In the News
In the News
152: Hidden Features, Immersive Visions, and Firefighting Fibrillations 🔥
Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/FbSXNMWcbpo
In the News blog post for June 21, 2024:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2024/06/in-the-news732.html
00:00 Hidden Features in iOS 18
10:49 Mapping Your Way Around iOS 18
15:17 Immersive Visions
22:37 Apple’s Never Pay Later Program
28:05 Siri Goes to the Land Down Under
30:28 Where Y’at? Firefighting Fibrillation & Tossing Your Watch
34:29 Tim Cook Blind Rankings
37:37 Brett’s iTip: YouTube Picture-in-Picture
42:47 Jeff’s iTip: Ditch the Camera Button in iOS 18
Rajesh Pandey | Cult of Mac: 11 hidden iOS 18 features Apple did not tell you about
Ryan Christoffel | 9to5Mac: Apple Maps in iOS 18: Here’s everything new coming this fall
Jeff Benjamin | 9to5Mac: How to create 8K 360 videos for Apple Vision Pro with Insta360 X4 [Video]
Joe Rosensteel | Six Colors: How Sandwich streamed The Talk Show Live in 3D on Vision Pro
Ben Lovejoy | 9to5Mac: Apple Pay Later withdrawal likely because of a law passed in 1968
David Price | Macworld: Apple’s Siri watch face finally bites the dust
Mitchell Bailey | Global News: His Apple Watch warned of an irregular heart rate. Turns out he was having a heart attack
Lexi Carson | Variety: Steven Spielberg Throws Apple Watch at ‘Sugarland Express’ 50th Anniversary and Remembers Finding ‘Jaws’ Script ‘Sitting Out’ in Producer’s Office
Marques Brownlee: Talking Tech and AI with Tim Cook!
Brett’s iTip: Keep watching YouTube video while you do something else on your iPhone
Jeff’s iTip: Ditch the camera button on the Lock Screen once you upgrade to iOS 18
Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com
(upbeat music) - Welcome to In the News for June 21, 2024.
A lot of 20s in there.
I am Brett Burdy from appsinlaw.com. - And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.
Hey Brett. - Jeff, good to talk with you again.
And hey, I don't know if you heard, but you know, Apple made some announcements a few days ago.
One of the big ones that I know we're gonna probably talk about now for the next few months, or we're gonna weave it in a little bit.
It won't be the only thing, but iOS 18.
It seemed like, you know, the keynote presentation at WWDC was separated.
Like there was an hour spent.
Yeah, I know.
It was an hour spent on like iOS 18 and Apple Watch and some of the features.
And then the second hour was really about all of the Apple intelligence, which we did a deep dive in last Friday.
But it seemed like maybe because they put so much in and they wanted to talk about so many things, Jeff, that I'm starting to see more and more things come out about iOS 18 that they never even mentioned.
And this was a great article you linked to today, 11 hidden iOS 18 features that Apple didn't even tell you about.
There's some good ones in here. - Yeah, I've heard others speculate on this too, that if it wasn't for Apple wanting to spend so much time, a full 45 minutes talking about AI, that they probably should have done everything that was in the first hour, would have been stretched out.
There would have been a little bit more time to talk about some additional features, stuff like that.
And so, yeah, it does mean that there's more articles like this one of talking about little hidden features.
Plus the other thing is people are starting to get their hands on this now, right?
It was just last weekend, I was at a birthday party and my brother-in-law was showing me on his phone that he had already installed the beta, which I haven't done yet.
And my son was with me.
And as soon as he saw that, like within minutes, my son was signed up to be an Apple developer.
We had the new thing installed, had all of his icons, different shades on the front.
You know, he could not resist. - Yeah, dad, there you go. - It just had to be the first to the block to have the fancy new things.
Where he gets that from, I can't even imagine.
I don't know why. - I don't know. - Exactly.
But that's fun because as more people are using it, they're starting to see things like you just said, that Apple didn't talk about, or maybe things that Apple would not have talked about anyway, but they're actually sort of cool features.
And there's some good ones in here.
On this list, for example, the very first one is, this is, I mean, this is almost a bug fix in a way that when you're in the phone app and you're looking at people that you've talked to recently, which is something I do sometimes, right?
You know, as a lawyer, sometimes I wanna, I know I talked to somebody earlier in the day on my phone and I wanna see how long the phone conversation was for my billable things.
And also I'm just trying to recreate stuff.
And it's unfortunately very easy to accidentally tap on a person and next thing you know, you can't get them back.
It's like, oh, that's so embarrassing.
And so, and even if you hang up quickly, it usually ends. - The technical term for that is butt dial, Jeff, I think. (laughing) - Exactly. - But that's what happens.
It's the exact same thing all the time.
It's so frustrating.
'Cause I try to like end the call as quickly as possible before hopefully the other person on the end didn't see it.
Because if they get a call, Jeff, they're gonna think, oh no, what's going on?
Then he hung up real quick.
So I gotta call them back.
And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It was an accident.
The old fashioned butt dial. - So Apple's gonna protect against this is the first tip in here. - Thank you. - That if you tap on it, instead of calling the person, it's gonna just give you to that, that call, the information screen from which you could call if you wanted to, but if you don't want to, you don't have to.
And so that's a good one.
Another one that I think is useful on here that a lot of professional users are gonna like is the third one on this list, which is keep things downloaded.
This is a feature that, you know, it used to be way back when, that when you had Dropbox, which was sort of the original of the big things, you would have everything in your Dropbox would be on your computer.
And then over time, Dropbox said, you know what?
We can actually store a lot more than you might have space for in your computer.
And so if you have like limited SSD space or hard drive space, you can say, I only want these things downloaded, but not other ones.
Just keep the other ones in the cloud.
You know, it's not as safe, I suppose, in terms of backup copies and stuff, but it allows you to use your space.
So now, and then the other extreme is iCloud. iCloud on your iPhone and your iPad, everything's basically in the cloud and you download it on an as needed basis.
But what if you know you're gonna be in a plane or what if you just wanna have something instantly available, even in a slow collection?
And so this keep downloaded option in iCloud, I think is gonna make sense, especially as more people are starting to, and I put myself in this category.
You know, I started using iCloud more and more as a robust file service, just like Dropbox or anything else.
So that was a nice one to see.
Any other ones you jumped out of this list? - I like the offline Apple Maps syncing with Apple Watch.
You know, we talked about this many times.
I still prefer, especially when I'm driving, I prefer Google Maps.
I just like the way that it works.
But I do use Apple Maps quite a bit.
And one of the areas that I do use Apple Maps most often is if I'm walking, especially like in a city, Jeff.
And I found like the Apple Maps does a little bit better for me and it works generally with my watch a little bit better as well.
'Cause a lot of times I don't wanna be picking out my phone, but I got my watch and I can just, you know, twist my wrist quickly and I can look at it and it like beeps me and taps me on the wrist.
Well, the fact is sometimes in a big city though, because of all the buildings and the interference, I can't get the best signal on there.
So I do like the idea that I can download, you know, offline maps in sync with the Apple Watch.
Haven't tried this yet, obviously, 'cause I don't have the beta either, unlike your son.
But I'm excited that that's gonna be an option there.
And then I'll just point out, one of them you had already gave into the scoop on this one last week, Jeff, was you can adjust the flashlight's width on here now, which is just brilliant.
I know we talked about this last time a little bit and the fact that you can, you know, turn on the flashlight like a lot of people do, but now we can adjust the beam a little bit within the control center.
So I'm glad that that made the list there too. - And that's one, Brett, that I still haven't even figured out yet because it was one of the first ones that my son tried.
You know, it's for a long time now, you've been able to adjust the brightness of the flashlight.
And that makes sense. - Yeah, of course. - How much the bulb is on or off, but to actually adjust the width, the way that on many, you know, physical flashlights, you would actually turn the end of the flashlight to either have a tight cone, you know, to really be bright in the middle or to have more of a wide thing to spread the light in a larger area.
And that's a nice option.
I actually don't, I mean, that seems like a physical thing.
And yet somehow the feature is working on old iPhones.
My son was using it the other day in our room.
So I can see it actually happening, but I haven't actually, I guess I have to stare at the bulb and maybe try to blind myself because I don't even understand physically how Apple's doing that.
But bravo, you know, it's a nice feature that I could actually see being useful in the right circumstances, whether you want that narrow beam or you want the wide beam.
So, you know, it's a cellular thing.
And yet, you know, I say it's a cellular thing, but I guarantee you, if you had people list the features of the iPhone that they actually use, I bet you as a flashlight would definitely be top 20, maybe even top 10 for a lot of people, so. - Here's another one that I know a lot of people are gonna like.
I think you may have mentioned this last time as well.
Hide the app labels.
I like the app labels, right?
On my home screen and everything.
But boy, just think of this little picture right here that they have, you know, in this Cult of Mac article.
It's like, it's so clean.
It's just the icons without the actual labels on there.
And that's pretty cool. - Yeah, it is.
I mean, we've gotten to the point where a lot of us no longer have 10 million pages of app icons. - Right, good point. - We have like our one or two app icon pages, and then everything else is just in the library, you know, that library page that you can just find it.
And so if you only have a page or two of icons, chances are, these are your old friends.
You know these icons.
You know, you can see the icon and know exactly what it is.
And it does, you know, you don't need to see underneath it that it's a such and such app.
And you know, we've all had the same thing because the four apps that are in the dock at the bottom of the iPhone, they've never, I think never, maybe in the very beginning, but it's been a long time since they'd had anything written under them.
'Cause you know, I have got like the mail app down there. - Oh, that's a good point.
I never thought about that, Jeff. - For the same reason, much like I look at the mail app icon and I know it's mail.
I don't need, it doesn't need to tell me all.
The same is true for like the photos app icon.
I know the photos app icon.
Nobody needs to tell me the photos. - Yeah, you're right.
You're right. - So it's interesting to make it a little bit bigger.
So I thought that was an interesting, and again, it's optional.
You know, you can either turn it on or off, you know, would you prefer to have a bigger icon or would you prefer things the way that they always were?
But it's nice that they gave you the option. - You know, I wondered, you know, looking at this and now looking at my camera, my phone, first of all, you made a great point.
Like the ones in the dock don't even have the labels.
But now if I look at my iPhone, of course I'm running iOS 17.
And I look at this picture that is, I guess supposedly taken from iOS 18.
There's less space between the icons on iOS 18.
In other words, if I don't have that labels. - Right, so it's not just to take the labels away.
Apple uses that space to enlarge the icon and make it just a hair bigger, just a little bit bigger.
So you can decide, do you want the regular size icon with the title under it or a little bit bigger than the icon with no title. - Okay, I see that.
Okay, okay.
But I wonder like, would that give me room for like another row of apps there? - I don't think it does. - Or bigger widgets.
Okay, no, okay, interesting. - You get the bigger icons, but I haven't tried it.
But from the previews that I've seen, - I know. - that's the choice.
Yeah, it's not a way to screen connect to the row. - I'm wanting too much, Jeff. (laughing) I'm wanting too much on there.
Okay, anyway, that was fun to walk through some of this.
And some of these others, I know we even talked about this power button in the control center. - Yeah, that's what I do. - No, no, no, I'm just a little, the screen bezel expands when you push a physical key.
That was, that'll be pretty amazing.
Just a little tiny tweaks like this.
And then I know it's something like this, the search suggestions in settings.
And then from a bigger thing, we talked about this last time, the settings and I think even the iCloud page, it's gonna look a little bit different.
I think they're gonna move some things around, which I welcome that.
I mean, right now there's so much that you can access in the settings app now for the iPhone or the iPad that I don't know, it could go bad, as they try to rearrange it too much, but I think I welcome any changes to kind of make this a little bit more intuitive, maybe a little bit.
There's just so much in there now.
'Cause I remember when they introduced the search function in settings, because you and I have been using this long enough, Jeff, that there wasn't, at first there was just enough settings, like you could just scroll down and see them all.
Now it's like, I don't even know where a setting is sometimes.
And it's so buried because it's so complicated, there's so much that you can do that it's good to have that search aspect on there.
So I'm glad to see there'll be a few little changes to the settings app on there as well. - Yeah, what I've heard for the settings app is it's not the complete re-imagination that many may have hoped for, to put everything in a way that makes sense, but it's at least a step in the right direction.
So, you know, take what we can get. - Next thing that you mentioned or linked to were some, well, I guess these aren't really hidden, but I remember that WWDC keynote, they talked about the Apple Maps.
One of the things that stuck out of my mind was the trail function, right?
'Cause I love this tab called all trails.
I don't think I've seen enough yet to think that all trails is gonna go away.
I just like that there's a lot more features and functions in there.
But this other article that you linked to a nine to five Mac was giving some additional features coming out in the Apple Maps in iOS 18, including not just the trails aspect, custom walking routes I think were in there, some personal notes for saved places.
I think this is great too.
I just, I like the fact that Apple is continuing to build into the Maps app. - Yeah, the first two features that they talk about in this article that you're showing is the save places features and the personal notes for those safe places.
It's sort of interesting, 'cause it's something that Apple's slowly been moving towards in the Maps app that it's not just the place that you search for an address and it shows you a little, you know, a flag or whatever, or the little thumb tack to see where it is in the map.
You know, it's more of like trying to learn about things through the Maps app.
And Apple's had the thing where, you know, and they've had this for a little while now that you can actually explore different cities and you can do flyovers and you can get guides of like things to do in certain cities.
And, you know, and this is a way to sort of do it on your own.
And, you know, take a place that is meaningful to you for whatever reason, even if it's just a place that you go to frequently and save it as a place in the map.
And then you can even add notes about it that are associated with that saved place. - Very nice. - We've had favorites in the past, which has been useful, because obviously, you know, things like my work and my home are my favorites 'cause I'm often doing directions from or to them.
But this is a next step.
It's not, it doesn't have to be a favorite.
It's just a place that you're saving because you wanna have it saved.
And maybe it's as simple as because, you know, the place that, you know, the entrance to the place is different from what Apple Maps might assume it is.
So you know that your actual save place is around the corner and that's where you want your pin to be.
Or maybe it's something more significant.
But, you know, this is all part of just making the Maps app more robust and useful.
And I'm definitely in favor of that.
So that seems like a cool feature. - The custom walking routes is nice.
The hiking features, again, I wanna see that because again, I really like the fact that with AllTrails, I see that David mentioned the offline hikes here.
With the AllTrails app, I like the fact that I can download the trail map because, you know, sometimes if you're up in the mountains or something like that, you're not gonna necessarily have a good signal.
And so I like having that component there to be able to download that.
And it looks like Apple Maps is kind of trying to, what we call Sherlock, a map, an app like AllTrails.
But we'll see how that goes.
Again, I'm just glad, you know, I don't have anything against Apple Maps.
I just find when I compare the two that sometimes it doesn't do as good of a job for me, at least from the aspect of driving.
I mean, that's typically what I'm using the Maps for, obviously.
But again, from the walking side, when I'm walking around somewhere, I really do like the Apple Maps a little bit better, especially because it just integrates with my Apple Watch, like I mentioned here.
So this custom walking routes and some of the hiking stuff, and I'm pretty excited about it.
I'm glad that they're just building up into the Apple Maps there aspect as well. - Yeah, it's actually interesting that topographic maps are coming to Maps because it's bizarre to have a feature start on the watch and then come to the phone.
But this is an example of that, right?
Because you have, I mean, in fact, you've got the Apple Watch Ultra, which you've had for, I guess, since you first got that watch, you've had the ability to have topographic maps right there on it.
And so, but that's obviously a small screen.
Now Apple's bringing in those same topographic maps to the iPhone where it seems to give a little bit more space to play with them.
Obviously the iPad, if you want even more space than that.
So, makes sense. - You know, that makes me think now, now I'm really even a little bit more interested in that, Jeff, because that reminds me, the last time that I went on a hike a couple of weeks ago, sure enough, I had the AllTrails app and it does work nicely with my Apple Watch.
And what I liked about it is that to make sure that I'm on the trail, which sometimes that sounds a little weird, but some of the trails I go on, you know, are overgrown a little bit and there's like a fork or something.
And I'm like, I gotta make sure I'm going the right way for the loop that I had planned.
Well, I love the fact that on my Apple Watch, I could just glance down and make sure like, yes, that's the right angle.
You know, I'm on the right trail, but I would like to see, is there a tighter integration that Apple Maps could have with my Apple Watch?
The AllTrails app is doing a really good job, I'm still a big fan of that.
Anyway, I'm glad you mentioned that 'cause the topographic map, it was so helpful to have that capacity on there.
Yeah, let's talk vision a little bit and specifically with the Apple Vision, 'cause you've mentioned this many, many times.
It's a fact that, 'cause it's a chorus of folks in a similar situation like you, Jeff, it's like the vision is great, we love the way it looks, but we want more content to be able to interact with this.
Here's a way that you link to a nine to five Mac from Jeff Benjamin, that maybe you can create your own immersive content, Jeff.
If you're not happy with what's out there in Paris parkour, maybe you can get an Insta360 camera and make some of your own videos.
Although this looks really cool, I'm excited about this. - I had some fun with my Apple Vision Pro this past weekend for Father's Day, because we got together at my dad's house and for the first time ever, my dad put on the Vision Pro and some of the other people in my family put it on as well.
And so I picked some of the most impressive Apple immersive videos. - Sure. - There's this highlight reel that they have, which is fun 'cause it gives you a few seconds of like a basketball game and a few seconds of, you know, the Superbowl and also some fun things.
And then, you know, for some other folks, I showed like this thing where you're going across a tight wire, but there's a couple of those things that they're just sort of the show off, you know, videos or the ones that when you look at and it's so immersive around you, like, oh, this is so incredible.
But again, as I keep saying, there's so few of these videos and it'll be so much fun when we have more of them.
And part of that is putting the tools in people's hands to make them.
And so recognizing that, you know, we already have the high-end tools and Apple's working with companies like Blackmagic that make these incredible $20,000 cameras and stuff like that.
But what I'm liking about, what I liked about this post is it's trying to sort of push it down to people's hands.
You know, yes, you can do some things with your iPhone, but it's actually pretty limited.
I'm hoping that Apple adds to that in the fall with the next version of the iPhone.
But this specific camera, the Insta360 X4, it's an interesting camera that you can, it takes this completely immersive, as the title implies, 360 degree immersive video.
And so what you can see from like the Amazon page of the little things, you can put it on like a selfie stick and have it with you.
And as you're walking around, it sort of erases the selfie stick so you don't see it.
And it has this completely immersive 360 video.
And so, but then once you create that video, then the challenge is to get that into a format that you can actually view on the Apple Vision Pro.
And this post that you're showing does a nice job of us going through the steps of, you know, you do this and you do that.
And eventually this is gonna get even easier over time.
It's gonna get to the point where you can take whatever, you know, you use, whether it's a $500 camera like this one, or whether it's the $20,000 camera, and you'll be able to, you know, I'm sure Apple will have tools that you can very easily create immersive videos, which is what this article shows you.
And then of course the next step will be having a place where you could actually go to like a YouTube like place or something that Apple might sponsor, where you can just see all these videos.
So again, these are all, we're in early days.
These are all the pieces.
We're slowly getting there.
And so it's cool.
I mean, I know $500 is not nothing, but at the same time, for people that are recording videos professionally, I mean, that's just a, you know, that's a small expense for something that you could perhaps sell and make some real money off of. - If you've already spent $3,400 on the Vision Pro, you know, another $500 is perfectly fine.
I bet most people listening to us have probably seen some of this video with an Insta360 camera.
There was the X3 that I've heard lots of people talk about in the X4.
It's a little weird.
You can kind of tell sometimes, in fact, here's a picture from Amazon with the guy on the skateboard here.
And you can see clearly in one picture, he's got a stick in the Insta360.
It's a little rectangle at the end of the stick.
But like you mentioned, Jeff, it'll erase that little stick.
And so, but it's weird.
You can still see somebody like holding something.
It looks like they got a fishing pole or something in their hand.
But it's amazing video.
People talk about how great that it's 4K video that it creates in this.
And I just, I love the fact that this is a great post here from Jeff Benjamin and like how you can use that, how you can create those 360 degree videos on there and just use that.
But I mean, I see people, by the way, using this for non-Vision Pro videos as well, right?
It's a really fantastic camera.
And the fact that this company is even doing the X4 is really great.
So is that what-- - I think that's sort of the point, Brett. - Yeah, go ahead. - So I mean, well, before you go on, I mean, what people have done in the past is they've created these really cool 360 or 180 videos and then they've watched them in a 2D environment, which is still cool. - In a 2D environment, exactly. - But it means that, your YouTube video is a square and you're looking left, you're looking right, you're looking up, you're looking down but it's that controlled 2D, it gives you the ability to point the camera anywhere but the final product is just gonna be looking one direction.
So that's why when you take this technology and then put it with something that's a 360, whether it's the Apple Vision Pro or one of the other few products out there that allow you to have this 3D immersive environment, that's when you're truly experiencing it the way that it was captured.
And so then that gets into what you were just starting to get into was last week, right after WWDC, and I may have mentioned this recently but the keynote was on Monday and then Tuesday night, John Gruber of Daring Fireball has this thing called the talk show.
And you could buy tickets and you could go and watch it in person or you could be anywhere in the world as long as you had your Apple Vision Pro and you can watch it for free using this app called, that came up by Sandwich Video, which was called Theater.
And what was cool about it is they set up and this article is so fun that Joe Rosenstiel put together.
He interviewed the guys behind Sandwich Video, Adam Lissagore and stuff, and they described how they put together this camera.
They thought at first they were gonna use two iPhones and then instead they went to something higher end and like they had to basically set up the cameras right at the bottom of the stage and it's all the tech stuff that goes into it.
And I won't ruin the story, you can read it.
It's interesting.
But it was fascinating just to, all the stuff they had to do to make this work because no one had ever done this before.
No one had ever streamed live in 3D for people to be watching immersively, not just 3D video, but 3D audio as well.
So that it's, or I guess it was stereo, 3D or stereo, whatever you wanna call it.
But the end result was, you're just looking at people sitting on stage, but it really felt like you had a front row seat and you were watching them when you were there.
And with the audience sound around you, that some things are to the left and some things to the right, it was as close to actual being there as you could possibly get. - Oh, that's so cool. - And I love that there's a question here.
Someone asks that it was fun that you were watching it in the pretend theater, like there's fake theater seats to your left and right when you're wearing a big row.
Someone suggested, the interviewer suggested, it's such a great idea.
Wouldn't it be great in a future version of this to use the immersive video so that in that seat next to you could be your buddy who could be around the world, but for the purpose of this event, you're sitting next to each other, watching the concert or watching the live event or watching whatever it is, that would be cool.
And again, every time I talk with the Vision Pro, it's futuristic.
This is the stuff that's going to be coming in the future.
And again, as people are exploring these ideas today, things that people are just tossing around now is wouldn't it be cool if, some of this is gonna be implemented and this is the way things are gonna be five, 10, 15 years from now.
And we're all watching the beginning stages of it today.
It's really cool. - Of all the things that Apple announced last week, Jeff, there was one thing that they didn't announce.
It's almost like, maybe we'll call this Apple's announce now, discontinue later.
Okay, I'm making a little bit of joke on this, but I do remember several months ago, maybe a year ago, Jeff, we talked about a new program that Apple was rolling out that was, I kind of always rolled it into their financial side, right?
The Apple credit card and, kind of that flavor like Apple Cash and Apple Pay and all those other things.
One of the things that they announced was, Apple's buy now, pay later.
And that's sort of a phrase a lot of people were using, but Apple was trying to get on the bandwagon of this.
And I was never completely 100% sold on it.
I'm like, I don't know why, I'll just use the Apple Card, it's so easy.
Apple Pay is so much better.
I like the way that you can look at all of the interaction within your Apple Card, for example, and see when you can pay and how much you pay so you don't get interest, all that kind of stuff on that.
So I didn't really know if I was gonna jump on this bandwagon, well, good, because apparently Apple is discontinuing this Apple Pay later function.
So it never was, I don't think, right?
I mean, I don't know if it was even announced.
Okay. - I think it actually came out and you could use it, I never certainly did.
You know, when it first came out, Apple wasn't, Apple was not doing it this way, but the problem with this type of payment is there's a certain amount of sleaze associated with it because there are so many companies that will say, we know that you can't afford to buy a new living room set, but, you know, buy it now, you're gonna pay later.
There's often these exorbitant rates, you know, interest rates, and you know, it's not the best part of the industry that's doing these things traditionally.
Now, Apple tried to do it the right way.
So give them full credit for that.
They didn't have crazy interest rates and all that other sort of stuff, but still, you know, this was a program that, I don't know, I had mixed emotions about, you know, Apple things can be expensive and it's nice that you can pay for it over time, but at the same time, you were only getting to pay for it over a couple of payments So, you know, the announcement that came out is Apple said, you know, we're looking forward to exploring other exciting financial applications and not this one.
And then there's some subsequent articles that have come out that have speculated that what might be going on is that federal regulators might be just starting, it just so happens, I don't think it's because of Apple, they might be starting to enforce some regulations that are way beyond my pay grade and we're staying in the ball.
But suffice it to say that I suspect that Apple said, wait a minute, if we have this type of program, it's gonna subject us to all these regulations, plus it's probably not that popular of a program to begin with.
So what are we really getting out of it?
And it's gonna cause a lot of headache.
And you know, this is just speculation by Chance Miller and the article you're sharing right now, but, or Ben, whoever wrote this article, Ben Lovejoy, but if that's the reason, then, you know, good on Apple for trying, I suppose, you know, if it's an interesting idea, why not do something?
You know, the whole idea of Apple as a bank is still sort of, you know, interesting, you know, interesting world that we live in, but, you know. - You know, speaking of which, I barely knew you. - Right, exactly, exactly.
However, this raises just a little bit of another question in my mind, because we've seen some stories on the periphery, Jeff, that the relationship between Apple and Goldman Sachs, which is the bank that underwrites the Apple credit card, that could be on some rocky things, or Goldman Sachs isn't so happy with the way it's going, they're losing money, whatever, we can't get, obviously, the straight answers on all of this.
But I just, I wonder if that had anything to play in it, along with the other things you're talking about here, this other article that you linked to from Ben Lovejoy, you said, you know, the Truth in Lending Act would be involved, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would get involved, like, I wouldn't wanna go through all that red tape, but I just wonder if maybe another factor is like, if there was any kind of a rough going between Apple and Goldman Sachs, that, you know, maybe this is like, hey, okay, we'll back off on this, right, it's like, hey, we'll try to stay on the straight and narrow with some of this, obviously, I don't know, we'll probably never know, but it just, my only concern is, don't get rid of the Apple credit card.
Like, I love the way that Apple provides that information, and I think to your point, they do the best job at basically, you know, revealing all of that information, like, how much do you pay, what do you need to pay to make sure you don't pay interest, which I can imagine some credit cards and banks may not want you to see that information as clearly as what I think the Apple credit card and the Apple wallet puts in.
But anyway, that's my only concern, it's like, don't mess with my Apple card, please, 'cause I really enjoy it, and I gotta use it the next time that I buy an Apple Vision Pro, you know, so. - I like my, and I got a lot of points when I did that purchase. - Exactly! - I like having an Apple credit card, it's nice to use for especially Apple purchases, and so I do hope it continues on, notwithstanding the Goldman Sachs stuff that you were talking about.
I will tell you, though, that any time you read articles or hear announcements about Apple in the financial sphere, it does sort of feel like Apple is playing outside of their area of expertise, you know?
It's, Apple is creating things like iPhones and iPads and Macs, that's what they do when you're trying to replace, you know, the Bank of America, Chase Bank, whatever, it seems like you're going a little far afield.
But who knows, what do I know, so. - So Apple's getting rid of the pay later function, they're also getting rid of the Siri watch face.
Apparently, you can get this somewhere else, or somewhere else, I'm not really sure how they justify this, but the old Siri watch face for Apple Watch is gone, it's gonna be removed, I should say. - Yeah, so when we have the next version of the watchOS, which is watchOS, what, 11, that's gonna come out this fall, perhaps there will be some new Apple watch faces in there, I certainly hope so, they tend to often add one or two new ones when a new version of the operating system comes out.
But one that will not be there is the Siri watch face.
And I think the reason for that is because I don't think that you necessarily need it.
I mean, the idea of the Siri watch face was that you would have these little cards that would come up, and the watch would use some form of artificial intelligence to show you what you're most likely to want.
So if you happen to be running a timer, that's gonna be right there on top.
Or if you're doing a workout, it's gonna be linked to it there.
If it thinks that you might be interested in the weather, that would be on top.
You know, it tries to put things there that you want.
But in the next version of watchOS, Apple, you know, we already have it, this was a change they did a year ago, that no matter what watch face I'm looking at, if I swipe from down under, from the bottom here, and I swipe up, I'm gonna see some cards that are telling me what is most likely to be the things I'm gonna wanna do next. - Right. - It's the same idea, right?
And that's in the current version, watchOS 10.
And watchOS 11, and we talked about this a little bit last week, those cards are gonna become more interactive.
So sort of better than ever.
And so I think Apple is realizing that the idea of the Siri watch face, which originally made sense as a standalone watch face, it's now sort of built, or it's going to be built into every watch face just from swiping up.
You know, and I still find, I mean, it's been how many months now that we've had this feature that you swipe up to see the cards?
I'm using it more than I used to, but I still haven't 100% internalized it. - Same, exact same. - Sometimes I remember it, and sometimes I forget about it.
The other day I wanted to jump into messages real quick, and I was like, oh, I gotta press the button on the side and scroll to the messages. - Right, scroll. - I'm like, oh no, I don't have to do that.
I can just go up. - It's right there. - And at the very bottom, the last one has got those three icons, and the last icon on there is messages, and that, oh, that's a much faster way to jump right in the messages app. - Much. - Just to look at a text that my wife had sent me.
And so I'm slowly getting used to it, and I guess as it gets more powerful in watchOS 11, I'll be using it more.
So anyway, I think there's a reason that Apple is saying goodbye to the Siri watch face. - Let's do our where are you at segment.
Got a couple of stories here that I like.
This one has a happy ending, thank goodness.
A firefighter in Nova Scotia had his Apple Watch warn him of an irregular heart rate.
Every time I read these things, I think my heart rate goes a little up, Jeff, 'cause I'm like, 'cause he's like, he's talking about he was outside playing road hockey, then he came inside, he was laying down with his daughter, and he just could not get his heart rate to go down.
And at that point, I'm like, oh my goodness, is my heart rate beating faster?
Anyway, I like the fact that, hey, I've got an Apple Watch, he had an Apple Watch, the watch indicated he was experiencing atrial fibrillation, an AFib, and so that's when, obviously, he got up and made it to the doctor, and good on him, because it saved his life, basically. - Yeah, they said, I mean, it looks like you're having a heart attack, so it's a good thing that you're in here.
There's a video with this article in which they interview not only the firefighter who was otherwise in perfect health, or everything else, it just sort of came out of the blue, so to speak, but the doctor, she certainly gives the watch some credit, but she also points out that the guy had actually sort of said that he was having a really bad splitting headache, and that he was starting to feel something in his chest, and I laughed, and laughed, perhaps it was the wrong word, but I sympathize, because I know that for myself, sometimes you feel something, and you're like, is that something, and he's like, no, I'm just gonna go rough through it, whatever. - Is it serious? - It's gonna go away, and it usually does, it usually does go away, so I could totally understand this guy saying, whatever, I've got a headache, whatever, and yet the Apple Watch comes up and says, hey, this actually might be something, and he's like, okay, I'll listen to the Apple Watch, and so the doctor's point was, perhaps we should listen to other symptoms from our bodies, but if listening to the Apple Watch is what gets you in here, that's great. - We'll take it. - To get the medical attention that you need, we will definitely take it, but like you say, it's nice to have these feel-good stories. - That's great.
Well, one of the things, make sure you wear your Apple Watch, don't throw your Apple Watch down on the ground, especially if you're a world-renowned movie director.
What a crazy story of variety that you link to, Steven Spielberg throws his Apple Watch down, and it called 911. (laughing) - This is so funny. - There's a little bit more to the story. - So, I mean, as much as the Apple Watch did a nice job for our firefighter friend in telling him, wait a minute, it looks like your heart rate is too high, for some reason, Steven Spielberg is on stage at the 50th anniversary of a movie that he did 50 years ago, Sugarland Express, and he's sitting there talking about the film, part of the Tribeca Film Festival, and his watch says, it looks like you fell down, and you know, it's been a long-- - He's on stage. - It's been a long time, but I've had that happen before, where I was walking to my car, and I think I hit my hand against my car door, I mean, it didn't hurt or anything like that, but whatever way I tosseled it, my watch said, it looks like you may have fallen down.
Now, this was during the first few months of the feature being available, so I think that Apple was still calibrating, which never happened to me since, but it was a false positive, right?
It was a false positive, I was fine, I did not fall down, thanks for looking out for me, Apple Watch, but I'm fine.
So, Steven Spielberg, same thing happened, whatever he must have done with his arm, it thought that he'd fallen down, so then him trying to be sort of funny on stage, takes his Apple Watch off and throws it to the stage.
Now, with that, when you throw something down, and it hits hard, the watch says, well, I'm sure you fell down now, and of course it calls emergency services, and you know, then it starts to beep, or at least it does that countdown thing, if you don't press the button in 10 seconds, I'm gonna call 911. - Right, right. - So, it's sort of funny to, I don't know, I laugh now.
I'm glad that Steven Spielberg is okay, you know, hopefully he will not like, you know, let this one false positive, make him not take advantage of the Apple Watch in the future when he finds himself in the same situation as the firefighter, but. (laughing) - Just, maybe next time, throw your Apple Watch into the audience, right?
Like, let somebody else catch it for you, and you know, take it, and it's a memento of the situation, something along those lines.
We've talked about WWDC, and the video, we did that extensively last week, but a few things have come out now, including, like you said, John Gruber had Craig Federighi, and I forget the other Apple executive on stage, we're talking about that.
Thank you, Jasmijai.
Well, I watched this video that you linked to last week as well, I thought this was great.
We've talked about Marques Brownlee, MK, I always get it mixed up, like MKBHD, I believe. - You got it. - He's so good at all of the technology reviews that he does all the time, and he asks good questions.
Like, what I love about it is that he's so fair in all of his reviews, it's like, if there's something that's not working correctly, I don't care if it's an Android, iPhone, it doesn't matter, he's gonna call it out.
He had a chance to sit on stage with Tim Cook himself, and ask, I thought, some really good questions.
He had it all listed there, and you could tell Tim Cook, I think, had to admire him.
I mean, obviously, Marques, in fact, what I think is great, did he say this in this video, or maybe it was another one that I saw, I think now Marques has more subscribers on YouTube than the Apple channel does right now.
It's like over 19 million or something like that.
So I just thought that that was so cool that they were meeting on there.
Anyway, I thought this was a great, like a 15 minute little interview here.
Marques asked some really good questions, at the end it's a little funny, he does like a ranking.
He asked Tim Cook, if you had to rank, like what was it, the best Apple products?
And Tim Cook looks a little flabbergasted at going through these, but Marques helps him along.
And it's like, of course Tim Cook agrees, like, yes, that's good, the magic mouse or the iPod, you know, that kind of a thing.
Sometimes I feel like Tim Cook was a little too markety speak.
I'm sure you have many interviews going on that day, but it's a great interview nonetheless.
It's good because Marques doesn't hold back, I think, in some of these questions, and I really enjoyed this.
I'm glad you linked to it. - Yeah, I felt the same way about it.
There's a couple of these interviews that are out there, Tim Cook sat down with maybe a half a dozen interviewers, and they have YouTube videos.
This is the one that I thought was good.
And it's because, like you say, Marques Brownlee, he's a very good interviewer.
He's incredibly smart on all technology topics.
And like the first half of this 15 minutes, he asks a lot of details about the Apple intelligence stuff.
And even though Tim Cook is obviously professional, he's not gonna stray too much from what the playbook is, and what the message that Apple's trying to get out there.
But I actually found it very interesting to listen to.
And then, like you say, at the end, Marques tried to do something a little silly with getting him to pick his favorite children among the many successful Apple products.
And even though Tim Cook, very politely, did not do that, it did give him an opportunity to tell a little bit of a story about some of these big moments in Apple history, like the introduction of MacBook Air, for example.
We all remember Steve Jobs pulling it out of the little envelope.
How can a computer possibly be that thin?
And the introduction of the iPhone and other things.
So, you know, we don't often hear Tim Cook talking about the past.
He's very much focused on the now and the future.
So overall, you know, it's only 15 minutes.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.
I recommend it. - In the know. - In the know. - A couple of tips today, Jev.
Here's one of my favorite.
I feel like we've talked about this back in the past.
I don't know that I have ever used it as maybe a tip, but I wanna make sure that people know about this, because I start using this all the time now.
And this is watching a YouTube video.
So in the past, obviously YouTube is owned by Google, right?
They've been owned by Google for a long time.
So sometimes in the past, I should say, that YouTube, the app, the YouTube app on the iPhone doesn't always work the friendliest, again, in the past.
I think they've done a much better job of kind of integrating all of this.
And what I have always wanted to do for a long time, either on my iPad, more so on my iPad probably, but also my iPhone, is that I like to watch a YouTube video, but sometimes I just want the video to play sort of in the background, Jev, while I'm maybe looking at a website, right?
Because a lot of times the YouTube has a website and they link me to a website.
Or maybe I wanna go check my email while the YouTube video is playing.
Well, in the past, what I had to do is I had to like pause the video, go to a different app on the iPhone or the iPad, and then come back to the YouTube video.
But I hated that.
Like I didn't wanna stop the video.
I wanted to keep playing.
Well, for a while now, maybe a couple of years, this has now been available to everybody in the YouTube app.
It was first rolled out for the YouTube premium, but you don't have to have a premium now.
If you want to watch a YouTube video while you're doing something else on your iPhone or your iPad, you can simply go into the YouTube app, start the video.
Now, the video has to be playing, but while the video starts playing, once you get past the ads and everything sometimes, you simply just go back to your home screen.
And now automatically, as long as you're on a fairly recent version of iOS, the YouTube video will go, what I still call picture in picture.
It basically minimizes the video into a corner, usually the bottom right corner of your iPhone or iPad.
And it keeps playing while you go to a different app.
In other words, it minimizes that little video.
And I feel like it's great.
Like I love this, even better.
Sometimes it goes into that bottom right corner, but that might be where I want to tap to open up my mail app or something.
Well, you can just drag the little YouTube video that's playing into the different corner, for example.
You can drag it all around.
You can also take your finger and thumb and you can enlarge the video or make it smaller.
Like you can get it down to just, you know, a little tiny section of the screen, or you can make it a little bit bigger.
Now, again, I'm not, I don't know all of the models that this works on all the way from a hardware perspective, Jeff.
Sometimes it might require like an iPhone Pro to work.
I'm not really sure.
I've seen it work on a multiple devices, as long as again, you have a fairly recent device and it works the same on the iPad as well.
I just found that this to me is one of those features that now just comes, you know, naturally.
In other words, like anytime that I go and I watch a YouTube video now, I will just scroll up and go to email or do something else on my phone while the video is playing in the background.
And I love the fact, you know, if there is a little button on that little YouTube picture in picture, you can go back to the YouTube app or there's a little X on it as well so that you can tap the X and it'll just close the video out and you can go on, you know, with whatever else that you're doing on there.
But try that out.
It's very simple.
It's very elegant the way I think that it actually works.
And it's just kind of beautiful.
Like it should have been built in, I think from day one, but it really works so nicely in there.
So try that the next time that you're watching a YouTube video and you want to go to something else that works brilliantly on the iPhone and the iPad. - Yeah, it's not just YouTube.
Other streaming services have something similar.
Like if you're watching a program on Apple TV Plus, you know, but I like you, I love the elegance of it.
You just swipe up from the bottom of your phone or your iPad, assuming that you don't have a model with a button on it.
And you go to your home screen and the video just sort of turns into this little window that you, like you say, you can move around and you can change it.
And I find it useful for two types of things.
Myself, sometimes I'll use it because I am just having something in the background that you're sort of, you know, you're interested in, but you're doing some other stuff at the same time, sort of doing a little multitasking.
And I like it for that, but I also like it, like sometimes I'll actually be, you know, getting, learning something from the YouTube video, you know, some informational thing.
And I may open up some notes and I'll just sort of stick the video on the side there while I'm taking some notes or just jotting down some of the things that they're talking about in the video at the same time.
And so it's almost like a multitasking type thing that allows me to be literally paying attention to both at the same time, 'cause I'm all doing the same thing.
It's a nice feature and I'm glad that you don't need to have the YouTube premium to use it.
If people were looking for content to listen to, you know, maybe go to the In the News podcast channel on YouTube and stream some of it. - In the YouTube channel, exactly. - If you wanna go back and pick an old episode and try to, you know, feel free to watch them.
You know, episodes that we recorded 18 months ago, they're just as interesting today as they were back then. - They are. - Listen to all the stuff that we said about iOS 4 way back then. - Well done.
Well done, Jeff.
I like that.
Good job, though.
Nice little recommendation there.
My little tip is looking to the future.
So I strongly encourage that you do not put the beta version of iOS on your phone, period.
Okay, now having said that, everybody that's going to ignore me, including my son. - Like your son. - People that are gonna stick it on there anyway.
Okay, you got it on there.
You might as well start taking advantage of it.
And one of the thoughts that I had this past weekend, and then like, it's like two great minds think alike.
I just happened to notice this article by Ryan Christoffel on 9to5Mac, where he said the exact same thing.
You know, we all know, and we mentioned this last week, that on the front of the standard iPhone, on my iPhone as I look down, I have the flashlight and I have the photos icon.
And it's nice that I can tap and hold the photos icon to jump into the camera icon, to jump into the camera app and start taking some photos or start taking some video, but it's unnecessary because I don't need to press or hold down on that icon.
If I instead just swipe from the right, you know, from right to left, I'm suddenly in camera mode just by swiping.
So I did, there was no reason for me to have to use the button.
I could just as easily swipe.
And in fact, if you have the iPhone 15 Pro, which has the action button up here, you could actually assign your action button to launch the camera.
So there's many different ways you could get into the camera app.
You know, you really don't need the button there.
And so my encouragement is if you have iOS 18 beta version, go ahead and replace that camera button with something else.
I mean, there's so many different options you can use, so many different apps, so many different little subsets of apps.
We talked about this last week extensively.
So I just refer to you to last week's episode, you know, all the different things you could put there and it's just gonna increase over time now that third parties have access to it, but start getting used to having something down there besides the camera app, because I mean, that is such valuable real estate.
It's right on the front of your iPhone, always accessible.
And so anyway, very cool, very cool. - Yeah, that's one of the things I can't wait.
I mean, they did mention this, so it's not like hidden, but these are one of the small little tiny things that I get so excited about Jeff, that I can customize those buttons and you're right.
I have the camera button down there, but I don't know why I don't just swipe to the left.
I mean, it's so easy to be able to do that and get right to the camera there.
I don't know if you can turn that off in the settings.
I'm not really sure if that's something that you can toggle on and off.
I just always left it on.
And it's like what he says here, Ryan Criswell, he goes, "The swipe jester works just as great "as it always has in iOS 18."
So you might as well use that and then put a different button on there.
Yeah, I think I'm ready.
I'm with you.
I'm not putting on the beta, even the public beta, if that's gonna come out, but boy, there's some good things on here that gets me tempted about that, Jeff.
I just have to wait.
Gotta be patient again.
I don't like that.
So we'll see what other hidden features for my iOS 18 come out by the time we talk with you next week, Jeff.
Thanks for being here. - Thanks, Brett.