it has this tiny camera on it.

And let's put aside that wearing a pin on your clothes is gonna be awkward and it makes your clothes sag and everything else.

But having the idea of a camera that can see where you are at all times, that is interesting because I think of, I'm wearing my Apple AirPods right now, my AirPods Pro, and they're already able to talk to me in a way that other people can't necessarily hear it.

So it can convey information to me.

And if there was a way that the AirPod Pros on their own, or maybe with some accessory pin, could see the world around me, such that when, and you and I have used this example so many times in this podcast before, when somebody approaches me, you can say, "Oh, by the way, that's Fred.

Remember you had lunch with him three years ago.

His son's in the same grade as you."

Those sorts of things, which is what the Humane AI pin is trying to do.

It's looking at the world around you and saying, "Oh, this building is the such and such."

Here's the, that idea of augmenting your reality through these devices that are small and not cumbersome is a good idea.

And I don't think that they're necessarily, they're trying to come up with the answer to that.

And even if their answer isn't the right one, it's at least a shot and somebody else can try to come at it another way.

The thing that they use a projector to project something on your hand, it's an interesting solution to the idea that doesn't have a screen.

At the end of the day, I don't think it works.

I think it's better just to have an Apple Watch, where you can glance at your Apple Watch and you can see a small screen and see everything that you need to see without worrying about silly projectors and the fact that you can't see it outside because the projectors aren't bright enough and everything else.

But so it's almost like it's an interesting thought experiment that we can all learn from, even though the product itself, I don't think it's gonna go anywhere. - The coolest thing about it is that it now allows me to unveil my inner Captain Picard.

Do you see my little man here? - There you go, look at you. - My friend gave this to me many, many years ago and it doesn't do anything, but I know that you could buy a Star Trek communicator pin that you could just put it on your chest and you tap it and it goes, and you could talk to Jordan LaForge and say, "Warp speed 10."

Anyway, that to me was just the coolest thing on that.

All right, let's move on to some security stories.

My goodness, we have always admonished, suggested, recommended that folks will update their phones when there is an appropriate update for security precautions.

And boy, reading this story, I think now would scare most people if you're not convinced already why you need to make sure that you are updating the iPhones, well, frankly, any device today, just because there's a lot of people out there that are looking for security compromises, flaws, and then they can get paid for finding them. - TechCrunch is quoting this one company that says that they will pay up to three to $4 million for people to sell to them a way to break into the iPhone.

And then what this company does is they turn around and they sell them to different governments that are looking to hack into your iPhone, hopefully for legitimate reasons of trying to get the bad guy, perhaps for what was something that we might consider an illegitimate reason, such as tampering down the people that are protesting for civil liberties and stuff like that.

Obviously, one person's hero is another person's insurrectionist in a bad way.

It's just, it depends on how you look at it.

But the idea is that, look, these threats are out there that people are willing to spend big bucks for hacks.

And so this is why people that are smart hackers have an incentive to come up with these ways to bypass security.

And yes, you could give it to Apple and Apple will give you a bounty of probably maybe as much as $100,000, but you could sell it to somebody else and you can get $4 million.

Well, you've got on the one hand, you wanna be moral.

On the other hand, boy, sure, it would be nice to have $4 million versus what Apple is willing to pay for bug bounties.

So you can understand why people are trying so hard to break into the iPhone.

And like you said, Brett, that's why when Apple releases a security patch, it's a good idea to install it pretty quickly.

And not to mention all the other things that we recommend that people do to keep their iPhone safe. - And more specifically, 'cause you have harped on this many times, Jeff, what they're looking for are the zero-day vulnerabilities.

And every time we have a security update, you always zone in on that, Jeff, and you say, "Hey, this is zero-day.

This is already in the wild.

This is something why it's important."

And then the second thought that comes to mind is I'm in the wrong profession. (laughing) - Oh my goodness. - But, you know, by good, I mean, that is big money.

I mean, that is absolutely incentive.

And then, so my third thought after that was, wow, Apple, you need to either pay more or you need to just continue to be on your toes about this.

And it looks like, you know, they are, we've talked about this many times.

There was another story you linked to here where Apple is actually sent out like some kind of information or was it, I don't know if it was an email or so, but they were just sending alerts to individuals that there's a potential or something, there was a spyware attack maybe on their phones.

You can probably do a better job of explaining this, but I'm glad that Apple's on top of it here at least. - Yeah, so I mean, what we were talking about 10 seconds ago was someone finds a flaw in iOS that could be used in theory to attack different people's phones.

But then there's a secondary thing is when Apple says, "Hey, we actually think that someone has used a hack "to target your specific phone."

And that's the thing is some of these hacks, like we've talked about the ones that the Israeli-based company Pegasus used, you know, they are used to target specific individuals.

And now Apple, Apple's not saying how, of course, somehow they have found a way to, just based upon the information on their server, to figure out that it looks like, you know, they don't tell me how many people this happened to, they just say that they are users of 92 different countries.

So it's at least 92 people, you know, and probably many, many, many more that Apple somehow sent a notification to, I don't know if it was an email or if it was something that appeared on the screen, and they say, "We think that you have been a target."

And, you know, I'm sure some of these people are probably like, you know, reporters that are probably in, you know, trying to report from more totalitarian regimes or something like that, that Apple is letting them know, "Hey, we think, you know, that you, Mr.

Journalist, "Mr.

Politician, Mr.

Whoever you are, "you know, have been a target of specific hacking."

And so now this person just needs to take the appropriate steps to either, you know, stop using their iPhone completely or turn on some more security things.

But it's a pretty scary notification for someone like Apple to say, "Hey, we actually think that you have been targeted."

So this is the first, I think the reason that this made news this week is it's the first time that I can remember of Apple, you know, proactively reaching out to a large number of people and saying, "We think you specifically have been targeted," which probably means hacked, I mean, unless the person was lucky enough to avoid it.

And so that person needs to take appropriate measures.

And of course, Apple's just telling them that it's seeing it on the iPhone side.

Goodness knows if a government is trying to get information on you, yes, they're gonna try to hack into your iPhone, but they're also probably gonna be sticking bugs in your hotel room, and they're gonna probably have people trailing you on the street.

And there's many other things that they'll probably be doing as well.

So perhaps many of these people already knew that they were vulnerable risks.

Certainly as an attorney, I mean, if I ever had a client that was in a situation like this, you know, you would want to give them good advice on how to protect themselves and stuff like that now that they've been targeted. - It looks like TechCrunch was able to get ahold of some of the people that received these alerts.

And so they were saying that it said Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack, and it could remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID.

So obviously they were tied with the Apple ID, which you and I have talked about many times is important, such as the iPhone is one thing, but making it, you know, if they have access to the Apple ID as well.

And they did say in the story that Apple has sent an identical warning to a number of journalists and politicians in India in October last year.

And they worked with apparently Amnesty International.

Anyway, it's just the fact that it's good that they are sending out these alerts or staying on top of it.

My goodness, I mean, it's more than a full-time job just to do this, especially if you're, you know, up against the fact that, hey, there's millions of dollars at stake on there.

Okay, well, I know that we're gonna have a couple of security-related tips that we wanna share, but- - Absolutely. - How about we'll just, how about we'll have a quick little moment of frivolity right before we get into that?

A couple of trailers that you linked to today got me excited.

Apple TV+, you know, whenever there's a new show, 'cause there's not a whole lot that, you know, that they're doing.

So when they do release one or announce that Apple TV+ is gonna have a new show, I get excited about it as well.

This one is "Dark Matter," which I know I had seen the book before.

It's like science fiction, but I've never read it.

But I watched the trailer that you linked to today, and I can't wait on this. - Yeah, Apple has been doing a really good job with sci-fi shows, you know?

That's one of the things that Apple TV+ has been great at.

I mean, I love "Severance," I love the "Silo" one.

There's so many good ones.

And it looks like this is, you know, at least if it's as good as the book, the book was, you know, supposedly one of the top 10 sci-fi books of the last decade or so.

And so it's good source material.

And so as long as it's a good translation, and from the preview that I watched, it looks like it could be sort of fun.

I won't give any spoilers away.

But, and it's got some good actors in it as well.

So Jennifer Connelly, I see.

So I'm looking forward to it.

I love watching these sci-fi shows.

I think it starts in May, if I remember.

So next month, I'll definitely be watching this one. - Again, it just looks so good.

Even the preview, just the stylistic cinematography is amazing. - Agreed. - And if you wanna be even a little more lighthearted, "Fly Me to the Moon."

Wow, what's great about this?

At first I was like, wait, are they gonna be real?

And then as I watch it, the preview, not gonna give anything away.

It's just like, oh, this is really cute.

And then the last thing I thought is, oh, well, this is smart.

You can just use the same sets that you did for "All Mankind," right?

And they could probably use the same sets from "The Moon" and everything.

But this was really cute.

I'm glad that you linked to it 'cause I didn't have this on my radar. - Yeah, that's very funny.

This is, it takes, the movie takes place around the time of Apollo 11, the moon landing.

And what jumped out at me was the stars.

It stars Scarlett Johansson, who of course is amazing, and Channing Tatum. - Right. - So it's got some star power to it.

This is gonna be a movie that's gonna come.

So this is like "Killers of the Flower Moon" or some of these other ones where Apple is funding production of a movie.

The movie is gonna go to the theater.

It's gonna be there for a while.

And then it will come to Apple TV+ and those of us who wanna see it again or who did not see it in the theater will be able to watch it as part of the Apple TV+ service.

And this is, it's a comedy.

It's a period piece.

It's, it looks like, if it's well done, it looks like this one could really be fun to watch.

So I'm looking forward to it. - It already looks well done.

Just in the preview alone was really cool on that.

Okay, in the know. - In the know. - You know, Jeff, why don't you go first?

Because I think your tip here, it's just so much more appropriate and linked in to what we were just talking about with some of those security stories there.

And I think it's good to make sure that people know about this. - Okay, so my tip is something called lockdown mode, which is something that Apple came out with a while ago and then they improved it when iOS, what are we using right now?

17 came out this past fall.

And lockdown mode is something to, this is not something that I recommend that you use.

It's something that I recommend that you know about so that at least if you're talking to somebody else or advising someone else, or if you really feel like you wanted to take advantage of it, you could.

What it does is if you turn down lockdown mode on your phone, it enables a whole bunch of settings.

And the settings do limit the usability of your iPhone, but they also give you a lot more protection.

So for example, your phone won't, it won't accept FaceTime calls or text messages or things like that from people that, you know, are not in your address book and that you haven't texted with yourself.

So right off the bat, you know, there are ways that your phone can, an iPhone can sometimes be hacked by getting a text message, which has things in it that basically break the iPhone.

Whenever this happens, Apple releases a patch.

But if you want to be protected, just in case another one of these techniques comes up before Apple comes out with the patch, you can have it that your iPhone doesn't even receive a text message unless it's somebody that you know.

Also, it does things like take away your location data in your photos so that you don't accidentally share a photo with someone and let them know where you are to the extent that your location is private because, you know, maybe you're a reporter on assignment or something like that.

And it limits Safari in ways that will make certain websites not work, but provides additional privacy.

And so it does a whole bunch of things and it basically turns them all on so that it's gonna limit what you can do with your phone, but it's gonna make it much more locked down and secure.

So if you are somebody, I mean, and I don't even necessarily have to mean that you are a journalist working for CNN in the Middle East or something like that, maybe it's as simple as you're traveling, you're traveling to the country of China or right now people are not traveling to Russia, but if that opens up again and the Ukraine war ends, if you happen to just be on your own traveling to certain locations where you feel, you know what, either I'm not gonna use my iPhone at all because of this location, or I'm gonna have it, but I wanna be as secure as possible while I'm here, then maybe you might wanna turn this on.

And then certainly if you know of someone who, you know, if they received one of those notices from Apple that they've been a target, you know, those are perfect people, then you might say, hey, the limitations and usability are worth it to get the extra security of lockdown mode.

So again, this is not a tip in that I'm not telling people to turn it on, but I want people to know about it so that should you ever be in that situation or should you be talking to someone else in that situation, they at least know that it is an option. - And it is available in the settings app.

I'll make sure there's a link to the show notes here.

You go into the privacy and setting, you scroll all the way down and you can turn on lockdown mode.

So before you could even get into that privacy and security, I believe you have to put in your iPhone passcode if I'm not mistaken.

I think you have to do that first.

So it's not just face ID, you have to actually put in the iPhone passcode to even get into the privacy and security settings.

And then it says, once you turn on lockdown mode, you do have to restart the device, right?

And then of course, when the device restarts, you have to actually put in your passcode again.

So again, it just, for me, that aspect of even if you're really in a situation that where you're thinking you really wanna lock everything down and be secure as possible, then making sure that you just don't put in the right, it just doesn't work on the face ID.

You have to make sure you put in the passcode on there.

But this is a great page, even from Apple.

I know you link to a Wired Magazine article as well, but it just goes through everything that gets turned off, even the wireless connectivity.

Like it doesn't join non-secure wifi networks, right?

So it's only trusted. - That's another good example, right? - Yeah. - And in fact, it's even if you, like even if like there's a hotel that you've actually connected to that hotel's wifi before, once you turn lockdown mode in, if that wifi is not secure and protected, your iPhone will not connect to it.

You just can't connect to it.

So it's going out of the way to protect you even in ways that maybe you didn't even think about. - Yeah, yeah.

So good tip on there.

And I'll make sure we have the link in there.

So lockdown mode.

I don't know that I've ever had to turn this on or I felt like I needed to, but again, even just like you talked about, even traveling internationally, to even quote friendly states, it just might be something that you might wanna consider or at least remember in there.

How about this?

I'll do a bonus tip, one that I was thinking about talking about, but I also wanna know that people should know that there is a safety check available on the iPhone.

So lockdown mode is one thing, but you can also go in and do a safety check.

So one of the things that we do is through the iPhone as you use it day to day, I will install a new app and I'll say, "Yeah, you can share this pieces of information with this app, or you can share my location data with this app."

When I think I just installed like an airline app, Jeff.

And so it was asking, when do you wanna share this data?

One time or anytime that you use the app, that kind of stuff like that.

A lot of times I don't even think about that, I just go through, or in some cases it's asking with my messages, do I wanna share my location data with an actual person or an individual?

Anyway, as we go through all of this, sometimes I just click through and I don't even think about it too much.

And so it reminded me that only about a year or so ago, I think this only came out in iOS 16, and some of it was during response to security issues where personal safety, right?

Like a spouse, a battered spouse or something like that.

And just, the iPhone has so much information on there.

And so now Apple has this safety check and you can go in and there's a great video here that I'll link to, it's about a five minute video that Apple shows you all of the different options that you can go through and do.

You can emergency reset all of the settings at one time, or you can go through the step-by-step process of managing, sharing and access.

And I just went through it, I didn't make any changes this morning, Jeff, but you go through and like step one is review all of the things that you've shared for Find My, or all of the things that you've shared your health data with, or all of the things you've shared, calendar.

You can do it by people, it'll walk you through about the things that you've shared with an app, for example, it'll let you reset specific apps.

If you don't want an app to specifically have access to like your location data, that kind of a thing.

I mean, there's just a whole slew of things you can review your emergency contact and change that or take it off, all this kind of stuff like that, that is just a good way, this safety check is almost just like a good checklist, if you will, just to make sure like, do I want this?

Do I not want this?

I just went through really quick and I just said skip this morning, 'cause I just didn't wanna make any changes and I knew, hey, once I started getting in, like I need to spend a little bit more time to make sure that everything is exactly the way I want to go on there.

But anyway, I just wanted people to know, safety check, it is available in the same spot, you just simply go to the settings, you go into the privacy and security, and again, you'll just put in your iPhone passcode and then you'll see that there is a safety check there.

And it would be good, I think, for folks just to go through, review all of this, because again, over all the years that we've used the iPhone, there's a lot of stuff in there we may not even remember that we allowed an app to specifically have access to location data or something like that.

So that is the safety check on the iPhone. - Yeah, that's a good bonus tip.

You and I have mentioned this in the podcast in the past, but it's been long enough that when you told me just before we started recording that you were gonna mention this, I have to admit, it took me a second, I'm like, oh, I don't remember that.

And then once you saw me, I was like, oh, now I know what you're talking about.

And so this is a good reminder that, it might be something that every once every year or so, you might wanna do this, or if you have a change in circumstances, like you used to be in a relationship with somebody and you're no longer, or that might be a time to say, you know what, let me just use the safety check feature to find out who I've shared things with, because some of those things that made perfect sense to share 18 months ago may not make sense today.

So it's a good way to sort of walk you through those steps.

So I'm glad that's a bonus tip. - Which apps have access to the camera, right?

Which apps have access to the camera? - And there may have been a perfectly good reason for you to give that access way to go, but then you're like, I don't even use that app anymore.

And maybe that app was, somebody else owns that app now and who knows what they're doing with it.

And you're like, gosh, that app doesn't need to have that access anymore.

You go ahead and turn that off. - Yeah, good point. - So that's your bonus tip, because we've talked about it before. - That was my bonus tip.

Okay, so last word that I did, just 'cause I was thinking about this the other day.

I love the fact that now, since we've had the always on screen on the iPhone, that I like having access to some things on the lock screen, 'cause I can just glance over it.

I can see something on there 'cause the screen is always on.

But then I'm thinking, well, wait a minute, if I can see it without unlocking my phone, that means other people can see some of this stuff on there.

So my little tip was almost just a reminder, again, control access to information on the iPhone lock screen.

So again, if you go into settings, and this time there's a separate section in settings called face ID and passcode.

And this might've been what I was thinking about.

To get into this, you have to actually put in your iPhone passcode.

Maybe you have to put in both of those on there.

But in this, you go into this area and then you'll see a section that says allow access when locked.

And then there are several toggles that you can say, do you want your notification center to be available when the iPhone is locked?

Well, I say, yes, I have most of these turned on.

I say yes, 'cause I like having the notifications that I can just glance down at, for example, and see if they're on there or not.

But do you want access to the control center?

This one I turned off, right?

I don't wanna have somebody to be able to pull down from the top right corner and go into the control center.

If I want to do something with the control center, I have to then unlock the phone, right?

And then go into control center.

And it's very quickly on that.

I just don't want it to be available when the iPhone is locked.

I think I shared this maybe last week or so, how you can turn down the time of how long the iPhone is unlocked before it locks the screen.

Live activities, I want those in the lock screen for sure.

Reply with message, I think I turned that off.

So that means if somebody texts you, you can tap and hold on the lock screen, right?

On the message, and then you can do a reply right there on the lock screen.

I don't like that.

At least for me, I'm like, I don't want anybody else to be able to have that access if I'm not there.

So I turned that off.

That means I have to reply to a text message.

I gotta unlock the phone, go to the text messages and then reply there.

So your mileage will vary on what you wanna have access to.

But I just think that's a good reminder again to go into the settings, go to the face ID and passcode section, and then go to allow access when locked.

And think about this just for a couple of minutes about what you want to have available on the lock screen when the iPhone is locked.

That's my- - Thank you for this tip.

While you were talking about it, Brett, I was pulling mine up as you described to do, settings, face ID and passcode.

And like, for example, when you just mentioned the control center one, yeah, I don't want anybody to pick up my iPhone and use the control center 'cause I have lots of stuff there.

So I do have that one turned off.

Some of these other ones I need to think about, I don't know.

I'm glad that you're a minor.

I'll have to take a note.

I think the way I have it set up is right.

I've got turned off control center and I've got turned off wallet and accessories.

And I think this makes sense.

You know, I have home control turned on.

I guess all that would mean though is that if somebody picked up my iPhone, in theory, they might be able to turn a light off in my house or something like that.

That's probably not, but the convenience of me doing that myself is probably worth it.

But I'm going to think about that one.

I'm going to think about that one.

So it's a good tip.

They gave me some food for thought there.

So thank you so much. - Very good.

Now, that was like a whole bunch of security tips there, but you know, what I love about this, Jeff, and some people write to us and tell us like how much they appreciate, like these things for us, sometimes we just take for granted because we see it.

Oh, you know, you just mentioned, like it's a good to have a reminder every once in a while.

And especially when we talk about some of these security aspects on there, the iPhone really does.

I mean, there's so much now in the settings.

I remember the early days, it was just a few little options there. - Right, right, right. - There's so much now that you can tweak and customize in here that it's important to remind folks of that.

So great, thanks again for listening, everybody.

We always appreciate the audience and for the thumbs up and the likes on the YouTube videos and any reviews that you've left for the podcast.

We appreciate that.

We just enjoy doing this and we're glad that you enjoy it as well.

So that means, Jeff, we'll talk with you next week. - Sounds good.

And just again, if you're listening to the audio podcast here, this is one episode that you might wanna jump into YouTube real quick just to see some of the Eclipse photos, if that is of interest to you, 'cause there's some cool ones in there.

There you go.

Okay, thanks Brett.