Welcome to In The News for November 15, 2024.

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

Hey Brett. - Good morning, Jeff.

Always good to talk with you.

And wow, there's quite a bit that you had to cover this past week.

Why don't we start off with, I think some of the biggest news.

You had several links about 18.2, iOS 18.2.

And some may be saying, well, wait a minute, didn't we just have iOS 18.1?

And I would say, yes, you are correct.

But it seems like just as soon as we got over the excitement of that, Jeff, everybody's now talking about iOS 18.2.

We're still about a month away, maybe a couple of, you know, three weeks or so away from what you even announced.

Like some people think it'll be, what, December 9th, I believe, on this.

But actually, I joke a little bit, but I am really excited about several of these features that are coming out at iOS 18.2.

Yeah, this is one of those years where it's not just the initial release of the operating system that has all the new features, but like every one of the 1.2, 1.3 have been really robust.

And partly that's because, you know, Apple is so big on the Apple intelligence stuff and they're rolling it out in phases.

So we're gonna see major new parts of Apple intelligence in 18.2.

I mean, things like, for example, the fact that with a modern iPhone, you'll be able to point at objects, you know, using the camera on the iPhone and it will use the Apple intelligence to tell you something about what your phone is looking at and those sorts of things.

And of course, also it's gonna integrate a chat GPT so that you can ask more sophisticated questions of Siri and get responses, you know, not just based on Siri knowledge, but based on knowledge of the world.

So it will be more interactive.

So the Apple intelligence is one aspect that we've always known because Apple is phasing out, is rolling it out in stages.

We've always known that 18.2 was gonna have the next round of the Apple intelligence stuff and the ability to create emoji and an image playground and all this sort of stuff.

But what is interesting is now that the beta is out there and people are using it, people are talking about lots of other features of both 18.2 for the iPhone and then the related updates that are coming out for the Mac and for the iPad and everything else.

And there's some really interesting things in there.

I mean, one that I think is a really cool idea that it's like, what are those?

Apple loves to do this, Brett.

They come up with the feature that once they do it, you're like, yeah, that makes sense.

We should have always had that.

And one example is for the Find My feature that, right now you can already share Find My stuff with people in your family, but what if you wanted to share Find My for an object with a specific third party?

And the perfect, perfect example of that is if you have an air tag on your luggage and the airline uses your luggage, loses your luggage, you want them to find it.

But ideally what you'd wanna do is say, instead of like my iPhone can see that it's over here, you wanna just give that to the airline and say, here is, you can see on the map exactly where my bag is.

Now, please go get it for me.

And so that's gonna be built in.

It's gonna be part of Find My that not only could you send like a secure link to your friend, John, if John was happened to be the person that wants to help you find something, but you can specifically work with airlines and Apple is working with, I think all the major airlines.

And so if you're flying United and United loses your bag, you can go to that baggage person and they have their own system for trying to track bags.

But we all know from experience, their systems are so wrong sometimes.

I see example over example of, they say it's over here, but it was actually my bag was over there.

But now you could actually say, look, you can see on the map, here's where it is.

And so in theory, this should really save your bacon on getting your bag a lot faster.

So that's just like one tiny little example of the cool little features that they have coming up. - I'll just tell you, that is one example, but boy, I have seen that covered almost everywhere this past week, Jeff.

Like, I don't know why this just like struck a chord with so many people and so many blogs and so many tech people have been talking about this.

Like, they're so excited.

And can I just tell you real quick, couple of things that I thought of, number one, you're right.

Like some apps today are better at tracking your luggage, but that tracking capability is dependent upon somebody scanning the little tag that the airlines put on your bag.

You know, when you check it in, right?

It's like, they actually put that little paper tag.

And if you notice when the loaders put it into the plane, like somebody is having to scan at every little portion of that.

And if they don't scan or the scan goes wrong or something like that, that's where the mistakes happen.

And so for this, I feel like this is sort of like an active tracking capability.

So I do see why people are so excited about it.

And then the second thing, if you remember, several months ago, I think it was earlier this year, that somebody, when I got off the plane, somebody else had taken my bag.

It was like identical bag.

And if you remember, I was in Chicago O'Hare airport and I was talking to the gate agent, like somebody has my bag, and I was trying to tell her where it is in the airport, exactly what you're talking about on my phone.

I'm like, "Hey, it's a gate E11."

"Oh no, it went to F12."

And it's like, I had to keep telling her how wonderful this would have been if I could have just said, "Here's a link, you can look at it on your phone as well.

And you can track it and send it to whoever else needs to track it throughout the airport."

So, I mean, I am really excited about this, even though I felt like this was what everybody was sort of so excited about, but man, I welcome that.

And I feel like that's not even, this isn't even Apple intelligence, right?

They could have done this even without the intelligence side and it just really makes sense on that.

So good on you Apple, even without the Apple intelligence side, we're just glad to see that this is something that's gonna be so useful. - We're getting to the point where, if you ever check your luggage, like not getting an air tie, I mean, you need to have an air tag if you have luggage.

And in fact, I'll note that parenthetically, 'cause we talk about this from time to time, but you can get a four pack on Amazon for only $70, which is the lowest.

It's the lowest price I've ever seen.

It often gets down to 75.

So we're only talking about a $5 savings from the normal price that they have every few months.

But I'm just saying it's 69.99.

I've never seen it that low.

If you were waiting for the absolute lowest price of air tags, you can now get it on Amazon.

So that's just one of the new things coming out in iOS 2.

Another one is, let's see, what do you even talk about?

I mentioned the fact that if you have one of the new iPhones that have the camera control button on it, if your iPhone is locked, you actually have to press the camera control twice to get into the camera mode, because one unlocks the phone and the second one brings you into the camera.

And there's gonna be an optional feature that you can turn on in iOS 2, 18.2, that will allow you to just go directly to the camera, which I'm looking forward to.

I mean, the danger is, what if you hit that thing in your pocket by mistake?

You know, we'll see how that works.

But I mean, a lot of times when I wanna take a picture, I really wanna take it like something is happening.

You know, there's something I really, something interesting I wanna catch quickly before the moment passes.

And so being able to jump in that mode, I think will be useful.

So I plan to try that one out.

Another one that has been getting a lot of good press this week, even though it's only for a limited number of people, which is the universe of people that own an Apple Vision Pro and I realized that most people don't have it, but the Apple Vision Pro already has a mode where you can use, connect it to a computer, to a Mac specifically, and you can have like a virtual monitor so that instead of using your Mac monitor, which may or may not be that big, you can have a big virtual monitor in your screen.

But what they're now doing is they're making it that you can either have a wide screen, so like a really, really long monitor, or an ultra wide screen, which like wraps around you, which is a sort of monitor that, I mean, no one ever argues that the Vision Pro is a bargain from a price standpoint, 'cause it's so expensive, thousands of dollars.

But if you were gonna get like a real wraparound monitor like that, that I don't even know what that would cost, $5,000 on its own probably or something like that.

And so it just, you know, if you're in, if you're the sort of person that likes working with all those different windows around you, and I have like, even at my office right now where I'm talking to you, Brett, I have a two monitor set up for my PC, which is nice to have some things on my left and some things on my right, but you have to have everything on one screen, because if you ever have a window that sort of is a half on one screen and a half on the other monitor, you know that like, first of all, you gotta get the monitors lined up exactly.

Plus like there's the part between the monitors that you can't, it just doesn't work well.

Whereas if you have a continuous screen, it's just, I'm told it is so much better for moving windows exactly where you want it and stuff.

And so being able to do all of that stuff virtually just seems like a really cool idea.

So if you have like a MacBook that doesn't, you know, or MacBook Pro that doesn't have the biggest screen in the world, you could hook this up and have a huge screen.

Or if you have a Mac mini, like one of those cute new Mac minis that Apple sells, you can have that with your Vision Pro and have a big screen.

So that's another people that feature people have been really bragging about.

And I think there's some of the, but there's more too.

I mean, suffice it to say, we're gonna get a lot new features, probably the first or second week of December, and I'm really looking forward to it. - I feel like every time there's like a point update, yeah, I mean, certainly you and I get a little excited about it 'cause there's a few more things, but man, I just, I feel like this time, we're hearing a lot more people getting excited about it.

And I think it is because of that kind of the slow roll, the slow rollout that Apple is doing with some of these Apple intelligence components on here.

But again, even in addition to that, this was a great article I thought you linked to from Tim Hardwick at Mac Rumors, 18 new things your iPhone can do in iOS 18.2.

First thing right off the bat, he's talking about that AirTag.

You know, location tracker, like we already talked about some of the improvements for that camera control if you have an iPhone 16, 16 Pro.

There was one in here that I thought was really cool.

Oh, this, talk about like, having something return to the screen.

Do you remember back in the day, we could do, there was like a touch interface to turn the volume up and down on your iPhone.

And they took it away at some point, I can't remember.

There's always the volume buttons, the hardware buttons, of course.

But apparently now in 18.2, we can adjust media volume on the lock screen.

So you can toggle that on and off now.

And I'm like, fantastic.

Like I would love to be able to have something like that.

Again, I know you've got the hardware buttons on the side, but I just thought that that was really cool.

And then one other thing quickly in this article, easily manage default apps.

Like we've always, you know, we have the ability today, not, you know, once upon a time we could not do this, but we can say, do you want your default web browser to be Safari, which obviously is the default, or you can say, we want it to be Google Chrome.

And then there's other things like your default messaging or some of your other default apps, like the passwords now.

Well, you'd have to go into each one of those little sections to say, I want my default app to be this.

But apparently now they're gonna have a default app section in the settings, which I think is just gonna be great.

Some of these are like, I feel like they're minor tweaks, but they're so important and I look forward to it.

Very cool. - Good stuff on that.

Well, speaking of Apple, and let's see how well they're doing, they seem like they're doing pretty well with iPhones, but sometimes we always look kind of forward to this, Jason Snell at Six Colors has been doing this now for a while and takes all of the Apple fiscal numbers.

I mean, he goes all the way back to 1999 and he shows these beautiful, colorful little charts.

And man, when you can see it in this visual component, Jeff, it really strikes you, number one, Apple sells a lot of iPhones.

And then number two, it's interesting for us that we kind of track over this to see, you know, how well are things like the Apple watch doing over the years?

Or I think you pointed this out in your post, the services side is really starting to track upwards.

And we've been talking about that for a long time, but it's good to see some of the numbers here too. - Yeah.

I mean, people, you know, the old phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words.

These charts, I really think prove it.

So if you're watching the video version of this podcast, you know, Brett's going to show this.

If you're just listening in your AirPods or whatever, take a look at this post to see it, because each one of these charts just tells so many interesting stories.

I mean, if you look at that first one, Brett, which talks about the overall Apple revenue for the last 25 years, I mean, you see how Apple, and of course, many of us remember this chart starts 25 years ago in 1999.

If it had just gone back a few more years, we would see years in which Apple revenue was not positive, it was negative.

You know, Apple was in such dire financial straits and on the brink of bankruptcy in the 1990s.

But, you know, Steve Jobs comes back to the company.

We have the iMac, the original iMac, you know, getting some interest.

And so in the early '90s and into the 2000s, you know, Apple's floating around that they're making, you know, 5 billion a year, 6 billion a year, you know, and then the iPod comes in and then they start to get a little bit more money.

It's like, okay, I'm getting a little bit traction.

This is nice.

And then the iPhone originally is introduced in 2007.

And of course, the first version of the iPhone was not revolutionary, but then after a year or two, you get the iPhone 3G and the 3GS.

And suddenly, you know, in that third or fourth year of the iPhone, it just goes up and you can see the impact on Apple's income, which just, I mean, dramatic.

I mean, it changes the, whatever the statistical term is for when you have something that's a slight curve to a really, really big, a really big steep curve.

And so it just continuously goes up. - A big jump. - Yeah, I mean, you can see it.

And then you can even see it, it's a much smaller one, but when you see it more in the Mac numbers, but on this big chart, you know, in recent times, Apple more or less is sort of at a plateau, but then there was that time in the pandemic when people were stuck at home in 2020, they were using their personal computer, realizing they needed an upgrade.

And so many people in late 2020, early 2021 bought a new Mac and it actually had an impact on Apple.

And you can see that little bump from just a couple of years ago.

So, I mean, that's just some of the stories that you can see there, but you know, the one on the iPhone, go ahead. - I just like, I like these numbers.

They start off at like five, six, and they go all the way up to like 383.

You're like, okay, well, you know, those are interesting numbers until you look at the very bottom here.

These are numbers in billions by fiscal year.

So that's 6 billion, like you mentioned it, upwards to go up to $391 billion.

Just, it's hard for me to fathom numbers like that.

Okay, but anyway, what else? - Just a few more.

If you go down to the, this one right here with the iPhone revenue, you know, you see these really big bumps.

Every once in a while, Apple comes up with an iPhone that people really like.

And it was often like when Apple came out with the bigger screens for the first time.

And you can see that, although overall, that's been a huge increase, they have these little spikes over time when different models have come out that people have been particularly interested in.

That's interesting.

The next one that has the Mac revenue, you can really see that jump from a couple of years ago of 2020, 2021, you know, Mac sales.

But you can also see, you know, a phrase that people originally talked about with the iPod, which was the halo effect, that people didn't use a Mac computer at all.

And then you bought an iPod and they're like, hey, Apple, interesting company, maybe I'll buy a Mac.

And then the same thing happened, of course, with the iPhone.

So just as iPhone revenue started to increase 2007, 2008, you see the same thing with Mac, that suddenly people like their iPhones, people decide to get a Mac.

And you can see, I mean, you can absolutely see the effect in that green thing. iPod one is interesting too, because iPad rather.

The iPad revenue, when the iPad first came out in 2010, you and I both remember that, and it was a real immediate hit.

I mean, it just shot so much.

And a lot of people thought, wow, is this going to just continue to go up like the iPhone, but it actually didn't, because what happened is everybody got iPads and people realized that the iPads were so good, you don't need to buy one year after year.

People upgrade their iPads so much less than their iPhones that you had, you know, after this couple of year rise, it just sort of stayed.

I mean, it was a great business.

Apple made tons of money.

What was it?

$31 million, $30 million, or a billion, excuse me, billion dollars a year.

But it sort of stayed there and then sort of came down.

But then as Apple has like improved the iPad Pro and things like that, it sort of came up again.

And it's been an up and down business, but definitely a steady moneymaker.

And you see that in context.

We have service and wearables, but go all the way down to the one at the very bottom, which is where you see all the charts together.

You know, when you look at everything, from each product line, and again, Apple doesn't break this up within the product line.

So we can see the total iPhone revenue.

We don't know, is it the iPhone Pro, the iPhone mini, whatever it was.

But you can see Apple, I mean, Apple is definitely the iPhone company.

They made so much more money from that than anything else.

But you know, there's interesting things in here too.

Like if you just look at the green and the yellow lines, which is the Mac, the product that Apple has been making since the 1980s, and the iPad, which only came out in 2010, there are some years that the iPad revenue was higher than Mac.

There are some years that Mac revenue was higher than iPad, but like the iPad is just as profitable as the Mac.

I mean, that's sort of, it's interesting to see the interrelationship of those two lines.

Wearables, which is a whole host of things, from AirPods to Apple Watch and stuff like that.

But you know, it started pretty small, but it has increased to the point that wearables for the last few years is actually higher than Mac and iPad sales.

And then the services one that you alluded to before, services is, it's mostly the app store, which, you know, the more iPhones that you sell, the more apps people buy.

And so you're gonna expect app store revenue to increase, but it's other components too.

I mean, a very small component of it is Apple TV Plus, although I'm sure that's just a tiny part of it, but it's all of those things that, and iCloud storage and stuff like that. - Fitness Plus. - That has been something that has just steadily increased.

I mean, I was amazed that purple line just gets bigger and bigger.

There was this time years ago where it was much less than Macs, it was much less than iPad, but then it got to be bigger.

And now it's just left them in the sand.

I mean, it's not an iPhone level, but it makes you think Apple, a company that traditionally we would joke was not the best services company.

They are absolutely a services company now.

So that's a long way of saying that these are, they're just numbers, they're just spreadsheets, but they tell a lot of stories.

And if you're trying to think about what Apple is doing today, what Apple's probably thinking about in the future, I guarantee you, they are cognizant of this.

I mean, when you know that you make so much money from services, it's going to influence the way that you do things in the future.

When you know that certain types of changes to the iPad actually cause it to go up and make even more money than the Mac, it's gonna change the way the company thinks about things.

So I think that these are fascinating. - It's fairly brilliant.

And I think we've listened to people over the years that have talked about how Apple has to start switching into the services side, because I mean, I predict that that line, that purple line is just gonna continue to go up.

I don't know if it'll ever hit the iPhone side, but here's the thing, that services undergirds everything else on these charts, Jeff.

That's the whole thing, right?

Anything that you're using, the iPhone, the iPad, any wearable, any Mac, you are reliant on those services, even if it's just the basic free iCloud services.

But you and I both know that even if you start out with a basic iCloud, the free iCloud account that you get with it, you probably at some point are gonna bump up your storage, so you're paying at least 99 cents a month is what I had my mom on for a long time.

I think she's on the $2 a month plan now, just because she keeps having these pictures.

She doesn't know where to get rid of them.

It's just little things like that, like to me, just undergirds that.

And it wouldn't surprise me, again, that services number will continue to go up.

I don't think, maybe it won't hit the iPhone, the same numbers there.

But anyway, just really interesting to see, 'cause there was a lot of years there that we'd hear people speculating, like Apple's not doing enough on services.

It's not going enough, but anyway, just good to see that.

So thanks for posting that.

And thank you, Jason, for your very colorful.

And so it's such interesting.

I don't know anybody else that really does this.

I think there's a year-end one that he does as well that he comes up with this, but he just says always- - This is the year-end one, yeah, actually. - Oh, this is, okay, this is the one. - Yeah, this is the year-end one.

Yeah, so that's why it gives you the broad perspective. - Absolutely, just a good place to go and all of that.

I appreciate it.

Well, if you plan to be one of those customers that is gonna add to those numbers, 'tis the season, right?

But if you go and buy, you and I have talked about this.

In fact, you have experienced it.

Well, both of us have gone and personally experienced it.

You more recently, is that when you go and buy something from Apple, whether it's online or in the store, I always think about it in a physical store, Jeff, but it could be online as well.

Apple has always had a very, I don't wanna say generous, but I think it's a very, very smart return policy.

Like for 14 days, as long as you bring it all back in the same packaging, you haven't thrown it out of a car window or something.

If the device is in good condition, you can bring it back within those 14 days.

You can get a full refund, you can get a trade in.

Apple has always taken this on.

I like to think that on the backend, they're just refurbishing it and reselling it or making sure that it's going somewhere good.

But they've done this in the past, I believe, if I'm not mistaken.

Over the holiday season, they will extend that return policy.

And you link to this story from Joe Rizignal on Mac rumors that they're doing that again for 2024. - Yeah, so if you purchase something from Apple directly, it doesn't count if you buy it from Amazon or someplace else.

But if you buy it from Apple, instead of just having two weeks to return it, so I mean, you buy somebody a Christmas present today and the return period's gonna end long before Christmas day.

Now you have until January 8th, so a week after New Year's to return it.

Which means that if you get somebody an Apple Watch and somebody else gets grandma an Apple Watch too, that's not a problem because you can still return it.

Or if the person gets it and then decides, again, it's a general Apple return policy, they can open the box, they can try it out and they can say, "You know what?

"I love it, but I wish I had the model with more memory."

Or, "I wish I had," or any of those sorts of features, you now have that extended period of time.

And so it gives you the ability to purchase a gift now, or purchase for yourself, of course, too.

But it gives you the ability to purchase a gift knowing that even if they're not gonna open it until Hanukkah or Christmas or whatever, you're fine. - I'm glad that you mentioned that.

It does need to be from Apple, right?

So if you got it from Amazon or you get it off some other store and you buy an Apple product, this does not apply.

I'm glad that you referenced that, Jeff, because it has to be from Apple.com or the Apple physical store, right? - Right, and just to highlight that even more, it's worth thinking about because Amazon does do a good job with discounts.

I mean, we talked about that today that you can certainly, you can buy an Apple Watch 10 and save 50 bucks.

And I'm like, "Gosh, saving 50 bucks, that's nice."

But you don't get that generous return policy.

I'm not saying one is right or wrong, but do you wanna save 50 bucks and hold onto that thing for a month until Christmas?

Or do you want to spend the extra 50 bucks by buying it from Apple, but have the security of knowing that you can return it no questions asked?

There's no right answer.

Just think about those two options. - We talked a lot about 18.2, iOS 18.2, but something that came out in iOS 18.1, I believe this happened.

I was listening to some folks talking about this.

I wasn't too aware of this, Jeff.

I think I'm happy about it from like a general consumer that Apple added a little security trick into 18.1.

But I gotta tell you, if I was in law enforcement, I probably would not be quite as happy about this.

This is basically a security lockdown that after the iPhone is turned off or not powered up for like, was it four days or something like that, that it then requires an actual passcode in order to unlock it.

Is that accurate? - Actually, it's not even if it's turned off, even if the iPhone is on, but unused for four days, it gets into this mode.

And so what we're talking about here is, start with the basics.

We all know that when you have your iPhone, you can either unlock it with Face ID or Touch ID, if you have an older one, or if it has first been started up, then you can't use Face ID yet.

You have to put in your passcode.

So it's those two different unlock modes.

There are hacking software, some that are used legitimately by good people and some that are used illegitimately by bad people.

One good example of this is a company in Israel called Celebrite that sells hacking software to law enforcement around the world and governments.

And what they do is they find these flaws in the iPhone so that if somebody plugs in the iPhone, they can hack into it without having their password.

Many of their techniques, as I understand it, they work if your iPhone is in that secondary mode, which means that the same mode when Face ID would work.

But if you're in that initial secure mode, the mode where the only thing is to have the actual passcode, nothing else would get in it.

They're, the things that they've exploited to break into the phone don't work.

And so an iPhone is more secure if it's in that mode.

And so Apple figured, you know, if you have an iPhone and you haven't used it in four days, I mean, most of us use our iPhone every day.

I mean, crazy people like me use it every minute, but most people, even casual users are probably gonna use the phone, you know, every day, every day or even if you're just, you know, you know.

So if you go four days without using it, there could be a question of maybe the original owner no longer has it.

Maybe it was stolen by someone pickpocketing or something like that.

And so they will then, after four days, put it into this mode that's more secure.

So the way, the reason that you made the joke about police departments is sometimes a police department, you know, as part of a seize, they will have a warrant that allows them to seize somebody's electronic devices, including an iPhone.

And in the past, they would just take the iPhone, put it in the evidence locker and say, you know, I'll get to that next week.

You know, I'll plug it in, you know, whatever.

And then more than four days have passed and little do they realize that it's now in this mode that's uncrackable that might have been before.

Now, again, I'm not, I mean, yes, the police officers are trying to do the right thing and help us and that's fantastic.

But, you know, the fact that they have a little bit more inconvenience, I think it's better that Apple is constantly, I mean, let's be clear about it.

This cracking software is taking advantage of security flaws.

They have super smart people that are finding flaws.

And so, you know, if you ask that, if the question that you ask is, do you want to hurt law enforcement?

You're like, oh, I don't want to do that.

But if the question is asked is, do you want Apple to fix flaws?

When they find security holes, do you want them to patch it?

You're like, yeah, absolutely.

And so, since this is an example of that, it's a way to make the device more secure.

So, but it's interesting.

I mean, we all have, if you've updated to the latest operating system, I mean, 18.1 came out a couple of weeks ago, you already have this.

You may not have even realized it because I presume that you have not gone more than four days without using your phone.

And even if you did, if it's been more than four days and you pick up your phone and you have to type in your passcode instead of face ID, you probably wouldn't even think about it.

You're like, oh, maybe I didn't unlock it before.

You know, it probably wouldn't even occur to you that you had to enter your passcode again.

So I think it's a good idea. - I feel like it's one of these things that Apple just did.

Like, these are things that most, the vast majority of people just aren't even gonna be thinking about, right?

But this is one of the things that Apple focuses on.

I think right at the bottom of the story here, they talk about, you know, how Tim Cook and many executives, they talk about this privacy as a fundamental human right.

I mean, you know, I was listening to a podcast where there's a, Alex Lindsay has always said, you know, privacy is like a business model for Apple, right?

I mean, they build a lot on this, Jeff, to the point where like that is the higher priority for them.

The other thing quickly I just wanted to say, I'm actually pretty familiar with Celebrite in my sort of my day job.

One of the things that I work with lawyers is both on the criminal litigation and civil litigation.

And we actually use, you know, Celebrite has some many, I guess you would say, fundamental uses, you know, good uses in the sense that if we need to capture text messages from communications, in some cases, even for folks that have passed away or so, we can use this software to capture or gather or collect that information on there.

And then we can put it into another platform to read text messages or to, you know, see photos.

I mean, it's a legitimate tool that people use all the time, not just law enforcement, but even, you know, from a legal perspective, even if it's civil litigation.

And when I started hearing about this, that's what I was saying, that exactly the scenario you painted there, Jeff, in many cases, we'll get a phone and we may sit on it for a month or two or something like that, right?

Just 'cause we haven't gotten to it, but we know we collected it, we know we preserved it, we just haven't collected the information out of it.

But in this case, I think I've heard other people talk about it, that if you're doing that, you better capture that information as quickly as possible, because this quote, inactivity reboot that they have here is, it's gonna, again, from a consumer side, this is brilliant, I love this.

I think this is great, it makes me continue to feel great about using the devices, but certainly I can see where there's a big argument there.

You know, it's not like Apple has made friends with the FBI over the years, right?

I mean, there have been several scenarios where Apple has refused, well, not refused, but they can't help get some of that information just because of the way that they've designed the phone.

So anyway, that was a little bit more than what we wanted to cover, but it's good information here. - When you've been involved in that stuff from a discovery standpoint, let me turn it on myself.

When I have been involved the limited number of times as a lawyer, that I've been involved in getting information off of an iPhone, like you described, like text messages, it has been the iPhone that belongs to my client or someone connected to my client, such that they have given me or they have typed in themselves the passcode.

I have not been involved.

If I've been involved in a situation where I wanted to get like my opponent's iPhone, I wouldn't say, give me the iPhone.

I would tell the attorney or the opponent, you need to get your client's iPhone and get the information off of it.

So you're doing the same thing.

So to be clear, you're not using the tool that hacks into it, but what you are doing is using that next level.

Once you're in the iPhone, what data can you extract from it?

And as we know that there's so much data that you can extract from an iPhone that you can use for so many purposes in litigation and criminal law and everything else.

But then again, to get to the privacy, the thing that you mentioned before, that's so important because not only does your iPhone have information on your contacts and numbers and names, but I mean, there's so much about your personal life, who you see, where you go, what you do, that if you haven't come out of the closet yet or you have something else about yourself that's a private hobby that you just don't wanna share with the world, there's so many things that are private that can be reflected on the iPhone, but otherwise would not be something that you wanna share with the world.

So anyway. - Interesting story.

I mean, again, for me, the takeaway is as a regular consumer, Fanta Apple continues to protect us at least from the privacy standpoint, but I can see that there's always another side of the story on some of that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Hopefully most people can all agree on the classical music app from Apple is a good thing.

So good in fact, that now it's not just the Apple music app available in CarPlay, but you can get the Apple music classical app in CarPlay as well.

And I say like, why was this not done a year ago or so?

I am continuing to enjoy the Apple music classical.

It's not the first thing that I open up all the time, but I'm glad that they're now officially bringing it to CarPlay as well. - Yeah, I have used the classical app quite a few times, more than I have thought I would when Apple introduced it.

I like it a lot.

They have a lot of great movie soundtracks in there, some of which you can get onto on regular Apple music, but many of which are nicely presented there.

And also classical music.

I mean, I use it a lot as like sort of background music.

I want something that doesn't have words I'm gonna sing to, but I just wanna have something going on in the background that I strangely sometimes find it helps me focus on things.

But because I have always been using it in that context, I just had not tried to listen to it in my car.

So it didn't even occur to me that they didn't have a CarPlay support.

But oftentimes when I'm listening to music in the car, especially if it's a road trip, I wanna have something with a good beat that's gonna keep me going and keep me pumped.

But sometimes you might want just the opposite.

Maybe you want Vivaldi in your car to sort of have a calming influence as you're dealing with all of the traffic of modern day society.

So yeah, it makes perfect sense.

And I'm glad to see that they're getting, and this is not the only update.

They added some other things to it as well, but it's nice to see that Apple's continuing to develop Apple Music Classical. - I feel like some people start asking like, why is there two different apps?

Why we have Apple Music and we have classical music?

If you listen to any kind of classical music, you know, well, you can see almost immediately, like there's so much additional information and ways to organize songs.

And yeah, it's a whole different thing.

And I feel like Apple really has done such a great job.

This is the year after their acquisition of an app called Prime Phonic, which was what, in 2021.

And it's taken them a long time.

People have kind of bellyached about that, but I'm just really glad that they're continuing to support this and continuing to make sure that it's available out there, which is good. - Yeah, it's been slow, but it's been slow but steady. - I know, I know.

All right, so now once you get home, after being in the CarPlay, you might wanna check on the batteries in your HomeKit devices once you get home.

I didn't even know this was a thing, but apparently you have been using the Home Batteries app, Jeff, and you rely on it quite a bit. - Yeah, in fact, I should have done a review on this on iPhone JD by now, because it's such a useful app.

I mean, I've just opened it up on my iPhone right now, and just on a single page, I am seeing all of the HomeKit devices in my house that have a battery.

So for example, I have this thing on my backyard called the Eve Weather, which it just checks the weather, but it's a way that I can get the weather, not just the general weather in New Orleans, but the specific weather at my house where I'm located.

And for me, it's not as big of a deal, but I know that depending upon where you live, especially if you live in like San Francisco, where they have all these different microclimates that from one place to another mile away, you may have very, very different weather.

So anyway, I can see right now, my Eve Weather is at a 100%, which makes sense, 'cause I replaced the battery a few weeks ago.

But on the other hand, I have another motion detector that's in the room that we have our TV in, so that if you walk in the room and it hasn't had the lights on in a long time, the lights will turn on for you automatically.

And I can see as I'm staring at it, my motion detector is at 64%.

So, okay, I'm in good shape there.

On the other hand, I can see one of them is in yellow on my phone, because we have cameras outside of our house, like security cameras from a company called Eufy.

And one of them is pointed at my driveway, and I can see it's currently in yellow because I'm down at 43%.

So I'm less than half of the way.

And when you charge those, you have to take them down and plug them in for like eight hours and stuff.

So it's a little bit of a pain.

When I get down to like 10%, I think that, I can't remember if it's 10 or 20, but at one of the lower percentages, it turns red.

And so I will open up this app once a week or something like that.

And when I see, oh, you know, this camera's really getting low, I can say, okay, well, I don't wanna do it today 'cause I'm going to work, but maybe on Saturday, I'm gonna take the time to pull the ladder out, get up there and replace it.

So now again, I could do the same thing by going into the individual apps for these individual things, or I could go into the Home app and I can dig level, but instead of having to dig deep into several menu levels, it's just a single place to see it all at once.

So as we get more and more HomeKit compatible devices, again, this is not for things you plug in.

These are just for things that you have a rechargeable battery or a replaceable battery. - Right. - It's a great little app.

So when I saw this review by Bradley Chambers, I'm like, oh yeah, great app, great app. - You need to do a review, coming soon.

I feel like this would be great.

Like I still have sort of the older smoke alarms in our house, right?

You know, the nine volt battery is supposed to change it when the clock's changed, everybody remembers that.

You know, some of those today are kind of wired now, but you know, just things like that.

Like I would love to have this in there, but it actually, it looks like it tells you even the kind of battery that it is.

Like this bathroom light switch, it has that CR2032 battery.

I like that because I always forget which kind of battery goes where, but I can look at this and have a battery in the ready, which would be good.

All right, let's talk 3D videos and a little bit more Vision Pro.

We can run through this a little bit quick, but you had several links today that talked about, first of all, updates to Final Cut Pro from Apple, which now allows you to apparently, what is this, edit some 3D type videos.

You've even done some of this yourself, but some interesting news on the video side as well today. - Final Cut Pro is an amazing, but very powerful app.

It is akin to Photoshop for editing photos.

You know, if you start Photoshop for the first time, you're gonna be lost because there's so many sophisticated controls in there.

And the same is true for Final Cut Pro.

I'm somebody that for many, many years, when Apple first released, you know, computers that could handle video, gosh, that was the iMac DV in the late 1990s.

They had a program called iMovie, which was a very simple way to deal with it.

And then over time, I sort of bumped up against the edges of iMovie and I want to do a little bit more.

And so I bit the bullet and I spent 300 bucks on Final Cut Pro, which is not cheap, but that was like, I don't even know, 10, 15 years ago.

And Apple has never charged for upgrades.

They update the thing all the time.

So like, so once you pay that 300 bucks and get yourself in the door, I don't want to say you're good for life because Apple may charge something next year, but my experience has been so far, you're good for life.

Now, Final Cut Pro is used to make like motion picture movies.

I mean, it's so powerful.

And people that really know the program can do so much more with it.

I know like 5, 10% of what the program can do.

But what I love to do it for is if I'm taking a couple of videos, like just last week, basketball season restarted with my daughter and they had a game and I wanted to put together a highlight reel, right?

And so I videoed the whole thing on my iPhone, just went in like a bunch of different clips.

And then I wanted to take those things and just focus on the highlights and then put like little transitions between them and make a little couple minute long movie and put like a little title in it, and little things as appropriate.

And it's fun to do that.

So I love using Final Cut Pro to do that.

And then you can export it and you can share it, et cetera.

But what I didn't like was that, although Apple has given us the ability for 3D spatial video for an Apple Vision Pro, you could use an iPhone as of many, many months ago to actually record spatial 3D video by using the two cameras that are on your iPhone.

There was all you could do, you could look at your individual clips, but you couldn't put them together to make a movie and to like get the highlights and stuff.

And I tried it earlier this year.

I was walking around in July and I took some video and I'm like, well, let me stitch this together in Final Cut Pro.

And I quickly realized Final Cut is taking the 3D video and it's converting it to 2D and I can make a 2D movie, which is fine.

But I wanted to make something that would look cool on my Apple Vision Pro.

And so I couldn't do it.

So this video that I took back in July, this week, and many of the, Apple made many changes to Final Cut Pro.

They added, for example, the ability to automatically create transcripts and stuff like that so that you don't have to do it manually, which is great.

But I took those same clips that I took a couple of months ago, where I just went to go to the favorite place to get burgers in New Orleans called Porticole, right on Esplanade on the edge of the French Quarter.

And so I took these little videos and I just, you know, I stitched things together and, you know, made it shorter and put in some transitions.

And so what you're showing on the screen right now is the video in 2D, which is, you know, whatever, it's fine.

But like, if you're sitting here at the table and like the part where I'm looking at that little thing with the flame and the, what do you call it?

The candle on the table.

Exactly.

Like, it's so close to me that when you look at it in 3D on an Apple Vision Pro, you feel like you can reach out and touch it.

Or when I look at that big plastic cup in front of me.

And so, you know, it's fun to watch 3D movies.

So again, you can't appreciate this in 2D, which is how you're showing it now.

But this little movie, I was able to take those clips that I recorded months ago, stitch them together into a cute little movie about, you know, here's two minutes of my trip to Porticole to get a delicious burger.

And there was my video.

I mean, it's, believe me, this is not gonna win any Oscars this year, but I love the fact that I could put together my own little video and then save it to my photos roll and then put on my Apple Vision Pro, just go in photos and click and play my movie.

And instead of playing each of the clips, which has all the boring parts in it, I could play my finished movie with the transitions and the titles and everything else.

And it's fun.

And better yet, so that was fun.

I loved it.

Just from my home movie standpoint, I loved it.

What was also cool is we are on the precipice of being able to really share these things.

Right now you can get amazing, cool, 3D spatial videos from Apple.

That's awesome.

But I want everybody to be able to make spatial video, everybody that has an Apple Vision Pro.

And so, you know, the fact that I put this on Dropbox and you were able to download it, I realized you don't have a Vision Pro to see it, but if you did, you would be able to, and I know it 'cause I tested it with somebody last night that had a Vision Pro and he was able to download it and actually watch it.

So hopefully it'll work for anyone.

So if you're listening to this and you own a Vision Pro, I mean, it's not the most exciting movie in the world, but you can feel like you're in New Orleans getting a burger in 3D.

And, but what I want is I want people that make really good movies, like cool travel movies and stuff or other things.

I wanted to make so much easier to share.

And I also, right now I put this on Dropbox, you have to download it.

I want to be able to just stream movies so that you can just basically click play and start watching, which is the way it is on Apple TV Plus right now.

And there are companies like Vimeo that are say they're gonna be starting to do this in December, next month.

So, I feel like I'm really hoping that six months from now, we're gonna look back and say, once Apple gave us the tools and it's not just Apple, there's also an Adobe product called, I think Premiere, which just added this ability to work with 3D videos too.

Once Apple added that ability, the number of people creating this stuff has just gone through the roof.

One more thing I want to say about it.

And then I realized that most people are not using 3D yet, but one of the tricky things when you're editing 3D is, you know, in a computer, what do you want to see?

Because you have two different images for your two different eyes, right?

And so the way that it works in Final Cut Pro is you can choose how you want to view it.

One way to do it is just show me the dominant eye, which by default is the right eye, but you can change it to the left eye if you want.

Another way to do it is you can have two side-by-side windows on your computer screen.

So you can see the left eye and the right eye at once.

And they're very close to each other, but like, because it's 3D, things that are closer might be here on the left side and like here on the right side, 'cause you know, it's a little different.

So that's another way to do it.

But the coolest thing that Apple, and there's other modes too, but the coolest one is they have this thing called anaglyph mode, A-N-A-V-L-Y-P-H.

And when I saw that, I'm like, what in the world is anaglyph?

Apparently this is a real world, it's been a real word that's been around for decades.

And what it refers to is having the two images stacked on top of each other, the left and the right eye.

And the places where they're different, they either use red or blue.

And you look at it and it's exactly the way, if you remember when you were a kid in the 80s, watching a 3D, like a 3D monster movie with the red and blue glasses, or those sorts of things.

It's the red would be for one eye and the blue would be for another eye.

And you're like, why would you wanna do that in Final Cut Pro?

Brett, to my complete surprise, it totally makes sense because it allows you just in one window, 'cause the two windows side by side is a pain in the butt.

When you just have a single window, I can see that because that white plastic cup on my table was so close to me, I can see that the edge of it was red in Final Cut Pro on one side and was blue on the other side.

And so I can just see when I create the 3D movie, this is gonna feel really 3D.

On the other hand, things in the background that are not close to you, they don't have the red and the blue on it, on the edges.

And so you're not actually seeing it in 3D as you edit your movie, but you're getting a sense of, oh, here's a moment that is going to be more dramatic for the audience just by using it.

And so again, I learned a new word that's- - That's really cool. - Anaglyph.

And I love the idea that something that we all associate with ancient red and blue 3D glasses made of paper is now has a very perfect use in modern technology.

So whoever at Apple, like there's somebody on the Final Cut Pro team that had the idea of using this, and I'm like, bravo to you.

This was such a smart, smart use of this technology.

So anyway, I know 3D and we're all using it.

This is just the future, but I feel like we're watching the future being made right now, cool stuff. - I think just the fact that you as a normal person with a 3D, with a Vision Pro, but you as a normal person were able to get this movie, you were able to make it in 3D and share it.

I mean, that- - Exactly, that's cool. - That's a practical future that is not far away right now.

And just that capability is amazing.

I mean, just that thought of being able to do that.

Apple, obviously you had a couple of other links here, are continuing to release additional 3D Vision Pro base type movies.

They've been worked with Weekend on a couple of things.

I think it was a music video not too long ago that we reported about, but now they're doing a little bit more.

They've had some of these other concerts that are available for the Vision Pro.

Just very excited to continue to see a lot of this information- - Great, great content. - Come out like that, which would lead us to, in the show, a couple of- - In the show. - I love this that you talked about.

If you like Ted Lasso as much as, well, the vast majority of people did, now you can get a little behind the scenes book on this.

I haven't read it, I don't know if you read it all, but at least you alluded to something in your post today, Jeff, that this was a show that was very hard to sell.

And the only people that were willing to take a chance on it was Apple TV Plus.

And boy, didn't that turn out good for them?

(laughs) - Yeah, I haven't read this book yet, but what I did do is, you know how you can go on Audible and you can listen to the first couple of minutes for free?

So I did that just to get a sense of it.

I guess sometimes on Amazon, you can do the same thing and see a read sample and do the same thing.

And so I just got a sense of the beginning of it.

And it's written by this guy, Jeremy Egner, who's the, I think he's the editor of the TV section of the New York Times.

So this is someone who knows TV and knows how to be a good writer about TV.

So I haven't read the book, but I'm thinking I'm gonna get, I normally don't, normally when I read books, I prefer to read fiction and stuff like that, but this might be sort of fun to read. - This might be fun. - And we know that they're coming out with the next season of, I guess it'll be called Ted Lasso sometimes.

So this might be fun to read to sort of get yourself excited for what's coming out.

So cool book. - Maybe it'll be called Side Lasso.

You reported on Mythic Quest, another show that, apparently they're not coming out with a new season, but they're gonna be doing like a side quest or something like that.

Yeah, oh, excellent. - It's actually both, Brad. - Oh, they are. - So they have a new season.

Have you watched Mythic Quest?

Is this one that you've seen? - I haven't yet.

No, it's not. - It's a comedy.

It took a little while to grow in me.

Like I wasn't sure, am I gonna get into this or not?

I know that people love Rob McElhaney, who's in it.

And I've never seen that show, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, that people say is such a great comedy show.

But it's really fun.

Mythic Quest is good.

And if you watch the first three seasons are on Apple TV+ now, and some episodes are better than others, but some episodes are truly laugh out loud funny. - Oh, really? - And then every season in the past, they've had a single episode, and it's often like in the middle of the season that sort of steps away from the main story.

And it's like a side story.

So it's like, there was one season where they went back in time like 20 years and they said like, you know, here are the people that aren't even characters in the current show, but it's their own story of what they did 20 years ago.

And it was like amazing.

It was like a really good episode.

And so with that in mind, yes, they have the fourth season coming out next year.

That's great.

But as soon as the fourth season ends, they're gonna start this four show, six show thing called Side Quest.

And I understand it's like an anthology.

So each one of those episodes will basically take a character from the show and maybe it's a backstory or maybe something like, you know, something to focus on them.

So it's a way to get even more Mythic Quest goodness.

And so that's sort of fun.

So we got a lot of, if you're a fan of Mythic Quest, a lot of stuff is coming next year.

And if this is a show that you haven't seen yet, like you, Brett, it's just a 30 minute comedy.

You know, you're looking for something funny.

You're interested in technology, which I presume you are if you're listening to this podcast.

It's worth watching.

It's funny.

I'll say one more thing.

They had an episode that came out right after the pandemic where it was filmed like, you know, we were all talking to each other via Zoom after the pandemic.

And so the entire episode is done in like little Zoom screens. - Oh, I remember that. - So funny.

So funny, so funny.

I need to go back and watch it again.

So funny.

So good job. - And just real quick.

So it's like, it's about a team creating a video game, right?

That's the whole idea of that.

Okay, okay, okay. - Yeah, they're making a video game and it's all the people that work for the company and you've got some crazy people.

And I mean, it's a comedy.

So of course you've got crazy exaggerated characters, but it's funny.

It's funny. - We don't get to talk a whole lot about iPhone accessories.

I mean, we bring up one every once in a while, but boy, we got a humdinger of one for you today.

What this is called, the Zephryo, is that what it's?

Is that, yeah. - Zerfio? - Zephyro.

This is something that you never know that you needed, but you'll probably have to get it for Christmas, I'm thinking.

If you ever wanted to have a flute accessory for your iPhone, this is it.

And yes, I said flute.

You can now play, although I guess with this app, it's a little USB-C.

I almost call it like a reed, or they call it like a digital reed that you can put in.

And you can make several different instruments here, which is just amazing.

I'm glad you linked to it at the Gadgeteer from Julie Straddle Meier, who's been doing this for a long, long time.

And I think this is beautiful.

So years ago, there was an app that came out. - Yes. - I wanna say it was called Leaf Trombone. - And Ocarina. - I started to buy Ocarina. - And Ocarina, yeah. - And what you would do is you would blow into it. - Here it is, I got it. - You found it, there you go.

Oh, there you go, Ocarina.

And so as you blow into it, I guess it picked up from the microphone, the sound of you blowing, and translate that into notes that you would play.

So this is the same idea, but instead of just pretending like you're blowing into it, you are literally blowing into this little $25 reed that sticks into the bottom of your iPhone. - Right. - And then using your fingers on the screen to change the notes, just as if you were covering up the different holes. - So funny. - And so it's not out yet, it's in the Kickstarter stage, but they've already exceeded their goal.

And it's supposed to be delivered next year.

We'll see if it actually works.

But, you know, and of course, you're gonna probably look a little silly blowing into your iPhone as if it's a breathalyzer or something like that.

But, you know, from the little video they have, it's cute.

The guy's playing it and he makes noise.

And it's not just a simple toy.

If you wanna be fancy with it, apparently you can also use it as like a MIDI controller.

So if you were a serious musician, - I saw that. - You can like play a keyboard as you are blowing either more or less and change the sound of the keys based upon how, so I mean, you can actually go far with it if you want to.

So it seems like a perfect little gadget for the music lover that you know. - I just clicked to their Kickstarter page.

Their goal was $5,271.

They are now at $59,635. - I think they beat the goal. - That, I mean, you know, when I looked at this, I saw your story that you linked to at the Gadgeteer.

And I'm like, okay, that's, you know, that's fun.

A few people will buy this, but oh my goodness, that is a lot of people that are back.

That's over 1,100 people have pledged to buy this when it comes out.

You know what, good on them.

I'm like, something interesting, something different.

You know, an iPhone accessory, but yeah, that's the first thing I remember.

This Ocarina app came out in 2008, Jeff.

This is one, I remember this so vividly. - Yes, this is one of the first iPhone apps, goodness, yeah. - It is one of the first, exactly.

And it's just like, it was so weird.

And so, I mean, I remember I would go and do presentations and show it off of like, people were like, what in the world are you doing blowing into your iPhone?

And it's like, it barely worked a little bit, but it was just so cool and unique.

I enjoyed it, but I'm glad to see that, hey, we're still, all these years later, we're still coming up with other ways that we could use some iPhone accessories.

I love it.

All right, last little thing you linked to, as you are prone to do, as usual, a little video from one of our favorites, Joanna Stern over at, is it the Wall Street Journal? - Wall Street Journal, yeah. - This one is so fun.

You have to go and watch this.

Joanna Stern spending 24 hours in the woods with the, I guess you would call it like, whatever the best AI chatbots exist right now, except for Siri. - And she remarks, and she makes a note on that in the video when you watch it. - He does, exactly. - I won't warn the joke, but it's cute because we are getting to the point with OpenAI, which is also used by Microsoft and Google.

These products are, they can have conversational, what appears to be a conversation with you.

And they do sometimes try to be friendly.

You can even pick a voice that's a friendly voice.

And so, you can see how people would say that we're almost at the point that you can have a conversation, but for her to take it to the next, admittedly absurd level of having these fun conversations and getting advice for cooking and everything else.

You know, when you watch this video, my first reaction was, that's a very funny video.

It made me laugh out loud.

But my second reaction is, gosh, this stuff's gotten so good.

And like, how many years away are we from it truly being this AI companion friend, like that movie that came out years ago called, with Scarlett Johansson, with a car, or something like that. - Yeah, which I haven't seen that either, but now I got to. - Oh, good movie.

You know, we might be closer than you think to a future where your AI chatbot can be your quote unquote friend, you know, sort of.

I don't know.

It's interesting. - I'm not quite there to the friend, certainly after watching Joanna's video here, but you know what it did, again, I was listening to the MacBreak Weekly podcast this past week, and Alex Lindsay was talking about, he was driving down the road.

Now he subscribes to the ChatGPT, the professional, like the $20 a month, right?

And he was using the ChatGPT app on his iPhone while he was driving, I guess through CarPlay, and he was wanting to know about wild turkeys.

You may have listened to him. - I did, I did hear that. - And just the way he was describing this, Jeff, just is really what I started thinking about too, because he was like, he was having sort of like this conversation.

If you could have a conversation with the Encyclopedia Britannica, that's what I keep thinking about.

It's like, what if we could say, oh, what are wild turkeys, you know, or where do they, what are the habitat of the wild turkey?

Okay, well, okay, have you ever seen them go north of, you know, this particular geographic location?

When do they mate?

Like, if you could just keep asking different questions and get more and more information, as opposed to just one static question with one static kind of an answer.

What if you could just continue to interact with that?

And for me, from a practical level, that just really raised some green lights going on, like, oh, that's how we're gonna start to see this.

And you know, for some of us, I started thinking back to like the "Star Trek Next Generation," you know, any of these that you can start interacting, like, I feel like to some extent, we know exactly how this is all gonna work because we have seen movies and we have seen television series over the years.

Like, that's exactly what we want.

We want to be able to talk to the computer and have some kind of an interactivity.

Don't know quite yet about the friends aspect on there, but just listening to that this past week really started getting my gears going.

It's like, oh, that's where we're gonna start going on that. - Agreed. - Interesting stuff.

Gotta watch that little video.

All right, in the know.

I know we've been going a little bit long today and I love this because we just keep talking, but here's a fun little site that I found not too long ago that I just had to share.

Landsat, land satellites.

So apparently the first land, this is like sort of a joint group between NASA and like the US Geological Society, whatever it is.

So land satellites, apparently the first one was launched in like 1972, which is crazy, but it just is what most of us would see is sort of like mapping or taking pictures of the entire world, the surface of the earth, as it were, and being very specific.

So of course, somebody's gotta take this now and you can say, well, wait a minute, there are specific shapes that you can find in some of these Landsat pictures.

So now what you can do is if you go to this Landsat, I've got the link in the show notes, but this is see your name in Landsat, your name in Landsat.

So Jeff, I'm gonna put your name in here.

So you just type in your name and then you say enter.

And now what it does is it goes and brings back images from the earth that have your specific letters in it.

So you can see, and then even cooler, if you go and hover over this, you can see that your J picture came from the Karakaya Dam in Turkey.

Your E is the sea of Aktauk. - Which looks like a letter E, yes. - Yep, and your first F is from Cougar National Park in South Africa.

Your second one is from Mato Grosso in Brazil.

What's also really cool about this, they're freely available, you can download them, you can even download the entire picture here.

So, you know, Christmas present here that doesn't cost too much.

You could just pop in, download this image, and then you can go and get it printed out and framed if you wanted to do that.

I just thought that this was really cool.

Here, I'm gonna put mine in real quick so you can see.

If I put B-R-E-T-T, hit enter, and there it is. - Oh, I like the B, the B is cool. - I know, where did that B come from?

Let me just see what is this. - Yeah, where is that B from? - It's in-- - Arkansas. - Wait, did that say Holla?

It does say Hollabend, Arkansas. - Hollabend, H-O-L-L-A, Hollabend, Arkansas.

And it's cool because it's a river with this cool little bend in it that makes the letter B, or looks sort of like the letter B, yeah. - Exactly!

Oh, look, it's got the same E on there, but then my T's come from the United Arab Emirates and the Lena River Delta.

Anyway, just I thought it was just a cool little thing that you can play around with.

And this just comes from the Landsat Science, the NASA's website.

You can get all the history of like all the different satellites that have come up, but just kind of a fun aspect of Landsat.

And for me, it's like, hey, that's so interesting, and I wanted to learn a little bit more.

See your name in Landsat. - Okay, so when I was trying to come up with my tip for today, and I saw that you were doing this tip, it just tickled me, Brett, because it reminded me of the early days of the internet, and I'm thinking back to the late '90s, early 2000s, when the fact that you could find just these really strange, funny, bizarre sites was just so clever, and people used to love it.

And so, first of all, because you had NASA with Landsat, one that I wanted to recommend that was sort of this funny website is called, not funny, but interesting, is NASA has their astronomy picture of the day.

And if you go to this page, and again, we'll have the link to the website, every day, they take so many pictures that NASA has taken of the universe, and of stars, and Milky Ways, or moon pictures, or whatever.

And so when you go to this site, every day you see a new picture, which is interesting.

But the reason I thought it was so appropriate today is because today's picture is a picture that was taken from Apollo 12 on the moon, but they took it with a 3D camera.

And back then, in the early 1970s, how would you view a 3D picture?

Well, we already talked about it today with Reagan's new glasses.

And sure enough, when you look at the description of this picture, it says it is a 3D anaglyph.

Anaglyph, it's that very word that I learned last night when I was playing with Final Cut Pro.

And so when you just look at this in 2D, you can sort of see around the edges of the spaceship, like some of it's a little bit more red, and some of it's a little bit more blue.

Oh, when you zoom in like that, it really shows it.

And the idea is that when you're wearing your Red Bull glasses, it'll make it look like it's in 3D.

So what I should do is I should take this picture and probably put it in Final Cut Pro and see if I can, you know, I don't know if it works that way, but change it into something for the Publisher Pro.

So the fact that the word anaglyph goes from something I had never seen before in my life to I've now seen it twice this week, I thought I had to share that.

But another, just in terms of just fun silliness is there's a website that's been around for a long time called theuselessweb.com. - Oh, you got a bonus here. - A bonus gift.

And if you go to theuselessweb.com, when you go to it, it says, "Take me to a useless website, please."

And hopefully it will be safe.

Oh goodness, you got a little ad coming up. - I know, I'm gonna have to pop that open.

You can click the little please button on that, right? - Every time you click it, it brings you to another random, silly website. - Let's see where we go. - So let's just see what happens. - We're rolling the dice here, Jeff. - Rolling the dice first time.

Okay, this is just something with optical effects, you know, visual things, so that's interesting.

But go back and let's click it again. - Let's do it again.

All right, please roll the dice.

Oh, hello. - And now we have some very large doge.

(Jeff laughs) Interesting, okay. - This is like for Dogecoin, I think is what that is. - Exactly, let's do another one. - Oh, come on, this is, I mean, now this is what I'm doing for the rest of the day. - Always continue without supporting us, click at the bottom. - Always judge a book.

Yeah, let me do another one. - By its cover, where people talk about covers.

There's a lovely one there.

So if you wanna just waste some time looking at the internet, just hit the button and it will bring you to bizarre places.

So very, very funny. - This is called puginarug.com.

And we are honoring the pug that it's like, it's floating in midair.

Oh my goodness. - In fact, it looks like 3D, as we talk about 3D today.

(Jeff laughs) - Oh my goodness, this is all I'm gonna be doing.

Ooh, maze toys.

Are you serious? - A maze? - So I can just do a maze here?

Okay, this is going to ruin my entire day.

Thanks a lot, Jeff.

I appreciate that.

(Jeff laughs) Take me to another useless website, please.

All right, well, that's what I'm doing for the rest of the day.

Thanks for your time as always, Jeff.

Thanks for listening, everyone.

We really appreciate it.

And Jeff, we will talk with you next week. - Thanks, Brett.