(upbeat music) - Welcome to In the News for July 19th, 2024.

My name is Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com. - And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey Brett. - Good morning, Jeff.

And wow, what a humdinger of a morning already.

I have seen the headlines just plastering me in the face today about a huge technology outage that's been happening.

It's almost like it doesn't surprise me that something like this would happen.

So at first, when I saw the first two or three headlines, I'm like, okay, it's fine.

Things get resolved.

But this sounds like it could be a biggie.

Like a lot of repercussions happening about this.

This is a story you have a link from the New York Times this morning. - Yeah, and I didn't even link to this yet in iPhone JD.

I noticed that when I was putting iPhone JD together last night, the Friday post, my web server was having trouble, like it was, I kept getting these weird messages from this thing called CloudFlare, which is used to prevent hacking.

But I was having trouble getting the post uploaded.

And I was like, that's weird.

So I go to bed and then I wake up this morning and I see a message from the IT department at my law firm saying that apparently when CloudFlare did their update from Microsoft, they messed something up.

This wasn't a hacker or anything like that, but they messed something up in their software updates and it affected services around the world.

I mean, literally hospitals, this New York Times article says that hospitals in England had to cancel surgeries because their computers weren't working.

There was airports in Australia that had to cancel flights because the computers weren't working.

Here at my office this morning on Friday morning, we've gotten most of our services up, but I see that like my time and billing system is still not working yet.

It's like, it just reminds you of how many things rely upon Microsoft Windows.

And this wasn't even a hacker thing.

I mean, this was just somebody made a silly, some sort of, we don't have all the details, but some sort of an update mistake.

It reminds you of how fragile the world is from a technology standpoint, that if something like this had been unintentional and if you do go to the right point, I mean, there are literally global implications of the interconnectedness of this technology. - You said CloudFlare, CloudFlare. - CloudStrike, I'm sorry, CloudStrike. - Yeah, which doesn't surprise me.

CloudFlare is like a content delivery system.

So when you said your website, I thought, but I know where a lot of this comes from is a company called CrowdStrike, which is more of like a cybersecurity company on there as well.

But when you first said it, I'm like, okay, they could probably have affected CloudFlare as well because there's so much that it has been affecting.

From what I've been able to gather so far, it sounds like, first of all, CrowdStrike is a very well-respected cybersecurity company that's been around for many years and they supply cybersecurity services to a variety of companies and organizations around the world.

Again, very well-respected, but apparently one of the updates to the CrowdStrike software, somehow, some way, affected or kind of shut down some piece or part of a Windows operating system.

I don't even know what version of Windows that it is, but obviously computers running Windows, if you had this CrowdStrike update applied, then it basically gave you what we know affectionately as the BSOD, the blue screen of death.

And that apparently is what is shutting down.

I mean, it affected basically all of the airlines around the world, certainly all of it.

I mean, one of the ways that I heard about this or knew that it was gonna be something serious was like all of the domestic airlines here in the United States shut down.

Delta, American, United were like grounded everybody, but then more scary than that, just like you alluded to, Jeff, were some of the hospital health organizations, like in the UK and somewhere like in India, I think, or somewhere.

I saw something either on Twitter or X or somewhere where somebody was saying like, airport in India was handwriting boarding tickets, something like that.

Like that just shows you, like it just shuts down everything and the CrowdStrike executives have already been out in full force trying to talk about what happened, assuring people that A, it wasn't a security breach and it's not a cyber attack.

It's just simply an update to some kind of a piece of software that was still getting worked out right now. - Yeah, and as you've been talking, Brett, I looked and the error messages that I was seeing last night were CloudFlare. - Yeah, okay. - What I'm now wondering is if that was something independent of this, or maybe it wasn't, because you're right, I was confusing CloudFlare and CrowdStrike.

Last night, I was seeing error messages from this other company, CloudFlare.

This morning, it's CrowdStrike.

So maybe these are independent things, maybe they were related.

Suffice it to say, I mean, the fact that I can't even tell where the interconnectedness stops in some ways tells you all that you need to know, but it's been a mess out there. - But that's what I was saying.

Like that wouldn't surprise me when you first said it, I'm like, oh, okay, well then it affected that.

Because again, a company like CloudFlare that delivers digital content probably uses some version of CrowdStrike security software.

And so that's what I was saying.

Like that wouldn't surprise me at all if that's exactly the messages you were getting and it is related.

It's just, wow.

Like I guess where my mind is going, 'cause I think, you know, you and I kind of think about things maybe from a risk assessment standpoint in some cases.

I'm like, whoa, the fallout from this is going to be a little extreme.

'Cause it's not just like, you know, I think you mentioned somewhere today like the AT&T data hack, right?

It's like, okay, we've heard it.

But it's like, I get another one and okay, I'll get some, you know, spam text messages.

It's like, we can, that's not life threatening.

I mean, in some cases it can be pretty dire, but when we're talking about shutting down computer systems that are running some of the life sustaining capabilities around the world, that's pretty serious.

And again, just to underline the couple of points that you made, just how reliant are we on this?

And again, just because we've been around for a while, it wouldn't surprise me if some of these are like outdated versions of Windows, for example, right?

That some of the, I don't know for sure.

So maybe I shouldn't be pointing questions, but it's just sometimes I know that these are woefully outdated systems, but who knows?

It could be all brand new Windows operating systems.

And whatever happened with the CrowdStrike delivery or the software component is, oof, somebody's probably not in good spirits today at CrowdStrike headquarters, I'm just guessing. (laughing) Several people, but that is not funny because there's a lot of people that are woefully affected by this today.

So hopefully we can get that all this straightened out.

Hopefully you can get systems back up and running.

I mean, my thought is the same way that this issue was delivered from CrowdStrike as an update, hopefully they can fix the update and send out the update as well.

And all of these systems will be able to reboot and get back to where they need to be.

Okay, that out of the way, let's talk about a little bit of happier things.

How about some public betas of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18?

Boy, they're looking good.

Boy, I've got a lot of questions about this, Jeff, but I'm so glad that you linked to both Dan Morin and Jason Snell from Six Colors because I thought they did a really good job of just, well, first of all, being guinea pigs for us.

Thank you guys.

And second of all, just a quick little update on the things that they're already looking for, they're already seeing and highlighting some things for us. - Exactly, so a couple of weeks ago, WWDC, we learned all the features coming out this fall and Apple immediately released the developer update.

And again, you can become an Apple developer for free.

And so people like my teenage son, as I mentioned before, instantly signed up to be a developer just so that he could have the latest and greatest in his phone for no good reason, whatever.

But so that was the developer beta.

A lot of people, you know, unless you're a developer, there's no reason to install that.

But if you do want to have a taste of what's coming, now we have the public beta out.

And traditionally the public betas have been a little bit safer.

They're still not going to run perfectly.

They're not going to have the battery optimization.

So you're probably going to have worse battery life when you use them.

However, they're at least going to be a little bit more stable in, you know, traditionally than the developer betas.

And it gives you a chance to start to preview what's coming out this fall, if you're interested.

Now, Apple is still adding features.

And so it's certainly not all the features.

Most notably, it's missing all of the Apple intelligence features, which was all the AI stuff, which is really interesting.

It would improve Siri and stuff like that.

So none of that's in here, but some of the sort of, you know, little creature comforts of, you know, app updates and setting updates are here, you know, for those people that are interested, for example, in the changes to your home screen, that you can leave certain parts of it blank, or that you can change the color of icons from third parties and things like that, that stuff's all ready.

And some of the other features available.

So I actually, I thought it was, and this is what they've been doing, I think for the last few years.

I like what the Six Colors guys, Jason and Dan, have done because, you know, the public beta is a certain degree of a milestone.

I mean, Apple feels like there's enough stuff ready that we can let the public use it.

And so it's a good opportunity for them to give a review of these features.

Having said that, this stuff's subject to change.

I mean, Apple always makes changes between the public beta and the final shipping version.

And so it's sort of, you get a chance to sort of see how the sausage is made.

You can sort of see what it looks like now and what's it gonna look like this fall.

So anyway, that's it.

So if you wanna get an in-depth look at at least the stuff that's available now, it's there.

We've talked about all the different things over the last couple of weeks, change it to the photos, the new password app, the scribble stuff on iPad is so cool that you can recognize handwriting and all sorts of cool things.

Not recognize handwriting, I mean, make your handwriting more even and stuff like that. - Yeah, okay, I wanna come back to that. - Yeah, we'll come back to that. - I'm just gonna say, Dan, yeah, Dan did a great job here on the iOS, like the iPhone iOS 18 public beta.

And I just gotta tell you, I know the rage on the iPhones, at least from the younger guys.

See if you agree.

Both my kids run dark mode, Jeff.

Like they think dark mode is great.

When they look at my phone, where I've always left it as what I call regular mode, I guess it's light mode today, but to me it's just regular mode 'cause I like the colors and pop and everything.

They're just like squinting, like, oh my goodness, my eyes.

And they're like, why are you doing that, dad?

Like go into dark mode.

And they love, but I don't know, I've never been comfortable with dark mode.

I've switched back and forth.

But this still is so interesting 'cause at the very top here, Dan put like six different pictures showing you the different things that you can do, the different styles.

And not only can you go into dark mode now, but then you can apply a tint, a tint, T-I-N-T, to a tint color to these app icons.

And it still strikes me, Jeff, first of all, it's pretty, I love it.

I like the fact that you have this customization option on there.

And apparently this has been on Android for a long time, but it always strikes me if I was an app developer and I made some money through the app store, I want my app to look a very specific way.

I don't want it to be tinted.

For example, I'm looking right here at the Slack icon.

It's a very colorful icon.

It's always been white with this different red and blue and green and yellow.

But now if you tint it, then all of that is blue.

Like I can just only imagine, like this is just, I don't wanna take it away from people 'cause I want them to customize it as a way.

But to me, part of the character of an app is the way that the icon looks because you see it every day, all day long.

And it's just like, you just associate that.

And now you're allowing people to change that.

I don't know how Apple kind of sold that to the app developers.

Maybe they didn't.

Maybe they just said, this is the way it's gonna be.

And that's it.

But anyway, I thought that it just continues to strike me at that.

Again, I don't wanna change it.

I like the fact that people have the customization options, but it's just gonna be a little weird, I think going forward.

But then quickly to your point, Jason Snell did a little bit of an in-depth look into the iPad OS, iPad OS 18 public beta.

And my favorite thing is right here where he's talking about, I have terrible handwriting and I hate writing by hand, but he's showing you how he's handwriting in this on the iPad, Jeff, and it's fixing the handwriting.

Now it's not making it pristine perfect, but it certainly is making it a little more readable.

And I just, then my mind from that immediately goes to, wow, all of the hours that folks like us spent in handwriting class, learning how to write cursive, learning how to write, is this the new age?

Like in several years, are people just gonna look at us like we're crazy because we're the old, I look at like scribes from the old days and their handwriting.

And it's like, I feel like we're starting to see now another, there's gonna be a generation or two from now that are gonna look at this and is like, why are you spending, wasting time on learning how to handwrite?

Like the computer that you're writing on is just gonna fix it for you. - Yeah, yeah, it is interesting.

And of course you talk about script writing.

I mean, kids nowadays don't even learn how to write script in some schools.

My kids actually never did, Brett.

If somebody sends them a birthday card and like some grandparent, like in script writes a message, they literally have to hand it to us to read to them, even though they're teenagers, as if it was written in Greek or something like that.

And we need to like, let me translate from this ancient language called script into the modern everyday language, which is crazy.

But it's neat that it makes your handwriting neater.

That's an interesting trick. - Neater, that's a good way to put it, yeah. - What's even more incredible though is the way that it understands your handwriting because it can understand the letters.

Therefore it can find spelling mistakes.

One of the coolest things is sort of reflowing.

So for example, if you write a sentence in the Notes app, sentence number one, sentence number two, then you wanna go back in and add in something between sentence one and two, you can literally select sentence number two, move it.

It will add, put your new sentence in and it will actually reflow the other sentence.

So like if you're only writing in a box on the left side of the screen, because you've got like a picture on the right side of the screen, it will sort of reflow around it.

It's incredibly sophisticated handwriting technology.

And the ability to make your handwriting neater is a side effect of it.

And it's a cool bar trick, so to speak.

But it's actually the underlying technology of what they've done with handwriting to basically make it the same as text.

I mean, I think that there's even a thing where, and I've done this before, where I've been taking some handwriting notes, 'cause I do a lot of handwriting notes for stuff.

And I typically use good notes for this.

I do some handwriting notes and then sometimes I'll like copy a sentence from like a legal case or a statute or something like that.

And I wanna put it in my notes.

And the way I have to do it now is I paste it and it's like, it's the printed text 'cause I'm pasting printed text.

And sometimes that's fine.

Sometimes it's even preferable, but sometimes I actually just wanna have that in with my notes.

There's this new feature now that Apple can actually take those words you copied from the internet and it can paste them not as printed words, but as letters in my handwriting or something that looks close enough to my handwriting so that the end result is it's just part of, it's part of the handwritten sentence.

This is all really neat next generation stuff.

I'm not gonna use the public beta because I depend upon my iPad too much.

I get serious work done.

I can't deal with the uncertainties that come along with running a public beta.

But I have to admit, I am really curious to use this in my everyday life.

And I don't usually take notes in the notes app.

I usually take notes in GoodNotes.

So I need to wait for GoodNotes to incorporate this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But the day is going to come where this is going to bring my use of the iPad to a whole nother level.

I'm very excited about it.

It's cool to read about now.

Good job, Apple, neat stuff. - Another quick thought, just going back to what you said about being able to select a sentence, move it around.

I mean, I know when you and I have given presentations, we've talked about that for a long time using Notability or GoodNotes.

Like you can't do this if you hand wrote this on a piece of paper with a ballpoint pen.

And so just going back to my other thought about that, not just from a handwriting perspective, but also maybe we hear so much about how it's so important for people to write notes because it affects your brain or it embeds in your brain a little bit differently.

But I think one of the reasons that that is so, Jeff, and I'm no expert, I'm just saying, is because when you handwrite, you have to think about what you're gonna write first, because you couldn't move it.

But if you have the ability to move that around now, would that take some of that away?

I don't know, it's just interesting stuff. - It's an interesting question, yeah. - Yeah, which by the way, I think you had another link here today, I just wanna bring up another interview from a gentleman that I enjoy watching, Christopher Lawley.

This is amazing.

He's talking to a couple of other executives that we've only seen one of them, I forget her name here, 'cause I think she was in the presentation. - She was part of the, yeah. - She was part of the presentation.

But Christopher Lawley has been doing iPad stuff for a long time and it's on his YouTube channel.

But he's doubling down on something that Jason Snell also talks about, related to handwriting, calculator and math notes.

I didn't get to chance to watch this entire video, but amazing stuff that again, taking it to an entire new level, with not just handwriting and the way that we're thinking about handwriting, but being able to write out equations and variables.

At one point he was talking about, instead of an X, Y variable, you have cups and party favors as variables.

I saw that part of the video.

And then you can create an equation from that.

I mean, just incredible.

That's a little mind blowing right there. - Yeah, it's gonna be cool stuff.

It's really, we've never seen anything like this before.

And yet at the same time, it's the natural evolution of what started in the 1990s with the Apple Newton, a device that I never used.

But to a certain degree, we've seen this coming for decades.

And yet to the other degree, this is all brand new stuff.

It's exciting.

There's not a lot that's unique to the iPad this fall.

A lot of the changes that are upcoming are just good changes that are in both iPhone and iPad.

But this is one, this is this whole handwriting, math notes, all that sort of stuff.

It's really next level.

And Jenny Chen, who's sort of in charge of everything involving the Apple Pencil at Apple, her and her team, I mean, they have hit it out of the park.

I'm sure they've been working on this stuff for years and it must be so exciting for them to finally see it all come out because this is gonna be cool stuff. - Well, they're even excited about it.

In this interview, it's so great.

And that makes me even more happy because if you know they're excited about it and just wanting to see what people are gonna do with it, that's crazy.

All right, that's the iPhone 18, iPad 18, iPadOS 18.

Had another link here from, we got a lot to cover today.

Apple Watch, I like this.

They talked about some of the improvements in WatchOS 11.

And this is Dr.

Sambal Desai, who's been on several of these videos and stuff. - Yeah, we've talked about her before. - I always enjoy, yeah, always enjoy watching her.

But now we're talking about this Vitals app.

And I think the big takeaway from this story that I got that you'll link to today was, if you want to utilize the Vitals app, make sure you wear your Apple Watch to bed. - Yeah, yeah.

It's the new Vitals app, it's gonna be coming in WatchOS 11.

It is going to, I mean, according to the scientists that know more about this than I certainly do, that it's one thing to take measurements throughout the day of your heartbeat and all that sort of stuff.

But apparently, according to what they say, at nighttime, when your body's at rest, you can actually get much more interesting data.

And so, what Apple's gonna encourage people, if you want to take advantage of this, to wear your Apple Watch when you sleep at night, and it's going to suck all this data into the brand new Vitals app.

And the Vitals app is not gonna give you a score, like you had a B+ night, but instead it's gonna be sort of a relative thing, because everybody's baseline is different.

Based upon your baseline, you're a little bit more of this, you're a little bit less of this.

And it's gonna give you an ability to sort of see in a graphical way, in a statistical way, how different changes in your life, whether it be the things that you eat, or the alcohol you drink, or whatever, how you work out, whatever else, you'll be able to start to understand the impact that things have on you.

And there are other devices, like the Aura Ring, which is that sort of smart ring that people wear, that have similar things, that you're encouraged to wear that all night long, and they give you some similar data.

But this is Apple's attempt to do the same thing, and I hope it's gonna be good.

I have had times in my life, where I have worn an Apple Watch overnight, just to try out the sleep monitoring features.

And at the end of the day, I've often felt like, well, this was interesting, but I just don't know what to do with this data.

So I'll be curious to see whether I feel the same way about vitals.

But if it is really cool, my Apple Watch is sort of due for an upgrade, 'cause it's been a while since I upgraded.

So I may, depending upon what Apple announces this fall, I might get a new Apple Watch this fall, which is always nice, 'cause they tend to have really good battery life.

And so if I do get an Apple Watch, and I do have really good battery life, I might start wearing it overnight, every night, just to sort of, I certainly do try this vitals app, but it was interesting to see the description about why Apple is doing this, what they think they're gonna get out of it.

It's really interesting. - The article even mentioned, some of us are already on the bandwagon.

Like every night I wear my Apple Watch, because frankly, my wife and I now will compare each other, in the health app the next morning, like how much REM sleep did you get?

How much deep sleep did you get?

Because it really is telling. - And you can do that, because you have the ultra, which has so much extra battery life, that you can do that now.

I don't have that extra battery life of the ultra, like you do. - Right, right.

But to me, I guess from my standpoint, and maybe it's because I do the ultra, although my wife does not, but she does have to make sure that she charges it before.

And then sometimes she'll forget that day.

And so she's like, oh man, I can't wear it overnight, 'cause it's gonna die.

So yeah, there's a little bit more juggling that she has to do.

So you're absolutely right, Jeff, that the ultra does help in having that extra battery life.

But I mean, it's so amazing to be able to wake up and see all of that.

I mean, she even measures the blood oxygen level, the VO2 level, or whatever it is.

I mean, there's so many things that it's tracking, that anyway, I'm just excited about this, and coming out.

AirPods Pro 2.

This was a good article, from Ryan Christoffel at 9to5Mac.

I love his first little sentence here.

"It's hard to think of another Apple product that has only gotten better since I first purchased it."

And I love how he talks about it here.

He was on the fence when the AirPods Pro 2 were introduced.

He's like, you know, the other ones work fine.

I'm okay, I don't need it.

But as I was reading this, it occurred to me as well, Jeff, like these things are something, I almost wear the AirPods Pro as much as I wear the Apple Watch.

They're in my ears every single day.

It's my go-to for any Zoom meeting that I'm on.

It's what I put on if the dog is barking and I just wanna do noise cancellation.

For travel, they're always in my ear, and I have the adaptive on.

Even when I jog and run, I have the adaptive on so that I can focus, you know, hear the music, or I do your podcast, but then when a car's coming, it'll break through and let me know that there's something going on.

Like, they're just amazing.

In fact, I even pulled the trigger, and for Prime Day this past week, I got even the AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C charging, which we talked about a while back. - Yeah. - There's not much, a whole lot different, but what I did get excited, and I justified to myself for the reason that I went ahead and pulled the trigger on that, is because he's talking about the fact that very soon, we're gonna get some great improvements to AirPods Pro 2, whether you're lightning or USB-C.

It's still gonna be coming, and it's just amazing how they've been able to improve this without really releasing, like, you know, big hardware changes. - Yeah, no, they've done a nice job improving things and adding, you know, the quality of the sound has gotten better over time with the device. - Yeah. - And it's gonna get even better this fall with Apple's OS 18.

It's gonna give you better noise isolation if you're in noisy environments and stuff like that, and other things.

Plus, they're gonna have those new things that when Siri asks you a question, you'll be able to either, if you don't wanna actually say yes or no out loud, you could shake your head, and it will understand that a nod means yes, and a shake means no, which will be sort of interesting to see how useful that is in practice.

I don't know about the yes, but the no feature I could definitely see being useful to shake your head no.

Yeah, I love my AirPods Pro 2, and like you, Brett, I often think about how much I use them.

At my law firm, we just this week upgraded in my office a brand new phone system, and so now it's sort of like a cloud-based phone system, and what it means is that my office phone is, it doesn't have to be a literal hardware phone anymore.

I can now make my office, quote-unquote, phone, ring on my iPhone.

So wherever I am, I could monitor and screen, stuff like that, but what it means is that now, there's, in fact, as I'm doing this, getting a call, it means that I'm literally, I'm using my AirPods even more because I use them, of course, I use them when I podcast with you, but I use them to listen to podcasts.

I use them to listen to music.

I use them for my personal phone calls.

I'm now using them for my work phone calls 'cause I can do those on my iPhone.

I can do some all the time.

It's one of those things that if I go to the office and I left my AirPods at home, I will sometimes turn the car around and go get them because it's gonna be a bad day.

I have literally thought about getting another pair of AirPods.

I could put a really neat to have, it's two pairs, so I need to have one at home and all the time, and one at work all the time.

(Riggs laughing) They're one of those things that- - It's a good call. - It's amazing how much I use them, so anyway. - Good stuff, good stuff on that.

We, speaking of podcast, listening to podcast, we are always so thankful and grateful to all of our listeners, so thank you, listeners.

We also know from the stats that we track on our podcast host, Jeff, that the vast majority of our listeners use an app called Overcast to listen to our FAIR podcast.

We are happy to let you know that Marco, who is the developer of Overcast, has done an amazing update to the Overcast app.

So if you don't have it already, or I think it's on a subscription basis now, right?

I wanna say $10 a year or something like that. - Well, if the app is free- - Either way. - You can get additional features by paying for it. - That's right, that's right, that's right.

The app is always free, and there's a few ads that are really not that bad.

He's done a very good job, and as he points out, Marco is an independent developer.

It's a one-man show, one-man band, and it's just been amazing what he's done.

To me, I've tried other podcast apps, even the Apple Podcast app, Jeff, 'cause that's our second biggest app that people use, 'cause I think it's sort of the default, which is fine, and it's good, but it doesn't compete with Overcast.

I just, I love, the features that I have always thought were so great in Overcast are even better now.

The way he's improved some of the things, even the way that I can create a cue, for example, on this, it's a little bit faster.

I mean, I think he did a whole development back end, right?

He went to Swift, I think, from another version that he went to.

Anyway, just wanted to put that in, and hey, all of you Overcast listeners, thank you, first and foremost, and second, you're welcome.

Go ahead and download that Overcast update.

It is really worth it. - Yeah, the marquee feature from day one for Overcast has been the ability to remove extra space between words.

So I just paused between my words there, and you may not have heard it if you were using Overcast. - I see what you did. - Because it tries to remove that extra space.

So it does a great job of, if you like to either speed up your podcast, like a 1.2, 1.3, or just remove those extra words, or boost the sound, it's always done great with those behind the scenes technical things.

What Almarco has done now that it's a 10 year anniversary is he's rewritten most of the app in this brand new Apple language, the Swift language that Apple's had for a couple of years now, which means that everything is faster, it's more stable, and it also means that he's gonna have the ability in the future to make changes much more rapidly to bring new features.

Another big change is the interface.

He has done, I think, a phenomenal job.

The buttons are bigger and more obvious.

He's gotten away with the cards interface and changed things around.

Once I've started, you'll immediately see the changes, and then now that I've started to use it for the last couple of days, everything makes more sense.

It's a really beautiful looking app, which is really, really nice.

There was one feature that he had to remove from the app.

There used to be a feature that you could start to download a podcast and listen to it immediately.

Basically, as it was downloaded, you could already start listening to it.

And I would sometimes use that. - Me too. - He removed it for two reasons.

From a technical standpoint, it was getting harder and harder to do that, in part because many podcasts today use this thing called dynamic ad insertion, where you will hear ads in your podcast depending upon what location of the world you're in.

And so you'll actually hear different ads depending upon where you are when you download the podcast.

You'll hear different ads based upon when you download the podcast.

And he was having troubles that you might start to download it, like with one set of ads, and then by the time you're finished, if it gets interrupted, there's another set of ads in there, but a different length of time.

So now, then it loses your place in the podcast.

It's very complicated. - That's fine. - But he also noted that with modern bandwidth, whether it be through your wifi or service or cellular, downloads are so fast.

I mean, podcasts are not very big. - True. - Waiting a couple of seconds for a podcast to download before you start playing it's not a big deal nowadays, like it used to be in the old days.

So that's one feature that's gone.

But every other feature that we've had before is there and better.

And it's just a really, really nice app.

Now, you talked about the Apple Podcasts app.

Apple Podcasts has this fantastic feature with the transcripts, and it's gonna get even better this fall where you'll be able to actually send people, like start at this sentence of the, start listening at this sentence of the podcast.

There's also some cool features coming.

He does not currently have transcripts built into Overcast.

I'm sure he's thinking about that.

So there are areas where the built-in Apple Podcasts app is better, but Overcast is a fantastic app.

And it's so nice to see a fresh new, it's not just a fresh coat of paint.

It's all new underneath as well.

And it's a brand new platform for the next decade.

So awesome. - This is one of the apps that's on my first homepage, Jeff.

And again, I know exactly where it is and what it looks like.

It's orange, 'cause I've left the default app icon.

And it's like, I don't wanna change that.

Like I don't want Marco's app to be changed.

Anyway, so we'll see.

But thank you, Marco, for all the work you do.

And thank you again, fair listeners for listening.

And yeah, go get the Overcast update.

It is well worth it.

No secret that you and I, Jeff, are fans of Apple TV+, but apparently they have many other fans as well.

72 Emmy award nominations this past week for all kinds of shows from Apple TV+.

Incredible.

It was the most Emmy awards that Apple has ever seen for Apple TV+.

Now that makes sense, because they have more and more shows every year.

Some of the surprises were that "The Morning Show" did incredibly well.

I like "The Morning Show."

It's a good show.

It got perhaps even more awards than I would have been surprised for.

You know, both Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston are both nominated in the category, which is great.

Shows like "Palm Royale."

One surprise that I saw is that there was a show that I really loved called "Hi-Jack," which is it's a plane hijacking.

And the star of that show, what is his name?

Is it Idris Elba?

Am I saying it correctly?

Idris, yeah.

Idris Elba.

He is so fantastic.

I have to admit, "Hi-Jack" is just sort of a silly, fast-paced, exciting, edge of your seats ride.

It wasn't something that I expected to see an award, and I've seen other people too, that I thought he was fantastic in it.

I mean, literally, there he is right there is a picture of him.

Idris Elba, yeah.

He makes the show good because he is so good in it.

And so I was thrilled to see that he got nominated for an award because that was a surprise to me.

It's like, I loved his performance, but apparently other people did too.

And I've seen in the Hollywood press that it was a little bit of a surprise that he got the nod.

So that's good.

One of the surprises- "Slow Horses."

Oh, "Slow Horses" was great.

It had not gotten something in the past years.

Now it's finally getting the recognition that it owes.

Apple's big show, "Masters of the Air," did not get any nominations, which is a little bit of a surprise because they put a ton of money into that.

They had a lot of people.

I mean, that was one surprise, but overall Apple did really good and it's come some great, great, great shows in there.

"Lessons in Chemistry" got some awards.

I loved that show.

That was so good.

"Loot" got some awards, some great stuff in there.

You know what show we started- I say awards, of course I mean nominations, but go ahead.

Yeah, nominations, right, right, right.

"Franklin."

Have you guys watched the "Franklin" show yet?

I haven't, yeah.

Oh man.

I gotta tell you, because both my wife and I are, from a legal standpoint, US constitutional standpoint, founding father standpoint, and again, nothing to say with the current political sphere or anything.

I don't mean to get into that at all, but really just to say, first of all, Michael Douglas, I don't know if there's gonna be anybody more perfect to play Benjamin Franklin.

I think he's just fantastic in the episode.

We've suggested it to some other friends, Jeff, and I'll tell you that they got a little bored with it about after the third or fourth episode.

My wife and I have enjoyed it, just a bit simple, because to us, it's fascinating.

Like to see all the interplay and to see how the revolution of the United States was on the precipice of failing.

I mean, just all of that kind of stuff.

If you're into the history aspect of it, I think they do an absolutely phenomenal job on that.

But you know me, I haven't done as many shows as you've been able to do, but we started watching that, and I think there's only eight episodes, but really good, something I would recommend. - And you're mentioning it because it did not receive any awards or any nomination. - But I don't know the timing.

I don't know if it's how old. - Because there was an article, and I wanna say Variety or Deadline or one of those sort of entertainment articles that I read this week, which did say that people were surprised that Michael Douglas did not get a nomination because they said his performance really was, a lot of people thought that he would have been in that camp.

So people- - Okay, so it was eligible.

It was eligible and it just did not, you know. - Now I'm a little- - There's always surprises. - I'm a little peeved about that. - Every year, there's always surprises of what's on the list.

What do they call it?

The snubs and the whatever it was. - Yeah, well, I don't keep track about this.

So I'm like, okay, well, maybe it would just released after the dead, the cutoff.

But now I'm really peeved about this because I mean, even just him alone, I mean, it really is amazing.

You know, obviously, none of us have video of Benjamin Franklin, but I gotta tell you, I just think he personifies it so much, so well.

Good stuff.

Kind of along that lines, in a segue there, Apple's in talks to license more films from Hollywood.

We've talked about this every once in a while, that Apple has like a select, you know, a few dozen old movies, I believe is what they are, right?

That they release from time to time.

Am I correct on that, Jeff?

And you know, we've been wanting to see more, like can Apple TV+ do more because they don't have as much of a backlog or, you know, back catalog as what some of these other, you know, Max or, you know, Paramount or some of these others do.

So I'm excited to see this story that you linked to today as well. - Yeah, it's just a rumor, but it's Bloomberg saying that Apple's talking to major Hollywood studios to get even more back catalog items there, you know, just for a limited period of time.

I've enjoyed them.

I've definitely watched some movies because they've showed up and like, you know, only here for the next couple of weeks.

And it's like, okay, well, that's a good movie.

And it's only here for a few weeks.

I'll watch it now.

And they've been good stuff.

So I like the fact that Apple's sort of doing a little bit of this.

Again, they've got so much great original content that I don't think they need to do this.

But the fact that they do just makes the service that much better. - We can't have a podcast episode of "In the News."

I don't think with at least mentioning Vision Pro.

But this is good stuff.

You keep, this is what everybody's been talking about from you and Jason Snell and everybody else.

It's like, we need more content.

And it sounds like you were happy to see some balloons this past week. - So here's what I'm excited about.

Apple has a press release this week that you're showing on the screen right now that for the first time that I can think of, they have actually said something about the immersive content that's coming soon. - Okay. - People that listen to this podcast and have heard me before say, the best, best stuff on the Apple Vision Pro is the immersive content made by Apple.

It's just amazing.

You feel like you're there.

It's transformative.

It's unlike any other media, blah, blah, blah.

Fantastic.

But I wish there was more of it.

And so the good news is right now, first of all, we have something new.

Last night, they released the first episode of a new series called "Boundless."

And the first episode features hot air balloons going over Turkey.

Last night, Brett, I mean, I'm sitting there on the chair and I see hot air balloons all around me, which is awesome.

Plus it's like in the early mornings.

So they look beautiful against the sky.

And then we're flying over Turkey.

And there's like these, you can see in this picture, there's these rock formations in the country of Turkey.

I had no idea they even had this in Turkey.

It was beautiful.

Everything about it was amazing.

I just want to watch it over and over again.

It was incredible.

So we need more, but- - More. - Yay that we have this.

But also in this press release, they are finally telling us a little bit more about what their game plan is.

It looks like they're going to have stuff.

I wish it was new stuff every week.

It looks like it's going to be new stuff every month, but we're going to have additional episodes of the wildlife and additional, this thing called Elevated, which is going to be like, sort of like what your Apple TV screensaver is, where you have like all these overhead shots.

And then they've also announced that later this year, we're going to have something from the NBA All-Stars.

We know there's something about the Superbowl they're doing.

Sports is always so incredible and immersive.

So I'm glad that- - And a short film.

A scripted short film. - That's going to be awesome to have an entire movie, not just, I mean, the balloon thing I watched last night, Brett, was great.

But after six minutes, I was like, can I please have 60 minutes of this?

I want lots and lots and lots more.

So to have an entire film, even if it's a short film, is going to be just an incredible luxury.

And so, you know, we of course know that Apple has things in development.

I'm glad that they have given us a little bit of a peek under the kimono so that we can say, you know, now we actually do know for sure stuff's coming.

Here's when it's coming.

It's great.

And again, I know, so people own the Vision Pro, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but the more they build up this content over the next couple of years, as Vision Pros become more and more popular, they're going to have this back catalog of incredible, incredible immersive content. - Yeah. - So, yeah, no question they need to be working on this because we know the hardware is improving.

We know the hardware would become more available to the common folk, as it were.

I mean, I know that I'm going to get one eventually, one day.

It may not be the current version of that, but whatever it is that they're going to be, but yeah, we got to have content in order to justify all of that.

So good stuff on that.

Where are you at? - Where are you at? - Oh, good, a couple of good stories.

Oh my goodness, this first one was just amazing.

Did he have, first of all, this was not even an Apple Watch Ultra, or was it?

I can't remember on this one.

This is a story from Australia today.

Apparently an experienced swimmer was out in the ocean and realized and recognized that he got taken away in the riptide, whatever that is, right?

To the point where, you know, you can't fight it.

You just got to drift along until you can find a way to get out of it.

He was getting tired, cramping up, until he remembered, I can call some help.

And he used his Apple Watch, just amazing.

Not only that, but apparently he was on the phone, quote unquote, with his Apple Watch for like an hour while they sent a helicopter to rescue him.

And you can watch the footage right here. - Yeah, it's just a fantastic story.

And I mean, the Apple Watch is so amazing for this stuff because first of all, you know, you're in the middle of the ocean.

You have no idea where you are, but fortunately the Apple Watch has GPS so we could tell it to the emergency people exactly where he is.

And second of all, I love that idea.

Like you said, that for the entire hour that it took them to grab a helicopter and get out there, he can talk to somebody, they can sort of coach him through it, you know, say, you know, it's a little bit longer, you know, I can, you know, without that, you can imagine the person sort of feeling helpless and, you know, maybe drowning or something like that.

And so it's a great rescue story.

And again, this was not just some shmo.

This guy was a professional swimmer.

He knew what he was doing.

And yet sometimes when you're battling the elements, it, you know, the stuff like this happens.

So who knows what would happen to this guy if it was not for the Apple Watch?

I mean, he literally might be dead.

I mean, it's incredible. - There is a picture, there is a picture here.

So I can confirm it is an Apple Watch Ultra.

So I don't know if that has anything to do with like the battery life or anything on there. - It certainly helped.

Yeah, certainly helped. - Exactly, and to me, I mean, we're just gonna continue to, I'm never gonna get tired of hearing stories like this, Jeff.

I mean, because even with the iPhone, the next iPhone we anticipate we'll be able to send text messages, not even if it's emergency related through satellite.

Like to me, I just know eventually that's gonna come to the Apple Watch.

I mean, we are Dick tracing in it all over the place.

I mean, it's gonna be the point to where we're not even gonna need it.

I mean, I gotta tell you the number of times now, even when I run or go out somewhere, I don't even take my iPhone with me because I have the Apple Watch Ultra and I have a cellular plan with it.

And just to hear stories like this to me is like so absolutely worth it.

If you lose your Apple Watch though in the ocean, instead, the good news is even almost two years later, you can still recover it.

This is a fun story.

I like this one too, Jeff. - Yeah, he lost his Apple Watch in the Virgin Islands when he was swimming and figured it was gone forever.

And then it turned out that somebody filmed it 18 months later and they plugged it in and sure enough, it powered right up.

And it said right there on the screen, if found, call so-and-so.

And so this person was very, very surprised that...

So I mean, the real story here is, I mean, it's great that he got his Apple Watch back.

I'm sure in the 18 months since, he had probably replaced it already.

But an Apple Watch is durable enough to stay underwater for that long of a period of time where you know that all sorts of things could be happening to it.

And yet it still powers up, which is, that tells you something about the durability and that makes you feel better going back to that first story, when you're in the water off of Byron Bay in Australia, you know that it's gonna be a durable device that's gonna hold up.

So cool stuff. - The other, this gentleman in the second story here must be a media professional.

So, 'cause he put together a really fun, exciting little video about the whole thing, even with maps.

He apparently lives like just a few miles away from Apple's headquarters in California, but he was in the Virgin Islands, like you said, lost it, but he knew to use Find My to locate it.

And so it literally pinpointed the place in the ocean where his watch was located. - He knew where it was, he just wasn't getting to it. - Exactly.

But it was like, okay, you know what?

I'm not going back.

It's like, it's fine.

But then he got this phone call.

He had the watch mailed to him.

And at the end of the video, you can see him open the package, plug it in, and it boots up.

And he's like, there's no scratches, or there was like one scratch on it that he already had on the watch before any of this happened.

Just amazing stuff.

Like I love these stories on there.

Another thing I would love to have is a tiny iPod.

Tiny pod, tiny pod.

This just made me laugh out loud to the people around me that had no clue what I was talking about.

But hey, if you long for the days of the iPod, but you don't wanna go back to those days 'cause you like your Apple watch, have we got a product for you.

Thanks for linking to this today, Jeff.

It made my day. - Back in the days of the iPod, Apple had all sorts of iPods of all sorts of size and shapes, including some of them that were really tiny.

And what this company has done is it's taken the spirit of those small iPods of yore.

And they have basically designed a case that goes around an Apple watch without the bands, of course, just the face part of the Apple watch.

And just an Apple watch by itself could do all sorts of things.

It could play music like an iPod.

It can make phone calls.

It can read emails, et cetera, et cetera.

And so, and then they have put, this is the one piece of technology in it.

They've put a little scroll wheel on the front of it.

And apparently as you turn the scroll wheel, it causes the digital crown to actually spin.

I don't know physically how they're doing that.

I guess there's a little bit of technology that does that.

And so it looks like it actually is sort of interesting.

And again, do you need to have a handheld device like this when you can do it on your wrist?

Maybe not.

What it reminds me of is, back in the day, Brett, I had so many iPods.

I had the very first generation that used FireWire.

And then Apple got to this point, and we're talking like 20 years ago, where they started to come out with these smaller and smaller iPods.

And I brought a couple of them in here because I used to use them over the years.

One of them that I loved was the, this is the iPod Shuffle second generation. - Oh, the Shuffle, yeah, the little clip. - It would clip onto your place and you could have your headphones coming out of it.

This was the days before Bluetooth headphones.

And you can press the buttons to go fast forward, you know, and pause.

This one was really, really cool.

One of them, which was almost ridiculous, is the iPod Shuffle third generation.

So this one that I was just showing you was in 2006.

This one is 2009, I think.

And this one is, it was the most ridiculous iPod Shuffle.

This was the one iPod Shuffle that had no screen and no buttons.

And you're like, wait a minute, it has no buttons.

How do you even control it?

And the way that you controlled it is, although the iPod itself had no buttons, your headphones, which would stick into the one hole in the top, they actually had on the cord, play, pause. - The clickers, yeah. - If you clicked it a certain way, it would fast forward.

But you know, it literally was a shuffle.

Apple would encourage you to just shuffle the music.

Whatever comes up, comes up at, you know, Carpe Diem, you know, just enjoy the randomness.

But it was such a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little device.

And I'll show one more of the tiny devices, which this one's always intrigued me because it was really the spiritual forerunner to the Apple Watch.

This is the iPod Nano, sixth generation, which came out in September 2010. - Yes, I remember that one. - It was the second to last iPod Nano ever.

Again, it had a clip so it could clip onto your clothes.

But the screen of it was, I mean, it's actually about the same size as my Apple Watch nowadays.

And so it was, and actually there were third party companies that would connect this thing to a band so that you could actually wear it as a watch back in the day. - I remember that. - And it was a fun little device.

So anyway, there is this rich history of people using Apple devices as something really, really, really small.

And this tiny pod product, it definitely taps into that nostalgia.

How good it is, we'll have to see.

But I hope it is good.

I hope that people come out and say, this is a really fun thing to have.

And I want it to be popular because it will make me happy to once again, have people have these tiny little handheld devices that are sort of like an iPod Shuffle or an iPod Nano.

I love it. - I think we need one of these to review.

So tiny pod people, if you're listening. (laughing) I just love it.

It makes me think of, wasn't it the company Elgato?

Or they used to make little tiny, it looks like the old iMacs, right?

That you would put your watch into. - Oh yeah, just as a holder.

Yeah, they still have those. - Yeah, just a little holder is kind of a thing.

But this is functional.

Like it would actually turn the digital crown.

That's amazing. - Can't wait to see it. - Well, if tiny, yeah, if you're not interested in tiny pods, maybe you're interested in iPhone powered bird feeders. (laughing) What a fun, another fun thing that I feel like we need to review this as well.

So bird buddy people, send us a review and we'll be happy to talk about it. - It literally is called the bird buddy.

It is a fun iPhone connected smart bird feeder. - I love this article by Julie Clover over at Mac Rumors. - Me too. - And she describes, I mean, basically it's just a bird feeder that has a little camera in it, much like the camera you might have in your doorbell or something like that.

But instead of looking at who's bringing me a package, instead you're looking at the birds.

And so whenever it senses motion of the birds that are sitting there eating the food, it will take pictures and videos.

It has a mode on it that it will come up with like the one or two highlights of the day and send you at the end of the day, like here's the coolest bird video from today.

Or of course you could watch it live if you want to stream live from it.

One of the models that costs a little bit more money has a solar panel on the roof. - Solar panel. - So that you don't have to, you know, it charges itself all the time.

You don't have to reach in there and take the camera out and recharge it.

I have to admit, you know, whatever.

I think this is pretty cool.

It's, how much did it say it cost?

It was a-- - $239 is what you posted. - Yeah, the one with the solar roof is $239.

So a little more pricey.

And again, you have to have it, like it does not come with the pole to hold it on or the stand.

And I know enough about bird feeders to know that you have to have them in the right position that, 'cause squirrels love apparently. - Squirrels, yeah. - And they'll jump on.

And so you have to have a part of your backyard that the squirrels can't jump to and just the birds can get to it too.

Or just say, I don't care about the squirrels and I'm gonna feed the squirrels too.

But what a fun idea.

And I could see a lot of people having fun.

Like if you're looking for a cool present for somebody, you know, the ability to get a close look at the birds that visit their house.

And like their faces are right there next to the camera.

So you have this really, really cool, close view of the birds.

Very fun, very fun. - I like Julie Enza, she shows, "The bird buddy is a lot of fun.

I initially got one as a gift for someone who is hard to shop for, but it turned out to be a hit.

We have regular conversations now about bird visits, bird food, and thwarting squirrels."

(Jeff and Nate laughing) I gotta get one of those.

That's funny.

That is great. - And the software actually uses AI to identify the birds.

So it'll tell you this bird is such and such. - It does. - So very cool stuff. - Oh, come on.

That's even better.

Nate, like it says, "This is a house finch."

Okay, you know what?

That's pretty cool.

This is your backyard squirrel.

(Jeff laughing) That's great.

Last but certainly not least, Jeff, they're back.

The underdogs are back.

I'm so happy.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, how long ago was it?

I think you put it in here.

You walked through the history of the first year that it was this four-person team that Apple, and it was a team of actors, but they were box designers.

Like literally like boxes, like packages designers.

They've had what, four videos, I think, so far?

I remember when they first came out, they were a hit. - This is the first one, yeah.

The first one was in 2019, yeah. - This is the fifth video.

And oh my goodness, it is so fun, so worth it.

This is called "OOO, Out of Office."

They go to Thailand.

I'm not gonna spoil anything by saying that, but totally worth a watch on here.

Thanks for linking to this today. - I don't know who at Apple came up with the idea for these videos, but the idea is let's have four funny characters that are using Apple technology to get work done.

And the very first one that came out in 2019, they were at a company that makes boxes, and their idea was to have a circular box for pizza instead of a square box for pizza.

Which is actually funny, because on Apple's campus in Cupertino, if you get a pizza from their Cafe Max or whatever it is, they actually serve them, apparently, I've been told, in a circular cardboard box as opposed to a square box. - We need to go test that. - That may have been the inspiration for this.

But it's a cute story.

The very first one that they came out with, it was only like three minutes long, it's really short.

But then over the years, they came out with one during the pandemic, and they were all working from home using their Apple technology.

And then they're returning to work in 2022 after the Apple technology.

And so I continue to be amazed that there's more of these that would have never occurred to me that would be up to the fifth edition now, and they are all cute.

This one was a little bit longer, I wanna say it was 10 minutes long. - 10 minutes, yeah, it's 10 minutes.

So worth it, though. - I don't think it's quite as good as some of the earlier ones, but it still had many funny moments. - I agree, but still worth it. - I enjoyed watching it.

And in fact, I saw you put in the show notes here, watch it to the end, including all the credits. - You have to. - Good advice. - Am I right? - You wanna watch it to the end, absolutely agree.

So a fun video to watch. - The other funny thing that just occurred to me, and I guess it's my real practical realist mindset here, is the whole thing is about they're scrappy workers on a scrappy budget, right?

They're having to watch budget all the time and make sure they get it.

But of course, throughout the entire video, they're using the most up-to-date MacBook Pros, the most up-to-date iPad Pros, the most up-to-date iPhone Pros, the Vision Pro that he's using on there.

So I'm like, I think all your budget has gone to Apple products.

Don't front here, your scrappy people trying to make it through a budget.

I mean, you're using the most expensive Apple products, but that aside, to get that out of my head, it's so worth it.

I mean, it's just fun.

And I mean, not just the fact that they're showing how to use the Apple products, because they really do a good job, by the way, in there.

Like some of the things I caught in there, like, oh yeah, you could use that and you can apply that that way or use the messages that way.

Really cool stuff in there.

But just the cinematography of it, like on the character development, I mean, it's like a little mini Apple TV+ movie on there.

And so worth it, I love it.

In the know. - In the know.

I got a humdinger of one today.

Look, look what I picked up this past week, Jeff.

Look at that.

You recognize what that is.

This, my friend, is something that you have been using for a long time, the Anker 3-in-1, let's see, what do they call it?

The Anker 3-in-1 MagSafe charger or something along those lines.

I know it's Anker and I know it's 3-in-1.

You've been talking about this for a long time because if I'm not mistaken, you still have this on your desk.

I think you do, 'cause you just picked it up right there. - Every single day, every single day. - I know you have been talking about the amazing aspects of the iPhone standby mode, which just came out with iOS 17.

And I've plugged in my phone without a MagSafe charger and I've propped it up on the side and I've seen standby, but I'm like, okay, I don't wanna have to plug it in every time.

But boy, Heidi, am I thrilled with this Anker 3-in-1 device.

It's a little heavier than I thought it was, but I understand why, because it has to have a good solid foundation base because I just now plop my phone, thank you for demonstrating that Jeff, right on this Anker and it is brilliant.

Literally within a second, it pops up with standby mode.

I have been thoroughly, thoroughly enjoying standby mode.

So thank you for all of that, 'cause I'm linking to your post here from October 4, 2023, when you talked all about standby, 'cause I was like looking for a few tips and sure enough, your article came up and the Google results has like one of the best articles to go through and read about what can I do, what are the ways that I can customize this.

My only complaint, and I hesitate to even use the word complaint because it's already good, but I want more customization options on here in the widget.

I love being able to flip through, like you said, there's three different modes, I guess I just call it clock mode.

Then I can swipe and go into like pictures mode.

And I love how you can go through different pictures or different albums and you swipe one more time and I call it widget mode.

I don't know if that's exactly what it is, but I can flip now between different widgets on here.

I can have, I usually have like the clock on one side and then I have maybe the weather on the other side, although you can have your calendar or whatever's coming up next or reminders and you can add widgets.

I just haven't been able to play around with it quite that much because honestly, I gotta tell you, I just leave it on for like a big honking clock right there on my desk that I can just glance at and I see the time.

It also, on mine, it actually has the date and it has the temperature on the outside.

And just that alone is amazing.

Plus, my phone is always charging.

Plus this Anker three in one gives me the ability to also charge up the case for my AirPods Pro 2.

And if I needed to, I could put my Apple Watch on there 'cause there's a little, thank you again.

You're my Vanna White today, Jeff, thank you.

I love the fact that you could just pop that little side drawer out and you can charge up, Apple Watch, just juice it up a little bit on there.

I was trying to find a neat tip, but you know them all right now.

I do like the fact though that quickly that you can still access the control center from the standby mode.

Sometimes it's a little tricky because if you flip up and down, it goes to a different phone mode or a clock mode, but there is a way that you can just flick down quickly and you can get into the control center.

And I do like being able to get access to that because I put things in my control center that I can access like off and on so that if I need to turn something on, it's almost like having an extra page of widgets.

For me, it's the way I kind of think of it on there.

But anyway, just wanted to thank you.

Highlight your article again on standby mode and tell people don't stand by on this any longer.

You don't have to get the Anker 3-in-1, although I really think it's an amazing little device here.

Jeff, you link to another one down here.

What is it, the Belkin one, I believe, or the 12 South?

Sorry, the 12 South. - 12 South. - There's several of these that are MagSafe stands for your iPhone.

And man, I gotta tell you, if you're an iPhone enthusiast like Jeff and myself are, it is worthwhile getting one of these stands and be able to use standby mode because if you're not using this, I see now what I have been missing out on for all these months, Jeff. - Yeah, so my tip of the week is to gonna be a piggyback on this one and just to underscore it. - Oh, good. - So let's talk about both of these things.

There's the standby mode itself, which is so incredibly useful because it means that even when you're not using your iPhone it is still being useful to you because it's a clock or because it shows your calendar or whatever, or shows pictures, whichever one of those modes that you pick.

And standby mode, it's one, and until you actually use it, you're sitting there, you're working at your desk and you can just glance there right beneath your monitor, wherever you have it set up in standby mode.

It's just, it makes the iPhone, it's like doubling the use of the iPhone.

So it's useful all the time. - Yes, good way to put it. - It's useful when using it and it's also useful when you're not using it.

So I love standby mode.

I actually, now that we're saying this, Brad, I am not aware of any improvements to standby mode coming out this fall on iOS 18. - I know. - And I hope that there's something there that I don't know about yet because that would be a shame.

But it's just so useful.

Yeah, the picture you're showing you right now is a little bit of my messy desk. - That's your desk. - Going standby mode right now.

It's like I'm looking at it on my screen and I'm looking at it in real life at the same time.

You're blowing my mind here.

So that's one great thing.

But the other great thing is this anchor charger.

And again, I also use the 12 South one at home on my bed stand. - Okay, on your bed stand. - And it's bigger. - You say that here. - Everything's a little bit more expanded.

I like that.

But for something in my office that just uses very little space, I love this three-in-one charger 'cause it's very compact.

You can fold it up and it literally looks like a cube, but most of the time, you're gonna wanna have the top propped up to have your iPhone on it. - Right, right. - So it works great for standby mode.

I also love using this as a travel charger.

Now, like you say, Brett, it's a little heavy.

I mean, it has a tiny bit of weight to it, but if you throw it in your luggage, you're probably not gonna notice.

And then when you get to your hotel, it's great because you can just plug in the one cord in the back.

You plug in the one USB-C cord in the back. - It's USB-C. - And then, where I lost my cord here, I can't reach up to my camera, but I plug it in.

And then once I do that, I can charge my phone, I can charge my watch overnight, and I can charge my AirPods, which means that the only other thing that I usually have with me is my iPad.

So I'll have someplace else in the room where I'll charge my iPad just with a regular charger.

But this one thing, which I often will put right next to my bed because that way I can look at the time at night and stuff like that, charges everything else.

And it just works great for a travel charger.

It works great in my office.

I absolutely love it.

One of the things I mentioned about standby mode is we talked about the three modes, the widget mode, the photos mode, and the time mode.

There's actually a fourth sort of mode too, because many apps that you're running, if I, for example, let's just say I'm having lunch in my office, I'm listening to a podcast.

At the very top, when my phone's in standby mode, there will be a little circle that will appear that if I tap on it, it will bring up, yeah, I think I may have a picture on this website.

There you go, right there.

And it will actually bring up the full interface for a podcast or for music.

And so basically while I'm sitting here listening to something, if I want to skip a track or if I want to pause or play, it gives you these huge, real big controls that are easy to see, easy to touch.

You can see the album art there.

It's really, really nice. - I like that. - And that's just what the music app does or if you use Overcast or one of those sorts of apps, but other apps can do this too.

I mean, you can have a flight app can show you flight.

You can use whatever widget you want as long as it's in this mode.

And so this is sort of a fourth mode of standby, depending upon you using a specific app for a specific purpose.

And it's really useful as well.

So I'm a big, big fan of standby mode and I'm an especially big fan of this thing.

Now I spent $150 on this thing and I thought it was worth every single penny.

And I know that 150 sounds like a lot, but it is three in one charger.

So think of it as 50 bucks a charger.

You're just buying three of them at once.

But you don't have to spend that because I know that you were able to get a really good deal for this week for Prime Deal.

Even right now on Amazon, it's 111, which is so much less than I paid for it.

So that's still a great deal.

It's worth it. - I got mine from Costco.

And right now as well, we're recording this, I still see it's on sale for 79.99. - Oh my goodness gracious. - So that's why I had to pull the trigger on that because I know you've been talking about this.

And I remember I was watching a video about sales this past week or so.

And I turned to my wife and I said, Jeff has that and I know what it costs.

And if it's a good price, I got to jump on that.

And I'm so glad that I did.

I knew eventually I would come up with one of these stands of some kind because I've been wanting to try standby for so long.

And I'm really again, just peeved.

I've been peeved several times today.

I'm peeved at myself for not doing this earlier because it is so useful.

Plus I know that my iPhone is pretty much always charged when I pick it up now.

Like I don't have to worry about it. - Isn't that nice? - It's a great way to just to land the iPhone when I'm sitting at my desk because otherwise I would normally always lay it down horizontally, right?

I would just lay it down like most people do.

But now the fact that it can be so much more useful, oh, I'm so pleased with this purchase.

Very good stuff on there. - Well, let me just finish up by saying that people that are listening to it, much like you, Brett, you've probably heard us talk about standby mode in the past.

If your job is a, I don't know, a trash collector or you dig ditches or something like that, maybe this isn't for you.

But if you have a job that often has you sitting at a desk, whether it's because you're a business person or a lawyer or whatever you do, so that you often find yourself sitting at one spot, having a device, whether it's this Anker device or something similar that can just stay in one place, it's a place to always put your iPhone, you know where it is.

You've heard us talk about standby mode.

If you haven't made the switch yet, I encourage you to give it a chance because once you actually use it, you're gonna be like, just like you said, Brett, now I get it.

Now I understand how useful and wonderful this feature is.

So it's really worth it.

While you're talking, I'm sitting here, the photos version, I usually don't do the photos because it kind of goes through whatever album that it'll just toggle through the different photos.

But if you see a picture and you don't remember where it came from, you can tap the screen.

It'll tell you what date you took it.

It'll tell you the location.

And there's even a view in photos little button that you can tap and it'll unlock the phone.

So you have to be looking at it.

So face ID will work, which amazing to me that it works even when it's in landscape mode.

Because by the way, this three in one will allow you to put the phone in landscape or in portrait mode.

You can charge it either way.

But for standby, it's gotta be in landscape mode or what I call landscape mode. - I forgot about that view in film.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's a neat feature. - That's really, I just, I love, because I love the fact that the photo was there, then you got a clock in the upper right corner.

I wish I could customize that a little bit, but I don't think that I can.

But I like the fact that I can just glance over, I can tap it, just tap the screen to see where it was, the date that it was taken.

And then I can tap view in photos.

So I can go, if it reminds me of something from before that I can go into the photos app, so I can swipe back and forth to some other photos.

Just really cool stuff.

Just really amazing.

Thank you again.

And I'll link to your standby article here 'cause it's definitely, to me, it was worth reading again, even though I remember when we talked about this months ago, it was worth reading again, just to be sure to go through like, okay, this is why this is important stuff.

Love it.

Good stuff. - Good stuff. - Okay, I know that was long.

Thanks everyone for listening because man, there was a lot to report on this week.

But man, so many fun things.

I love this.

I'm very excited about what's gonna be happening with iOS 18.

And I'm sure we'll have more to talk about next week.

So Jeff, we'll talk with you next week. - Thanks, Brad.