Welcome to In the News for November the 1st, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey, Brett, happy November.

I know.

It's like, goodness gracious, I cannot believe it's already November.

I mean, it was just like July yesterday and now it's November.

It's a little nuts on there.

But hey, we're heading to that time of the holidays.

And for us, it's that time that Apple may be making some additional announcements.

Not only do they make one announcement, there were three announcements this past week, Jeff, and nothing to do with the iPhone.

It was all on the Mac side.

We found we had a new Mac mini, we had a new iMac and some new MacBook Pros.

Not some huge jumps in there, although the Mac mini was a little bit of a change, but definitely some improvements on the processors and, you know, more speed, better cameras, all the better kind of stuff that came in this week.

Yeah, you can get the itty bitty details from the people that do like, you know, the detailed posts.

But from a big picture, you know, what Apple is doing is they have their newest processor, the M4, which before this week was available in the iPad.

I have it in my iPad right here.

Yeah, that's right.

But now it's brought to the Mac.

So you got the latest and greatest processor.

And of course, it's not just the M4, there's the M4 Pro and stuff like that.

But then additionally, Apple is upping the memory on all of its computers.

So it's now at least 16 gigabytes.

And you know, one thing that we are learning is, and I think the memory is good for a million different reasons, but my suspicion is the reason Apple is doing this, and this is both an iPhone and an iPad and now a Mac thing, is that the future is Apple intelligence.

I think that's what Apple believes.

And because Apple, for privacy reasons, wants to do a lot of that stuff on device, it just eats up memory.

And so they're now saying that even if you get that entry level Mac, you know, they still want you to have 16 gigs of memory so that it's going to be able to handle going forward.

So that's sort of like the big picture thing.

Otherwise, the iMacs are pretty, they're basically the same as before.

The colors are tweaked a little bit.

As someone who uses a Mac mini at home, and I have a Mac mini M2 Pro, which is a more than wonderful machine.

I don't need anything else at all.

I'm perfectly fine.

But I have to admit that when I saw this new Mac mini, it's smaller and it's got ports in the front, which is sort of nice.

And you know, like that could be really useful.

And like for a brief moment, I'm like, well, maybe I do need a Mac mini in my life.

And then I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm totally fine.

I don't need the speed.

Everything's good.

But it's nice to know that whenever, you know, two, three years from now, who knows, Macs last a long time.

Whenever I get to the point where I want to upgrade, they will presumably still have this cute new design and it looks great.

So.

Before even getting to the actual hardware on there, I just thought that it was so interesting this past week that instead of like one big keynote address, right, that we normally like all wait for.

And you know, we I mean, I reserve it on my calendar to make sure I'm there.

There were three like mini announcements.

I think there were like 10 minute videos that Apple released.

Was it Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I believe.

And there was one product for each video.

I just thought that that was really interesting.

Like is this sort of the way it's going to go?

Like there wasn't a big event where all of the reviewers and journalists came around.

There wasn't a place where, you know, one time particular time that everybody got together and they watched.

I mean, some probably had some watch parties, but I just really thought that was interesting on on the way that Apple was doing that.

Like are they experimenting with other ways to make announcements?

Because I thought it was very effective.

It was sort of kind of like a dribble, you know, a triple threat of announcements this week as opposed to just one big punch in the face.

That's what I think.

When you think about it, you know, WWDC, their big developer conference, you know, you got people in town.

It's a big keynote.

You know, that's its own thing and it's going to do the own thing.

And then every September, you know, in that second week of September, we're going to have the iPhone announcement.

And that's a big deal.

The iPhone is the biggest product for Apple.

They're going to have people from around the world come.

Even if they're doing a video thing, you know, they're going to have some some live event.

But this, you know, sort of the pre Christmas, Hanukkah holiday season event in October with new computers, Apple, this is this is it.

There's less at stake here.

And I think Apple can play with things.

I mean, if you remember almost one year ago, do you remember what Apple did is on Halloween or maybe the day before Halloween, they had it was a nighttime presentation.

It was the first time Apple had ever done a nighttime presentation.

They made it like a Halloween theme with like, you know, bats and stuff.

It's spooky, scary, fast.

It was spooky.

Exactly.

And so that was a new way to do it.

And of course, there were some advantages that because it was a nighttime, it allowed them because the time changed to do some things in Europe that normally they wouldn't do.

And so it was just trying something new.

And now they've done something different this year, too.

And I agree with you if they had had I mean, if they had taken taken these three announcements and squeezed them together into one, it basically would have been like a single 30, 40 minute announcement, which is exactly what they had last year.

But instead, they broke it up.

And now because they broke it up into three, it did mean that the every single time they wanted to talk about Apple intelligence and, you know, they tried to make them a little different, but there was some repetition there because some people might only watch the MacBook Pro announcement, for example, because they don't want a Mac mini.

And so Apple wanted to make sure that if you only saw one or two of them, you still get all the details.

So maybe if they'd squeezed together into one, they could have made it a little bit shorter.

But the reality is that by coming on different days, it really it really spread out the news.

So like Monday, everybody was talking about the iMac and the fact that it was M4 and stuff like that.

And then Tuesday, we were all talking about the your Tuesday, the announcement was the Mac mini and people talked about that.

And it sort of it gave each one its own space and allowed us to think about it.

And I sort of like that because like I was just talking about the Mac mini announcement comes out and I spent some time just sort of thinking, you know, when am I going to get my next Mac mini?

And then the next day, the MacBook Pro announcement comes out.

And then I guess Thursday, there actually was an announcement, but not a product announcement.

It was just the the financials.

And we'll talk about that next week, perhaps.

But, you know, I like having things spaced out like this.

There's there's you know, and I especially like the idea of Apple experimenting with new ways to announce products.

And you know, you know, last year it was the one nighttime event.

This year, it's the three days in a row.

Who knows what it'll be next year?

But I say I say, you know what, let's try something new.

Sure.

The biggest physical change to these three devices was the Mac mini, as you already alluded to.

I don't know if you actually watched that video for the Mac mini, but when I was watching John Ternus make the announcement, it came back and he had a table next to him with a cloth laying on top of the computer.

And I don't know about you, Jeff.

It sounds like you're smiling.

I said, you may think where I'm going with that.

That just hearkened to be back to some of those announcements with Steve Jobs, right, where he would have like a black felt cloth covering over, you know, the device on stage.

And then he would just reveal it by ripping it off.

And I just thought that was so cool that they did that of all the technologically, you know, options that they have, you know, green screen and magic that they could do on video, that they still had an actual physical cloth that they would take that off.

But even that you mentioned this already.

The fact is it he took the cloth off and it was the current or I guess, you know, as of three days ago, the past.

Yeah, that was cute.

And it was the bigger one.

And then he lifted off that fake little, you know, hollowed out version of it.

And underneath was the new Mac mini, which, as you said, it's already I mean, it's literally five by five.

It almost to me looks the same size as like an Apple TV that you would get today.

And the fact that it packs as much punch in that device now is really amazing.

Plus, they kept the pricing pretty much all across the same, right?

I mean, maybe just some incremental bumps.

But that is amazing that they made that physical change.

I mean, this is such an affordable device for folks that are looking for, you know, a starter computer.

And but it's even more powerful than I mean, they even compared it once to like the quote, you know, best selling PC on the market today.

And it's just an incredible value that you can get with a little Mac mini now.

Yeah, I mean, just to give it a plug, first of all, in terms of size, an Apple TV device is about three and a half by three and a half.

And this is five by five.

So it's, you know, it's bigger, but it's still I mean, it's anybody look.

Yeah, anyone looking at this would say it reminds me of the Apple TV.

I completely agree.

It's also a little bit taller, too, just to get some air in there.

And it's sort of lifted a little bit in the bottom for airflow.

But the Mac mini is fascinating because I mean, you just said starter computer and I completely agree.

The Mac mini has been around for a very, very long time.

And I remember like when my when my wife's mom needed a computer years ago, the Mac mini, I just wanted something super cheap that she could use with her existing monitor and keyboard and mouse.

And the Mac was perfect.

We got the low end model, the cheapest one.

It was perfect.

And yet and yet you can spec them up like I did.

I mean, I didn't get the M2.

I got the M2 Pro.

And you know, you do that and you get some extra storage space and some extra RAM.

And you have a computer that is can be almost as powerful as like the Mac studios, the Mac pros.

So you have this this huge range.

You can go from just a basic, simple I think that's what five, six hundred dollar computer all the way up to, you know, two thousand or more to really spec it up.

And I love the I love that you can sort of make what you want of it.

And then I have the Apple studio display.

But if you want something different, if you one of these new displays, it's like twice as long or, you know, you choose what you want, whatever keyboard you want.

You want the Apple keyboard, you want a third party keyboard, you want to have a trackpad, you want to have a mouse.

You just have so many different choices with the Mac mini.

It's a fascinating computer.

It's even more interesting now with the new design.

I love it.

You mentioned a keyboard and mouse.

This did not warrant its own video announcement, but Apple released updates to the to the magic or the magic trackpad and the magic mouse.

And why this is so significant.

Why are we talking about this?

Because finally, these devices can now be charged with USB-C like these were some of the last remaining Apple devices that required a lightning cable.

Is that right, Jeff?

I think you have one or two of these, right?

The keyboard or the mouse?

I do.

Yeah.

And they had lightning and the ones that I still use are lightning.

And it's a little bit of a pain because it's like, what do you like, for example, for my Mac mini, just about everything I'm doing is USB-C, but that keyboard is lightning.

And so I still have a single lightning cord, which, you know, in days past I would use with my iPhones and stuff, but they've now all gone to USB.

So like the only thing I'm using the lightning cord for now is charging my keyboard.

And how often do you charge a keyboard?

Once every, I don't know, six months, three months, you know, forever.

And then likewise, and for my Mac mini, I've got the big extended one, like you're showing on the screen now that's got the separate number, what do you call it?

The number pad and stuff.

NumPad.

But then I have another older Magic Keyboard without the number pad, just a small one.

And I use that when I keep it downstairs and I use it extensively because if I'm downstairs and I don't feel like going to my upstairs computer, I just want to use my iPad, but I want to have a keyboard so I can get like some real typing done.

I will pair the keyboard with the iPad and then I've got my track pad there and I can get some work done.

And then I take that same combination and use it with my Vision Pro if I want to get more work done with my Apple Vision Pro and go between the two of them.

And again, those are all things that I need to charge with lightning and everything else in my life is USB-C.

I will say, however, that, and they've gotten some slack on this, the only change, the only change this week is they just took out the lightning port and put a USB-C port.

And it is a bit of a missed opportunity because you have to assume that now that they've done this update, they're going to keep these accessories static for a number of years now.

And you know, it would have been nice if Apple had done a little bit more.

You know, one thing that I would have loved, and it's the feature that I love on my Logitech keyboard that's in front of me right now in my office, is that I can press a button and I can make my Logitech keyboard switch between talking to my PC and talking to my iPad or one other device.

And I would love to have that on Apple's keyboard, which I really love because for me, it's a bit of a pain that if I switch from my iPad to my Vision Pro, I need to go into settings.

I need to say, forget this device and then go to the new one and then pair it and then back and forth.

And it's just a couple of seconds.

I mean, I guess I shouldn't be too complaining, but it would be so much easier to just hit one key and say, remember two or three different Bluetooth configurations.

And this would have been the perfect time, the perfect time for Apple to make that change.

And they didn't.

So, oh well, so be it.

But at least we have USB-C now.

Well, it's been a big week for Apple.

Not only did they come out with a brand new Mac mini, a new iMac, a new MacBook Pro, but we talked about this a week ago, Jeff. iOS 18.1 came out this past Monday and I am confident you and I have both downloaded it.

I know I have been playing around with it, although I feel like I've just barely started to scratch the surface of everything.

But that was yet another big story that came out this week.

And this is our first introduction, like you said, in those three announcements for the hardware products, they kept talking about Apple Intelligence, but now we have it actually in our hands on the brand new iPhones, at least if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPhone 16 or 16 Pro.

Yeah, it's a big update.

There's a lot that was added that was not quite ready in 18, but is here in 0.1.

And you sort of have the Apple Intelligence, which is just a whole host of changes.

And then you have the non-Apple Intelligence stuff.

So I guess we'll start with the Apple Intelligence and say that, you know, John Voorhees probably summed it up in his review.

He says it's a mixed bag.

And that's what I feel.

There's some interesting things here.

There are some strikes of genius.

And then there's some stuff that just, you know, I don't get it.

And you know, in some ways I don't get it.

You know, last week I was really pooh-poohing some of the writing assistance tools.

And I continue to feel like for me, they are totally useless.

But I will tell you, as I've been thinking about it, and I've been listening to other people talk about it, you know, it does remind me that, you know, I happen to be in a profession as an attorney where I write for a living.

And so writing is second nature.

And a lot of other people are in some sort of a business where writing is second nature.

And yet there are other people that just, you know, writing is not something that comes to them naturally.

Not that they don't have the ability to explain their thoughts very well.

It's just not a natural skill.

And I remember that for years when my mom was alive, she ran a preschool, did a fantastic job with it.

But sometimes she would have to send like a big letter to the parents about stuff.

And she would often ask me, "Could you write it for me?

Or could you change it?"

And I could tell that she just didn't have the confidence in her ability to express thoughts that a tool like this where you could sort of do your best.

You were her AI.

Exactly.

You were mom's AI.

Copy the text and say, "Make this sound more professional."

It would probably improve it.

Now again, it's not going to be the best.

And you know, you might want to go adjust it.

But at least it would do something.

And so I think that for a lot of people for whom, you know, verbal, you know, writing expression did, they just don't feel like it's a strong point.

Everybody has the things in life that they're good and bad at.

But maybe the writing tools would be helpful for them.

For me, however, I really, they dumbed down the stuff that I write.

I don't like them at all.

A related one is, you know, summarization of stuff, summarization of emails.

And you know, I have mixed emotions about that.

Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not.

You know, a lot of these word things, you know, I wish that it was more like, as I pointed out when I read about 18.1, I wish it was more like grammarly, which can do a really good job of fixing grammar errors.

Apple's initial attempt at that, it just isn't quite as good.

But again, you have to start somewhere.

And I do, I give them a lot of slack that this is point one.

You know, I will point out that what they are doing with photos does interest me more.

And I talked about that, you know, my review this week that, you know, for example, they now have this clean things up feature that again has been in Photoshop for forever.

And but it's actually really useful.

I mean, I had showed this example this week if I found like I'm scanning some old pictures from an album and I found this old baby picture of me and I put pictures of me in here.

I don't have to ask anyone for rights to put the picture in if it's myself.

But like, you know, these pictures just deteriorate over time, right?

Like I don't know what it is, is the chemical process and the photos or whatever it is.

But it's got like, you know, these like you're zooming in at like this.

I don't know what that is.

The picture fell apart and like there's something above my head.

And then on the left side of the picture, it's sort of become like a rainbow sort of kind of I don't know what's going on.

But I was able to just circle those things and then hit on the little cleanup tool and it instantly, you know, fix them, not just fixing them to make them go away.

But like, for example, if the underlying bedspread has like a pattern of it, like sort of a diamond pattern or something like that, it kept that pattern.

So like it made it look underneath it the way that it should look.

And, you know, all it's doing is just sort of restoring it and getting it back to where it used to be.

So that was really nice.

And then I just adjusted some colors.

The next thing you know, you have a picture that looks pretty good.

So that was one thing.

That was so much better.

I will tell you, though, that for me using the tool to fix things like dust and scratches and stuff from old pictures, again, other apps have done this for a long time.

And I will say that on my iPad, for example, and my iPhone, especially on my iPad, Photoshop, of course, can do this, but Photoshop is almost like that's the 200 pound gorilla.

You don't need that much power.

There's an app that I've used for years and years and I've recommended it in the past in this podcast called Photomator.

That Photomator has a really good tool that I've used for the same thing.

Like if there's just a little like a dust line across an old picture or a crack, you can just use the Photomator with your – it's nice with your stylus and just sort of, you know, right go along it or circle it.

And it does a really good job too.

I don't know if it's better, but it certainly – it works a little bit differently.

So that's one use of the Apple – that technology.

But the other one though and where I think it actually works better is if you want to remove things from the background.

You know, the classic example is you've got you and your wife are on the beach or maybe your kids and then just somebody happens to be walking in the background and you just don't want them there.

And it does a nice job of – especially if there's some separation and stuff, you can just circle that person and you can make them go away.

I did an extreme example here that you're showing on the screen.

I just made everybody in the beach go away.

It made it look like it was a vacant beach and we're the only ones there.

You know, and that's where you get to the point of, you know, ethically – That's amazing though.

It looks so good.

It does look very good.

Is it, you know, appropriate ethically to make it seem like the beach is empty when of course it's not?

Whatever.

You can decide for yourself where you draw the line in your photo ethics.

But you now have the ability and there's something to be said for having it in the Photos app.

I know that whenever Apple has added things to the Photos app in the past, things like reducing shadows and adjusting, you know, colors and stuff, it's just having everything right there in front of you just makes it so much easier.

And I know, I know we could go to a third-party app and do it and then bring it back in and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But just having those tools at your fingertip makes it faster, it makes it easier.

So I'm glad that we have this one particular tool.

And then I'll also mention that in the Photos before I stop talking about this, you know, they have this Photos magic memories feature that you can have like a memory movie.

And it used to be that you would just open up the Photos app and see what memory movies they want to give you and you could adjust them.

But now you can just describe to the Photos app, you know, I would love to see a picture of, you know, my friend Julie wearing red because I'm going to put together a little movie for Christmas and I want, you know, lots of red in it.

And I did that.

It's very similar.

For example, I did one, I said, you know, give me pictures of my wife wearing red.

And it did.

It had pictures of my wife wearing red shirts and red dresses.

It also had some examples where my wife was next to somebody else and they were in a red shirt.

So Apple had a little bit of, you know, it's like it was her and a red shirt, not her wearing a red shirt.

You know, whatever.

We got to work on that.

Right.

But, you know, these movies are fun and it was nice that you could actually say, you know, give me something of the kids at the beaches over the years or give me, you know, whatever, whatever you can envision that might be a fun topic for a movie.

Just a way to sort of find some of your pictures that maybe you forgot about and put them together and put some music behind them.

It's fun.

It's really good.

Now, I have not yet tested the enhanced search feature, which I look forward to because I know this from my legal practice that doing like a regular search is always good.

But doing an AI search is sometimes better because it can find things that maybe my search term doesn't specifically say.

I may say dog and it may also look for something else, you know, related words.

Those types of AI searches are powerful.

On my iPad, I'm told that it's still indexing my photo library.

So it's not letting me do those searches yet.

I'm hoping that maybe by this weekend it'll finish indexing everything and I can do it.

So, you know, writing tools in AI, you know, it's a first effort.

The photo tools, you know, a little bit better.

But you know, it's the brave new world of AI.

So I mean, I know we just had it a few days, but has anything jumped out at you yet, Brett, in terms of the AI stuff?

Honestly, this is how silly it is for me.

The first thing I wanted to do was to see the new Siri.

I do like it.

I know it's eye candy, but I like it.

But I got to tell you, I downloaded, I upgraded, and then I'm like asking Siri to come on and do something.

And it's the same old.

And I started getting frustrated, Jeff, until I'm glad you pointed this out, because I finally found this out as well.

Not only do you have to download and install 18.1, you have to go into the settings and you have to actually turn on or opt in to Apple Intelligence.

It's a whole new little section there in settings that you have to go into now and say, yes, I want to be part of the Apple Intelligence.

I don't know if they call it a beta.

It was something like that that they called it, right?

But you have to opt into it.

And then it takes a while for you to actually be approved.

Or I think I heard somebody else, Jason Snell, was talking about this, that what they're actually doing is downloading some of those models and some of the tools or the software utilities, whatever, to your iPhone in order to have that work.

So maybe that's what we're waiting for.

But I think just like you said in your review, I got in within maybe, I don't know, 20 minutes or so, I just said, yes, I want to opt into this.

And then it was available.

And sure enough, as soon as I had that turned on, I had the new, I like how John Vorhees says it, it's basically the Siri flourish.

So instead of that little circle at the bottom now, your whole screen does a different color.

And I got to say, I like it.

Sounds like you do too.

Although I thought the exact same thing that you said.

This is really cool now for the first two, three, four days.

Is it going to get old after a while?

I don't know.

I even use this in CarPlay and it's cool.

The whole CarPlay screen does this.

My iPad does it as well.

I just thought that that was really cool with the new animation.

So that's as little petty as I am.

Like that was the main thing that I was like looking at.

I did like the notification summaries.

We'll talk about that in the know in just a moment on turning that on.

I do like some of that aspect on there.

Just quickly, the comment that I had about my email summaries or even the notification summaries.

I don't know, Jeff, if I'm along the same lines as you, that it's not helpful or I just don't trust it yet.

And is that maybe just the fact that I'm never going to trust it?

Or is this just the maturity or the eventual maturity of the Apple intelligence?

Because right now, even if I see a summary, I was like, well, that's good.

But now I want to go read the entire email.

And I'm like, well, this isn't saving me any time because I want to see the, first of all, I want to say, is that summary actually correct?

Did I miss something?

And it's the FOMO kind of an aspect on there.

But so far, I like it just as a comparison aspect, but I can't trust it just yet.

And I don't know, again, if that's just me being an old foddy, or is it just the fact that at some point, eventually, we're going to get used to it and it's going to get better and everybody will be happy, including me, about that.

I have the same way.

There's one of these features that's in the mail app on my iPhone that I'm looking at that if I think it's on by default, and then you can toggle it by tapping at the top right of the mail app when you're looking at your inbox.

If you tap the three dots, you can turn on or off this thing called show priority.

And if you have it turned on, what the AI tries to do is, if you have a whole bunch of emails in your inbox, it's going to put at the top a little notification of the one or the two emails that it considers to be the most important.

The idea of it is good.

Right now, as I'm standing here, I've got 24 unread emails.

So do I start at the top, do I start at the bottom?

How am I going to start to read through those 24 emails?

I like the idea of the iPhone being smart enough to say, "Why don't you start with this one?"

The problem, though, is how effective is it?

I mean, the other day, I did it for me and it brought two emails to the top of my screen.

One of them was an email where somebody else that was sending it to me, they actually put in the summary line, "Urgent."

I mean, I guess that's a way to tell you for...

And so sure, I know the reason it was urgent is because he was having computer problems and he was emailing our help desk at my law firm and then he just copied me on it too.

So it wasn't really urgent for me, it was more urgent for him.

But I can understand, sure, the AI sees the word "urgent," it's going to bring that one up to the top.

But the other one that it brought up to the top was, I don't want to say a spam message, it was like a newsletter type thing that it was like there was nothing.

I mean, maybe they were saying that they had an urgent sale.

I don't even know what it was because I didn't pay attention to it.

I'm like, "Really?

This is the one that you brought to the top?"

Is that important?

It bothered me enough when it happened that I immediately turned off that feature.

And then I have since then turned it on again.

I mean, I'm going to give it some more time, but...

I know, same.

I love the idea.

I love the idea, but unless you can trust it, which gets back to what you said, Brett, if you can't trust it, is it actually helping your life or is it just annoyance?

Anyway, so that's Apple Intelligence.

There's a lot there.

We're just at the point one stage.

Point two is coming in December, next month.

There's a long ways to go, but the dawn of Apple Intelligence has begun.

I'm glad, just back to the photos thing, I'm glad that you went through some of that and I loved your comparison pictures here in your review.

I haven't had a chance to try any of that out.

I'm looking forward to doing that on there.

But just quickly, just going back to what you said, I think you had another story that we linked to today where somebody said, yes, that you can use these cleanup tools in photos with a clear conscience.

Because you made the point, it's not like this is a brand new thing.

We've been able to touch up and Photoshop photos for years, but I don't ever remember this much of an outcry about whether or not that this is something that you should do or you shouldn't do.

Is it...

Are you being untruthful?

I don't remember this much belly aching about it.

Is it just maybe because it's the iPhone now and it's in our hands?

Maybe it's a lot more accessible.

I'm not really sure, but I did like this article from Joe Rosenstiel that you linked to.

I thought he did a good job of making some good points here about...

We crop photos today.

Nobody really cares if you crop something out of a photo.

We've been doing that for a long time.

I like one of his examples here.

He has his friend where he just basically colored out a strap.

He had a bag across his torso and he just cropped out that strap because it just didn't look good in the picture.

It was a green color.

It's like, "That's fine.

I don't have a problem with that.

The fact that you touched up your cute little baby picture, that's fantastic.

That's what those little tools are there for."

Obviously, just like anything else, it can be used for good and it can be used for bad.

I don't know.

It's so weird to me that we're seeing so many people talk about this from, I guess, a morality standpoint of whether you should do this or not.

I just don't think it's that big of a deal.

Anyway, we'll see.

You can't help but think about it.

I think that...

I don't want to get political here on the eve of the election, but I do think that all of the Trump fake news stuff and the severe risk that people truly can use AI tools that are a lot more sophisticated than what is in 18.1 to take video and do deep fakes and stuff like that.

It is starting to cause people to question.

That plus the gaslighting that we see in everyday society is starting people to say, "Would people just deny?"

I think it has something to do with where we are in society.

It's a far bigger concept to get into than we have the space or time focused for the podcast.

I do think there's something there.

It's something that you think about and you just have to draw the line yourself.

I guess it's worth mentioning, however, because if you take a picture that you and some of your friends are in and you do something that you think is meaningless cleanup, like taking off the strap, if you share the picture, other people, for example, maybe and for some reason you have crossed the line for them that you yourself don't see.

They may think, "Wait a minute.

Is this even the picture?"

Apple will even...

If you bring up a picture that you have removed things from, they have a little icon at the top.

I think it's at the top left that indicates that somebody has used that touch-up feature just to give you that little bit of a head.

It's not quite a watermark, but just sort of a little cue that's on top of it.

But again, this is a debate.

It's one for the ages.

We can have a whole show just on this.

Okay.

I think that's probably plenty on 18.1, but a couple of things that you will link to today as well, a couple of changes in the Apple Music app.

I saw this.

Now you can share through TikTok directly from the Music app.

It seemed like there was something else.

This story talks about the iPad tab bar that's a little bit different, which is nice.

In Apple Music, you can now customize that new tab bar they have at the top.

So for example, if you have a playlist that you love to use, you could stick that playlist that you use all the time up there on the tab bar.

I mean, it's a little minor, little thing.

There's a lot of 18.1 minor changes that are not Apple intelligence, but there are things like recording phone calls if you wanted to do that.

There's again, there's sometimes some legal implications if you don't disclose that.

And you can get some really good markets around that by announcing it.

I haven't tried it yet, but my understanding is that if you do record a phone call, much like nowadays, if you record like a Zoom call or things like that, it will announce this is being recorded in a voice.

So everybody knows that.

And there's some other little features too.

So 18.1 is not just Apple intelligence.

It's got other stuff too, but those are the big ones.

And I'm glad you mentioned that because you'd link to another story today where Julie Clover, pointed out, what are some of the things that you can use in 18.1 if you do not have a 15 pro or a 16 pro is if you've got an iPhone 12 or 13 or whatever that, yeah, there are still some other things in here that you can use, including the phone call recording.

You just mentioned Jeff, some of the AirPods features.

I think you can still use the new hearing features, which we'll talk about next here, but you can still get some of these brand new features in 18.1, even if you're not on the brand new iPhone, one of the brand new iPhones.

So I thought that was, that was good.

But one of the things that I just got around to doing this morning, in fact, is I tested my hearing, Jeff.

I ended up having to go into like my bedroom closet and close the door because it kept yelling at me that it wasn't a quiet enough environment, but I got it done.

Thank goodness.

I have no hearing loss, although it was, it seemed pretty exact.

It was like minus six decibel in one or 10 decibel in the other or something like that.

I didn't dig too deeply into the results on there.

But I just thought this was a great article you linked to a well from as well from John Voorhees like we now just the fact that you can do a hearing test and it seemed to be pretty comprehensive for me.

I mean, it took me probably about 15, 20 minutes to get through the entire thing.

And I felt like it was, it was, it was pretty comprehensive and I liked that.

And so it'll turn on some of these features automatically for you if it determines that, yeah, you do need a little bit of help on some of your hearing.

Yeah.

So I tried to do the test.

I tried to do it as I'm sitting right here in my office.

And just because of the air conditioning, there's like an AC vent I can hear on top of me.

I mean, it's just the slight, no, I mean, I don't even hear it.

It's like white noise, right?

It's just the slight noise of, of, of air being pushed through.

But my my iPhone and AirPods were having none of it.

They told me, Nope, that is too much noise.

I'm like, it's the literally it's completely quiet in here except for that.

But that was not enough.

So I had to, I had to go home and I had to close the door and get into a more quiet space like you.

And then I ran through the test and it told me I was fine.

It told me I was like nine in one ear and 13 in the other, which was, which is not a problem.

But but as you say, other people, it will find issues.

And I was, I mean, this, this article from John Voorhees, the Mac story, John Voorhees used to be a practicing attorney up in Chicago, great writer, great Mac person.

He now works for Mac stories.

And he he, he said that he had a hint that he might have some hearing loss, but when he ran the test, he found out that sure enough he did.

And as you say, once, you know, not only can it diagnose the hearing loss, but then it can say, okay, now if you wear your AirPods pro two, we will adjust the way that you listen to music and podcasts and stuff.

And when you're listening to the outside world and that's coming in through the ears, we will, you know, lift the mid range.

I'm saying lift the mid range or whatever it does, the things that it needs to do to process the noise from the outside world to make it easier for you to hear voices.

And he was saying like, this was weird.

It's like, I'm walking across my room and I can actually hear my footsteps better than ever before.

And I'm at the cafe and other people, I can hear them better than I ever have before.

And I think that that is the perfect example that, you know, people that have extreme hearing loss, hopefully understand that and get some help and have professional hearing aids and stuff.

But anyone that's in this middle, which more and more of us as we grow older are going to probably end up there.

You know, I can understand if someone like John saying I'm not severe enough to go get hearing aids, but it would be nice.

Yeah, it's like professional ones, but it would be nice if something like that I already own my AirPods could improve the way that I hear the outside world.

I mean, this is just great.

And we know that Apple loves this increased emphasis on health, whether it's the Apple watch or whatever.

And I just love that they figured out that this was something that they could do to improve people's lives with the products that they may already have.

And and I just think it's I think it's great.

I did like the fact that he said when he walked into through the door of his coffee shop, he his instinct was to pull out the AirPods and put them in a case because that's what we would normally do in society.

But he resisted that impulse.

And so then he kept a man walked up to the counter and he said normally his barista is is soft spoken.

But he could actually hear the barista loud and clear because he had the AirPods in and he had already done this this hearing test.

And I think that that's you hit the nail on the head there, Jeff.

It's the fact that like this isn't going to solve everything if you've got some true, you know, bad hearing loss.

But but if it's just enough that maybe you don't even notice it and you just have gone through life, you know, kind of saying what a little more often than others.

It's like this could at least boost your quality of life just a little bit.

If we can just get over that, that, you know, that societal norm of like keeping the AirPods in like, are you listening to music?

Can you hear me?

It's like, we've got to get to the point where that's going to be okay.

On the other hand, like, I don't know, like, we've just been trained in a different way.

But I just like the way that John covered this on everything.

And can I just say quickly, we've been talking about this, this is a hearing test in 18.1.

It's available now for pretty much anybody that has an iPhone.

And I think you have to have the AirPods Pro two in order to do this.

But I would just I would just recommend everybody go and try it like this isn't something that you should do if you think you've got to hear just go and try it.

I mean, it to me, it was a nice little exercise to go through and be like, okay, well, you know, I'm glad that I that I tested that out.

And then it actually show you some of the other settings in the AirPods Pro on the iPhone that you can tweak a little bit if you wanted to do a few other things.

I mean, there was a few other settings in there that you could toggle on or off.

And I just thought that that was good.

So anyway, just just encourage folks to just go and try it.

If you upgrade 18.1.

This to me is one of the better options and one of the better features that you can jump into.

One little tip I'll add, Brett, is that I have used for a long time now, a third party tips for my AirPods.

I use them that there's like a squishy foam or whatever.

And I just find them more comfortable in my ear.

I found that I could not get the hearing test to work with those on.

I had to take those off and put on like the ones that Apple, which I imagine, you know, Apple has calibrated this very carefully.

They you know, maybe that was a coincidence.

I mean, maybe if I tried one more time, it would have worked with those.

But I was just having difficulty.

So as soon as I remove the foam ones and got and put the Apple ones on and then got into that super quiet room, that was the combination that I needed.

So if you happen to be somebody that's using the tips that are made by comply or one of the other companies, consider going back to the ones that came with the AirPods just just to run the test.

For this.

And the hearing test is a little picky.

I thought I had my AirPods in the way that I normally did.

And at first it says, no, not good enough.

It had big X's on there.

He wants everything like push them.

You know, I mean, I didn't like to like, you know, jam them in, but I had to just make sure that they were very snug.

That's what it says on right on the screen is like, make sure they are snug and comfortable.

So anyway, just a nice little exercise.

And I predict that this is going to even be enhanced more and more as we go through as they start getting data back from this.

Good point.

Yeah, this is just going to be even better as we go through.

Let's go from hearing tests to notes, the notes app, which there is no shortage of love.

I don't think for the notes app in on Mac, on the iPhone, on the iPad.

See if I can get this up.

This is from pod feet.com.

We don't have to do a whole lot on this.

But it's just funny to me that anytime I start talking to folks about where you capturing thoughts and ideas, even my kids, like, that's the first thing that they open up and they will put everything that they are collecting in notes.

My son started driving, Jeff, and so he has to keep track of how many hours he's been driving.

What did you do?

You opened up a new notes and he shared it with me and my wife.

And so we can all track it together.

And it's just been neat.

So anyway, I don't know if I can get this story up now, but this I just like the fact that Allison shared in a long time.

Mac user, you know, just went through and was talking about some of the highlights and sort of the lowlights or things that she didn't really so much like about notes.

But the one thing at the very top, I do remember I completely agreed with her is it sinks.

It just sinks like it's there.

It's everywhere.

Like I pick up my Mac, I pick up my phone, I pick up my iPad.

You know, even to some extent, I guess I could get it on my watch if I need to.

But it's just all there.

Like it just sinks so beautifully.

And that alone is why I keep coming back to the to the to the notes out.

And not just sinking between your own devices, although that works really well.

But like every once in a while, I will have a shared note with my wife.

And it's just really nice that one of us can go in there and change things and it changes for the others.

And you can see the little, you know, your face, the pictures up there and you can see who's made different changes.

And that's really that's really nice.

And then but she also acknowledges that there are some things that notes is perhaps not as good at, for example, things like formatting text, which works well if you have an external keyboard and you can just like do command B or command I for Alex.

But to change it within the app, it's a little cumbersome and have to go through all the little steps.

But I mean, this is almost like a timeless article.

There's nothing about 18.1 specifically.

It's just sort of like, let's step back and think about what does notes do really well and where is there room for improvement?

And I thought it was I thought it was a nice article.

It made me it made me think about the way that I use notes and the way that I could use it more in the future.

So, yeah, if you're in the market for a new nightlight, I like this article you link to from Bradley Chambers.

The third reality smart color nightlight is the perfect home kit accessory.

I think of a nightlight as something I need to be connected to my smart home, Jeff.

But after reading this, I'm like, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, you can turn it on and off.

You can change the color of it and stuff.

I remember when my kids were little, we used to have all the nightlights in the room and they wouldn't go to sleep without them and everything else.

And so this was just a little, you know, what is it, thirty dollar device or something?

And you can get it connected to your it looked like a nice little device.

And so when I read the little write up on it, I haven't tried it yet myself.

But when I saw it, I'm like, you know, this is nice.

And I actually like the idea that you can change the color of it and stuff so you can have just different shades or whether it's, you know, seasonal or whatever else.

So it looked like a nice little a nice little device.

It's one of those things that I initially read from your post, Jeff.

And I'm like, that's ridiculous.

I don't need that to.

Can I get here today?

I already ordered.

I have to do it there.

If you're in the market for a new case for your iPhone, this is from the Wirecutter, of course, one of the I think still an amazing resource when you're looking for something to buy.

This is the best iPhone cases for the iPhone 16, 16 plus 16 pro and the 16 pro max.

Whoo.

I mean, there's a lot of them.

And you know, this is, of course, you know, iPhone cases are something that, you know, have no issues with people arguing about all the time.

But I do like the fact that he goes in here that if you want a leather one, if you want a very thin one, if you want a big one, if you want a protective one, there's all manners of different iPhones cases.

And I just like the fact that Wirecutter goes through as much detail as they go through.

And so you should be able to find one or two here that you can use for your own iPhone 16.

Yeah.

Whether you either take their suggestion or even if you decide to get your own reading, this article will sort of remind you of what are the features that you might want to look for just to get, you know, the best possible case.

Because, you know, we all know that when you buy a case, you're going to probably stick it on your phone and keep it on there, you know, for another year or two.

And so you might as well do a good job picking up a case in the beginning.

I still this is this is the first year ever that I did not buy Apple's case because I didn't like, you know, Apple.

I guess last year I bought the one with the now I forgot what it's called.

It was the crazy leather replacement that came up with the the.

Oh, I'm blanking on the name of it.

I just I did.

I didn't like that.

Fine.

Fine woven.

I did not like the fine woven case.

This year Apple doesn't even have the fine woven case.

They stopped making their leather case, which is probably better for the environment, I guess.

And so all that they have are sort of the more rubbery ones, which I just I didn't know if I wanted that.

So I have no case at all right now.

So far, it's been fine.

I don't because of the flat edge.

I don't find my iPhone 16 Pro Max to be all that slippery.

And so it's not slipping out of my hands.

I did I did use a case for my prior iPhone, though.

I remember during certain times, like when I traveled and stuff like that.

So I guess I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to get a case or not.

But this article made me think about it.

So perhaps I link to this really for me more than anyone else today.

But I'm thinking I've never had a case for this new iPhone.

This is the first time in my life that I have had a case for an iPhone, at least all the way back to the very beginning.

Maybe I mean, it's chills down my back, Jeff.

I know, but it's just because I will sometimes go naked.

I will pull it out of the case and because I have the Apple case.

But even just yesterday, I was walking outside with my wife.

And sure enough, it fell and I can see the case got like dinged on the edge.

And it's just like just in case, like it could happen, even though that, you know, I pamper my iPhones anyway, just wow.

You're a brave man.

In the show, one little show you met, you mentioned today, which, you know, as somebody that's in the legal profession, I cannot believe I still have not seen the presumed innocent.

Oh, you got to watch it on Apple TV.

Plus, it's not a movie, right?

This is a series.

It's got several episodes.

The reason you're saying movie, though, is because years and years ago it was a Harris of course.

So there has been a presumed innocent movie.

But this is a this is a TV series.

Yeah.

With Jake Gyllenhaal, who I really enjoyed just seeing him in Roadhouse and some of the other movies he's been doing.

And it's like, wow, now they have a second season that should be on the way.

Jake isn't going to be in there, Mr.

Gyllenhaal.

But he still remains executive producer, apparently.

Yeah, I was told, although I'd never read it, that Scott Turow had written a sequel.

And I heard people saying, we're not really sure how good that would make for a second season.

And again, I haven't read it, so I don't know.

But Apple decided to instead sort of go the way that what is it like the HBO show, the real detective or whatever, you know, other in these anthology shows where every season is something new.

Fargo is another example.

You know, every season of Fargo has completely new characters.

Now, sometimes there'll be a little thread between the two of them.

But as a result, it's the same theme, the same type of show, just different characters.

And Apple has now decided to do that with Presumed Innocent.

And so I listed here the book.

I'm not familiar with the author, Jo Murray.

You know, I bet my wife is because she knows books a lot more than I do.

But there's an upcoming book she's already written called Dissection of a Murder.

And apparently Apple is going to take that plot and, you know, turn that into their next one.

But as someone who, you know, I guess I'm a lawyer, it's stereotypical that I love legal thrillers.

But I would love the idea of Apple having a show that every season is just a great legal thriller.

It's not like a whodunit or whatever.

And so and I have no problem with the characters changing from season to season as long as they're done well.

And so I'm excited for this.

So if season two is really good, then this could be the thing that we may have, like, you know, six seasons of it, which would just make me totally delighted.

So I did enjoy Presumed Innocent as a show and look forward to the second season even more now.

Last little video that you linked to, as Apple is usually prone to do whenever they have a new announcement of new products or so they have some cute little video commercials to go along with it.

And this week was no different.

This one was so funny.

I laughed out loud, sent it to my wife.

And if you watch it, you'll understand why I sent it to my wife.

I just thought that this was so cute.

Although you also linked to another story that folks some folks don't think is so cute.

But I mean, you know, I just felt like it was such an innocent, funny kind of a thing to kind of highlight.

Yeah, yeah.

What you talked about was creating photo memories, which I still haven't haven't like jumped into too deep into my phone and my photos aspects yet with 18.1.

But this was really, really cool.

Yeah, it's a fun little video.

And again, I think it's true to life because like, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, you really can create a topic and you can create a memory movie and it will it will find photos that match that topic, put them together, put put put some music behind it.

The music often will, you know, be appropriate for what the movie is, you know.

And so like if it's a beach movie, it might be like a Beach Boys song or something like that.

If you know, since I live in New Orleans, sometimes I'll have like a New Orleans type, like a like a Mardi Gras type collection of pictures and it will pick something from like a local artist like Dr.

John or something.

So Apple does a pretty good job and you can you can adjust them if you want.

Or you could just take exactly what it does and don't touch it at all.

And there's your memory, which is what happens in the commercial.

And it's great.

So I thought it was cute.

It's not.

In the know, in the know, so I thought we could pick some of our favorite eight I was 18.1 tips so far.

I mentioned summarize notifications.

I got to tell you, I'm picking this as my tip just to kind of share a couple of things.

But the my jury is still out on this kind of along those lines of like trusting it.

Is it the way that I want to?

And I think again, I think it's just a matter of kind of getting used to it and seeing and maybe comparing to the full system of notifications.

I get a ton of notifications.

I've turned off a bunch, but I still get a lot from emails, you know, certain email people that that send me emails or YouTube notifications.

I'm on a couple of slack channels, that kind of a thing.

And so I do I was looking forward to this notification summarization from Apple intelligence.

Now you can go you can turn this offer on and I would just recommend that you try both ways for a little bit for maybe a couple of days and just see right now I had it on that I turned it off, I turned it back on now and I'm kind of in the on flow right now.

But you can do that by going into settings and then tap notifications.

And then you will see there is a new option called summarize previews.

And so what that does, at least for me, that's the one that I'm focused on, is that on my lock screen, instead of getting 18 separate YouTube notifications, for example, that I can just some they can summarize it into maybe one, maybe YouTube isn't the best idea.

I will tell you where it is on a slack channel, for example, that I that several people are talking back and forth, I usually will get if it's an important channel for me, I'll get a separate notification for that, right, Jeff.

But what I want it would love it to do.

And this is what I'm testing out is that instead of getting 18 different notifications from slack, I'll get one notification, and it'll just be three or four lines of a summary of what's going on, what what's happened.

Now this has been in the news, right, not too long ago, where sometimes the summarization previews can go a little wrong because of the way that Apple intelligence is interpreting what people are saying.

But it is worthwhile, I think to try it out.

And so this is an 18.1 I do not, it might actually be turned on by default.

But if you want to switch it back and forth and toggle it back and forth, you can just simply go into settings, go to notifications.

And you will see there will be a new option there called summarize previews.

And you can turn that off and on.

So just try that over the last next week or two, the next week or two, just simply because it's good to see what it looks like without it, which is what we have mostly been working with, and then to try it with it on and see how much of a difference that it makes.

Right, there have been one or two times in the past in the what is this our one 170th episode of this podcast is where you and I have both had the exact same idea for a tip of the week.

And I always think that's cute.

This week, however, is the first time that totally unknowing of what your tip of the week was going to be.

My tip of the week is the opposite of yours.

Because I went to the show no document.

And I'm like, yeah, my tip of the week is how to turn off or disable these notification summaries.

And I laughed out loud when I saw that your tip was to use them.

And of course, the reality is, I mean, I mean, I'm exaggerating, because we sort of are saying the same thing, which is that they are useful in some circumstances.

Yeah, but they are in other such circumstances.

And I'll give you a perfect example.

So I have all of them turned on for everything.

And so I'm literally this morning driving into work, and my wife sends me a text message.

And you know how CarPlay I have CarPlay set that it will automatically read the message.

So as I'm driving in, I'm listening to it.

But instead of reading the message, because of the summarization feature being turned on, it gave me this AI summary of the message.

Now let me pause for a second.

The message was like, maybe she sent me two texts in a row.

But we were talking about two or three sentences, not something that takes a long time.

So instead of just taking 10 seconds to read them, it took seven seconds to summarize them.

And the summary made no sense to me.

I'm like, what?

Literally, it just got it completely wrong.

And I was like, what do I do?

And so the immediate thing that I noticed I could do is if you look at your CarPlay screen, and again, I'm trying to drive, I'm trying to pay attention to the road, for goodness sake.

But on the CarPlay screen, I noticed that I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn't do it.

Of the three like buttons in the middle of the CarPlay screen as this was occurring, the middle one, I don't even know what text it had on there.

But if I tapped that one, it would switch from summarizing the text message to just reading it.

And then once I did that, and it read it, I'm like, oh, okay, now I understand what she's saying.

But I mean, literally, the summary was just so off.

It was bizarre.

So the first thing I did when I got into the office this morning is how do I turn this off?

But what I actually wanted to do is I don't, I mean, notification summaries, I appreciate your tip, because notification summaries are actually really useful in some context.

I've only had them for a few days now.

But I've noticed that, for example, some of my HomeKit summaries that tell me whether certain things are on or off, I don't need to see the history of those, I just want to see the current state of it.

Or like you have a Slack channel where there's a big long discussion.

I don't necessarily, or at least for the standpoint of deciding whether or not you want to jump into the chat channel, the summary gives you that little preview of how hot of a topic it is.

I totally like that.

So what you can do is, you know, the tip here is if you go into settings, and then you go into, what is it, Siri?

No, you go into settings, and then you go into notifications.

And then, is that where it is?

There is notification summaries.

And you can adjust it on a per app basis.

And so I literally just tried this this morning.

I turned it off for messages.

Hopefully that will solve it going forward.

Because for me, I don't get so many text messages that I need to have the one or two texts from my wife summarized about the football game coming up or whatever it is that they're all talking about.

Maybe for that person, summarization is appropriate.

But for me, I didn't like it.

So and again, this is, it just goes back to what we started today's podcast with.

When it comes to Apple Intelligence, it is this mixed bag.

Sometimes it's really helpful.

You're like, wow, that was really nice that you did that.

And sometimes it's like, just get out of my way.

Just let me get to the way it was before.

And so and this is it's going to be like this for at least at least six months as all this stuff gets gets worked through and stuff like that.

So anyway, that is my tip of the week is to if you don't turn it off completely, at least adjust it, customize it, realize that you have some control over it.

I just turned off the messages one as well, because I think that that exact same thing happened to me in CarPlay Jeff, and it just got the summary.

I'm like, I don't need the summary, like I want the full thing.

So I'm glad that they did give you the ability, you can just turn summarize previews off for everything.

That's the top toggle there.

Or you can turn it on and then go down and say for these specific apps, don't summarize them don't give me previews about them.

So yeah, that's good.

I'm glad that you followed up with that.

Hey, it worked out that worked out well that we had, we were looking at the same tip on there.

Oh, okay.

A little bit of a whirlwind week, we just like this week, hardware coming out, we got the new software coming out.

Wow, we'll see.

We'll see what happens.

And like you said, even Thursday, yesterday, Apple had their big earnings call, just starting just barely starting to see some of the news coming out of that.

And I'm sure that we'll talk about that next week.

So we'll talk with you next week, then Jeff.