In the News
In the News
166: Messaging Satellites in a Hurricane 🛰️ Ferrari AirPods, and Scary Harry Meeting Sally
Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/0Ojs0x7mzHw
In the News blog post for October 4, 2024:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2024/10/in-the-news747.html
00:00 Where Y’at? #1 - Hurricane Satellite Messaging
10:32 Minor 18
13:30 “Hidden” iOS 18 Tips
15:53 Point 1 Coming Soon…
25:25 Maxing Out The Review
33:44 Federico’s Pro “Downgrade”
38:01 If You Know You Juno
41:54 An Earful of AirPods
46:45 Where Y’at? #2 - Ferrari AirPods
50:18 Harry Does NOT Want to Meet Sally!
51:51 Brett’s iTip: Hide Screenshots in New Photos App
54:38 Jeff’s iTip: Customize Sections in New Photos App
Kevin Collier | NBC News: Internet and phone outages cut some Hurricane Helene victims off from the world
Ryan Christoffel | 9to5Mac: Messages via satellite provides lifeline to iPhone owners in Hurricane Helene fallout
Try the Satellite Connection Demo on your iPhone:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/105097#demo
Chance Miller | 9to5Mac: iOS 18.0.1 fixes security issues affecting iPhone microphone and Passwords app
Aman Kumar | How-To Geek: 12 Hidden iOS 18 Features Nobody Is Talking About
Tim Hardwick | MacRumors: 15 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.1
Jeff’s Review: iPhone 16 Pro Max
Design Tangents Podcast: Nerdy Details: The Apple iPhone 16’s Camera Control Button
Frederico Vittici | MacStories: After Five Years of Pro iPhones, I’m Going iPhone 16 Plus This Year
Juli Clover | MacRumors: Juno YouTube App for Vision Pro Removed From App Store
John Moltz | Macworld: Apple’s true hit of 2024 isn’t the iPhone 16
Marko Zivkovic | AppleInsider: Apple AirPods help police locate stolen Ferrari worth $575,000
Before — Official Trailer | Apple TV+
Brett’s iTip: Hide screenshots in the New Photos app
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/filter-and-sort-the-photo-library-iph2e66e2f2c/ios
Jeff’s iTip: Customize Sections in New Photos App
https://support.apple.com/gui
Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com
- Welcome to In the News for October the 4th, 2024.
I am Brett Burdy from appsinlaw.com. - And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.
Hey Brett. - Hey Jeff. (laughs) You know, we just gotta tell people, we actually just saw each other a couple of days ago.
I had the ability to be in New Orleans with my wife this week, and it was just great to sit down and say hello.
And we actually had fantastic weather in New Orleans, which I'm glad about, because I know since we've been doing this Jeff, a couple of times, you've had to leave the city because of hurricanes. - Unfortunately. - And we want to give a special shout out to all the people that have been affected by Hurricane Helene.
Is it Helene?
Helene?
That has been a terrible tragedy.
I've just seen the, even the numbers of people affected and being injured, just going up.
And it is a terrible tragedy that has happened.
But I thought we could at least do something to maybe help people understand that there is a way that potentially you could continue to communicate with loved ones or people that may have been affected by Hurricane Helene that has been happening even as long as this.
You had a great little write up in your post today, Jeff, that while a lot of the cell towers may not be functioning, I think one report from NBC was like, fewer than 10% of cell sites are fully functioning.
If people have an iPhone Pro 15 or 16, they have the ability to potentially message through satellite functioning.
We've been talking about this for a while and I just thought that it was great.
I'm glad that you mentioned this because it really is an excellent way that potentially people could continue to communicate with people that may not even have another way to communicate these days. - Yeah, in fact, as you and I were discussing just before you hit record, you know, we, this is, we always talk about like a where yet segment on the podcast and which is sometimes funny stories and sometimes something being stolen, but here's a very serious where yet at, you know, where are you in communicating?
I tell you, Brett, have you ever, I'm just curious, you know, being in Ohio where you are, have you ever been in a situation where you had just no power and no communication?
Have you lived through that before? - Yeah, a little bit.
You know, we don't have hurricanes up here in Ohio.
We do have some tornadoes and some very bad storms that have come up, but fortunately we've never like lost power for maybe more than like a day at the very most.
And it seems like we've always been able to have some access to internet connectivity and somehow, so it's just never been for like multiple days, which obviously what you guys have experienced out there. - But even the fact, - But yeah. - Yeah, I mean, even the fact that you've had your experience with it for whatever reasons too, just shows that it really can be sort of a universal thing.
You know, when I've been in this situation after hurricane, like I said, the biggest one for us recent, you know, historically of course, was Hurricane Katrina, but recently it was Hurricane Ida just a few years ago.
And it's tough because, you know, you have no power, you have no idea when power is coming back.
For Hurricane Ida, I think that our house was out of power for like two weeks or something like that, which was ridiculous.
We ended up leaving town.
And then you have, you know, no power of course means you have no internet, but it also is often accompanied by the fact that the cell phone tires, their batteries die after a while.
Sometimes if it's like a hurricane or tornado, the towers themselves are damaged.
And so communication is just really, really difficult.
Way back in Hurricane Katrina, which was in 2005, that was the first time that a lot of people that I knew who lived in New Orleans area, learned about texting in the first place.
It seems silly 'cause we all text message without even thinking about it nowadays.
But back in 2005, most people did not text that much.
Remember that was the days when you had to like press, you know, 444-66-888 to get letters out.
But we learned how to do so because after Katrina, when you could not call people on the cell phones, you could never get a signal.
You could sometimes get text messages out.
And that was important because after a disaster, you wanna reach out to your parents.
You wanna reach out to your siblings and your friends.
Are you okay?
Do you need help?
Where are you?
You know, maybe we can get together.
It's just communication becomes so, so very important.
So after Ida, when I, you know, had such hard problem getting cell phone towers, and I shared this tip on iPhone JD, that if you turn on airplane mode and then turn it off again, like you might be able to hook on to that cell signal for just 10 seconds enough to get a message out.
But oh my goodness, I would have loved to have had, and now I'm so glad I do for the future, this satellite capability.
Because the one thing that you can do after a hurricane is go outside.
And usually, ironically, the weather after a hurricane is very nice.
It's just the devastation is everywhere.
So you could go outside, you could, you know, hold up your iPhone, communicate with people.
The interesting thing about this story about Hurricane Helene is that you only gained this ability.
You could do 911 via satellite for what, a year or two now.
But in terms of actually using text messages through satellite, that just came out in iOS 18, which of course iOS 18 just came out like what, two weeks ago?
I don't even think my wife has upgraded yet.
And so they said that after Hurricane Helene, a lot of people had not upgraded.
So they didn't have the feature.
But one thing that I learned last night when I was putting together this articles is, it's not just that you have to have iOS 18.
For someone to receive your messages via satellite on an iPhone, they have to have either iOS 18 or iOS 18 17.6, which is, you know, just the latest version of iOS 17.
They basically have to have updated their OS, which seems odd to me, because it seems to me, Brett, that like, once you get your message out and it's in the iMessage cloud, shouldn't it be able to be delivered to everybody, even people that were using much older phones?
And ironically, if you're using a text message through SMS, like a traditional text message, that will actually go to any Android phone, but only the newest iPhones.
So, you know, there was a story that I didn't link to today, but I read last night that there was a man who he had the update, and he was trying to communicate with his family, and nobody in his family had updated their phones except for his son.
So his son had updated his phone.
So he was able to talk to the son, and the son then was then able to get the message out.
So, you know, we're in sort of a transition period right now at the end of 2024.
It's wonderful that some people were able to use it, and the Carolinas and stuff like that.
But, you know, for 2025 and 2026, and in the future, I think this is gonna be an even bigger thing.
And the last thing I'll say is, and I mentioned this at the end of the post, that when the satellite communication via text message came out, I was really thinking it was gonna be for like, I know that you like to hike, Brett.
And I think of you like being in the mountains or in the woods hiking.
I always thought to myself, that's what the future is for.
You're off the grid because you're in the middle of nature.
But the irony is that even when you're in the middle of a city, a city that's devastated by a natural disaster, you can be off the grid in an urban area just because of the issues.
And that's when satellite is just as important if you're within a metropolitan area as it is if you're out in the middle of the woods or in a mountain somewhere.
So that was really interesting to me. - You know, I'm a huge fan of this.
We've talked about this several times, even when it first started coming out with like being able to text 911 or emergency personnel, because this isn't like full phone calls or anything.
But to me, it's just always been sort of that science fiction dream of like, why do I have to check the bars on whether or not I'm connected or not to an area with, you know, is my towers close by, whether I'm on Verizon versus AT&T.
I'm like, surely, surely, at some point, we're gonna have enough satellites floating around in the atmosphere that there's gonna be enough connectivity there.
And it's just kind of interesting to see this progression because we just talked about this as well.
Starlink, you know, is a company that's been around for a while.
I think this is an Elon Musk company, right? - It is, yeah. - Or X or whatever.
And you and I both know people that are sort of nomadic workers.
Like they work in their RVs around the country, whatever.
But as long as they have a connection, you know, an open view of the sky, they can work as if they were sitting in an urban area with a T1 connection, you know, to the internet.
And Starlink is doing this.
I think I mentioned this just a week or so ago that United just announced that for all of their planes, they're gonna give free wifi via Starlink, I think is in 2025 sometime.
And that to me is sort of another indicator of like, man, like we're just continuing to be able to do more and more without sort of like the land challenge of having the towers and, you know, the curvature of the earth and everything.
Anyway, so while this is devastating in this aspect of why people are being able to use it, I think it's fantastic.
I think I see there was a tweet here that you were talking about that somebody said the new iOS feature came in handy.
He was able to contact his son, but unfortunately no one else in the family had the latest iOS installed.
So I don't know if the lesson there is to go ahead, you know, we tell people, you don't have to immediately go from like 17 to 18 when it comes out, but hey, you know, sometimes it might be beneficial, especially on the Apple side.
I feel like, you know, we are so much more confident today, now being iOS 18, that we can say, go ahead and upgrade.
But it's just fantastic that people have been able to find this.
And I feel like that at some point in the near future, hopefully, very near future, that we will get to the point where we can do text messaging via satellite, and it'll be like the same that it is today.
We can send photos and videos and everything.
I know the technology has to creep a little bit further about that, but it was just really heartwarming to see that with all the devastation coming in this hurricane, and just the flooding that has been happening and everything around the country too, and there in the South, that there is still a way that people can communicate, and that's great. - Yeah, and communication is just so important after a disaster like this.
So, interesting. - Now there is a, I'll link to the support article here from Apple too, the like how to do it.
We've talked about this before, by the way, there is a way that you can do a test run. - Yeah, I've done it before, yeah. - Hold your iPhone up in the sky, and you can just see how this works.
I think it's built in.
I don't have the exact link here, but I'll make sure that we link to it, to where you can just go into the settings app, I believe, and you can say test the satellite function, and you can at least just see what it looks like, so that if you are in a situation where it is devastation, natural disaster, whatever the case may be, hiking and fell off the ledge, that you can at least know what it works, and so that you have a little bit of a heads up on some of that. - Good point. - Yeah, good stuff on there.
Speaking of iOS 18, there was a little tiny incremental bump of an update.
I went ahead and did my iPad and my iPhone today.
This is 18.0.1, just a few minor issues that were updated here, right, Jeff?
No big thing.
This isn't 18.1.
This is 18.0.1, right?
Minor upgrade.
We're looking for 18.1, hopefully maybe within the next week or so. - Well, it's funny that you say it's a minor upgrade, because of course you're correct, but for some people, it was very important.
I actually got an email from an attorney earlier this week, who said, "Why is nobody talking about the fact that he has the latest iPad, just like I do, the M4, and when iPadOS 18 first came out, I updated my iPad pretty much the first day, and it was fine."
But you may remember, this was in the news two weeks ago, that some people, when they updated the most recent iPads, it caused problems.
And so Apple pulled iOS 18 for an iPad.
And so people that had an M4, which is the latest and greatest iPad, people that were really into Apple technology, as you might imagine, if they did not upgrade successfully within that first day, they haven't been able to use iPad 18 for almost two weeks now.
And he was saying, "This is aggravating that his phone is on the new system, his iPad is not, nobody's talking about this, when is it gonna come out?"
And I told him, I was like, "Gosh, I just assumed that when Apple pulled it, they would fix it pretty soon."
Well, finally they have.
So it took about two weeks.
So this iOS 18.0.1, and the similar updates for the watch, and the iPad, and everything else, it's fixing bugs like that one, which was a big one for certain parts of the population, and others.
But if you already had iPad 18 or iOS 18, you're not gonna really notice much changes.
It's some bug fixes, it's fixing some security issues here and there.
So it's just minor things around the edges.
Apple does this all the time.
If you have updated, you should definitely, if you update it to 18, you should definitely go to 18.0.1, because that's gonna fix some of those things that they didn't discover until it first came out. - And it's real quick, by the way.
I mean, I think I just jumped on my phone and my iPad when I saw that you linked to it today, and maybe it took seven minutes, five minutes, something like that.
It's very quick.
Just make sure, like, I remember my iPad was like 13% battery and it gives me the message, like, you have to at least be 20% battery in order for this upgrade to apply.
So I always recommend that people plug it in or just have it plugged in and be charging when you are doing this update, but it'll go pretty quick. - Yeah, don't forget your watch too, because they also mentioned that there was some battery management issues with some of the Apple watches.
I had not noticed it myself, but battery life is always important for an Apple watch, unless you have an Ultra.
And so you definitely wanna get it on all your devices. - I have to say just quickly, I was drooling over your brand new Apple watch.
We talked about that last week.
Since I got to see you in New Orleans this week, it was just really great to see that in person, which was nice.
When you do upgrade to iOS 18, hopefully many of you are.
If you haven't yet, if you've been holding out, I think upgrading from 17, whatever it was, to 18, not a problem.
At this point, wouldn't you say, Jeff, go ahead and feel free to upgrade to 18.
And then of course, upgrade to 18.0.1, once you do that.
Great article that you linked to though, "12 Hidden iOS 18 Features That Nobody Is Talking About."
I think I've seen some people talking about some of these, but a couple of these were really nice.
Even the first one here, "Change App Icons to Widgets."
I had not played around with that, where you can tap and hold on an icon, an app icon, and then you can switch it to a widget.
I hadn't had a time to play around with that, but that's just the first one in this list of 12 other ones that I thought were really good.
So thanks for linking to this today. - Yeah, HowToGeek did a good job of coming up with some more secure ones.
Another one that I had not noticed, and this sounds tiny, but actually it's a real thing, that every once in a while, you might have, set up your iPhone and then have a countdown timer so that you can get into a picture.
Now, one great way to do that is with your Apple Watch to remotely control the iPhone.
But if you're not doing that, if you're just setting it on the side of a counter and then jumping into a picture, it used to be that you could either have, it was I think a two second timer, or it was a three second timer, which is not quite enough time to jump into the picture, or a 10 second timer, which, you know, I know 10 seconds doesn't sound very long, but it can seem like forever when you're standing there.
So now they have a five second option.
And again, we laugh about this because it seems so minor, but I think five seconds is about the right amount of time.
So, you know, that was a nice little trick.
So that just tells you, even though there are some huge marquee features on iOS 18, like, you know, potentially saving your life with satellite communications. - Yes. - There also have these tiny, tiny, tiny little things that can just make quality of life a little bit better.
So. - Yeah, really good.
And so I'll make sure that we link to just those.
I mean, some of these weren't the, you know, the highlight of anything, but it was just good to know, because we're still finding, I mean, I'm still finding out so many things about iOS 18.
We talked about this when we got together.
It's like, I hadn't had a chance to customize my control center.
I haven't had a chance to like, move some other things around.
I mean, my phone for the most part, looks almost exactly the way that it did with iOS 17.
And it just, I haven't had time to change everything.
So it's just neat to have some of these reminders of like, here's some things that we can actually go in and change.
Now that's 18, 18.0.1.
We've talked about the fact that 18.1 is gonna come out pretty soon.
And we are really excited about this one.
Mostly because if I could just oversimplify it a little bit, this is where we're gonna start to see some, some, a few little hints of the Apple intelligence coming out.
Another great article from MacRumors you link to about 15 new things that your phone will be able to do when iOS 18.1 comes out.
And I gotta tell you, I've just looking through this, got me even a little bit more excited today. - Yeah, and it's gonna be this month, by the way.
I mean, Apple has made that clear that the first Apple intelligence, which means 18.1, is gonna be out in October.
They've announced that in their commercials and everything else.
So we do know it's gonna come out this month.
Now, maybe it's gonna be October 31st, I don't know, but we can definitely start to get ready for it 'cause it's gonna be here soon.
Like you say, the big things, well, before getting to it, 'cause you happened to just scroll by it, one of the things when you and I were talking to each other earlier this week, I was showing you the camera control button and you asked me, oh, can you also take it, can you switch it to the selfie mode when you're using the camera control button?
And what I told you was, well, today you can't, but it's coming soon.
And sure enough, as you're showing right here on the screen, that's coming in 18.1.
So within a few weeks, if you press the camera button to open up the camera app on your phone, you'll then be able to use your finger to switch to the, to take a selfie.
Otherwise though, I think the big changes are gonna be a lot of these artificial intelligence things.
And this is where, you know, I have some personal biases here.
A lot of the AI that Apple is coming out with at first, of course, they're gonna do the low hanging fruit.
And so almost by definition, it's the stuff that doesn't interest me that much.
You know, things like summarizing your emails and stuff like that.
I just have, I have some suspicions as to how useful that's gonna be.
And the writing stuff, I know that it can be helpful.
You know, I use Grammarly.
I mean, I definitely understand the idea of having something that's smart to help you with writing, but the way that Apple, at least from what I've seen, and I haven't tried the beta yet, but from what I have seen of how Apple, like you can take some text and you can click one button to make it more professional and another button to make it more friendly.
You know, I'm sure it's gonna help some people.
I don't know that I'm gonna use it that much.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I mean, I will say that.
Maybe once I actually start using it, I'll think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I do have some questions about that.
But there are some things that are coming that do interest me.
One of them is this creating a memory movie from a short description where you basically use the photos app.
And instead of saying, you know, I have like a trip that I create a memory movie from or something like that, you can actually describe something like, you know, my kids and I, or maybe you have to actually name some specific people, you know, Joe and Mary and I in the snow over the years or something like that.
And then it can say, okay, I know who those people are.
I know what snow is.
I understand over the years means it's not just one time period, but you know, and so it will then use your description to create a little memory movie.
I think that could be really fun and powerful.
And I look forward to people coming up with really cool sentences that they use to create a memory movie that I'm like, oh, I might want to modify that and use that myself.
And so that's one of them. - That's good. - And then the other one that's coming.
And again, I know this is something that we've had in Photoshop for years and years and years and years, but it can be very useful.
Sometimes you take that photo and you didn't even realize when you took the photo that somebody is in the background.
In fact, literally, Brett, I saw this the other day.
So when you left New Orleans, one of the last things we did and we're saying goodbye is your wife took a picture of you and me together.
And then I looked at that picture afterwards and there was somebody just to the right of us that was getting into an elevator.
I mean, not that it's distracting, but it just occurred to me, you know, what I could do is use this feature of the 18.1 just to sort of use my finger and cover up that person and have them out of the photo so that it's just you and me in the, now you can debate, is that change?
Yeah, you see what I'm talking about?
'Cause I sent you the picture, I texted it to you.
You know, is it really that distraction to have a person on the side?
Probably not.
And am I altering reality by removing that person?
You know, who knows?
You can make your own decision, but this very simple, and we used to always call this Photoshop.
You would Photoshop somebody out of the picture.
You no longer are gonna need a sophisticated program like Photoshop to do this.
Just within your iPhone, you'll be able to use the Photos app, say this little thing on the side, get them out of there.
And you know, we're standing in front, we're at the beach and there's a beautiful picture of you and your wife on the sand at the beach, but there's this one guy that happened to be in the water doing something goofy in the background.
Just get rid of him, you know, get rid of him.
I think that's gonna be something.
So those are two parts of Apple Intelligence that I think are gonna be pretty useful, at least for me.
And you know, other people are gonna like some of the other features, but this is again, really just getting our toe in the water because 18.1 is gonna have the first round of Apple Intelligence.
And then before the end of the year, I'm guessing we're gonna get 18.2 with even more interesting things.
For example, the one feature that I'm really looking forward to, and I don't know if this will be in 0.2 or another one, is the one that's in one of the Apple commercials where you can ask your phone a question.
And because your phone understands what's in your emails and your messages and your contacts and your calendar, it will be able to say something.
You know, the example in the commercial they have is, you know, who is this person that I had dinner with when we were at such and such a restaurant?
And it could say, oh, that's John, because three and a half years ago, you and John had dinner together at Commander's Palace and like, oh yeah, okay, that's who that is.
So that's a feature that's even more sophisticated. - And then you can say, hi, John, like you knew exactly who it was. - Exactly, oh, how can you forget John, exactly.
So that's coming in the future.
You know, we're gonna have more and more sophisticated Apple Intelligence, i.e.
AI features in the future.
18.1 is just gonna be the first step.
Some of it, not that exciting, but some of it could be interesting.
And the nice things is we're gonna have it in our hands this month, you know, pretty soon. - Yeah, I find it interesting that the two things you zoned in on were like, had to do with the photos and the memories, which I completely agree with you.
But I gotta tell you, maybe I am a little bit more, slightly more excited or anxious to see some of this summarization tools, I guess is the way that I kind of aggregate them all together.
I agree with you though.
I have a little bit of hesitation, like I wanna see exactly how it works.
And I feel like even today with some of the other AI summarization tools, Jeff, that I've been involved in with CoPilot or, you know, anything else, I feel like I'm still hesitant.
Like this is a great summary, but I wanna make sure that the summary is accurate.
So how do I do that? - That's my issue. - I have to go read the entire article at that point.
So it's like, I don't trust it yet, right?
I think that's where some of this balance are.
And again, I've used several other tools to do the summarization.
And so I'm interested to see if Apple Intelligence is any better, any different, how it goes.
Some of the things in here is about rewriting your texts, just like you were talking about, if it's a friendly mode or professional mode, summarizing long emails.
I kind of like that.
Like people sometimes send long emails and sometimes I have to set time aside to actually go through, read all the details and everything.
I just wanna see like, is this good, bad?
Is this something I need to act on right now? - So let me interrupt right there before you move on.
That particular feature, I guess for some type of emails, sure, if it's something not that important. - Some types, exactly. - One of the things that drill into your head in law school, I mean, you know this too, is that somebody might give you a fact pattern.
And again, I'm talking like a lawyer here, but someone may give you like, here's seven sentences.
And the first six sentences may say all these things.
And then in the seventh sentence, there's this one little detail that you're like, oh, well, that's gonna change everything. - That changes the whole thing, right? - As a lawyer, we're sort of taught to, you gotta consider all those facts.
My fear is that a AI service, a gender of AI service, like ChatGPT or Apple's intelligence is gonna say, oh, well, since six out of the seven sentences are talking about the rain in Spain, my summary is just to talk about the rain in Spain.
And let's leave out the part at the bottom where the person says, actually, I'm not gonna be in Spain, I'm gonna be in France, which is the most important detail.
So this is my fear, is that if you don't read the email, you miss important details.
But again, if it's summarizing an email that's not from a client to an attorney, but if it's summarizing an email from a vendor or something like that, maybe then I'm like, okay, the gist of it is enough.
But that's my trepidation.
We shall see. - That's an excellent point.
Another one quickly, summarize multiple message notifications.
I like that.
Since I was in New Orleans, I've been sort of on vacation mode.
And so I've got a ton of notifications.
And I'm like, do I have to scroll through everything?
So I like that.
And the last one, I gotta be honest with you, I'm excited about this, is summarizing web articles.
There's so, I don't know why that to me just excites me more.
I feel like we kind of have that now.
There's other services that you can even use right now, but it can be built in to the reader mode.
So in a webpage, you go into reader mode.
So sometimes these long, you know, I'm thinking like Federico Vecchieti, you know, review or some kind, which again, I love reading the entire thing because I like to see all the little details, but in some aspects, I like maybe to start with a quick summary.
So anyway, I am excited to see how some of these summarization, I'm not saying that I'm, you know, completely bought in yet, but obviously everything along these lines is like, wait to see how it's gonna be.
But I am a little bit excited.
But anyway, thanks for linking to that.
I know we're waiting for iOS 18.1 to get out and hopefully it'll be soon.
And when it does, I know you will be using it on your brand new iPhone 16 Pro Max, which I know you had to wipe my drool off of your watch.
You also had to wipe it off of your iPhone 16 Pro Max.
It was beautiful, but you came out with your full review this past week, Jeff, and it is great.
I mean, obviously I knew it was gonna be pretty good just the way you've been talking about it, but as you are prone to do, you did great comparisons of like some of the pictures and the zoomed in pictures on how it compares with the old version of that.
Anyway, great stuff overall on the 16 Pro Max review here. - Two things I'm gonna point out.
One is I started off talking about the slightly larger screen on the Pro models, which was significant to me mainly because when you look through, I mean, I sort of went back to the beginnings of the iPhone.
And when you look over history, it's not that often that Apple changes screen size.
You know, it happens every couple of years.
And so it's significant.
It's one of the things.
And over time it adds up.
I mean, anytime, if you find an original iPhone or an iPhone four or five, and somebody uses one of those, you look at it and you almost laugh.
'Cause you're like, how could that be?
You know, that thing is so tiny compared to what we use today.
But it does sort of slowly change over time.
So for people that like seeing more things on the screen, it's the biggest one yet.
And that's significant.
So it's worth talking about.
And I also love the fact that it's got fantastic battery life.
But the real fun thing to talk about with the new iPhones, and this is true for all of the models, whether you get the Pro or the non-Pro, the big one, the regular size one, is camera control.
And it's a lot of fun.
I have been enjoying using it more and more.
And in fact, one of the things that I mentioned in the news post today is there's a podcast that I linked to, which was called the Design Tangents Podcast, which wasn't a podcast, I was familiar with it before.
It was linked to by John Gruber.
And they interviewed these two people from Apple, Johnny Manzari and Rich Ding.
When I wrote this last night, I said that I haven't read it yet.
I actually, I haven't listened to it yet.
I actually listened to it this morning when I was getting ready for work and on my way into work.
And it's a fun podcast because these people work in Apple interface.
In fact, one of them has been working on the camera for the iPhone since the very first iPhone.
And when they were talking about the camera control button, I was thinking of it as let's add a button to the phone.
But what they said is where they actually came at it from, the original question was, what can we do to reduce the time that it takes to take a picture so that you don't miss those special moments?
And they talked about like way back when, before the iPhone and stuff like that, it used to be that if you were gonna take pictures at like a family event or something, you would have your camera, maybe it was a fancy SLR camera, maybe it was a snap and shoot.
But pictures were often like, okay, everybody get together.
Now let's all, it's sort of that this mentality of the days of film where you would only have, you know, 12 or 24 pictures.
So every picture was special and you would actually have this, you know, intentionality to taking a pictures, which is good.
You get some good pictures that way.
But what's even more fun is when you have the sort of candid shots or just the, you just take a picture 'cause something's happening.
And, you know, with the old days of, you know, the big phone it would sort of take a while to get set up and get the light on and everything and get everything ready to take the picture.
And what they said their goal was to reduce the time from you sensing this could be a camera worthy movement because my son or my daughter is doing something cute to taking the picture.
And so with that goal in mind, that's what led them to the camera control because it was like the fastest thing would be if you could just pick up your camera with, you know, with one hand, you're pressing this button and you're instantly taking the picture.
And I thought that was sort of interesting is, you know, what's, how did they, how did they come at it?
How did they get there?
But they also pointed out that like, they didn't wanna have something obnoxious.
They wanted you to, if you're just holding your phone, not taking a picture, they don't wanna have some big obnoxious button that's getting in the way.
And so they said they worked really hard that even though it's like different materials, you know, it feels very smooth as you put your finger on the side of it.
It's not obnoxious to have the camera control there or anything else.
That was one feature.
Another thing they mentioned is that when you, you know, you can, you press down once and it launches the camera as I've just done.
And then you, you can either push a tiny bit to control, like, what am I gonna set?
Am I gonna change my cameras?
We talked about this last week.
Am I gonna change my aperture and stuff like that?
And then you press the big way to take a picture.
They pointed out that both times, even though haptics are involved the first time, it actually is sensing you pressing the button down.
Let me think about how to describe this.
I was trying to describe, in fact, I was describing it to you when you and I were sitting together.
What's the difference between taking a picture and getting into the mode where you change the, go from changing the zoom to changing something else.
And I was, at the time I was saying, well, when you're just changing modes, you don't actually press it.
It's just sort of haptic.
But what they said on the podcast is actually, it does, it is actually a physical press, but just like a micron.
It's the tiniest of presses that sense.
And once they said that, I'm like, that makes sense because I've been playing around with it this morning before our podcast.
It's like pressing the tiniest, tiniest amount to get into that mode changing mode and then a more substantial press to actually take the picture.
But anyway, that's just getting into the nitty gritty details, the big picture.
And what's exciting is that it is, it does accomplish the goal that they set out.
It is a faster way to go from, I want to take a picture to I have taken a picture and that's really nice.
And then as a secondary thing, the idea that you can change modes while you're still having your camera in that take a picture mode so that you don't have to take it away from your face and hold it again.
That's really like, I like, and I've enjoyed it more and more.
So the camera control, it totally changes your mindset.
In fact, you told me this week and you were so right that because I'm used to taking pictures with my iPhone the other way, 'cause I used to press the volume up button where to take a picture, which meant that the cameras were down here at the bottom of the phone.
But nowadays with the camera control, my phone is flipped.
So the cameras are at the top.
And if I'm not careful, my fingers are in the lens.
And I take these pictures where you can see that.
So I need to get muscle memory of no, no, no, take, don't put your fingers in front of the lenses, take them away.
So, but I'm learning and two weeks in, I'm getting better at it.
But I have no doubt that once I completely internalize these features, this is an improvement.
So if you have an iPhone 16 this year, you're taking advantage of it.
If you're not gonna upgrade this year, at some point in the future, you will upgrade and then you'll have the camera control button.
And it really, it does what you want it to do.
It makes it faster to take pictures, which means that you capture those special moments, whether it's a photo or whether it's a video, 'cause you can just hold down and start instantly taking video.
And it makes a difference.
It really is nice. - I'm gonna call it, you have to do the pinky lift.
If you raise all your fingers on there.
You know, just real quick, I find that fascinating.
Like that's the reason they came to the camera button.
'Cause I can only imagine Jeff, we talked about this, that there had to be internal arguments in Apple that people would say, why would you add another button when we've got multiple ways that you can quickly get to the camera, right?
You've got the camera button on the lock screen.
You can just simply swipe right to left on the lock screen and the camera comes up.
And I can only imagine that they would argue internally.
Like there's already easy ways to get to the camera, but just even doing it, you know, as you said, you were so kind to let me touch your camera.
Just even using it for just a minute, I could just tell, oh yeah, totally easy.
And actually I remember asking about the selfie button because that's my wife and I were walking around New Orleans I would have to do exactly what we talked about.
I would go into the camera mode, then I had to pull the camera down, tap the little like camera, I want the front face of the camera.
So I had to like get it down, tap the button, make sure it was correct.
And then I raise it up again.
And it's like, if I just had the ability to just simply tap it with my finger and then I could get into that selfie mode, that would be so great.
And then I could capture it so much quicker.
So now I'm so glad you mentioned that podcast and I can't wait to listen to it as well, because I just, I'm so glad that they understand and realize this is an eye camera that can make some phone calls as well.
And it's really cool that, anything else you wanna highlight in your review?
I mean, it's so good.
And I know people can just read through it. - No, I think that's it.
The camera control was the other exciting thing for me.
Yeah. - Well, you continue to stay upgraded to the iPhone Pro Max and one of our favorite writers about Macs and iPhones decided I'm gonna downgrade this year.
It was actually fun.
I love this little story because this is Federico Vecchici at Mac Stories.
He always gets the Pro Max version and apparently he got it this year as well.
But then it just is interesting to see how he writes about this.
He thought, maybe I could be happy with the non-Pro version of the iPhone this year.
And it seems like he's continuing to be happy with that little, I call it a downgrade.
He may not call it that, but I do.
But I'm just so glad that a downgrade is an upgrade for him, it sounds like. - Yeah.
I mean, read his article for all of his reasons, but I think the two big ones is, first of all, he likes the case.
You know, the Pro cases are always sort of boring colors.
I have the one that's sort of black.
There's one that's white.
But if you want the vibrant colors, such as that vibrant blue that he has on this year's phone, you have to get the non-Pro models to get the fun colors.
So that's one advantage.
But the other thing that he noted is, and I mentioned this a few minutes ago, that Apple does not often increase the size of its devices, but the iPhone 16 Pro Max, it's the biggest iPhone that Apple's ever released.
And Federico said for him, it might be a little too big.
And so if you get the iPhone 16 Plus, it's still the larger size, but it's just not quite as large as the Pro Max.
And that little difference, I can definitely understand.
I mean, for me, I was worried about that too.
And I think that this is an okay size for me, but I will tell you, Brett, and we'll see if I eat my words in future years, I don't think I would want to get much bigger than this with a phone in my hand.
So if Apple does, three years from now, make the iPhone bigger still, I might do the same thing in Federico.
Maybe not switch from the Pro to the non-Pro, but I might switch from the Max to the non-Max, just to get it down a little bit.
So I do understand his reasonings on that, and obviously it's all for him.
Now, for me, again, the camera being so important, which is why you joke and call it the iCamera instead of the iPhone, I love that 5X telephoto.
I really, I loved it last year.
It was the reason that I got the Pro Max.
I love it this year.
It's, I mean, you truly take substantially different pictures when you have the Zoom thing.
And so I would not want to give that up.
And so for that reason alone, that would be a reason for me not to do the switch.
And there's some other advantages too.
It's a nicer camera, nicer video, and stuff like that with the Pro models.
So, but to each his own.
And the fact that a really pro user, like Federico Vatici of Mac Stories, for him to say that actually the non-Pro model is right for me, I think that just proves that for everybody, maybe the non-Pro model is right for you too.
And maybe the Max is right for you.
Maybe the non-Max is right for you.
You just have to decide.
There really is a reason that Apple has four different options.
You don't know which one of those you're gonna be.
And you might consider yourself, I'm an Uber geek when it comes to the iPhone, or maybe you consider yourself, I know nothing when it comes to the iPhone, but that doesn't necessarily answer the question of which model you should get. - As usually, as I am prone to do, I say, go to an Apple store and look at them.
I mean, that's what's great about an actual Apple store is that you can pick them up, you can touch them, you can see how heavy.
I'm like, I was so surprised how light your Pro Max was, Jeff.
Like, I mean, it's lighter than my Pro regular, 15 Pro.
Anyway, just picking them up and touching them and flipping them around is great.
And I do like the fact that he talks about, Federico has some very colorful tattoos on his hand and he likes that.
The color of the iPhone regular is so beautiful compared with his color tattoos on there. - You gotta match your tattoos, yeah. - I know, exactly.
And the last thing I would just quickly say, this is one of my, I call it a complaint, but it was just more of an observation.
There really isn't a whole lot of differences between the 16 regular and the Pro models.
I mean, again, I know the camera, I know some of the processing, but it's like, they both have the camera control, they both have the action button now.
From a hardware perspective, it's very, very minimal differences.
So I can certainly see where he came down to go to the regular model there, which I thought was great.
Another thing quickly, let's go to the Vision, just real quickly, because there was an app that you have talked about over and over called Juno, which is a way that you can watch YouTube videos, 'cause YouTube doesn't actually have an app for your Vision Pro.
And I hope that if people have a Vision Pro, they were able to download it, because Juno is no-mo right now, apparently. - Yeah, yeah.
And this is a bigger story, even if you don't have a Vision Pro.
As I noted, this developer, this is the second time this has happened to him.
He made an app called Apollo, which people loved, which was a Reddit client.
It was a better way to use Reddit.
And then Reddit decided, you know what?
We're gonna charge you as a developer so much to use this app that it basically would have charged you out of existence.
So he had to shut down the Apollo app.
And so now this is Juno.
If you have an Apple Vision Pro, watching videos on it is a very big use of an Apple Vision Pro.
But if you wanna watch a YouTube video, you have to do it within a web browser, which works, it's fine, but it's not ideal.
What you really want is no borders.
And a native app is, we all know that native apps can be better for viewing content than a web browser.
And so it makes sense to have a native app.
Juno did it.
And he did it in a way that I thought was very fair to YouTube because he didn't strip out the advertisements.
He didn't do anything else.
You saw all of your collections in YouTube, you saw in the Juno app.
It was basically just like as if YouTube itself had made a native app.
This is what they would do.
But unfortunately YouTube told him that, or not told him, they told Apple, this infringes on us.
And I wouldn't have a problem with this, Brett, if they had their own app.
I remember back in the day, there used to be a third-party app for using Facebook.
The name of it is, gosh, it's slipping my mind, but it was a more sleek interface for Facebook.
And Facebook said, you know what?
We have our own app on the iPhone.
We don't want another app.
So that's fine.
Actually, now that I'm saying that out loud, Facebook itself actually, I think purchased it.
And they were actually selling it as an alternative way to do Facebook, but then they just had their one app.
But if YouTube had a native app for the Apple Vision Pro, then I wouldn't have a problem with this, 'cause then you can use the YouTube app.
Now, if it was missing features that Juno had, that would make me upset.
But I really liked Juno.
For example, just one week ago, I was talking about how you could view immersive 360 degree video.
You can't do that currently with the web browser.
And so now that Juno is off, I still have it installed, so I can continue to use it.
But if somebody were to get an Apple Vision Pro tomorrow, but again, I know so few people have Apple Vision Pros.
I don't wanna focus on that.
The real focus is that when you have these big companies and then have a small developer that says, "I have a better mousetrap."
Like, come on, are they really infringing upon your profits and your individuality?
You know, why not let people, you know, use your platforms in different ways?
I really don't see how YouTube was harmed by this.
I wish they had not made this decision.
But you know, it's their product. - I feel like they could either provide guidelines to say, if you're gonna create independent apps, here's what you have to follow.
Just to talk about what you were saying.
Make sure the ads are there.
Make sure you're not stripping everything out.
I feel like they could either do that, or instead of just shutting them down, just buy them out.
Like, give this developer something that like, you know, for all the work that they put in.
And then either, you know, I mean, at that point, they would probably kill the app, which would make me sad as well.
But it's like, come on, like, don't just go around, you know, do an in run around, like go to the Apple and say, shut it down.
I mean, like, these are people that are passionate about your services, right?
He wouldn't make Juno for YouTube if he wasn't passionate about getting people access to this.
So yeah, it just makes me, and I remember Apollo.
Apollo was an excellent, excellent app.
And it just really infuriated me even back then.
But anyway, at least you have Juno.
Enjoy it while you can, Jeff.
That's a good thing.
Okay, let's talk about AirPods quickly.
Not just simply another review.
I thought this was an excellent article from Macworld by John Moltz, where he's literally talking about, I've heard this many times from people, the AirPods Pro just don't seem to fit their ears exactly.
Like in other words, they have problems with it falling out.
They've tried the small, the medium, the large, little, you know, the adapters on there, and nothing really seems to work.
And I thought John does a great job here in this article of just saying, hey, maybe try the regular AirPods then, because we recognize that not all ears are the same.
I just thought this was a good angle that he brought to it.
Yeah, when Apple came out with the new AirPods 4 this year, one of the things that they actually talked about was the fact that they studied lots of different people's ears and ear shapes.
And it's a subtle change, but it is a change.
The shape of the AirPod 4 is different from the AirPod 3, and Apple was trying to make them more universally acceptable.
And of course, there's not gonna be any one size, no one size fits all, as they say.
And so likewise, even though Apple tries to make the every AirPod more accessible to as many people as possible, it's not gonna always be right for everybody.
In fact, even for me myself, Brad, I use the AirPods Pro every day.
I love them, I'm wearing them right now to listen to your voice.
But I don't use the silicone tips that Apple provides with them.
I use like these foam tips that I've purchased from a company for years.
I've written about it before on iPhone JD.
I just find that makes it more comfortable for me.
I'm glad that I have that option to customize it.
But what if I didn't have that option?
What if the only ear tips I could use were the silicone ones that made by Apple?
Would I continue to say the AirPods Pro were perfect?
Or maybe I would be, you know, so just if you have used AirPods in the past and they don't feel quite right to you, and if the AirPod Pro doesn't feel quite right to you, you might wanna try a pair.
You know, one of the things, another post I had this week, by the way, Brett, was that you can try before you buy at Apple and that Apple has a very generous return policy.
But this might be an example of it.
With an AirPod, if you buy the AirPod 4, you have two weeks to try it out and to see if it works for your ear.
If it doesn't, then return it.
But it might be the best overall AirPod for you.
So you never know until you try it. - Yeah, here's your comply foam Apple AirPods earbud tips.
Is this the same company you're still using? - Yep, that's it. - Yeah, okay.
This was great.
In fact, my wife has said the same thing about the AirPods Pro and she tried these.
I don't know if she kept the foam, the comply foams, anyway, but she liked it because she was like, well, Jeff Richardson suggested this is a good one to try because she had the issues that were falling out.
And you know, by the way, I meant to talk about that quickly and I just would love to mention that you wrote about your Apple Watch, how should we say it, your return saga?
The generous 14-day return policy.
I just wanna highlight this story quickly that you wrote about because I remember talking to you over these last couple of months as you were waiting for the new Apple Watch to come out and you kept trying different versions of the Apple Watch and then returning them after.
Now, I realize you've already got comments from people saying, hey, this doesn't seem like it's only the total up and up, but obviously I followed you in this journey over the last couple of months and it was perfectly fine because it's not like you tried to like get more money back.
You brought everything back exactly the way it was meant to be.
And we have often talked about this, that Apple has this 14-day return policy, no questions asked, and it's just great that you did a great job of kind of reviewing all of your personal experience and exactly what happened.
And I think it's good just to highlight this because I tell people all the time, they say, well, I don't know if I want the small iPad or the big iPad.
And I'm like, well, go and get one.
As long as you make sure you return everything in pristine condition with all the cables and everything, Apple will take it back and then you can get the other one if you wanted to.
So I'm glad you wrote about this.
And it's particularly true this year for the Apple Watch because Apple is selling two excellent Apple Watches right now.
The Apple Watch Series 10 that I have is a great watch.
The Apple Watch Ultra, which you have, is a great watch.
And whether the Ultra 2 or the Watch 10 is best for you, I can't really tell you that.
You know, you might need to try.
You might need to try the Ultra like I did to say, you know what, it's a little too big.
Or maybe you think it's not too big and it's perfect for you and then you have the great battery life.
Or maybe you try the Series 10 and say, that's the right size for me.
So this is a time where I don't know how to give someone advice on whether the Ultra or the Series 10 is best for them.
So you might wanna sort of go with your gut, get the one that you think you like.
And if you change your mind within the first week or so, it's okay, you can bring it back and you can get the other one. - You call it Apple's generous 14 day return policy.
Apparently one of the Apple employees told you that it's known as the unofficial Apple loan program. - I thought that was so funny when he said that. - That's good.
All right, quickly let's go back to the Apple AirPods and another where are you at segment.
We talked about the where you're at with the hurricane, but this was a little bit more on the funny side.
If you have AirPods, make sure that you put them in the console of your Ferrari, because it could just happen that that's the way that the police can find your Ferrari when it gets stolen.
I thought this was great.
Like it wasn't just AirTags this time, they were able to track down a stolen Ferrari, where is this in Connecticut, because their AirPods were in the console of the Ferrari, which I just think is great. - I think this is the second time this year that you and I have talked about a story where it wasn't an AirTag in the car, which is what you would assume, right?
It wasn't an AirTag that they tracked it down, it was someone's AirPods that happened to be in the car.
And of course, if my car was a Ferrari that cost over half a million dollars, which by the way, Brett, my car will never be a Ferrari that costs over half a million dollars.
But if it was, I would probably have two AirTags in there.
Maybe three, certainly would not be relying upon my- - You could spend the extra 29, yeah. - Exactly.
So I'll get the four pack from Amazon and put all four of them in there in four different corners of the car.
But yeah, but it's great that the police were able to track it down.
And then as just sort of like a little twist of Apple-ness to it, the fact that the bad guy jumps out of the car and leaves his iPhone in there.
And so that's how they were able to confirm who he was.
So he sort of got double hit by Apple.
Not only was he tracked using Find My, but he also was, they figured out who he was.
So that was funny.
Hey, while we're talking about sort of where you at stories, can I have another follow-up here?
Which was, again, when you and I were talking on Wednesday night, I was mentioning to you that my Find My wasn't working on my iPhone in that I could see other members of my family, but when my wife was trying to see where I was, it wasn't working.
And I found the solution.
I had did every setting and everything else, but what it turned out is what I had to do was I had to go into iCloud on my iPhone, log out of iCloud, which gives you all these warning messages about logging out of iCloud. - It does, it does. - Then log back in and logging back in, like logging out and logging in iCloud is a little bit of a pain because you've got to re-put in your credit card, Apple Pay, you got to reset up a few things.
It didn't take me that long, but it does, it's a little bit of a pain, but that process of logging out of iCloud and then logging back in again, fixed my Find My and so now if my wife wants to know where I am, she can find me.
If I want to know what she is, I can find her.
So that was a solution, but that's just, you know, it was one of the last things I thought of and sure enough, that was the fix, so. - You know, I thought about that when we were talking about this, 'cause I think I was telling you to like turn off Find My and turn it back on, but I know that probably the next step you would have to do was to like log out of iCloud and log back in.
I've done that maybe twice over the last few years, Jeff, and I hate it, I hate it.
'Cause it gives you all these warnings and it's like, I don't wanna lose anything.
Like what if something gets screwed up when I log out and I log back in?
Now, it's not that bad, I understand, but it's exactly what you just said.
I have to like re-enable all of my, some of the settings, not everything, but I have to re-enable some of the settings.
You do have to add all of your credit cards back into the wallet and it's like, I've got everything set up, I don't want to do that.
So I'm glad that it worked out for you.
I mean, I've done this before, I think, I can't remember what it was.
There was some kind of a setting that was just so annoying to me on my phone.
I couldn't like update the Apple wallet, something like that.
And it's like, that was the last ditch effort and it worked, but I just, I hated the step of it.
Like you said, it's just too much of a pain.
I hate that.
Okay, we need to actually create a second- - Let's jump to it. - For like Apple TV.
Yeah, you wanna do that?
Well, I'm just saying, you talked about "Wolves", we've talked about this movie with Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
Apparently it's the most watched show on Apple TV ever.
That was good 'cause I always like how you talk about some of these things.
And then thanks to you, I had the most bone chilling experience this morning watching this little trailer from a movie that apparently is coming to Apple TV+.
It's with Billy Crystal.
Yay, happy, fun.
I wanna laugh out loud.
And so you said, there was a little warning you put into your little mention here.
And I'm like, okay, well, it can't be that bad.
It's Billy Crystal.
And I got so scared watching this trailer.
The movie is called "Before" and it's like a Billy Crystal I have never seen before.
And I'm not even sure that I really wanna, he does not meet Sally in this one and it does not go well.
Very, very serious.
By the way, it's not a movie, it's a limited series.
So I think it's gonna be like an episode, sort of limited show, but I think just something of one season.
But yeah, it's always interesting when you see an actor that you know 100% for a dramatic role and suddenly they're in a comedy or vice versa, when you know somebody really just as a comedic actor and then they show up in a very serious role.
That almost makes it even more bone chilling than it would have been otherwise.
So I look forward to this one.
I think this one comes out next month, if I remember correctly.
So yeah. - Yeah, I don't know if it had that.
Oh, "Before" premieres October 25th.
Yeah, so that's the end.
Hopefully we'll have 18.1 by then, but you can watch it.
You can watch it on your Vision Pro, Jeff, and you can see how it goes on that.
All right, in the know.
As I said, I am still finding out every little tiny detail of iOS 18.
And one of the main things, and I'm just doing this this past week because we are in New Orleans, we're taking a bunch of pictures of all kinds of stuff.
And I usually also do several screenshots on my phone.
Typically it's because it's like a sign or if I'm doing, like I have a receipt on my phone, right?
I go to Starbucks and I got a receipt.
I'll take a screenshot of that just so that I have it for later if I need to upload it for business expense or something.
Or there's sometimes that I'm just on a website and I wanted to capture something.
So I've got a ton of screenshots in all of my other photos.
Well, in iOS 18 now, 'cause this photos app is quite different, I'm still getting used to it all around.
But if you scroll into your photos and scroll down just a little bit, at the very bottom, you'll have this little circle in the bottom left corner that has an arrow going up and an arrow going down, which is a little of an odd button, I think.
But you can think of it as how do I want to sort my photos?
And this is similar in the files app, they have something similar.
But if you tap that little up and down arrow, there is a way you can sort by recently added or you can sort by date captured.
That's great, that's always kind of been there.
But if you go down to something called view options, if you go there, there are two things at the bottom.
You can show or elect not to show screenshots or photos that are shared with you.
Now, I typically like to see the photos shared with me, but many times in my photo roll, I still call it my photo roll.
I don't wanna see all those screenshots that I have.
So you can just tap that, uncheck screenshots and voila.
All those screenshots are still there, you just do not see them in the mix of all of your other photos.
Because a lot of times it'll just kind of get me off.
I'm like, why is that?
I know there was a reason that I took a screenshot of that webpage or that receipt or something on the screen, but I don't wanna see that with my other happy photos of my kids or my wife and I's were eating a lot of oysters in New Orleans.
And so it's like, I could just quickly just tag that off.
And you can just simply tap on that up and down arrow again, and you can toggle the screenshots back on if you wanna see them.
Or I guess you could just create a photo album of them as well, right?
So that you could just go to a specific photo album, and you can just see the screenshots there.
But anyway, that's my little tip today.
I'm finding out these little tiny differences in here that really can make a big difference.
I am starting to, the photos app is growing on me very well.
I have to say, I'm enjoying it.
I just feel like a little lost sometimes because I'm like, well, that's not what I normally see there, but I know there's ways that I can customize it.
And I'm just kind of learning a little bit more as we go along. - Yeah, great tip.
And that's what I wanted to sort of build off of today.
I mean, I agree with you.
I think of screenshots as a different type of, that's more of a technical thing that I'm using for something versus a photograph, which is like a memory of something.
And my mind does think of them separately.
You just mentioned at the end there, you could create a special folder for screenshots.
You actually don't have to create it.
It's already there.
The iPhone has, when you look on your iPhone under all the different things you can do in photos, one of them is called media types.
And one of the media types is screenshots.
And you can like move it to the top.
So it's one of your first ones.
But so you already have, like when you want to see the screenshots, go and see the screenshots, but you don't want it to be mucking up your regular photos.
So what I wanted to talk about is, with the new photos app, when you first open up the app on your iPhone or your iPad, but let's just talk about the iPhone for right now, you know, the top two thirds of your screen are the recent photos, but then the bottom third of the screen, and as you scroll, that's when you start to see like things that are sort of put together into collections and stuff.
And my recommendation is that you reorder these collections.
The way that you do this is scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, until you get to the very bottom.
And when you get to the very bottom, you'll see a button that says customize and reorder.
And then you can decide what order do you want things and which ones do you want to show first and second and third.
So for example, the first, I think by default, when you first update up to iOS 18, the first one is going to have, I think it's called previous days or something like that. - Recent days. - Recent days.
And it organizes, you know, here's all the pictures from yesterday.
Here's the pictures from two days ago.
Here's the pictures from five days ago.
And at first I thought that makes some sense, but I have found after using it for a couple of weeks that when I want to see recent photos, I just scroll up in the top of the screen.
I mean, I just see them right there.
So I don't really need to have that right there.
So I've taken that off, but I do often, when I open up my photos app, I do often want to jump into, I'm looking for a picture of my daughter or something like that.
And so I have as my first one, the people, it's called peoples and pets.
I have that first because it's one that I'm likely to get to.
So that's, and then the next one that I have, and you can control the order of this are the pin collections.
And pin collections is sort of its own little subset within a subset because pin collections is also something that you can modify.
There's a button right next to it that says modify.
And if you go there, you'll see what do you want your pins collections to be?
Do you want it to be your map?
I use that one a lot to find something by location.
Do I want it to be trips?
I like that one because you can like quickly get to a trip you took in the last year or two.
Another one that's there by default, but which I took out is called favorites.
Now, I don't know how you use your favorites, Brett.
Some people, every time they have a picture they love, they put it in a favorite.
And if you use favorites that way, well then sure, you're gonna wanna have quick access to favorites.
For whatever reason, I actually haven't done that over the years.
What I use the favorites for is sometimes I need to put a picture on a shelf because I'm gonna need access to it in the future.
And an example is like, you know how sometimes if I'm using a third party app and it wants me to put a picture of myself as the avatar in the app.
I have that as a favorite because it's just a way to get quick access to it.
When I'm in that third party app, instead of like scrolling through 10,000 pictures, I can just jump quickly to favorites and then pull it up.
Or sometimes I'll be using an app where I know for this app, I'm gonna need to have a photo of something that I took of something a while ago.
I will just use favorites as a way to sort of put it in a special collection so that I can yank it out of that collection often when I'm in a third party app.
And so I love the favorites feature.
It's great for that.
But because for me, it's not like my favorite pictures, it's more of a utility.
I actually don't want it at the top of my pin collections.
I very rarely will look at favorites within the photos apps.
I will add to favorites by clicking on the heart, but I'm usually using it.
So that's just me personally.
But my point is, if you want to have access to your favorites, put it way up at the top.
And if you don't want to have easy access, take it off completely.
And so, it's gonna take time to do this, but by customizing which collections are at the top and which are at the bottom, and then within the pin collections, by customizing which specific albums show up there, like in the first couple, and which ones are further down, you can get to the point where when you open your photos app, you have really quick access to the things that you want the most.
Not only the recent pictures at the very top, but at the bottom third, you have quick access.
So it's one of these things that you change over time.
And you may six months from now, you may have a different opinion as to what's more important, but take advantage of this customization feature.
And this is the thing that for me, changes the new photos app from being something that's confusing and aggravating to something that's really much better.
And it's a better photos app than it ever was before. - Yeah, thank you.
'Cause like, that's one of the things that I haven't done yet is doing the customize order.
I had seen that button way down at the very bottom there.
And I was like, okay, well, I'll set aside 30 minutes at some point to go through, but just that simple, those simple changes there have already changed it, made it like so much more accessible for me.
That is lovely.
I like that.
All right, so the photos app, I feel like we're gonna continue to talk about that. - Oh, I think so, yeah. - There's just so much more.
And we even knew this coming in, like even several weeks ago, we would talk about the fact that we know that that's gonna be something that most people are going to be accessing more, probably more than anything else, that messages.
And anyway, just thinking about that with the podcast we talked about earlier, where the designers were talking about getting people quicker access to the camera.
Anyway, just really cool.
Like just exciting where a lot of that is going there.
All right, woo, lots of good stuff.
Maybe 18.1 by next week, probably.
I don't know, could be.
We never know. - Never know. - We don't know on this.
Regardless of whether it's out or not, we're gonna talk with you next week.
Thanks, Jeff.