In the News

144: Pencil It In ✏️ AI Apples, Cooler Power, and VisionPro Surgery

Episode 144

Send us a text

Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/JuxRyXgoLL4

In the News blog post for April 26, 2024:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2024/04/in-the-news724.html

00:00 Jazz Fest Fun!
00:57 Ultimate App Store Rejection
05:04 Pencil It In!
15:56 AI Apples
23:37 HomeKit OutKit
27:54 Standby for More Chargers
31:06 Portable Cooler Power
33:53 VisionPro Surgery
39:03 Where Y’at? AirTag and an Extra KeyFob
41:30 Face Palm History
48:28 Brett’s iTip: Export to Image from Keynote
55:21 Jeff’s iTip: Use Your iPhone at Night with Red Tint

Jeff’s Post: New iPads coming on May 7th

Jovana Naumovski | Gadget Hacks: Apple Pencil 3 Is Almost Here — And It Comes with Squeeze Gestures and These Other Feature

Malcolm Owen | AppleInsider: Apple's four new open-source models could help make future AI more accurate

Jason Snell | Macworld: Apple needs to become a software company again

MacStories: Outdoor HomeKit Gadgets: The MacStories Team Collection

Rikka Altland | 9to5Toys: Review: Satechi launches two new 15W Qi2 charging stands with folding designs

Eric Slivka | MacRumors: Review: BLUETTI's New SwapSolar Ecosystem Includes App-Enabled Portable Fridge and Power Station

Filipe Espósito | 9to5Mac: Apple Vision Pro used to assist doctor during shoulder arthroscopy surgery in Brazil

Mekahlo Medina | NBC Los Angeles: Watch: North Long Beach man surprises car thief after finding stolen BMW with AirTag

Cameron Kaiser | Ars Technica: Palm OS and the devices that ran it: An Ars retrospective

Brett’s iTip: Export to Image from Keynote

Jeff’s iTip: Use Your iPhone at Night Without Losing Your Night Vision

Support the show

Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com

Welcome to In the News for April 26, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett.

Jeff, it sounds like you had a fun weekend so far for the last couple of days.

Jazz Fest in New Orleans.

Thanks for posting a couple of pictures and talking about it.

It's something I've always wanted to do.

It's a bucket list thing for sure.

Yeah, for sure.

It's a great thing.

I'm wearing right now, even though I'm not there today, I'm wearing my t-shirt for WWOZ, which is the radio station associated with Jazz Fest.

But yeah, it was a great day on Thursday.

And I tell you what, I'm looking outside right now, Brett, and it's not like a bright, sunny day in New Orleans.

It's a little overcast with clouds, which means it's perfect because that way you can sit out there, get your chair and just sit there.

Don't have to worry about getting quite a sunburn.

I've still got some sunburns on me from on Thursday, but that's okay.

A good time was had by all.

It was fun to enjoy the music and the food and the people and everything else.

Well, if anyone is there, make sure you get some TikTok posts up as quickly as you possibly can because probably lots of people saw these headlines over this past week, but apparently the United States government may not be allowing TikTok in a while.

It's a little convoluted and all the rules and everything going on, but I'm glad that you linked to a couple of stories this week.

Yeah.

I mean, what the government is saying is that they don't want to ban TikTok.

They're claiming they just want to force a sale so that TikTok is controlled by somebody in the United States instead of in China.

But the reality of it is TikTok is saying that they don't want to do that and they would just assume pull out of the US market if that's so.

Effectively it could result in a ban and it's going to be sort of a game of chicken to go to the end of the game.

It's a tough issue though.

It really is.

I mean, we all talk about apps that we use on the iPhone, but to get to the level of the federal government saying we're going to essentially ban an entire app, it's interesting.

And it's especially interesting because nobody can point to anything that TikTok has specifically done wrong so far.

It would be one thing, we're used to in this country to have a system where you do a crime and then you pay for it, but this is sort of reverse.

It's just the fear of what could be done with an app that is in such widespread use.

And on the one hand, I can understand the argument articulated by people like the John Gruber post I listened to, I linked to, and of course many, many people in the government that just because the app is so pervasive, it's used by so many different people and it absolutely collects data on you in terms of at least the preferences of things that you enjoy watching.

Now how that could be weaponized is a question for another day, but in theory it could be.

And there's absolutely no question that because it's such a popular platform, it could be used to like at the last minute promote a bunch of videos that are slanted one way or the other.

And we certainly know that the Chinese government, I mean, they have no problem admitting that they absolutely use social media and technology and information to change public opinion in their own country.

And so they would have no qualms doing the same thing in the United States.

I mean, not to get political, but I mean, I remember during the election between Trump and Hillary Clinton, there was that issue that came out just on the eve of the election about Hillary Clinton's emails.

And it was all sort of, in my opinion, it was a whole lot of nonsense.

But the point is that it was a last minute issue that arguably swayed some people that were on the fence.

And so the question becomes whether it's this election or some other ones, if China wanted to, could they do something with a platform like this to sway an election or to sway an issue?

And, you know, that's the thing.

Do you ban an app because the potential for something like this?

But the thing is, opponents would say, if you don't do it, then you basically are allowing it to happen.

So it's a really interesting issue.

But on the flip side, people love TikTok.

I mean, I don't use it as much as my kids do, but I tell you, sometimes I'll sit there and I'll look at TikTok and it does a great job of bringing up things that I find humorous, you know, whether it's old Saturday Night Live clips or music that I'm interested in.

I mean, it definitely it does a good job of knowing what your eyes pay more attention to and giving you more like that.

And, you know, of course, it can be sort of numbing because you sit there for an hour and you do nothing but TikTok.

You feel like you're one of the people in the Wall-E movie that just sit in the chair and, you know, just do nothing.

So it's it's I just think it's a fascinating technology issue for which there are interesting arguments on both sides.

It really is.

For someone that may not have been following this as much, I did see that you link to this John Gruber article from August 2020.

Interesting.

It's like a brand new thing.

Right.

This is something that's been going on.

And even John Gruber, I think, was taken somewhat of that position about TikTok could potentially be a security threat is what is the way he he profiled it here.

But I mean, again, it's nothing new.

This has been going on for a long time.

It's not like all of a sudden the government said, hey, you know, we want to stop this.

But it is been something that people have been talking about for quite a while.

On to something happier, something else that happened this week that made me very excited.

I usually only see this when it comes in an email from Apple and it says, hey, save the date or really that's kind of what I read it in my mind.

Right.

I see an email that comes in from Apple like there's a new announcement or there is, you know, something going to happen on May.

I immediately switched to my calendar and block out that time because I want to know what's going to happen on May 7th.

And indeed, I got one of these emails this past week.

You did a lovely job, I thought, of putting a post up that we potentially I think I think there's a very good chance potentially could see some new iPads and maybe more.

Very excited.

In fact, before we talk about the iPads, let's talk about penciling things off on your calendar.

Every single time that Apple does these announcements, Brett, you and I have seen so many of them over the decades.

They're always at 10 a.m.

Pacific.

The only exception is if they're going to do a special nighttime announcement or if they pre-announce that they're going to do it from Chicago or from New York or something like that.

And yet this one is at 7 a.m.

Pacific, which of course would be 10 a.m.

Eastern, which makes me wonder, is there going to be some live component in a place like New York or something in the Eastern time zone?

Because it seems mighty early to be doing it.

Or is it simply did they just want to try something new and say, even though people in the West Coast will just be waking up, this is maybe a better time for people to watch it?

Because they pre-record these videos in advance nowadays.

Of course, they could always change it up.

Maybe there'll be some live component to it.

Maybe it won't all be pre-recorded.

But there's clearly some significance.

There's some reason to doing it at 7 a.m. instead of 10 a.m.

Pacific time.

I just don't know what it is.

So anyway, that's just sort of a curiosity.

And we'll all know in, you know, what is it, less than two weeks, what it is.

But in terms of the announcement, yeah, I mean, nobody can say for sure because Apple hasn't pre-announced anything.

But we all know this is going to be the iPad announcement.

It's overdue.

There's the stylus right there in it.

You know, Tim Cook is talking about penciling it in.

So it'd be interesting.

You know, the rumor mill is that there's going to be a high-end iPad with an OLED screen.

And OLED technology, of course, is incredibly bright, incredibly deep cover colors.

It's what I have for my 4K television at home.

And it looks wonderful.

And so I would imagine that on an iPad, it would look amazing.

But then the question becomes, I mean, obviously, it's going to have a faster processor and stuff like that.

But for someone like me or you, Brett, that's using an iPad to get work done, the question becomes if I have a really even more beautiful screen, is that going to make a difference for taking notes, right?

Is that going to make a difference for doing legal research for me and reading cases and stuff like that?

You know, I'm not opposed to having a nice screen.

Don't get me wrong.

And I certainly am very happy that the iPhone screen has improved over time and the iPad screen as well.

But I'm curious to hear Apple make the sales pitch if that is the key new feature.

I'm sure that there's going to be more because the thing is they didn't introduce any new iPads next year, which means that I'm sure they have lots of clever ideas that have been building up over time.

So that's one thing that interests me.

And then the other thing, of course, is the pencil.

I mean, it's been so long since – I mean, the pencil is such a simple device, but so nice to – you know, people either don't care about the pencil for the iPad and never use it at all or they're like me and they use it every day.

And so I'm really curious to see what can be new.

One of the rumors is that you'll be able to squeeze the pencil to do something like maybe like make something show up on the screen.

I hope that they come up with some new interesting gestures.

There's always the people that say that you should be able to flip it on its back and make the back of pencil.

I don't know if they would do that or not, but I guess it's a possibility.

So but again, anything's possible.

So it's going to be really curious.

But you have to think that with the pencil being featured so prominently in the graphic, my prediction is that we are going to see a next generation of the pencil.

Does it work with existing iPads?

Does it require the newest ones?

Who knows?

We have lots and lots of questions, but it will be fun to see some new equipment from Apple.

That's for sure.

Not only is the pencil featured in just the static image, but it's twisty.

How did you say this if you were – if you were – I was a high school debater.

A debater, you do exactly what was going – I don't know if that means anything to you, Brett, but when I was in the high school debate circuit, you know, the really cool kids would know how to flip their pen back and forth.

It's a skill that I never gained.

It was my one failing as a high school debater is that I never learned how to flip my pen.

I'm just not coordinated enough.

But people used to do it all the time as they would sit there and take notes of their opponents making speeches and stuff like that.

I just thought it was neat because I clicked through.

You know, there's always like in those emails, there's like learn more, right?

And you click through to the Apple website.

And I thought it was just going to be a static image.

And sure enough, it morphs into this and it's beautiful.

And like you said, Tim Cook even had this formerly known as Twitter post where he's like pencil us in for May 7th.

You know – Can we just say real quick on that graphic, I love that for the last, what is it, decade now, Apple's been having fun with the Apple graphic with like all these different – Oh yeah.

Don't you love that?

I just think it's so playful and fun.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Totally.

I mean, that's what I – it's like I'm almost disappointed if there's not some kind of an animation.

That's why I clicked through on some of that.

But just so that everybody is clear, like we know already the dates for WWDC, right, which is going to be in June.

But this was one of these like unexpected – I guess people thought that maybe something could have an announcement.

This is one of these things that they slip in before like we know what the next big event is going to be, which is WWDC.

But this is on May 7th and obviously like you said, we don't really know exactly what it's going to be other than it's – surely it's got to be pre-recorded.

I mean, they're probably already finishing it up and putting some of the final touches on even now.

But yeah, just the timing was weird on how that's going to be.

Like if there could be some kind of a live component to it, it's a little bit too early that journalists wouldn't have received maybe like their special invitations if they were going to be on campus or not.

But that could happen.

I'll also say – Historically – Yeah, go ahead.

You go first, Brett, and then I'll go.

I was just going to say I was – a couple of weeks ago I was in a workshop working with a bunch of folks on the iPad and I still have my iPad Pro 12.9 inch from I guess it was like early 2022.

I don't know that I felt like I was missing anything though, Jeff, a couple of your points there.

It's like it's been so long and I just know from my own internal techie clock, it's like wait a minute.

There should be something new.

I should be having – I should be making a big down payment on something new.

But it's like I don't know what I would hone in on as something that I would say.

The bezels look fine to me.

I mean I guess I would like it a little bit lighter but it's not like it's a big deal.

Anyway, I know we always go through these cycles there.

It's like what is going to be something that they could actually put into this.

I don't know that I'm missing anything on the brightness of the screen.

I think the Apple Pencil even though it's now what, six years old almost or whatever it is, it's like it's working fine.

It's been fine on that.

So yeah, I don't know if there's enough meat on the bone there that Apple could offer.

They got to.

I know they will but it's just like what in the world could push me over the edge here to maybe make another purchase other than it's just a new bright shiny object.

Yeah, and that's the big question that I have too.

On the one hand, there was no announcement last year so you feel like it's overdue and then the last time that the iPad Pro, the high-end model was updated was the 2022 version, which one of the few new features that added was the ability to take your pencil and sort of hover it above the screen so you don't have to actually touch the screen.

But I never even purchased that version because for me, the 2021 version that I have been using has been perfectly fine.

It's been a great device.

And if you had told me in 2021 that fast forward to May of 2024 and I would still be thinking, I don't even know what you're going to announce but I'm not sure that I need anything.

Because it's just the opposite.

Every fall when a new iPhone comes out, I always enjoy getting the new iPhone for one thing.

They always have much better cameras and there are all other features.

But the iPad is one of those things that even for a true enthusiast and someone who really uses it in some ways at least to its limits like I am, I'm going to need to be convinced that this is something that I need.

My iPad battery is not quite as good as it used to be.

It used to be that it could easily go all day long without being plugged in.

Now, I sort of tap it off throughout the day, which is fine because if I'm just sitting here working on my desk, it's easy to do.

But sometimes if I'm at a conference or something or taking notes all day long, I want to plug it in in the afternoon.

And maybe if it was a brand new model, the battery would go a little bit longer.

But that's not a huge enough deal for me.

So it's going to be interesting.

One of the things I'll say is that this May timing, as you point out, being so close to WWDC, it is what it is.

Apple makes announcements when they're ready to do them.

But you and I have discussed on this podcast just a few months ago that there were originally some heavy rumors for a March announcement.

And historically, Apple has had many March announcements where they announced the iPads.

But this one was pushed back to, well, not, I don't want to say it was pushed back because it was never announced in the first place.

This one is occurring two months later from what we expected.

There's a part of me that feels like maybe Apple had intended to have a little bit more distance between this announcement and WWDC, and something wasn't ready.

Did they not have enough shipments?

Or what sometimes happens is sometimes the hardware is ready, but the software that takes advantage of that hardware is not.

But now, because this announcement is coming so close to WWDC, we're about to get to this in our outline today, but we believe that artificial intelligence is going to be a big deal this summer.

To the extent that there's a hardware component for that, you would expect a brand new iPad, whether it's just having more RAM or whether it's some special processor, you would expect there to be a story there.

But Apple's not going to want to tell a brand new AI story in May if they're saving that for June.

Whereas if it had been announced earlier this year, there would have been more separation.

So we will probably never know why this is being announced when it is announced.

But it's just something curious because whenever Apple does things that's not the norm, whether it's starting at 7 a.m. or announcing a new product in May, we just can't help but think we don't normally see something like this.

I wonder what the story is.

So just interesting.

That will be May 7th, and then almost a month later, after that, on June 10th, is exactly what you said, WWDC.

And the conference will start typically with a keynote where there are several big announcements.

That's what most of us that are non-developers are watching for because we want to see that big announcement.

Although that usually goes on for a whole week, right, for the developers, and there's a lot of other things that come out maybe throughout the week in little drips and drabbles.

But a couple of stories that you linked to today where people speculating or maybe kind of going through the idea of what Apple could be announcing on the AI side, just like you said.

I thought this was really interesting, some good inside information.

And of course, one of these articles was from Jason Snell in his Macworld column, which I just thought really was insightful, obviously, coming from him.

But it'll be interesting to see.

You know, maybe we get the hardware out of the way on May 7th, and then June 10th is more focused on the software.

And of course, a huge component of the software is going to be AI.

Yeah.

The two articles that you just showed on your screen are, I think, really two parts of the story that we think is going to happen.

This first part here is researchers that work at Apple are releasing papers in scholarly journals about the advancements that they're making in AI, because that's just sort of what people in this industry do.

You know, they publish.

It's almost like an academic type thing, publish or perish.

But they publish results.

And so these people are publishing brand new advancements, the specifics of which are way over my head, but they are talking about how they are using very efficient generative AI models using large language.

They're large language models, but they're being done very efficiently, and presumably on device.

So on the one hand, Apple is...

We know that they're...

You know, one of the things that they're doing that seems to be special and new is instead of requiring vast units of hundreds and hundreds of servers that someone like Google or Microsoft might have, they are using everything on device.

And although that's limiting in a way, because you just have the processors on device, it also means that you have the potential for incredible speed, because Apple's processors are very fast.

And if everything's being done on device, and it's not going up to the internet and coming down, you have the potential for really responsiveness.

So it's very exciting.

On the flip side, and this is what Jason points out in his article, Jason Snell for Macworld, that artificial intelligence is a big RAM hog.

It really requires a lot of memory.

That's just one of the...

It's the nature of the beast.

And so it may well be that Apple's current, and certainly their former devices, older iPhones, older iPads, won't be able to do whatever it is that Apple's going to announce for AI.

Not that...

It's not even that the processor's not strong enough, because, I mean, things could happen just a little bit slower, but just they don't have the RAM, because Apple has traditionally been so efficient in their devices that they don't need to have the same amount of RAM that devices running Android do.

And so this might be the first time that you really need to have that extra RAM.

Apple doesn't even talk about RAM when you buy an iPhone.

They don't tell you how much RAM is inside of it, unlike when you buy a computer.

But what they're going to do instead is...

It wouldn't surprise me if they say, "If you want to take advantage of this new AI feature that we're going to announce at WWDC, you need to at least have, for example, an iPhone Pro, the model that was announced in 2023, so that it has enough RAM, or all the new ones that are going to come out this fall."

So that would be interesting if people have a reason to upgrade, and maybe that will be the reason I get the new iPad, is not because of the new screen and not because of anything else, but just because the new iPad has the RAM and the other things that are necessary to take advantage of this new AI stuff.

So it may well be...

I mean, it would not surprise me.

This is a scenario I've thought about, Brett, that new iPad comes out in May.

I look at it and say, "Interesting, but I don't need it."

And then the announcements come out at WWDC, and they're like, "Hey, by the way, that iPad we just told you about, it's the only model that can take advantage of this stuff."

And then I hear about that, I'm like, "Huh, and that stuff is something I want."

Knowing that that's going to be in the operating system update that's going to come out in the fall, when Apple does their updates, it may be that the time to buy this new iPad is not May 2024, but October 2024, which will be interesting.

So that's a scenario I've thought about.

And I've particularly thought about this one because my birthday's in November.

So that's like, "Oh, okay, so maybe that's how I justify getting it."

Who knows?

But there's a million ways this could all play out.

But anyway, insightful stuff from Jason Snell in this article.

Yeah, I like this.

And I really just read this with interest on the memory side of this, because we've even talked about this.

I mean, again, I keep hearkening back to this idea of Siri when it first came out, right?

When we needed to use Siri, oh, sorry, I got to turn mine off.

That we would have to, like, if we wanted to do dictation, right, Jeff, we would have to use it, but it didn't do the dictation on the device.

Now, most of the time we didn't even think about it, but we had to go up to the cloud.

And it did it so quickly that most of the time we didn't think about it until you were not connected to the internet.

Then you thought about it because it didn't work, right?

But then now over the years, Apple has done so good at taking some of that.

And again, I say that is AI.

It just is what we weren't calling it that.

It wasn't the headlines back then.

But now all of that works on the device.

And it's noticeably faster, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely, Jeff.

Exactly.

The old version, Brett, we thought was pretty fast.

And then once we saw the new version, we're like, wow, this makes a huge difference.

So I think you are right.

That is a perfect, perfect example of what we're talking about here.

And that's what I keep throwing back in the face of everybody that keeps claiming, well, Apple is so far behind Microsoft and Google in this AI thing.

I don't think you guys really understand the bigger picture.

I have no inside insight into what Apple is doing, but it's just like, wait a minute.

They're really doing it.

They're doing a lot more there than I think what they're going to ...

They're not going to go out and be as boastful about it just because that's not been their model.

But in this quickly, just coming back to this article from Jason Snell, the most RAM ever in an iPhone is the eight gigs of memory in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.

But again, to your point, we don't ever think about this.

When we talk about iPhones, the only capacity component that people ask about is how big should I get the iPhone?

And what we're talking about is the actual storage on the phone, right?

Is it 256, 512, a terabyte, whatever?

And that's really because people are concerned.

They want to make sure they keep their pictures.

But never have I been asked by somebody when they come up to me and say, "Which iPhone should I get?

How much RAM they should have in that?"

That is nothing that anybody ever asks us about.

And the fact that we've had less than eight gigs, which I don't even know if I could tell you, is it four gigs that we've had all this time up until the iPhone 15 and no one's ever cared about it?

Just the fact that ...

I think I remember a story we reported on when the 15 came out.

That was something under the radar.

Nobody really talked about it because nobody cared about it really from the consumption aspect of it.

But it's like, "Hmm, wait a minute.

Why is that something different in there?"

But again, I think that was just something that Apple was thinking ahead on.

Yeah.

And this is why, like I just said, it would not surprise me if Apple draws the line at you have to have the iPhone 15 Pro, i.e. the high-end model that came out in late 2023.

That would not surprise me if that is the floor to take advantage of some of these new AI features.

So we'll see though.

And I was all comfortable thinking, "Okay, I don't have to worry about the iPad coming out on May 7th until I listen to you just now."

And now I'm like, "Man, I'm going to have to justify that."

Our favorite team over at Mac Stories last week, I think, or two weeks ago, maybe last week, Jeff, you had a great article where they were talking about all of their favorite HomeKit devices for inside the home since it is a HomeKit.

And this week, I love the fact that you linked to a story where they're talking about their favorite HomeKit outdoor gadgets.

This was really cool.

I had no idea even some of this existed, and now my life is even more complete.

Thank you.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

I mean, from controlling water to water your plants automatically, to controlling outdoor lights to all sorts of things.

And I will tell you, you know, HomeKit technology is not perfect, and some things work better than others, but it is something that you can do yourself for a reasonably modest price.

And I say that because I know that in our own backyard, we have some very fancy watering that was done by some people, like some landscape folks for our outdoor plants.

And it's really, really nice, but I know it was expensive when we had it installed.

And likewise, if you get outdoor lighting installed professionally, it can be very expensive.

Whereas with HomeKit, you can do things, you know, some of these devices cost, you know, 50, 100 bucks, and you can plug in stuff, and you can try things out.

And it's just a fun way to play with it.

The one that happens to be on your screen right now, the MiROS device, is something that the one that I use has one outlet, and the one that you're showing on the screen has two outlets.

But it's a nice little device that you can use that you basically just plug into one of your external outlets, and then you plug in.

For me, I just have some simple, like Christmas-style lights plugged into it.

And it works really nice, and it's a fun thing.

You've seen it before.

You've been in my house.

It's a fun way to just sort of have some lights in the backyard that you can, I can just say, "Hey, you know who?"

You turn on the lights outside, and they come on.

And it's fun.

It's nice to have it.

It's a cute, it adds something.

I enjoy it.

I can dim them if I want, which can add to the mood.

And so these are all nice technologies.

They also talk about outdoor cameras and stuff, which can be so important from a security standpoint.

So there's a solid variety of things here, and I definitely think that it's worth looking through the list just to see what's possible, just to see what are the different ideas, what are the different things that I could get.

And then, of course, because they all work with HomeKit, you can have one thing cause another thing.

You could have, for example, an Eve weather at your house, and if the personal weather at your house gets below a certain level, then it causes something else to happen.

Maybe some water goes on.

Or you can have it that if motion is detected by a security camera, then it causes the lights on your fence to go on.

Because it all is with HomeKit, it all works together.

So I do think it's neat.

I will say, however, that although I love that Max Stories has been doing this series on HomeKit, you and I have been talking about the Thread technology for really for years now.

And I really do hope that we get to the point, and I had hoped it would have been 2023 and then hoped it would be 2024, but I hope that we're getting to a day soon where everything really is on Threads because then it's going to be, I believe it's going to be cheaper because no one's going to have to pay Apple for HomeKit technology and stuff like that.

And there'll be a lot more options that'll be available no matter what platform you use.

So there's nothing wrong with getting HomeKit stuff if you use Apple devices, and I don't discourage it at all.

All of these products are going to work great for you today.

But I look forward to having more manufacturers come out with Thread devices that in theory should be a little bit cheaper and maybe have some additional capabilities.

So we'll see.

I think my favorite post here, Frederico calls it his crown jewel of outdoor HomeKit, the Gardena Smart Water Control Set.

And I was just skimming through, scrolling through this, and all of a sudden I look at a balcony, apparently his balcony, some of the tiles he's taken out, and there's like almost, it looks like a hose going through, and sure enough, he has this set up to where he has several planters on his balcony, right?

Jeff, is this what he's got set up here?

Yep, yep, yep.

And they're all irrigated.

It's like an entire irrigation system on his balcony in these planters that he can control directly from his iPhone.

Just that alone I think is worth going to the article to see.

What a great little thing on doing that.

He's even got a picture where he's got it set up.

That looks like the washing machine connector.

I don't know.

Anyway, he is on a level above everyone else I think.

Well, that's definitely true.

Yeah.

So from HomeKit, let's go to standby chargers.

We've talked about the Anker, which by the way was on sale.

You talked about it, right?

The Anker 3-in-1 Cube.

It's $129.

Is it still that?

I think I saw this past week.

Yeah, I think it's maybe $130 or something like that.

I love it.

I spent $150 on this thing, and it was definitely worth $150.

What is it at now?

Let's see.

$129.

Yeah, that's a good price. $129, but I think I saw it this week at like $112 or something.

I was traveling, but I couldn't pull the trigger, but I was like, "Man, that's good."

But anyway, we all know that the standby is so good.

I know that you use it quite a bit, but you link to a couple of additional stands from Satechi that look like with Qi 2 charging that looked pretty nice.

They're kind of nice and minimal.

I like these here.

This was a good review, I thought, from 9to5toys.

Satechi is a good company that often makes products that are a little bit less expensive.

One of the ways that they do it is, as you just said, Brett, this one is not MagSafe compatible.

Instead, it uses Qi 2, but you and I both know that those are the same thing.

It's just that to get one, you have to pay Apple for the license to use the word MagSafe, and to use the other one because it's an open standard, you get basically the same thing for cheaper.

So it allows them to make it, you know, this product, unlike the other ones that started at $150 and then sometimes go on sale, these are now what?

These are starting at, well, one of them is only $80 if it's just got the two chargers, but the one with the three chargers that's more of a direct parallel to what I just showed off on screen is starting at $130, which means you have to imagine that at some point it's going to go on sale to, you know, who knows what it could be.

Could it be $100?

But these are also, and again, I like the variety too because they're different.

Every device is something different.

I mean, I like this Square that I was just showing off because it's very small and it works great on my desk and I can fold it up and I can travel, but I'll admit that traveling with a somewhat of a heavy cube, you know, it does have a certain amount of space, whereas the one that you're showing off on screen from Satechi, it folds down.

So it's much flatter and I don't know how heavy it is, but I think it definitely looks more made for travel than the one that I use.

Although the one that I use works fine for travel, but this one looks like it's an even better device.

So I just, the more manufacturers come out with different versions of the same product, I love it because it means that whatever works best for your bedside, for your office, for your whatever, you've got more choices.

See, like I would not like the one that you're showing here that's got the phone on the back for a bedside charger, because if I'm looking right next to my bed, I like having it stand by on my phone, but I also like being able to look at the screen on my watch for the same type of information.

So, but on the other hand, if I'm in my office, if I'm in my office, this type of a setup would be fine.

So again, they're just different products make different decisions and you know, it's not that one's right or wrong.

It just depends upon what you're looking for, for your particular circumstances.

I do like the flatness of this and the fact that the base also can charge your AirPods on there.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Or anything else.

It's just a mag, it's just a Qi charger.

So if you had a, not MagSafe, don't say it.

Not MagSafe.

Yeah.

Some other, some other type of a charge thing.

Any other charge.

Yeah.

All right.

While you're traveling for some extra power, this falls now into the realm of items I didn't know that I needed, but now I have to have Blue Eddie, but this is the new Swap Solar ecosystem, which is an app enabled portable fridge and power station.

I love it.

To me, I saw the name of this and I'm like, what if the blue microphones got together with the Yeti coolers?

And like, this is the child that came out of this.

What an amazing little product, but I almost want to support it.

I think it's so cool.

A three in one portable multi-cooler.

It's a three in one cooler and I forget the price.

What was it like $700 or something like that?

Something like that.

Yeah.

It was expensive, but what it is, is it looks like a regular old ice chest that you would, you know, carry to, you know, the fairgrounds or the parade or whatever like that.

Right.

But it weighs like over 50 pounds.

They point out that you need to have two people to move this thing.

They recommend using a truck to get it around.

And because it has a huge, huge honking battery in it, it's almost like it's a little Tesla or something like that.

It can, you know, it uses the battery to, to charge a refrigerator.

It's got a refrigerator built into it.

So don't worry about ice.

This thing's got its built in refrigerator and it'll last up to three days.

But then if you do want ice, when I say don't worry about ice, not only do you not need to add ice to it, it can make its own ice.

You pour in a little water and you turn on the ice feature and in about 15 minutes it will make either small or medium sized cubes.

It's funny that they point out in this review that because it takes so much power to make the ice that they temporarily turn off the, the refrigerator feature while it makes ice for 15 minutes.

While it's taking the ice.

You know, make sure that the stuff stays cold.

You know, because if you make too much ice in a row, then your refrigerator might get too hot because you're taking away too much of the power.

But I just think, and then of course it's also got some power station abilities.

It's got like USB things you can plug your iPhone in off of it stuff too.

So it's just, you know, you'd have to be like a real power camper for this to be appropriate for you.

But I cannot help but it'll work and I don't need it.

I do not need it in any way, shape or form, but I sort of want it.

Does that make sense?

How cool though?

This is the ultimate late getaway.

Come on.

You're going to punch a train.

You need to take this with you.

Wow.

This is up to like $1,200, almost $1,300.

Oh, it's even more than I thought it was.

It's on Indiegogo.

So obviously it's not a product, right?

I mean, the way that they handle this, right?

They just make sure that they get the funding first and then they can release the product.

But I mean, the pictures are here in Mac Rumors.

I just thought were really good.

I mean, they did a good job of going through whatever they've made now.

It looks bulletproof.

I mean, it looks like a mini little Tesla.

I mean, you should be able to drive this around, right?

I've seen some of those suitcases you can drive around.

If you could combine that, I mean, come on, that would be the best on all accounts.

I love it.

Vision Pro surgery.

This is what I want to see you try next time, Jeff.

This is fantastic.

At first, I was like, well, how do you do the Vision Pro and do a surgery?

But then I realized what this story is talking about is he was accessing information through the Vision Pro while he was conducting the surgery.

And that is just really, really cool.

Thanks for linking to this too.

You and I both talked about a video a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago, I forget, where it was the nurse that was using the Vision Pro because it had a list of all.

It was all of the checklist items that you had to do during the surgery.

And she was making sure that the doctors and everybody working on the surgery stayed on task.

This is the next level.

This is the actual doctor using it.

And the reason is it's some sort of a anthroscopic surgery where, you know, the doctor, it's got all these scopes inside the body.

So he would not be able to see it with his naked eye anyway.

He would already be looking at a monitor to look at the tiny little camera as he's doing his work.

What type of surgery here is a shoulder arthroscopic?

I want to say it's a shoulder device.

Yeah.

So he's so it's not like he'd be able to see what he was doing anyway.

He's already going to be looking at a screen to do this surgery.

The difference here is that he now has the screen in his Vision Pro.

So it can be big and it can be superimposed.

And I mean, you could, I guess, in theory, even have the screen in a position that wouldn't make sense in a real space, but a virtual space works fine.

But what's really interesting about here is they have this YouTube video that actually showed it, you know, shows the surgery taking place.

And what he did is, you know, you can record things going on with your Vision Pro.

And so this doctor just recorded it.

And so you could see how he's doing it.

And again, you know, this is obviously cutting edge stuff.

Who knows, you know, how how widespread this is going to be.

But I do think that there is a future for this type of thing of, you know, using a device like maybe it wouldn't exactly be a Vision Pro.

Maybe something made specifically for the medical field.

But just to give the doctor some very specific and right in his eyes, their view of things.

It's really, it's really nice.

I just remember a certain procedure that I had to do for most males over the age of 50.

But I mean, I was mostly awake.

It was like that twilight thing, right?

But they were watching like the doctor, everybody in the room was watching this monitor, to your point, because it was using a scope and it was going through.

But I would just, you know, when I saw this, I'm like, you know, most of the time there is some kind of of a vision.

Now the only thing I would think is the entire team was watching the same big white screen, right?

And so in this case, you could do the same thing.

You could have one screen for the team, but then the doctor could have the screen exactly where he needs it.

But depending upon I mean, that's what I like about it is I'm imagining like wherever his hands on, he could have the screen so close to his hands that it wouldn't make sense in a physical space because it'd be too close.

But in a virtual space, who cares?

You can just put it anyway.

You know, it's just fascinating.

I didn't watch the whole video, by the way.

YouTube does say that it could be inappropriate for some users because it does show like all the detail and everything.

You're in a video, in a surgery.

I even think like he doesn't have to touch controls, right, Jeff?

I mean, he's got it.

It's all gloved up and washed up and everything.

And so, you know, he can just use some of the gestures.

And theoretically, I guess it would still work on the Vision Pro without having to like touch something that's physical or anything else like that, which I think that alone is also pretty cool.

And another good angle on that.

Last weekend, I was thinking about this.

I was it was a beautiful weather in New Orleans last weekend.

And so I was sitting on my back porch and like there was a nice wind.

It was just like you just wanted to sit out there.

But at the same time, I was watching a TV show.

And you know what it was?

It was a show that I just finished watching the length of it.

It was a show that was on Netflix called Shogun.

I don't know if you've heard it, which is sort of a famous book that they turned into a series.

Right.

And it was it was totally funny.

I heard it described to me as it's like Game of Thrones, but it takes place in feudal Japan without without the nudity, but definitely with all the violence.

And that's a pretty that's a pretty good description of it.

But it's it was a really good show.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

But when I was watching it, I decided because it was such a beautiful day outside that I don't need to be sitting in my I mean, my TV room is nice because it's closed up and everything like that.

But I was like, this is a day that I sort of want to enjoy the breeze.

So I just want to my back porch and sat there on my right, my rocking chair.

And then I use my Vision Pro to have this huge screen that was as if it was a portable theater just sitting on my porch.

And it's the idea that does it normally make sense to have a huge, huge, huge screen right there on my porch?

No.

I guess sometimes you see people on televisions.

But for me there, I was able to you know, I was I was perfectly comfortable.

I had a nice breeze.

I'm watching the show.

It was wonderful.

I had a drink next to me.

Everything about it was wonderful.

And you know, the Vision Pro allows you to take a screen and put it in a place that normally would never make sense in the real world.

It's way too big that you could ever have.

And yet for what you're doing, it makes sense.

So whether it's this doctor in Brazil or me just enjoying my Netflix show while I'm sitting in my back porch, it's it's these are the things that make you think about what you know, what's what's what's the future going to be when this technology becomes more and more widespread?

It was really cool.

Where you at segment.

OK, while you were on the porch, when you were on your porch, the Apple AirTags save the day again, or in this case, it saved your BMW car.

What an amazing little story this was not something that I would recommend that people do all the time.

But apparently this gentleman's in North Long Beach, gentleman's BMW was stolen.

And not only did the happy ending, he retrieved it because he was able to track it.

But the the dash cam, I guess, filmed all of the activity of the thief with this car.

He even got he got a nice car wash even during this whole thing.

What a what a funny story this was.

But again, happy ending, but not something that I would always recommend that people do.

But a good thing for where you're at.

Great Apple again.

It's the story we've heard a million times that somebody steals a car with an air tag and the person is able to track the air tag and find the car.

But again, what makes this story different is the video, because since his own car had a had the dash cam, like you just said, you could actually see the thief using the car, which just sort of adds to it.

And then since his wife's car had a dash cam, there's this great scene at the end where his wife and he are in the car and they can say they've tracked the guy to a gas station.

And apparently the wife is like, jump out of the car and go get it, go get it.

And again, this is the part that, you know, you really should not do this.

You should wait for the police, but he doesn't.

And you totally see in the video him jumping out of his wife's car, running across the street, approaching the bad guy saying, that's my car.

And you know, they have a little bit of a confrontation, but eventually the bad guy runs away.

He was very lucky that the bad guy did not pull out a weapon or something else like that.

True.

But the owner had another key fob.

And so the guy was like, you know, the thief was like, no, this is my car.

And he's like, no, that's my car.

I've got my key fob.

And he like, he opened it up.

Not what I would recommend doing necessarily, but the guy then just apparently the thief turned around and fled at that point.

Yeah.

So, I mean, he got his car back and for him, you know, using a $25 air tag to retrieve a BMW that had been stolen that who knows if he ever would have got it back.

Otherwise, it's a definitely a good investment.

So, and I do, you know, what we all hope you don't take their, their same on the video running after his car, whether you, you know, we all encourage people not to take matters to your own hand.

But a $25 air tag is such an easy little insurance device and tracking device to sticking your car somewhere.

And so we're definitely encouraged.

Last link is a walk down memory lane.

I like this Palm OS, Palm OS and the devices that ran it.

This was a great story from Ars Technica going through.

I just was able to breeze through it really quickly.

But so many of the pictures I like seeing the old Palm pilots all the way up through the Palm Treo, really cool link here, Jeff, thanks for sharing this one.

Yeah.

When the Palm was first developed in the late nineties, it was so many people had been trying to crack, you know, the device that at the time was called a personal digital assistant and it was, what was his name?

Trip Hopkins.

I may have that wrong, but I think that's the guy who sort of came up with the original design for the, for the Palm, originally called the Palm pilot.

And then the Palm, I remember it came out in the nineties.

And I got my first one was a Palm three in 1998.

And it was just such a nice little device for keeping track of all of my stuff.

And at its time it was so useful.

It was, it was wonderful.

And I used a Palm for about 10 years.

And of course, once the, the trio came around, it became more powerful because then it had the built in cellular radio and it had sort of, you know, so the initial things that you now take for granted in an iPhone, but it was definitely a revolutionary device.

They lost it.

You know, there's a lot of things you can say about the company.

They lost their way at the end.

And of course Apple, you know, completely took over this market, but, but for a period of time, they were the cool device to have.

And this was a fun walk down memory lane of all the things that were developed by Palm.

Some of which worked really well, some of which did not at all work well, but it was, it was, it was an interesting, interesting story to look back at.

I'm trying to remember that gentleman's name as well, because I include this sometimes in a presentation that I give Jeff talking about like, Hey, there was a dream one day that somebody wanted like a square device in their hand that would be connected to the internet.

You know, and I say, and I asked the audience, like, who do you think it is?

And everybody says, Steve jobs here.

I think you're looking it up.

You'll find.

But I say, no, actually in 1996, there was a gentleman.

And I remember I have pictures because it's in like the computing history museum or whatever to where it was like a square wooden block that he would carry with him in his pocket.

Yeah.

Hawkins, his name, like Jeff Hawkins.

Okay.

You had the Hawkins.

I knew, I knew.

And he had like a broken piece of chopstick that he would carry with him to be part of the stylist.

Oh yeah, here it is.

Here's Jeff Hawkins.

Right.

And he would just carry this around with him and act like he was using it because you know, again, we take this for granted today, but in like the very, very early nineties, it was like, could this really work?

Could this be something that could really make happen?

And that's what turned into the ultimate Palm pilot, like the first, some of the Palm ideas.

Cause it was like, it was like this, this, this revolution of like, no, I want to carry something where I can access my calendar, my to-do list, you know, my contacts.

And that, you know, if it wasn't for that, we wouldn't, I don't think have the iPhone or pretty much any of the mobile devices, the way that they look today, if it wasn't for Jeff Hawkins and sort of his idea during the day.

We take it for granted now, Brett, because we all have iPhones.

Right.

But in the 1990s, I mean, some of these original devices, there was one made by the Magic Cap that was more of like a landscape iPad shape, a little bigger.

And then of course, Apple came out with a Newton, which was portrait orientation, but it was much, much bigger.

I mean, a Newton was like a real big message pad and, and nobody knew what the right form factor was going to be.

And of course there was also the limitations of the time coming up with something as small as the current iPhone and back then the original Palm was, was tough.

I mean, that was a technological challenge, but you know, all these different companies were trying all these different shapes and sizes to say, what's the right one.

And so that story that you tell about, you know, Jeff Hawkins putting the little piece of wood in his, in his pocket of his shirt, just to get a sense of, you know, should it be this size?

Should it be that size?

What's the, what is, what is the one that makes sense?

Exactly.

And so it was, they just kept trying it out until they finally came up with something that worked.

And when it came out, it was like, wow, people really loved it.

They were, they were such powerful devices for your, your calendar and your notes.

And you could play games on them and other stuff and just, just good stuff.

I remember those days also that the only way to get information onto the Palm pilot is I would have to sync it with the computer, right?

Jeff, like it wasn't connected to the internet.

I mean, some of them, I remember at some point they had like modems in it, right?

If I'm not mistaken, you've got your trail right there.

Until that came out, we didn't have the ability, like I would have to synchronize my contacts or my calendar all the time, like every day and just make sure, cause I wanted it to be updated.

And again, we sort of just take that for granted today because we have so much access now.

You know what I mean?

These were the old days where I mean, you have 3g, I don't even feel you had 2g then at the point.

Anyway, just, it's just fun to kind of walk through this.

And now I remember looking at some of these pictures, you know, we call it the Palm pilot, but I remember at one point the company was us robotics and then there was three calm that was involved.

And I remember kind of later in the years it was handspring, right?

It was a company called handspring that took it over.

I mean, unfortunately things like that just kind of drifted away, but it was because they were getting replaced by the things that, you know, we, we, we, these were just the visions of what was to come.

I can look at this.

Even the back has two double a batteries, right?

And some of this, but you know, today, obviously, again, if it wasn't for some of this and some of this idea that Jeff and others and visionaries had of the course of the time, you know, similar to the, you could say the same thing about the Mac, right?

Steve jobs went and saw, you know, the Xerox, the park, you know, if it wasn't for some of just that, that, that interface components, you know, the, the graphical interface, then we wouldn't have the Mac that we had today or even windows for that matter.

So it's just kind of neat to, you know, sometimes sit here and remember where some of the history came from.

So I'm sure I'll link into that.

A lot of fun stuff on that.

Yeah.

One last thing I'll say is you mentioned some of the different companies.

I mean, they tried to just have it be Palm Inc being the company, right?

The problem is that they didn't have enough funding to do it.

So they had to team up with us with originally a us robotics.

And then that caused some corporate influence, which caused some problems.

And then they got three com and, and then that caused issues.

You know, when you brought in these companies, it helped in some ways it hurt in other ways, so much so that some of the original people at the Palm broke off to form their own company, which they called a handspring to come out with what they thought was a better version of the Palm.

And frankly, it was a better version.

And so it was when the handspring people came back in, I mean, this was the Palm version of Steve Jobs, leaving Apple and then coming back into Apple and bringing back the innovation.

So, you know, it's another one of those stories, but it just goes to show you that, you know, it's not just the technology.

It's also, is this the right point in time?

Who is owning it?

You know, are the right decisions being made?

There's so many ways that it could go wrong and that we don't have an iPhone at all.

You know, that there's an alternative universe in which the iPhone was never created.

And maybe we're all sitting around here using boring Nokia devices, who knows?

So it's just interesting to think about this stuff.

Okay.

In the know, my tip this past week, I was at a conference and I wanted to do a LinkedIn post, right?

Okay.

So I wanted, I took a picture of the room, but I wanted to make a couple of edits on it, Jeff.

And the edits that I was talking about wasn't like the main thing that you can do in the photos app, which you can do a crop, which I wanted to do.

That was fine.

I wanted to mark out a name or something that was, you know, part of the picture, right?

Now there are some pen and scribble tools inside the edit components tools in the photos app.

But most of the time I found that the quote edits that you're doing are basically applying some kind of a filter, right?

Do you want sepia or do you, you know, do you want it to look like a Polaroid picture?

And so I was like, okay, well there's gotta be a quick, I just want to do some quick little edits.

And then I wanted to add another image on top of that and like just, you know, kind of work it around a little bit so that it created an image exactly the way that I wanted it.

So I'm like, okay, there's gotta be a quick way to do some of these.

So I just did a quick search and I found a course, Adobe Lightroom, right?

Which is a lot of people know that's one of the great ones for doing photo editing.

And I open it up and it's like, no, I just want to do a quick little edit.

I want to like blur this part out.

I want to add another logo on top of it.

So then a Snapseed, I think, which is Google.

Now that was another one I downloaded.

These are fantastic apps.

I love these apps, but I really wanted something specific in my mind.

What I ultimately ended up doing, Jeff, and I should have thought about this from the very beginning is I went to Keynote, which most people might be yelling at the, at the speaker right now.

Like, why would you go to Keynote?

Like that's to give a presentation.

But I have to tell you, Jeff, I, I have used this tip over and over so many times when I've talked to people.

Keynote is a great way to basically get a blank canvas and maybe just cause I use Keynote a lot giving presentations and stuff, but it's a very simple interface, especially on the iPad.

Cause that's what I was using at the time, by the way, maybe I didn't mention that, but I was using the iPad and I, and I, I didn't want to do it on my Mac.

I didn't have my Mac out.

It was in my briefcase and I didn't want to do it on the iPhone.

So I was in front of my iPad and these apps were great, but not exactly what I wanted.

I just opened up a new Keynote presentation.

I gave myself a completely blank slide.

So it was like 16 by nine slide, completely blank.

I was able to insert the picture that I had taken.

I immediately was able to like get the, the, the, the drawing tool and mark out the things that I wanted to mark out.

I went and copied a logo from a, from another site.

And then I came back to the Keynote app and pasted the logo there.

I was able to move it exactly where I wanted it to move.

I resized everything exactly the way that I wanted it.

And then in Keynote, you can go and export out just that slide.

So you don't have to export the entire presentation and the Keynote.

I think Apple has done a fantastic job of allowing you to do exports in many different ways.

You can obviously export it as a Keynote presentation.

You can export it also as a PowerPoint presentation.

You can export it as a movie.

You can export it as a PDF.

You can export it as JPEG image.

So once I got everything looking exactly the way I wanted it with my image, I went in and said export just this one slide as a JPEG image and it saved it to my photo roll.

Then I was able to go to LinkedIn, which is where I wanted to do this post and add the photo anyway.

And I just said, insert from photo roll.

And there it was.

So I just wanted folks to know, Keynote is already on your iPad and your iPhone.

It's free.

It's directly from Apple and it works so well.

And I've heard other people like we listen to Mac Power users, right?

Alex Lindsay, not Power users, MacBreak Weekly.

Alex Lindsay talks about Keynote all the time.

It's a great way to design something.

I've worked with lawyers that would use it as a way to create a family tree or like a corporate organizational structure.

You can do all of that right in Keynote.

And then you can just export out of Keynote as just an image and you can just select one or two slides on that.

So I just wanted to bring that up.

It's something that I use all the time.

I can't believe it took me a while to remember this for this use that I needed a couple of days ago.

But Keynote on the iPad is really a powerful tool and you don't just have to use it for presentations.

Brad, this is episode 144 of our podcast.

I am embarrassed.

I am embarrassed.

It has taken us this long for you to have this tip.

I should have had this tip on episode number one because I do this all the time.

Better late than never.

It is such an amazing tip.

Oh my goodness.

Yes.

Good.

For example, yet another thing that Keynote does so well is the feature called Instant Alpha, which allows you to remove some background and things around.

So for example, if you've got like an object, but then in the background of the object are different colors or whatever, and you want to take all that stuff out and just have the object itself against a white background.

Keynote can do this instantly.

Can you open up Photoshop on your iPad and do the same thing?

You can, but it takes more time.

Keynote does it so fast and easily.

And if you want to have different things laid on top of each other, could you do that in any of these other apps on your iPad?

You know, you could, but Keynote does it so fast and so easy.

And I cannot tell you the number of times where I wanted to do exactly like what you're saying.

I just want to create some quick little collage for a slide or for something I'm doing or even just sending something to a family member.

I have a picture of something and then I want to draw on top of it and say, you know, you see this, I'm circling it and put an arrow and then write, you know, and again, can you do that within the photos app?

Yeah.

But within the photos app, you're limited to the four corners of the photo that you took.

Whereas in Keynote, you can put it against a white background.

You could circle something, point to it.

And then in the white area on the margins where it's more easy to see, you can write, you know, this is what I want you to bring to me when I see you tomorrow.

You know, things like that.

It's for quick and easy things.

Now, you talked about exporting a slide and that's fine if you want to be fancy and do that with all your fanciness.

But for me, you know what I do, Brett?

When I get it to where I want it, I just do a quick, I just take a screen grab, you know, you press the buttons on your iPad that you just take a screenshot.

And then once I have the screenshot, I crop it into the part that I want so that they can't see the tools.

And, you know, I probably don't even need the entire slide.

I just need this one part of the slide where I drew it.

And then now I have this image that I could stick into the messages app or it can attach to an email or save to my photos.

But I mean, it has saved my bacon so many times over the years.

I just can't believe it's taken us this long to talk about it.

Keynote is, it's the hidden, it's just this wonderful tool and it's free.

You get it for free with your iPad.

You can even use it on your iPhone.

It's a little tiny in your iPhone, don't get me wrong.

But in a pinch, you can use it.

Of course, I think it's for the things that you and I are talking about, much easier on the iPad.

So, you know, I'm embarrassed that I now have to offer another tip because it's going to pale in comparison to this one because it's such a powerful tip.

So I'm going to know, but don't get too excited, guys, because this is not going to be nearly as good of a tip.

But here's something I saw on the Internet recently this week and it's like a gadget hacks, which always have fun hacks.

And so the idea here is, you know how if you're in a really dark room or maybe you're outside and it's dark late at night, if you're looking at your iPhone, your eyes become adjusted to the light of your iPhone.

So then when you look around you, you know, you're blinded, right?

You can't see everything.

So if you want to actually preserve your night vision so that you can, whether you're seeing in a dark room or whether you're outside, there is a way that you can, you know, of course, accessibility tips are always the ways to do all sorts of fancy tricks with your iPhone.

And they walk you through in this in this article how you can go into accessibility and you're enabling a red tint, which you're basically doing is you're and you have this mode on your Apple Watch, on your fancy Apple Watch.

I love it.

I know how you have that night time mode.

Yes.

It does the same thing.

It basically takes everything in your iPhone screen and it makes it just this tint of red so that the only colors you have are red and black and different phases.

And I will tell you, I've tried this out and you can totally use your iPhone.

I mean, yes, you're losing colors and stuff like that, but for most things it works if you're just sitting there reading emails or something like that.

But if you happen to be in a situation where you want to keep your night vision, but you also want to be able to look at something on your iPhone, this is an interesting little trick.

And then they go through in the tip here and say, like, if you really like this and you use a lot, then you can take this accessibility thing and you can create a shortcut so that, for example, if you tap the back of your iPad three times or on the iPhone three times or, you know, the special action button on an iPhone on the newest iPhones, you could set it for that.

If you're going to really use it a lot, fine, go ahead and do it.

But, you know, if you're ever in a situation where just for that one time, you know, you know what, I want to keep my night vision, but I also want to be able to use my iPhone.

You can actually do that with this little tip.

So I thought this was a cute little tip when I saw it.

This is an excellent tip, Jeff.

I, in fact, I don't think I would have cared that much about it if I didn't have this capability on my Apple watch, because it really does it automatically at nighttime.

But it's so helpful to me because if it is at night, because I hate it when I like when I pick up my phone and I unlock it and you can't turn the brightness down.

A lot of people are probably saying, well, just turn the brightness down, but it still has that.

It's not quite the same.

Exactly.

It has that glaring effect.

But on my Apple watch, I love it that at a certain time every night it goes in just into that red mode.

I can still see the time, but it's so subtle that it doesn't like glare at me.

It doesn't wake me up because if I don't have it on, I've seen it at times if I go to bed, you know, a little bit earlier, it's like, whoa, like what is that?

I am thrilled about this, this tip.

Uh, because I've been thinking it would be great if the iPhone would have some kind of a capability.

You know, my, I have mine turned off that cause there's some kind of like, what do they call it?

Night shift or that night mode.

I mean, they, I think they even talk about it up here a little bit.

Yeah.

That's not quite the same thing.

Yeah, correct.

Yeah.

It does go a little bit dimmer and of course it has that.

What do they call it?

It's like the blue light or whatever.

Yeah.

Which again, all of that's great.

And I like having it in this, in this white mode, some people say, well, what about dark mode?

I mean, dark mode is great.

My kids like dark mode, but I still like having the light mode, but I'm going to try this.

This, this is really cool.

Yeah.

And dark mode is not the same because even with dark mode, even though your iPhone screen is mostly black, that you still have the reverse, you know, the text and stuff is a very, very bright white.

So yes, it's not going to affect your night vision as much, but not as much as this.

We should say Brett, by the way, that when we're talking about your Apple watch, um, I'm pretty sure check me in this, but the feature that you're describing is a feature of the Apple watch ultra.

I have the regular Apple watch and I don't think I have that feature you're describing and the specific face too.

There's only a couple of watch.

There's only a couple.

Yeah, that's right.

So I don't have that on the regular Apple watch.

You have to have the Apple watch ultra to have that cool feature.

Yeah.

And it's a couple of faces that are just available on the Apple watch ultra.

I don't understand why they can't make that more available to all the Apple watches.

I mean, to me, it just seems like it's a, it's a, it would be a simple kind of a software thing, but I don't know for sure, obviously.

And obviously it's gotta be much harder.

Otherwise I think they would allow that to happen, but you're right, Jeff, thanks for, for confirming that it is just in the Apple watch ultra and it's just for specific faces.

And I keep those watch faces on specifically one of the reasons is specifically for that reason because I like having that, uh, that red tint.

Um, so anyway, I think this is a fantastic tip.

I'm glad we got much more mileage out of the red tint tip that I thought it deserves, but the big tip today guys is not the red tip.

The big tip is keynote is your friend and do not forget how useful it is.

My goodness.

I might have to like, I'm going to do like the keynote tips for like the next month or so.

It's like, I love it.

There's so much that can be done and you're right.

I did.

It just sits there.

And again, uh, you know, kudos out to, uh, uh, uh, Alex Lindsay, he talks about this quite a bit because he's constantly doing presentations and like showing people like workflows and stuff like that.

And he's always going into keynote and doing it on there, which, uh, which is, uh, which is good.

All right.

Great stuff.

Thanks for joining me on this Saturday.

I think we said the date was what?

Uh, April, April 26.

We're recording this on the 27th, but thanks everybody for hanging with us.

And Jeff, we'll talk with you next week.

Uh, and we'll make sure that it's on Friday next week.

Sounds good.

Thanks.

Bye bye everybody.