Welcome to In the News for October the 11th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey, Brett, how you doing?

Jeff, it's a good day to sink a submarine or just maybe submerge it.

Why am I saying that?

Because I read your post today, and this may be the first time that I had a strong desire to finally purchase a Vision Pro.

We've been talking about the main thing about the Vision Pro is really when they start putting out content that's going to take so much advantage of what the Vision Pro can do.

And I think this was a turning point today.

And I loved how you kind of set this up today with just talking about how the synchronized recorded sound to movie started with the Jazz Singer in 1927.

And then today, this could be another turning point for how we could take in entertainment and movies.

And it's a short video, a short film that Apple, I'm sure Apple kind of underwrote it right called Submerged.

And even just watching the behind the scenes video that you posted today, I'm like, this looks incredible.

Like this is not just watching a movie.

This is like being in the movie is what it felt like to me just watching the behind the scenes video in and of itself.

But you've actually watched the movie.

And I just want to hear a little bit more about how it went.

It is awesome.

You know, I've said before, and let me begin by saying I've got a little bit of a cold.

I apologize that I don't have that normal velvety radio voice of Jeff Richardson.

But anyway, but despite my cold, I was able to enjoy numerous times watching this movie.

Of all the compelling things to do with an Apple Vision Pro, I think one of the most compelling as I've said before, is the content that Apple prepares in immersive video mode, which means that it's 3D, but not 3D the way that you might traditionally think of a 3D movie, where it's like, you know, a letterboxd screen.

You have special, you know, and you know, it's like so everything within the screen can be 3D.

But then of course, you could see above and below the screen in a movie theater, or if you're watching at home.

But this is different because when Apple does it, it is it's not 360.

So it's not completely around you.

It's basically 180 degrees.

So everything up, down, left, right, you know, as long as you're not actually moving your body behind you, everywhere that you look, you see the video.

And what Apple has done in the past is they have released a series of videos that have all been less than five minutes or so, and they have been, you know, nature videos with like elephants that come up to you, or, you know, some other cool things, hot air balloons, all have been situations in which it's been really cool to feel like you're there, but they're all like a documentary.

This is the first time that there has been scripted content, you know, like a movie that you would go enjoy.

Now, it's a short film.

It's less than 20 minutes.

I think it's 17 minutes long.

So it's not like, you know, a major summer blockbuster.

But don't get me wrong.

It is a true, I mean, it's a story.

I mean, there's the beginning, there's a middle, there's an ending.

You get excited about it.

You get to know the characters as much as you can in a short film.

It was done by the director of this, he has an Oscar, Edward Berger, for All Quiet in the Western Front.

You know, this is somebody, these are serious film people that they did this right.

They spent tons of money, they wouldn't say how much, doing this.

And the significance of it is the thing that makes immersive content so different is it gives you this sense of being there, the sense of presence that I had never experienced anywhere else.

And it's the way that, you know, one of the first films that Apple released was a woman walking across this tight wire between two mountains.

And because of the camera is right there on her, I mean, you feel like you are right next to her.

It's like this intimate experience that you're there.

And when she starts to flip, you know, your heart jumps because you feel like you're about to fall off this mountain.

And there's been no other content that I have ever looked at that has had that emotional effect on me.

And so to take that over into a movie, which of course are famous for tugging on the heartstrings, there's just nothing but potential here.

And I tell you what, it succeeds, it really does.

When you watch this movie, they did an excellent job choosing the subject of the movie because immersive video I find is often most powerful when you're very close to the subject matter, not only because it just is the sense that you're with them, but it also for this, the 3D nature of it, when some things are closer and some things are farther away, you can get a more interesting 3D effect.

I myself, for example, this past weekend, as you and I were talking about before we started, my wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by having a staycation here in New Orleans last weekend.

And so while I was walking around the French Quarter and stuff, I was, of course, I was taking pictures with my new iPhone and taking some videos.

But I took some videos and pictures in spatial format.

And I just know from my very limited experience that it becomes more dramatic when you have some things that are in the frame that are a little bit closer to the camera and some things further away.

And hopefully you have a couple of different things in different positions because the more of that that you have in frame, the more dramatic the 3D effect becomes.

And so, you know, this director, the storyteller, obviously knew that.

He had figured out what works and what doesn't work.

Another thing that he figured out is, and I've noticed this before, Apple has released some video content, for example, highlights of like soccer games and stuff, where the natural way that you would want to do a sports or many other types of shows is you sort of have quick cuts.

Like here's a scene for a couple of seconds.

Here's a scene for a couple of seconds.

And you do these quick, quick cut bits between scenes.

It makes things exciting, you know.

And if you're doing home movies, one of the things that I tell people, if you're doing a home movie or your kids, do quick cuts because it tends to make things more interesting as opposed to just sitting there staring at your kids for two minutes, three minutes straight.

However, that technique doesn't work great for immersive video, surprisingly enough, because it takes you a second to sort of get your sense of place because you feel like you're really there.

And so when you quickly cut from one scene to another, I have found it's a little unnerving and it's not, it has the opposite of the intended effect.

But for this movie, the director took that into account because he doesn't have a lot of quick cuts.

But what he does have is you'll be like in one part of the submarine and then he will quickly switch to the opposite end of the same submarine.

And because it's the same thing you were looking at just from the opposite angle, it doesn't have that jarring effect.

So I mean, I know that these are not accidental decisions.

I'm sure they tried 15,000 different shots and like, these are the ones that actually work effective with this new medium.

But the end result is really, really good.

I mean, you feel the claustrophobia that I imagine one would feel in real life of being in a tight submarine in World War II.

You feel the drama.

You feel, I mean, it is truly, I mean, it's an exciting little film in part because it was done so well.

And I'm sure he could have told this story in any medium, but in part because he took advantage of the medium.

And that's the part that really interests me the most.

I mean, as you mentioned, when I did the post, I was thinking of, you know, people talk about how the jazz singer in 1927, which I've seen bits and pieces of, I'm sure we all have, was famous because it was the first time that there was truly synchronized, the music and the audio was synchronized.

And so that was the talkies, exactly.

And that had such a significant effect on the industry, so much so that there are stories of other movies that were being made at the same time that they had to, you know, try.

In fact, there's a famous, what is it, The Music Man, or there's a Framer in Broadway show about that whole idea that they had to stop making all their other movies and change everything to the talkies.

Or another example is the transition.

This was a slower transition, but the transition from black and white to color surprised me when I was looking today.

I was thinking that was a subsequent transition.

Technically, the first color movies actually occurred a little earlier.

I think one of the first ones, there's this famous movie called, I think it's called From the Earth to the Moon.

It's a French guy, Georges Melies.

Everybody knows the movie because it has that famous scene that's got the moon with the face in it, with the rocket in his eye.

Everybody's seen that scene before.

But another thing they did with that movie is, although they filmed it in black and white because that's all they could do at the time, they hand colored the frames so that it was, when you looked at it, it was a quote unquote colorized movie.

It was almost like an early version of Ted Turner colorizing movies types of things.

But you know, adding color to movie, yes, it allows you to add color, but it also allows you to do a lot more.

Like we all know that when movies have a little bit more of a yellowish orange tint, you sort of feel warmer, like it's a desert scene.

Or if it's more of a bluer tint, you sort of feel cold, like it's ice.

And there's these tricks that directors learn over time that to take advantage of the media, that just, it's not the most obvious thing.

The most obvious thing about immersive video is it's in 3D.

But the secondary thing is that you can do different things with the medium.

And that's what I find is so fascinating.

So this is it.

You know, this is the first movie in 180 degree immersive video.

And I mean, who knows if it will stand the test of time, like, you know, from the Urch of the Moon or The Jazz Singer, one of those other ones.

But the point is that somebody had to do it first.

And of course, Apple with its Apple Vision Pro has done it.

And you know, we're going to have more.

Eventually, someone's going to come out with something that's feature length.

And you know, I have questions about that because with the current technology and Apple Vision Pro, you know, the battery on the Apple Vision Pro lasts about two and a half, two or two and a half hours.

And sometimes I say that that's a good thing because sometimes if you've been watching it for more than that, you know, your face gets sort of your eyes get tired and you want to take it off for a little bit and take a breath, take a break.

And so I do wonder if they had a full two hour immersive movie.

I guess it would depend upon the content of the movie, but maybe you would get tired after that.

But but it would be interesting.

And people are going to be trying this eventually over time.

We'll get to the point where we have a couple of movies, dozens of movies, hundreds of immersive movies.

And then at that same time, the technology is going to change.

And instead of having the big, bulky, expensive Apple Vision Pro first generation, we will eventually have something perhaps similar to what we talked about, I think it was last week, the the glasses that that Facebook Meta showed off, the the Orion glasses, you know, something smaller.

And as that happens, this content will build up over time and then it'll just be things that are available.

So I just think it's incredibly exciting.

If you have a Vision Pro now, you know, of course, watch the movie.

It's great fun.

If you don't find a friend at some point.

In fact, when you were in town recently, Brett, you should have come to my house.

You were in town for such a short time last week.

But if we had had some extra time, you could have come over and I could have showed you some of the use of the Vision Pro.

It's it's fun stuff.

And that's what I love about the Vision Pro is that, yes, it's expensive and it's a little impractical for many things now.

But it Apple is pushing the envelope in so many ways, including this movie.

So you really want to watch it.

I mean, obviously, anybody that has a Vision Pro, but this was some good articles you link to from The Verge, Victoria's Song and Lance Zulanoff at TechRadar.

And one of the things similar to what you were just talking about that that struck me is I think Victoria was talking about this, that it was so immersive that you really wanted to turn all the way around like 360 degrees.

But you've mentioned this a couple of times, and I'd love to hear your thought on it's a hundred and eighty degrees, because as you're doing this, apparently like the action is happening in front of you.

But I think in one of the stories that I read you link to, you could turn and look at like the rivets on the side of the wall or look down to the floor, even while the actor is doing something in front of you.

Now, apparently I think Victoria said this, like if you if you try to go 360 degrees, it just kind of fades to black.

So we're not quite 360 right now.

I don't know that we need it, but it was just amazing to hear how people were kind of talking about the fact that I've just I've never experienced that, that you could have the action in front of you, but then you could be looking around to look up and down and around in everywhere, apparently.

And you had the freedom to do that while the action was happening in front of you.

Yeah, that part reminds me of Jason Stelmach in his review.

It's almost like watching a stage production, because we've all been in the theater before where you're watching the stage.

And of course, the stage is not 360, it's just in front of you.

But when you're watching the stage, the main character might be on stage left, giving the soliloquy, but you might be looking at another character who because you're just interested in their reaction.

And so you're looking to the stage right.

And to have that freedom is one of the cool things.

And it's definitely true here.

It also, of course, changes the way that you make the movie, because the interviews and there are some interviews that you can watch on YouTube that are, of course, they're in 2D.

But they're not a regular type of movie.

And where the director and the creator, Edward Berger, describes that because so much was in the frame, they had to do things differently.

For example, lighting a scene.

Traditionally on lighting, you would have the lights just off camera, and you would have a boom mic that's just off camera.

And you can do that when your screen is limited to a screen size.

But when everything's 180 degrees, you can't do that, because you'll see the boom mic, or you'll see the lights.

And so they had to build that into the set, so that it would be hidden in the set, and yet still, as a technical matter, do what it needs to do.

And it also means that he said that they had to spend a lot more money in recreating this fake submarine, because they know that although the action might be in front of you, they couldn't fake it, because someone watching it might be looking to the right.

And believe me, this looks, it has, I mean, we've all been inside of like a ship or submarine, you know how it's got that, it's a lot of metal, it's a lot of metallic, and the paint is very shiny, and it's got that look to it, that as you're looking around, it is totally believable, even when exciting things start to happen in the movie, not to give away the plot, but like when things sort of explode, and you know, sparks come and stuff like that.

You can, in fact, one of the, I mean, it probably won't surprise you, given the title of the movie, that there is a scene when water comes in the submarine.

Hopefully I'm not spoiling it for anybody.

And the way that they have the camera angle right at the point, I mean, imagine if you're filming something, imagine if you're standing in like a lake, or if you're standing in the water, and you film something with your iPhone, or your iPhone is just above water letter, so that almost, you feel like you could duck down and almost look underwater a little bit.

They have some shots at that level.

And Brett, they are, I mean, they got to me, because there's a part of you that just sort of has a natural fear of drowning, you know, it's just a natural reaction that we all have in life.

And when you're watching this, it almost gives you this creepy feeling, because you could feel the water coming up.

And it's just, but they had to build sets that would account for that, for you looking in every direction.

So that's one thing.

One of the things I want to say, but that reminds me of also is, because of this filming technique, because you feel so close to it, you almost feel like, I mean, imagine if you're watching a play, but your seat was not in the audience.

Your seat was like, "Hey, you want to come sit up on stage with us?"

That's sort of what you feel like.

Court side.

And you have to be quiet.

It's like court side seats.

And so you got to be quiet, don't say anything.

You're going to sit right in the middle of the stage watching the show, be quiet and don't make a lot of noise, but you can watch it and you can turn around and you can see the characters all around you.

It's almost like that.

And it really is interesting.

Okay.

One scene quickly I want to ask, because I saw this two or three people in these articles today, talked about, this isn't giving anything away.

One scene, apparently they're loading in the submarine, loading a torpedo.

And Victoria Song, I remember specifically in her article said, she instinctively reached her hand out to stop it because somehow, however that it was shot, Jeff, it feels like you're in the tube getting shoved with this torpedo.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

That scene?

I know exactly what you're talking about.

And let's talk about that one effect.

All of us have been to see a 3D movie before.

And you know how sometimes, especially it's perhaps done well in some of the more silly 3D movies where they know they're being over-taught about it.

You know how you might have a scene where a character might stick their tongue out or have something extend out.

And because they do it right in the center of the screen, it feels like it's right there in your lap.

You've seen that effect before, right?

Sure.

Of course.

And that effect can either be done well or it can be done to the extreme that it's silly.

And I actually myself saw an example of the silliness because when I was in downtown New Orleans at the French Quarter taking pictures, I was on, you know how New Orleans and the French Quarter, Brett, they have all these balconies, like the French style architecture.

And so my wife and I were up on a balcony looking out over Bourbon Street and I put the camera taking spatial video, my iPhone camera, I put it right on the edge of the balcony.

And so it looked like the metal bar of the balcony came right to the lens.

And I thought it would be a neat 3D effect.

And it was, but it was almost too much.

When I looked at that picture in my Apple Vision Pro afterwards, I'm like, that went too far.

Like it's too gimmicky.

It's like I was too much.

I was too much in the action.

But anyway, this scene in the movie, what's happening is they're loading torpedoes and the director places the camera on top of where the torpedoes are being loaded into.

And so he, unlike Jeff Richardson, who did not know what he was doing, he had it just a tiny bit up so it didn't feel like obnoxious, but you can definitely, you feel them moving the torpedo into the, whatever the hole that you have, that a torpedo, that holds a torpedo in a submarine, whatever that's called.

But it's another one of those, it was, it absolutely felt 3D, but it absolutely, more than that, it felt like you were there.

And because they're sort of pushing it onto you, you almost want to say, excuse me, let me step aside so you can get that in there.

It was, I'm sure that they shot that 20 different ways and they found the one way that actually works the best.

And that's the shot that they used.

It just sounds so guttural.

I mean, you know, you're talking about like the drowning aspect, because I can only imagine, you know, there's probably several scenes in there where, cause I don't like getting underwater too much.

And in fact, I think one other person here that you wrote, that you linked to was talking about he's kind of claustrophobic even in real life.

And so watching this and being able to look around, like he had, who was it?

I think maybe this was Lance was in his mind saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's just a movie, just a movie, you know, that kind of a thing.

And I know we've all experienced some of that before where you kind of have to talk yourself down.

But again, I just feel like that watching it in the vision pro maybe visceral is the better word.

I just feel like it's so much more visceral and I haven't even put one on.

So I mean, I put one on, but I haven't even looked at it.

So anyway, good stuff.

I'm glad that we talked about it.

Cause I know we talked quite a bit about the vision pro, but I think the way that you set it up today was just brilliant and saying, yeah, you know, this is, this is something this is a mark in time to be able to show what entertainment is going to become.

And we know the vision pro is going to get better and we know the, the the entertainment is going to get better as well, which is just, and one last thing I'll say, Brett, is it's not just these, these million dollar, you know, Hollywood movies that have this effect.

I mean, keep in mind that if you have an Apple vision pro today, or if you think you might get one in the next five years or so, when you take a picture, you know, anyone with a modern iPhone can take these, these spatial videos and spatial pictures.

And whenever you get to the point where you'll be able to appreciate them, you know, again, going back to this past weekend, there was a, my wife and I were having brunch one morning and I took a, just a nice picture of my wife, but it was in the spatial photo mode.

And when I was looking at it afterwards in my Apple vision pro, and I attribute this more to luck than me being any great photographer, but it just so happened that for one of the pictures, it was really nice because, you know, we were having brunch and so we had like a cocktail on the table.

We were outside and like in more towards the front of the picture was a drink.

And then you have my wife and we were under a tree and there was stuff in the background.

And when I looked at the same photo as both, just a regular 2d photo, it looks really nice.

But then when I looked at the spatial version of the photo, it had a sense of depth and presence that as I looked at the photo, it really brought me back to being there again, even though in this case it was only a few days ago.

And so you yourself can create some of these same effects today.

And even if you don't have a vision pro today, take those pictures.

If you have the ability on your iPhone today, because in the future, whether it's two, three, five, 10 years from now, you will be thankful that you have some of these photos that have that spatial effect in them.

Yeah.

Even if you're not taking spatial photos, another story you'll link to today, which I thought was really cool was if you have the latest iPhone 16 or 16 pro, is it both models?

I think it's all the 16.

I think it's all the 16s.

Yeah.

Any of the 16s.

That Apple calls the photographic styles.

And I liked what you were talking about this because it's not so much like a filter, like what we've come to get used to, like with Instagram, you can do like a gray filter, you can do a shiny filter, whatever.

I just was fascinated by the way that this explained.

And then you link to a great little post on X or threads, I'm sorry, about who this is a Tyler Stallman, I believe, just using a small little adjustment inside the iPhone 16.

I guess you have to have iOS 18, of course, on here as well, but it just really makes those pictures pop a little bit more.

And again, it's not like this isn't brand new because we've had filters around, but maybe you can explain a little bit better about like why this is a little bit different with photographic styles.

When Instagram was brand new, if we think back to those days, one of the things that became known for were those filters.

And part of the reason for that is because the key to Instagram success was that you were taking photos right there with your smartphone camera.

But the problem was at the time that Instagram came out, smartphone cameras were, you know, they were just sort of crappy compared to today.

And so Instagram was smart enough to say, well, let's actually turn that to an advantage.

We know that the picture fidelity is not going to be as good as a great camera, but they had all of these fun filters, many of which were so over the top, you know, making everything look really purple or really orange.

And so they said, let's have all these fun filters.

And so it doesn't matter if the pixel quality wasn't great because you're making it a fun picture with the filters.

Well, nowadays, you know, 2024 Instagram, you know, they really demote that.

You don't need that anymore because our photographs are more than good enough.

But the idea of using sort of a slightly different way of taking a picture, you know, Instagram filters are the extreme, but real photographers, of which I am not one of, have known for decades and decades that when you take photographs using certain types of cameras or even certain types of film, you know, a Kodak Kodachrome film versus a Fujifilm gives you a slightly different look in the final photograph.

And so for years now, Apple has had the ability to use filters to change the way that a picture looks.

What's different this year is with the new iPhone 16 models, they have it.

First of all, they've changed the name, but it's actually more than a name change.

If you now take a picture with your, with a modern iPhone, the 16, it's not a filter, it's called a photographic style.

And unlike a filter that applies at the time you take the picture, the photographic style, Apple records enough information that you could change the style at the time you take the picture, or you can go back afterwards and you can change the style.

And it fundamentally changes the data that the phone is actually using to create the picture.

And there are probably eight, nine different styles.

Now some of them are dramatic, like black and white.

I think there's two black and whites, but others are just sort of adjusting the hue.

And I have to admit, when I saw this as a new feature, and when I first started playing with my new iPhone, I was like, you know, these are just slight differences.

Some of them, in order for me to notice the difference, it was becoming ridiculous.

And I'm like, I'm just going to stick with the normal mode, because I've always appreciated the way that an iPhone picture looks.

But then I was listening last weekend to the podcast that John Gruber does called The Talk Show.

And like you said, he was interviewing someone, Tyler Stallman, who knows a lot about iPhone photography, and he does this as part of his career, as he makes videos and stuff like that.

And here's somebody who really understands photography in a way that I don't.

And the most effective part was he said, look, if you just want to just do a little cheat, without even understanding all this stuff, he's like, if you take a picture that you've taken with an iPhone 16, and then after you take the picture, go and change the photographic style, he says, and just do these things to it.

First of all, change to the amber style.

And that part struck me as weird, because amber, as the name implies, is a little bit more of a goldish tint.

And I'm like, why do I want a goldish tint to my picture?

He's like, just do it.

So if you apply the amber style, and then once you have the style, the way that it looks on your screen is it's basically a square that's got all these dots in it.

And by default, you're right in the middle of the dots.

But if you go down, that changes the tone.

And if you go left and right, that changes the color.

And so if you use his style, use amber, go down so that the color is like a negative of, what's the numbers that I have there, like a negative 50, negative 40 to 50, and then go to the right, so that that's the tone.

And then make the color about a 20.

And palette is just the overall brightness.

Don't touch the palette, leave it at 100%.

If you just make those changes, you actually make a slight change to the picture that makes it, it has a little bit more depth.

It makes the colors, I don't want to say pop, because it's not like it's an ultra, it's not like it's popping like the reds are too red and the yellow, but it just, it gives the colors just a little bit more interesting to them.

And so I did this, I was like, okay, well, let me try this.

I just taken all these pictures from the French Quarter from this past weekend.

And I texted one or two of them to you, Brad.

And I took the same picture, like I looked at a picture that I took of the St.

Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, and I'm like, looks like a great picture to me.

And then I took that same picture and without really knowing what I'm doing, I just followed his formula.

And then I looked at the second picture and I went back and forth.

And in fact, if you're doing this on a Mac, there's just the button when you're in the edit mode on your Mac that you can hold down on the button and it either removes with the effect that you just applied and then you're not going up and applies it.

So it's a good way to do an A/B test and go back and forth.

And I tell you, every single one of the pictures with maybe one or two exceptions that I applied this to, this actually looked better.

And I'm like, huh.

So, now again, is it a subtle difference?

No.

And if I was just, you know, walking down the street and just saw this on the picture on the side of me, would I notice?

No.

But you know, whenever we go back and edit our photos, we're oftentimes making slight changes to the way that we crop it, the way that we change it so that it's the best possible photo.

And sometimes, you know, whenever I look at pictures that great photographers take, I always look at the picture and say like, I can see that's an amazing picture.

How they got to that result, whereas me, I would not be able to, you know, I don't know what it is that they're doing that I'm not doing because sometimes we may be using the same equipment.

Maybe they're using an iPhone, but they get to this result.

This is one of those examples of what the pros do to get to that result that's just a little bit better, what you might normally do.

So the moral of the story is that this is a real feature, photographic styles.

I mean, this does make a difference.

And if you do nothing else than follow this one formula with your own pictures, I think it makes a difference.

Now, having said that, just before we started recording today, Brett, I sent you one or two pictures that I took, like one with and without.

I mean, could you really tell the difference?

I mean, it was, it's pretty slight.

I could tell just because I knew I was looking for it, right?

If you didn't tell me and you had both pictures together, I probably, I mean, if I looked carefully, I could maybe tell just a slight difference.

But you know, I don't know, because I was looking at it on my Mac, which happens to be, you know, three years old.

So I don't know if that maybe has something to do with it.

I mean, I wonder if I look at it on my phone instead of my Mac, that that might have a little bit of a change, even though my phone is a 15 Pro still.

So anyway, well, I'll look at that and you know, I actually noticed the most spread on my iPad, my, my relatively new iPad M4, because I have the iPad Pro, which has got a really wonderful screen on it.

You know, that of all the devices in my life, except perhaps for my big screen TV, my iPad makes pictures look the most beautiful on it.

They just do.

And this is the device where I actually noticed it most.

So you're right, if you're just going to be using an old computer screen, you're not going to notice the difference.

If it's a YouTube video, you probably not going to notice the difference.

But if you're watching it on like a really high quality 4K HDR big screen or a really beautiful iPad Pro screen, or even some of the newest Mac laptops that have really nice screens, not the external screen, but the actual built in screens, you know, that's always true that the better screen you have, you'll appreciate these small differences.

So again, I don't mean to say that it's the end, that this is be all end all.

It's not as dramatic as going from color to black and white or something like that, but it is a real difference.

And if you have that special picture of your spouse or of a location or just something that seems special to you, and you want the picture to look its best with the newest iPhone 16s, you now have the ability to maybe get that little bit of extra oomph by adjusting some of these styles.

I will tell you, I'm looking at it on my 15 Pro now, and that second one with the lights that you sent me, I would say I can definitely tell now in the second one, I would say it's a little, I was going to say warmer, but maybe I mean richer.

It just looks richer.

That's a good word.

I like that.

The, I can like that gentleman that's sitting, that's sitting in the doorway on the left.

Like I, he, he just, he looks richer.

Like I can, he's defined a little bit more, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I'm just, I'm glad you shared that because he, Tyler here calls it a recipe, his photographic styles recipe.

And so literally just follow those little simple steps and I'll make sure I'll link to it in the show notes and just try that.

Especially, so if I have a 15 Pro, I don't have access to the same aspects on here.

Okay.

So it has to be a 16 or a 16 Pro, which is great.

I mean, it's just good.

And, and again, I feel like you could probably achieve some of these same results if you really knew what you were doing.

You know, you said that a couple of times, right?

If you were a professional, you could probably put it into Adobe Lightroom or, you know, some other kind of a tool that you could Photoshop that you could actually manipulate.

I mean, that's why we take raw photos, right?

The photos are raw because the people that know, which look terrible really when you take the original picture, but it's because it, it basically keeps everything flat and then professionals know exactly what to do on what colors to bring up and everything to make it look good.

And I feel like this is kind of like a poor man's approach to it.

Cause that's the way I think about it.

Anyway, I'm glad that you, that you shared that.

I thought, I thought that was good.

In fact, I'm glad you mentioned the raw format because Apple's had the raw format for a few years now and I don't use it because that is just a bridge too far for me.

I'm not going to spend that much time in it, but this, you know, I'm not going to spend the time on raw, but I probably will spend the time for certain pictures to adjust the style.

So there you go.

Yeah, very good.

One more story quickly that you linked to about just generally like the camera.

I thought this was good for nothing.

If nothing else, for me, it was just a reminder.

It's like, Hey, I got slow-mo on my camera.

And I love that because, um, I've used it.

I remember when I went, when that first came out, which was several years ago, I remember specifically cause my kids were young and I'm like, I let's try this out.

Let's go out in the yard.

It was fall and all the leaves were on the ground.

And so they ran and jumped into a pile of leaves and I had the slow-mo version.

I mean, this was many, many years ago, right, Jeff?

And it was just cool because it was regular speed up until the time that they left off their feet.

Right.

And then they did slow-mo as they jumped into the leaves, but you link to a very good, uh, quick little, uh, video from Apple today on the iPhone 16 pro cinematic slow-mo.

So there is a little bit of a difference here.

Obviously it's come a long way from when we first had slow motion on the cameras, but it is cool to remember you do have that capability, that option to record even cinematic slow-mo on the iPhone 16 pro.

Yeah.

And the difference here is of course it's 4k, so it's very, lots of detail, but the real difference is the slow-mo that you and I did in the past, we would, the original video that we recorded was probably something like 30 frames per second, which is what your eye normally perceives as for regular video.

But when you did it like at half speed, well then suddenly it was going to be 15 frames per second and you would sort of notice there was a little bit more, I mean, your eye could tell that things were half speed, but nowadays with modern cameras, you know, not only can they do 60 frames per second, but the latest iPhones can do 120 frames per second, which means that even when you make it half speed or even if you make it quarter speed and you're still at 30 frames per second.

And so you can cut the speed down to a quarter speed, which makes everything go really slowly.

And yet there's so much fidelity that it looks just as good as a regular shot that was taken years ago at normal 30 frames per second, which is why they call it the cinematic.

Again, this is not an effect that I have used very often, but every once in a while I do like maybe if I've had some fun scenes where like kids have these poppers that like you pull the thing and the confetti comes out and you switch to slow-mo just as the confetti starts to come out and you start to see the kids, you know, faces sort of like, wow, and they're fun effects.

And so having the ability to do it the way that a, you know, that a cinematographer might do with really expensive equipment, just using the iPhone that's in your pocket, pretty cool stuff.

We have had no shortage of reviews of the iPhone 16s and 16 pro, but we always enjoy getting the perspective from Jason Snell at Six Colors.

You link to his iPhone 16 pro review today, um, who, which one of the reasons I'm always interested is because Jason has been well-known to be such a big fan of the old mini phones, right?

He loved that smaller form factor.

And so I was interested just to read this review, which of course is fantastic.

I'm just getting his perspective, um, you know, on the iPhone 16 pro, which is obviously much bigger than his beloved mini that he has.

But uh, what, uh, it, it, it just quickly, I also loved how he did this little like bullet point aspect in here.

Like what were the big changes year over year?

Right?

Because really what he kind of has honed in on, which I think was excellent to point out, there hasn't been much of like a hardware change, like an overall form factor change since the iPhone 12, right?

I think that's what he was referring to here.

It's true, even though we've had some of these incremental changes and he talks about the 13 pro 14 pro, you know, the, the, the big major changes, but like the overall big picture form factor really hasn't changed all that much since the iPhone 12.

And he just talks about the fact that there might be something coming in the, you know, in the next year or two, because Apple of course knows just like anybody else that big changes like that will sell a few more phones.

Now they're not hurting for sales right now, but I'm just saying like, I thought he made a good point in this and saying that, you know, he just has a great perspective on this aspect, but overall it sounds like he was, he was pretty pleased with the 16 and the 16 pro too.

Absolutely.

In fact, what you just put your finger on was the same thing that jumped out at me in the review.

Jason was one of the members of the press that got an iPhone 16, you know, shortly before they went on sale.

So he has had a little bit more time than most folks.

And so I was curious, some years, Jason will be somebody who will post one of the very first reviews.

And that's always helpful if you're like an initial buyer, but some years, other years like this year, what he actually does is sort of weights.

And then after a couple of weeks, post the review.

And I actually sort of prefer it when he does it this way because, you know, he has been someone that's been in part of the Apple industry, gosh, since the 1990s for forever.

And so given the perspective that he has, because of all of that, that wealth of knowledge that he's had, that he's experienced, he's able to provide sort of a historical perspective, as you described.

And, you know, here's why this matters.

And if you look at, you know, it's not just there's a change from here to here, but look at the change over many, many, many years.

And this is why these changes are more important than other changes.

I thought he did a really nice job of providing those perspectives.

So it's not that he discussed any one feature that some of the other reviews don't discuss, but it's the overall context he provided for it that I thought was really interesting.

I tried to do a little bit of that on my own review when I was talking about screen sizes and how where it is that, you know, it's every couple of years, Apple will change the screen size and they did it once again this year.

And I think it will be one of the last ones they do, because I actually don't think that they can go that much bigger than the current, the 16 Pro Max that I have.

I think if you got much bigger than this, it'd be a bridge too far.

So they would have to measure your pocket.

Exactly.

So, so that's what I, that's what I appreciate about this review is it sort of let's step back, let's look at all in the big picture.

And then of course discuss some of the fun details as well.

One of his favorite features is colors.

He likes the new colors.

You know, Jason is known to be color blind, but he even likes the way the pink one looks like, even though we can't really see pink, it's Barbie pink enough that he enjoys that.

The other thing quickly, I just thought, because talking about this, you know, from the, the overall form factor, I like how he says the war on buttons is over, which he leads to a story here from 2017 about the survivor of the war on buttons, you know, where Steve Jobs and, and you know, Johnny, I tried to minimize it.

I mean, you know, that was a big thing when the iPhone first came out, like what, there's no physical keyboard.

Are you kidding?

And, you know, since then we've kind of taken away different buttons, but now with the iPhone 16, the regular 16 and the pro models, we have the camera control button on there.

So anyway, he's happy to be a survivor of the war on buttons.

And anyway, I just thought that was good that he's, that he's pointed that out with his overall perspective, which is also good.

On the color thing, Brett, you know, one thing it's worth pointing out is that for years now, Apple's has had much more fun colors for the less expensive version of the iPhones.

And when you move up to the pro version, you basically, your choices are black and gray.

And for me, that's fine because I always prefer the black model.

But if you actually do, yeah, different shades of gray.

But if you actually do want to get a colorful model, this model year, the iPhone 16 model year is actually a pretty good year to do it.

And I say that because sometimes the gap in features between the pro and the non-pro is bigger.

This is one of those years where it's smaller.

Now for me, it's still significant.

Things like the 5X telephoto lens, which I would not want to give up.

But if, if there was ever a year where you say like, you know, I'm going to get the non-pro model on a year where it has even more of the features of the pro than normal.

This actually is one of those years.

It is a smaller gap this year.

So again, it's still enough of a gap for me to prefer the pro, but for others that that's not quite as important for, this might be a year to actually get the non-pro model, get one of those fun colors, if that makes a difference to you.

So that's something that's worth considering if you're trying to decide which one to buy.

In a similar vein, another Jason, Jason Cross over at Macworld, um, had a good review of the Apple watch series 10 and his, I think he starts off saying right here that the Apple watch has more or less looked and felt like the same since the series four of the Apple watch.

And actually I think it kind of still goes all the way back to the original Apple watch unless you would talk about the Apple ultra, right?

That kind of went outside of the bounds, but the overall form factor, although we talked about it's much thinner now with the series 10, but the overall form factor has kind of stayed the same since series four.

But I thought this was a really good review and overall review.

And I think this is similar.

What I liked about it is that he says pretty much the same thing that I think you and I have said the last two or three weeks, if you have an Apple watch seven, uh, you could probably upgrade.

If you have an eight, nine, you may not need to, but if you've got a seven or less, it would probably be time to upgrade to the 10 cause you're going to be much happier with it.

Yeah.

I disagree with him a little bit on saying that.

I mean, yes, it's true.

Every Apple watch since the first one has had to have all looked like an Apple watch.

I myself see that, see the differences in screen size and the differences in width, but I appreciate that the regular person probably doesn't notice that quite as much.

Um, but the one point that JT and I do agree on is like you just said that, you know, if you have a six and earlier that I think that you're going to really appreciate all the changes.

The seven is on the cusp.

That's what I changed from was a seven.

Certainly anything more recent than the seven.

I would not, I would not upgrade it from the eight, nine or 10 unless you really had some specific feature that you know that you needed for X, Y, Z reason.

You know, the biggest one though, for me would not be, you know, if you had an eight or a nine and you're looking for a really big change instead of going to the 10, I would consider going to the ultra like you have read because it does have that, that significant new feature of the extensive battery life, albeit with the cost of being much thicker.

Um, but yeah, so I, so, but I do agree with him advice, you know, how long should you hold onto an Apple watch for, you know, after a couple, a couple of years, you know, you'll start to know the difference.

I've, I find that like a new iPhone every two or three years is pretty good.

And if you go more than that, that it's going to be significant.

I think that Apple watches last, they hold their value a little bit longer in my mind than an iPhone does and in part just because Apple doesn't change the Apple watches significantly from year to year.

So, right.

Well, when I was in new Orleans, I didn't get to play with your vision pro, but I did get to look at your brand new series 10 watch.

Something that he points out in this article that I didn't realize is that because the series 10 is a little bit smaller or thinner, I should say, right.

We talked about this last week about how it is thinner compared to like, I guess this is a series eight, nine or 10, but that means the digital crown had to be a little thinner.

I didn't even realize that obviously you've seen it because you've been using it, but I wonder, has that affected the way that you use it?

I mean, could you tell like maybe when you first put it on or anything?

So it was something that I had intended to put in my review and I forgot about it at the time, but I did notice it.

And part of the reason I noticed it was when I was, and this is a silly way to notice it, but I was taking pictures of older Apple watches, like some of my older Apple watches, and I was putting them next to pictures of the series 10 just to see the relative differences.

And one of the things that I was trying to do to sort of, because you want to make the two pictures otherwise the same, except for the difference in size of the watch itself.

I was taking the two buttons.

I'm like, well, surely the digital crown's the same size on both ones.

So I would expand one picture so that the digital crown was the same on both of them.

But then I'm like, that doesn't seem right.

And that's when I realized, yeah, Apple was, you know, they realized that by having a thinner watch, you couldn't have the exact same size digital crown as before.

And so they adjusted the size of it.

But yes, it does work really well.

And I noticed it a lot.

In fact, one of the big differences that I notice is this, not only is this my favorite digital crown ever, I particularly like this digital crown more than the one that's on the Ultra.

And that has, in part because of the digital crown on the Ultra, first of all, has protection on the left and right of it, which is good if you're going to like hit it against a wall or a rock or something like that.

I don't have that protection.

But I can't.

Yeah.

And because that protection...

It limits me, my fingers.

Yeah.

Right.

Also the grooves on an Ultra that you have are deeper grooves, which is good if you have like gloves on or something, you can actually change it.

But for me, I actually prefer this feel where instead of, you know, I don't need to have deep grooves on it to be able to move it easily because nothing is blocking the left and right side.

So it's a minor difference.

But like if you're in a store and you're trying to decide between a Series 10 and an Ultra, one thing I encourage you to play with is the digital crown because the digital crown, it works very differently.

It's a different size.

It's a different shape.

That is a real difference between the Ultra and the Series 10 that I got to notice by trying both of those.

So it's something to look out for.

We've talked about the fact that Apple is becoming a, what I call like a health company.

And one of the ways is because of this Apple Watch.

And even though we've been talking about it, I thought this was a fascinating article you'll link to from David Phelan today, for a line from the Independent, where he actually talks to several of the folks that I knew, we know from the Apple videos, Dr.

Desai.

And let's see, there was two others that he was talking to, Jeff Williams, Dr.

Desai, and then Jay Blanik, who again, if you don't recognize the names, you've seen their faces.

I'm pretty sure if you've watched any of the Apple keynotes.

And I just love some of the thoughts in here as to what that they did.

In fact, one of the first things here, I think in, he asked Jeff Williams about the decision to bring a greater focus on health and fitness to the watch.

And he said, after we launched the first watch, we were focused initially on tracking activity, right?

People know the steps.

And so, but then he started getting letters from customers that they came in two forms.

One was, "Hey, you helped me to be more active.

Great, I've lost weight."

But then he said, "Apple Watch has saved my life."

Now we've heard Tim Cook talk about this quite a bit, right?

In the videos that they play, which are just insanely amazing, that, you know, it literally saves people's lives because they're alerting, the watch is alerting people to their heart issues, which you had another great story here, where one reporter was talking about that, did exactly that.

But I thought this was such a fascinating article to get some insight from some of the major executives at Apple as to what they are looking at, how they view the Apple Watch and the product line there.

It's funny that you, because on that paragraph, Brett, you know, our minds think alike, because that was the same paragraph of this article that jumped out at me.

And the reason was that it was like, it's almost like it was, you know, I often get the sense with the Apple Watch that Apple knew that they had something special, but they didn't quite understand why.

And so they released it.

And then once people started using it for fitness, they're like, of course, of course, it's a great fitness device.

Yes, we've always known that.

And this is the same thing that it's like, they didn't realize at first that because it's always attached to your skin and it's monitoring things like your heartbeat and other vital information, that it could be something that could provide you with an early indication of health issues.

But people started to write to the company and say, hey, this is something I'm noticing.

And I feel like the people at Apple sort of looked at each other and like, how about that?

Yeah, we should focus on that more.

And of course, nowadays, of course, Apple has been adding more sensors to the Apple Watch, you know, for the last decade and has and this is something that they're very focused on, you know, with the newest feature.

Just even right here, I just got to point this out, Jeff, he goes on to say, we realized we have this opportunity.

And then he said, even more a responsibility.

And I just loved that, Jeff.

I mean, it's like, of course, they see the opportunity.

We know Apple is a for profit company.

Of course, there's like looking for opportunities.

But just the fact that I feel like we've seen this because of the way they are, they have been integrating things, even things like the Fitness Plus, right?

I mean, the fact that they are offering so much content and so much awareness around the health thing that they think they see it as an opportunity, but then even more a responsibility.

Now, some people may look at that and say, well, of course, they'll say that, right?

That's the way that executives talk.

But I just I feel like I've seen that played out so many times and how Apple has continued to to change this watch.

So I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I'm just saying, yeah, I saw the opportunity, but they look at it as a responsibility, too, because they know that we rely on this.

Like they get so many letters and we only report on a very small percentage of those letters.

You know, Tim Cook will will tweet about it sometimes or talk about it.

But like, you know, there's hundreds, thousands and thousands more that they get every day.

Yeah.

And I think that, like you're saying, I really get the sense that they are genuine about it, that it's not just marketing speak.

And although, like you say, Apple CEO Tim Cook is not quoted in this article.

This sounds like the sort of thing that he would say, too, is that it is the responsibility they have.

You know, the final thing, I guess I'd mention is, you know, I've always thought it might be a little silly to like send a letter to the manufacturer of a product to tell you them, you know, how much you're happy.

But time after time in interviews like this, and this has been true for years and years, maybe it wasn't as true in the Steve Jobs era, but in the Tim Cook era, he clearly reads them.

Now, my sense is that he has someone in his office that he screens them because, you know, he's of course, he's got many people.

He's one of the, you know, big CEOs, the biggest companies in the world.

But there's I mean, I'm sure it is clear that he is telling the truth that a certain number of those letters do cross his desk every day.

And as this article reveals, some of those letters, he'll like, hey, this is a good point.

Let me send this over to so and so.

I'm going to send this to, you know, to Blanik.

I'm going to send this one to Williams, you know, and he sends them out to people say, look at this and, you know, we should explore the future.

So I say that I've never felt the need to do this myself.

But if anyone listening to the podcast, if there's something special, be it good or bad, go ahead and send that email in a Tim Cook because they actually do read them.

And sometimes it actually makes a difference in the future of the product.

So you're not going to get a free Apple watch.

So don't you know, don't know, no ideas.

Jeff Williams, by the way, last thing I want to say, Jeff Williams is Apple's chief operations officer in this at the bottom of this of this article, he says he actually has sleep apnea.

And so in other words, he was just being sort of transparent about this.

And he says, when I discovered it, it was a game changer.

Now, I don't think he discovered it through the Apple watch because apparently he's been doing this for a while, but he got a CPAP machine.

It was like a new lease on life.

And just knowing that, though, I mean, not only is this a responsibility, Jeff, but it tells me that this is even personal to some extent that Jeff Williams did not know he had sleep apnea.

And I got to believe that at some level that has to help drive since he's the chief operation officer that has to drive the support that Apple has in like, yeah, we should put a sleep apnea sensor in the Apple watch, like at some level that has to be part of it.

Right.

Because it's more personal now than anything else, which I think is great.

Speaking of personal, just real quick, this other article I alluded to, who is this again?

This is Nirav Gandhi, a digital trans great article here as well, although we've seen many of these to the point that we were just talking about where not once but twice, apparently the Apple watch alerted him to a to a health issue that he had here.

You say alerting paramedics to the medications that he was taken and then calling emergency services when he fell or maybe three times helping the doctors to adjust the dosage of a beta blocker when his heart rate was dropping too low.

It sounds like you got to read the story because he goes there's a lot of stress.

He lost his father a few months before all of this started happening.

But just fascinating.

I never get tired of these stories to say how he literally says how the Apple watch saved my life repeatedly.

Pretty amazing there.

Yeah.

And oftentimes we'll have a story where somebody falls and this calls for help and that's their one story.

That's their one feature.

This gentleman happens to have like five of them in his story.

So he has definitely gotten advantage of the Apple watch for sure.

So that's what makes it interesting is all these different things affecting one person.

Last couple of stories.

Let's talk about the Apple wallet.

How about first of all, this was a great story from Ticketmaster of all things, where they are going to be one of the first to enable the new enhanced ticket and Apple wallet experience on the iPhone.

So quickly, I got a couple of New Orleans stories to follow along with this.

When we went to a concert that night that we got to New Orleans last week, Jeff, we went Tuesday night to the house of blues were there in the French Quarter at New Orleans.

And I had my tickets on my iPhone.

Now it was just in the Apple wallet.

Like I could, you know, like you go to the Apple wallet, you can pull up any credit card.

But in this case, it was a ticket that it did have a QR code on it.

But when I showed that to the person that was taking the tickets, instead of scanning that QR code, I literally just nudged or tapped my phone to their device, which I think was an action.

Another phone was kind of built into the device, but it was it looked like they had another, you know, package on it or an extra battery or something.

But that was it.

Like that ticket was all that I needed to get into the show.

And I had I had my wife's ticket on there as well.

So when I saw this story, I was like, bring it on.

Like instead of just having a QR code, what if you could interact a little bit with the actual ticket for a concert or sports event or something?

And so I was just thrilled to see this.

Like I'm getting more and more enamored with Apple wallet.

The more that comes out.

In fact, I just got my COVID shot yesterday or two days ago with my wife and my son.

And I don't know if that if you know this, but we use the where I am at the Cleveland Clinic, we use the MyChart system, right?

I can now go into the MyChart system and I can say, add my vaccination card to my Apple wallet.

So it's there because we're getting ready to travel internationally, Jeff.

And you know, sometimes you got to have access to that.

To me, that's what I'm saying.

Like Apple wallet is just becoming so much a bigger part of my life in so many ways.

And so seeing this Ticketmaster story was really cool.

Yeah.

In fact, I mean, of all the features that was coming along with iOS 18, I'm sure that Apple announced this and I just missed it.

I don't know if you saw it, but it wasn't until this Ticketmaster press release that I even knew this was a new feature.

And so to the, you know, what it is, is with an enhanced ticket, not only does it get you into the event, but it can actually have additional information associated with it, such as here's a map of all the seats and this is where your specific seat is.

So you could say, oh, now I need to know, or maybe parking details or maybe information about the venue.

And so instead of you, you know, having to say, okay, well, this is my ticket, but like where do we park?

I don't know.

Let me go look at the website and see what they say.

That will all be associated with it, built into your ticket as it should be, frankly, why not have all of that information?

Now say what you want about Ticketmaster, they own the business, they charge too much.

We can all have bad things to say, but let's, let's give them, give them their due.

One good thing that they're doing is since they do own the industry, at least they're taking advantage of this Apple experience.

Now, to be fair, it's not looking to be widespread instantly.

I think in this press release, they mentioned just a few things that are happening in calendar year 2024, but they say that, you know, starting in 2025, they expect to roll this out more generally, you know, like everything else that Apple announces with the wallet, it takes time for it to happen, but wouldn't it be nice that when you go to your concert in the next year or so, suddenly you'll have all this additional information right there with your ticket.

Now, Ticketmaster also mentioned that they'll have links associated with the ticket to purchase merchandise.

So I'm sure that Ticketmaster would love it for you to buy, you know, not only have your Taylor Swift ticket, but also your Taylor Swift link to buy a t-shirt and they can get their cut of it.

So let's not, you know, say that they're completely, you know, being angels here.

I'm sure they're getting their cut as well, somewhere along the ways, but some of it will of course be useful information such as where is your seat located that of course you would want to know.

So I can't wait to use this.

Very cool.

The other, so, I mean, I think I used to only think of Apple wallet for like paying for things because of my wallet, I typically have money or I have credit cards, but I like the fact that Apple, as I mentioned, not just for like tickets where I can store.

In fact, when I, we parked at the airport, when we came home, Jeff, I didn't have a physical, I actually did have a card for the parking lot that we use, but I don't even carry the physical card anymore because I've got the parking app or in my Apple wallet, I have the ability just to scan that car.

Like there's so much more than it does.

However, when you go into Apple wallet, right?

Most of the stuff that I'm just describing now is at the bottom section of the Apple wallet.

Right.

Everything at the top is the credit cards.

So this was another last story here that you were talking about today where thankfully more and more stores are coming on board with this Apple pay because here's, here's what I'm realizing Jeff.

I don't even realize how often now that I do use Apple pay at any story at any store that I go to.

I don't carry as many credit card, physical credit cards as I used to.

I don't need them.

I don't want to carry more of them.

I always have my phone with me or my Apple watch and I just want to pay that way.

And this, this happened to me.

The story you linked to here is our home Depot is starting to roll out Apple pay support because that is one store I go to and I pull out my phone when they tell us the, and every time the cashier, cause you can tell they get this question all day long and they just look at me and like, we don't have to have to pay.

And I'm like, are you kidding me?

Your home Depot, another place I think you mentioned in this story you mentioned in your post, HGB grocery stores, mostly only in Texas, but I, the same thing I go there and it's just natural.

I'm pulling out like this is the way I'm going to pay for this.

And the cashier, it's like I almost, I almost feel sorry for that because I know they have to answer the like, sorry, we don't have to have to pay.

They don't even apologize most of the time.

We don't have to have to pay.

So I was like, uh, I don't know what to do.

Like I don't know if I've got a credit card and I'll tell you one last story quickly in new Orleans, apparently cafe do mine won't let you pay for beignets with apple pay.

I love cafe do mine.

Jeff, they got to come on board.

It was so instinctive.

It was a young lady that was, that was checking this out Jeff.

And it was so instinctive to me.

As soon as she tells me the amount I'm reaching for my phone before I even get my phone out, this young lady knows exactly what I'm doing.

And she's like, do you have a physical card, sir?

And I kind of look at her like, why would you ask that silly question?

Young lady, that's ridiculous.

And you can tell even in her eyes, she's like, I know, I know it's ridiculous, but we don't have to have to pay.

Now I know there's probably a charge associated with it.

They took credit cards.

So I know the credit card fee can't be a hindrance, but maybe you have to set up with a tap, you know, aspect.

I know.

Anyway, that's a long winded way to say thank you.

Home Depot for finally coming on board, save your cashiers, please.

Cause I'm just a waste of time on this and thank you HDB for doing it.

The Cafe DuMond next time I come to New Orleans, you better have to have to pay, please.

Cause I got to have my beignets.

Home Depot is a funny one for me because they used to support it.

Like I personally, Jeff Richardson has gone to the Home Depot in New Orleans and paid with Apple Pay a couple of years ago.

And then I noticed that the next time I went, they suddenly weren't supporting it.

I'm like, how can something that worked here last month and it had to do with their cash register systems and stuff like that.

So you know, who knows what the reason were, you know, some people say, oh, it's a conspiracy.

There was a post by John Gruber this week that I did not link to, but he said that he actually thinks there was no, there was no nefarious intent.

It was literally just the cash register systems they were used, didn't happen to support it.

And Home Depot for other reasons happened to be upgrading and just got the support.

And so now it's, it's rolling in everywhere, but whatever the reason, it's nice that this will be available anywhere.

You know, related to this idea that we've actually gotten to the point where you can use Apple Pay just about everywhere.

This past weekend when my wife and I were having our little staycation in New Orleans, we were, we were staying in a hotel in the French Quarter.

So I mean, we were very close to home, but my kids are teenagers old enough.

I left them at home for the weekend and my wife was saying, well, you know, should we give them some cash in case they go get something to eat?

And my kids looked at me like we had a second head growing out of our shoulders.

Like why would we need cash?

You use Apple Pay everywhere.

And I was thinking to myself, like, you know what, pretty much everywhere you go, I guess maybe, maybe not Cafe Du Monde, I guess they weren't going there, but everywhere else, you know, and that's what I sort of laugh is that, you know, our this, this younger generation is growing up in a world in which the idea that you can't use tap to pay everywhere you go.

It's like, you know, it's like me asking them, do they need to have like an eight track cassette tape or something like that?

Like, what are you talking about with this cash thing?

Why would anybody want cash?

So it's just funny.

I like how Chance Miller does link to this other story here.

This just came out what, a couple of three days ago, H-E-B caves to the pressure.

It's rolling out Apple Pay to all stores as well.

You should, I like H-E-B.

If you're in Texas, you know what I'm talking about.

And again, I just quickly say, because I mentioned we're going to be traveling internationally soon, you know, all of our international listeners, we know, we know you've been doing this.

Like we are so far behind in the U S on some of this and it's ridiculous to have to even talk about it, but I'm looking forward to that.

I'm coming to London.

So I'm looking forward to that.

In the know.

Okay.

This week I helped somebody out with some of their iPhone devices and Mac devices.

And she asked me a question, Jeff.

She said, Hey, she might be thinking about upgrading.

She has an Apple watch series seven.

And I told her exactly your experience, you upgrading Jeff.

And she's like, you know what?

I might want to do that.

How do I find out when I purchased this Apple watch series seven?

And I thought to myself, well, that's a pretty good question.

I don't know the answer to it immediately.

Okay.

I knew then the next thing I thought of was, well, you could go look for your receipt if you still have it, right?

If you saved it somewhere, maybe it was emailed to you.

That might be one way to go about it.

But when I thought about it a little bit more, and I think I even Googled this and found this out.

You can go, Apple has a coverage page.

So this is what this is meant for is that when you buy an Apple device, as we've talked about before, you get basically a free year of warranty, you know, through Apple care, you can pay, there's different ways that you can extend that warranty on there.

But Apple has a site called check coverage.apple.com.

And you can go to that site, you can log in with your iCloud account, you can sign in, you can't, you don't even have to really sign in if you don't want to, but I think it's ridiculous.

I'll tell you why in a moment.

You can just put a serial number of a device.

And then there's a little capture there that you can type in.

And it'll tell you when that device was purchased.

Because it also tells you when your coverage will expire, right?

That's the main goal of it.

But if you sign in with your iCloud account, it will literally show you all the devices that you have purchased.

Now, not past devices, these are, these are mostly going to be active devices, right?

Like I had my Mac, my iPhone, my iPad, my Apple, my Apple TVs, my AirPods.

So all of those were listed, Jeff, and you can go in and see if you're still covered by Apple's warranty by AppleCare or when that AppleCare coverage expires.

But you can also see the purchase date on there.

And I just thought that that was fascinating because I don't know of another better, like official way.

I will tell you one thing quickly.

My most recent AirPods Pro with the USB-C, I did not buy through Apple.

I got through Amazon.

So when I logged into this, those AirPods Pro were not listed on there.

It knew that I had them, but it didn't have it on there.

It said, when did you make that purchase?

Or what is the serial number?

I was able to get that information.

I went into my Amazon order and I was able to put in the date and now it's in there and now the coverage, I can check on the coverage.

There is a similar site as well.

In fact, they talk about it here in this article is called mysupport.apple.com.

And so that just will let you go and check if your devices are covered, but it has a little bit more information on there as well.

So either of these sites, checkcoverage.apple.com or mysupport.apple.com, go in and log in with your iCloud account.

And there's a lot, a little bit more information, not a ton of information, but it is good to know like, when did I buy this?

Like I just realized I bought my Apple Watch Ultra a little over two years ago now.

So I'm out of the basic coverage.

I can, obviously they'll let you renew it if you want to, but it's just a great site to keep in mind that you can go to and check all of those things.

If you want to know when you actually purchase a product, that's what I was looking for.

It's important to know when the coverage is still there or not, but I just like knowing when did I actually make this purchase?

So I have one thought on this specific suggestion, and then this actually leads into my tip this week.

On this suggestion, one thing to keep in mind is you do have to log in with your Apple ID to see this information.

Keep in mind that if you've been using Apple products for a long time, like you and I have, you may actually have multiple Apple IDs.

You know, way back in the day, I had one for iTunes and I had one for .

Mac and all that sort of stuff.

And as a result, whenever I do this, all I know is whichever Apple ID I put in first, Murphy's Law, that's not going to be the one that my product's going to be under.

I'm going to have to log out of that and then go into the other one.

And if I use the other one first, I guarantee you that's going to be the wrong one.

I'm going to have to log out.

So but anyway, so keep in mind that you may have two Apple IDs.

Because of this very, so this problem, which is, which actually does come up from time to time.

When did I purchase something?

You need to know that from time to time.

I started doing something years ago that I'm so happy I did.

And that's why I keep it up today.

When I make significant purchases, and you need to decide what that means for you.

But good examples are when I, when we buy a car in my family or a new computer for me personally or a new Mac or a new iPhone, I always create an entry.

I put it in one password and I'll explain why in a second, but it doesn't matter where you put it.

You can put it in the Apple Notes app, whatever it is.

But the key is make an entry for that item around the time that you purchase it and put all the information that's relevant in it.

Things like what's the name of the product.

And for Apple products, for example, you know, you might just think it's called the iPhone, but there might be a specific name for it.

You know, Macs are infamous for that.

Apple Macs have names like Apple iMac late 2017, you know, or something.

They have these ways that distinguish it between the one that we're selling in early 2017 and stuff like that.

But if you can find those names and then I have a details like this, the serial number where I purchased it, how much I paid, all that sort of stuff.

You never know.

There's always going to be a time in the future when you're going to want to know, gosh, how long have I had this?

Maybe it's for warranty information.

Maybe it's because you're just looking to get a new device and you're curious, I'm replacing this one.

How much did I pay for that one?

Is this about the same cost?

You know, today's dollars.

I just find that it's often valuable to look back and find that information.

Now, the reason that I use my password manager, 1Password for this, it's, you know, normally I think of 1Password as a place that I keep my secrets, you know, right?

Like my passwords and stuff.

There's nothing really secret about the fact that I bought an iPhone.

I talk about it all the time.

But I like to keep it in 1Password because the app does a nice job of allowing you to create fields that have names on them.

So I can create a field called something like serial number and date of purchase.

Or for my cars, I have fields like VIN number, date, model, mileage at time of purchase if it's a used car, the salesman that helped me.

And once you create it in 1Password, I can then, so like I have the first car that I did that for.

And then when I get a new car, you know, years later for like someone else in my family, I just take that entry and copy it so that all the fields are there.

And then in the new entry, I will just change the VIN number, change the model number, change the color.

All of those forms that I previously thought were relevant to a car or previously thought were relevant to a computer or an iPhone or whatever are there.

And I mean, it's not like I use it every day, but it's absolutely something that every couple of months I will have a need to get the information about those significant items that I've purchased in my life.

And I just know that because I've been doing this for years now, I just know to go to 1Password and do it.

So again, whether you use 1Password or use notes, you know, if you get yourself into the habit, your future self will be thankful that you spent the time to write down those information like the serial number.

Because when you're on the phone with tech support because of a product that you've had for years and you're asked the question of what is the serial number?

What is the model number?

You don't know those things.

And it's like, how do I find that?

Oh, I know exactly where to find them.

I'm going to go right here.

And for me, because it's in 1Password, if I'm filling out like an online form, I can easily copy and paste, you know, especially something long, like a serial number.

I don't care how long it is.

I just copy and paste it and it's done.

So and again, the tip that you had, Brett, is a way that if you want to go back in time and try to create some of these cards for things you purchased in the past, this is the research that you might want to do to find that information.

So the two tips that we've had this week can really work hand in hand.

Oh, I'm so, I mean, there's no secret that we're both very big fans of 1Password.

But I just love what you're talking about there because even one of the things that you, I mean, you can put anything into 1Password.

In fact, I use the notes function all the time in 1Password.

That's what I'm talking about, by the way.

I'm using the notes function to do this.

Okay.

But I will say I even use the notes function in the actual like card, I guess is what I call it, because you can actually put in a driver's license.

And to your point, Jeff, I have put our driver's licenses into 1Password because there are sometimes when I might need to get a driver's license number and it's like I'm sitting at my office and I don't have my wallet on me.

So my driver's license is like downstairs.

I don't want to go downstairs and get my driver's license.

So I'll just put that into 1Password and just exactly what you said, Jeff, I will go and copy that and I have it handy right there.

Or again, other websites that require you to put in like security questions and answers.

I don't remember which one that I did.

You know, there's like dropdowns sometimes.

Anyway, just all of that kind of stuff I always collect into to your point, Jeff, just in addition to some of the things you're talking about, it's just a great secure, completely secure, trusted location where I know that I can put all of that information in.

I'm glad we should just do a whole podcast on 1Password by itself because we keep talking about it so much.

It's really good.

Okay.

Well, I think that will do it for today.

We'll end on a good note with 1Password, on a secure note with 1Password.

Well, lots of good stuff.

Enjoy watching Submerged again another 10 times probably, Jeff.

I'm going to guess that you're going to do and we'll talk with you next week.