Welcome to in the news for November 29th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett, you have a good Thanksgiving yesterday?

Very good Thanksgiving.

Lots of turkey, of course, lots of family time, which was always good.

And of course, we are recording this now on the day after Thanksgiving, one of the sacred holidays, of course, in this country of the United States known as Black Friday.

Lots of people have been looking forward to it.

We talked about whether even recording something, but I'm glad that we're here this morning, Jeff, because you did it.

You still did a post.

You're always faithful, my friend.

And you did some great links to some really good Black Friday deals.

Now we're not going to go through a ton of them, but I thought these were really some good ones that you linked to today for folks of us, you know, for the listeners that we know that listen to us.

These are products that I think would appeal.

How about we'll start off with the first thing you mentioned in your post today, the AirPods 2 Pro, which I think you may have said this in your post today, too.

When I saw this price, I'm like, could I use another pair?

You know, just an extra pair, a replacement pair.

This is incredible.

$153.

This is such a great sale, you know, and of course, you know, Black Friday is more than just a single Friday.

You know, some of these sales started many days ago.

In fact, even last week, I thought they were a great price when it was like almost $160 and now they're a few dollars cheaper.

And I don't know if this price ends today.

So a lot of these things we'll talk about go through Cyber Monday, actually.

So there'll be a few more days.

But I mean, they're basically $100 off.

You're basically getting something that is a really useful device at $250 for about $100 off around $150.

It's technically $153.99.

But you know, AirPods Pro 2, this is the top of the line device.

This is not like some Black Friday sales or like an older model of an iPad or something like that.

This is a brand new top of the line.

You know, this is it.

And you know, AirPods are so good.

I'm wearing them right now.

I mean, I wear them all the time.

I use them in my office all the time.

I use them at home.

Everybody loves AirPods.

They're beloved devices.

I love the, it's been a long time now since they've had the AirPods original Pro, but it introduced the idea of the soft tip so it's more comfortable in your ear.

Plus you can replace them.

You know, plus the, you know, there's just so many things you can do with them.

I mean, what can you say?

And it's a really nice gift for everybody.

Although they work the best with Apple products.

I use mine with my windows computer every single day because you know, video conferencing has become such a big deal in my business since well, I guess really since COVID right?

People will be getting more used to that.

And so now I, I mean, I, I use a different microphone.

I use like a nicer microphone, but for just listening, AirPods are so unobtrusive and they're in their ears.

So no one really needs, sees them in a video conference.

But then again, if people do see them, no one thinks, I mean, just seeing a little white body, you know, everybody's used to seeing them in your ear.

So it doesn't really everything about them.

I just absolutely love, they sound great.

The noise cancellation is really good.

Oh, such a great deal.

When I saw your link, I thought to myself, okay, I've seen this before.

I see AirPods and I stop and I'm like, wow, that's a great price for the AirPod.

Oh, but wait a minute.

This is the AirPods 4.

This is the first generation.

Maybe it's the older generation of the AirPods Pro, you know, that has lightning and not the USB-C.

No, this is the top of the line.

This is the absolute most recent ones, including that comes with the things we've been talking about, the hearing test, right?

The fact that you can use these as a hearing aid, by the way, keep that in mind, because we'll come back to that at the end of the show.

Stay tuned.

You mentioned the tips that came with this, and this is something that you've reviewed and talked about several times, the Comply Foam Ear Tips for the Apple AirPods.

I remember you talked about this so much years ago that my wife actually got these and she loves them.

She will use these.

These are basically alternative ear tips that you can get for your AirPods Pro and they're on sale as well.

There's a 15% off coupon here.

Yeah.

I mean, that's I love that you can get replacement tips.

The AirPods themselves, the pros, come with three different sizes of the silicone tip, so you can find the one that fits your ears.

But I find that they're very comfortable.

I like them fine, but sometimes they don't stay in my ear quite as well.

They might fall out and stuff.

And so just for me, many years ago, I went through, it was probably around the time we started doing the podcast originally, I went through sort of this vision quest of trying out different types of foam ones.

And I tried a couple of different brands.

I even tried some that like you would buy them and then I would use a knife to cut out something and put, you know, to do it yourself.

And then Comply came out with these products that much like the ones that come with the AirPods have the three different sizes.

And I think I used the large one for me, but they're great.

They work really well.

And so the foam tips do like, I replace them once, I don't know, maybe once or twice a year.

When you buy them, you get a set of three.

So I'll have it for like a year, year and a half, and then I'll buy some more, but they're really inexpensive.

So it's not a problem.

I hope that at some point, Brett, I suppose Apple will update the AirPods.

And I hope that, you know, whenever they come out with the next, the AirPods Pro 3 at some point in a year or two, I hope that they continue to allow third parties to have tips because it's a nice feature.

But again, whether you use these replacement tips or the regular ones, they work really well that they still allow for the noise cancellation.

In fact, one quick thing, you mentioned the fact that the price is so low that it almost made you think it was a regular AirPods.

You know, the current AirPods 4, which are pretty new, they have a version of noise cancellation in them, but it's because they don't completely fill your ear canal.

It's not as good.

People say it's about half as good.

And they're really only like 20 bucks cheaper than the AirPods Pro with this current sale.

So that's my point is, you know, it's, it's, it just makes it, you know, you can't say enough good things about it.

It's a great purchase.

Go into a little bit of a direction here.

You link to the Eufy, U-E-U-F-Y, Eufy security by Anker smart track card.

Is this the one you have this one, I think, right for your wallet on here?

I keep it.

I'm just pulling it out.

I have it right here in my wallet.

No, that's a credit card.

I have it somewhere.

But it's one of my little cards.

I have my wallet and, and it works great so that if you ever can't find your, here we go.

There's my, my wallet.

And if you ever can't find your wallet, you can make it beep, you know, much like you would with like an iPhone or something like that.

And you can, you know, use the find my service to find it and stuff.

I have fortunately never left mine at home.

I mean, you know, at a restaurant or any, something like that, but sometimes you're in your house and I always, I usually put my wallet in the same place in my house every night when I get home from work, which of course means that the few times I don't put it in the same place, then I've lost it forever.

It's like, where is it?

I can't find my wallet.

I'm trying to get to work.

I don't want to, unfortunately I can use my iPhone to find my wallet, but it's nice to have, I mean, I use it for a wallet, but if you have anything else for which a regular air pod, just because it has sort of that shape to it, you know, it's a little, a little bulky if anything else where you want something flat, this works great for.

And in fact, if I remember correctly, the Eufy even came with like some sticky stuff.

So if you happen to have something that you wanted to stick it against, or just like that flat shape makes more sense than the air, than the air, the air tag.

Yeah.

Whatever that then, then you can use that instead.

But so it's just like to have the options, but it works a hundred percent with the Apple find my service.

You don't even have to set it up with the Eufy app.

If you don't want to, you could just a hundred percent use it with fine line.

I use it with both just, just to have it in both places.

Sure.

But yeah, they're great.

I love it.

And they're so cheap.

This is 44% off right now.

Normally $30 is $16 and 88 cents.

I'm actually thinking about this.

You know, we, we've talked about this every once in a while because people have come out with all kinds of ways that you can put an air, an Apple air tag in your wallet, but you just, we're talking to, it's so bulky, it's too thick, it's too big.

And so I've seen some other tile trackers and other things like this that you can fit in your wallet.

But this one, I think, I mean, I know you've, you've done some experimenting with other products as well.

I've tried out some other ones.

Yeah.

This one is probably the best.

Plus it works so well with the iOS with a, with Apple find my, they even say in the title here, Android is not supported.

This is not something you're going to want to get if you have an Android phone, but yeah, that's a, that's a great deal too.

I'm in fact, I might even be thinking about it because it's not just even for a wallet.

I'm thinking if you've got like a passport, you know, wallet that you're carrying around or we want to put in your bag, I mean, this may not be as well.

It's certainly not as thick and you know, bulky as, as the air tag.

And so people may even prefer to put this in a backpack or something like that.

Good stuff.

Yeah.

And it's changing the company that I like.

Yeah.

I know.

Yeah.

But it says, it actually says you fee security by anchor.

And so that's two names that I trust.

I like your stuff.

Yeah.

Anchor owns you fee.

So it's a sub brand of it.

So that's gotcha.

That's a good one there.

Okay.

If you want it to spend a little bit more for your loved one and you plan on going really off road, this is the Jackery, which is I think one of the greatest names, the Jackery solar generator Explorer 500, a portable power station.

It's it's almost half off 40% off.

Usually is $800.

It is now $479.

And you might scoff at this other than the fact that if boy, if you ever want to go camping and you want to go off the grid for a little bit without power, this I've seen many, many, many people talk about how great the Jackery solar generator is.

And you know, this has the biggest discount on it, but there's a whole range of Jackery devices from small to big that, you know, many of them have sales today.

Plus just to step back even further, the idea of a big charger, which is not something tiny that you're going to throw in your pocket, but something that's a little bit more substantial.

It's just an interesting idea because, you know, you might have a work environment.

Maybe you're not even out on the, in a camping, like, like the, the pictures are showing with this Jackery device, but I mean, maybe you're just working in a place where you're at a central desk and you know, whether you're at a coffee shop and you don't have access to an outlet, having like a big charger, that's big enough for you to use with a computer and a bunch of other things.

It's just something nice to have.

And again, this is, this is a different, this is not the tiny little portable charger that you want to throw into your purse or your briefcase.

This is going to be more substantial, but as a result, it's going to have a lot of power.

So it's just something to think about whether there's a place for that in your life, whether it's the Jackery product or one of the other ones, Anker has some, some nice ones too, that are the bigger, bigger batteries.

It's just something to think about.

It's a nice idea.

Yeah.

This tells you it has a built in handle.

So that alone should tell you that it's something that is not going to fit in your pocket, but it does.

But I like the way you say, first of all, it's solar so that you can recharge it via solar, which is great.

So if you are outdoors, that's fantastic.

But I liked the fact that you mentioned that it does say here, one of these images use outdoors or indoors, it's completely safe for either one of those.

And that's a, that's a good, that's a good angle to talk on that as well.

But stay on the topic of charging the 12 South HiRise 3 Deluxe.

I know you use this too, again, an amazing price drop on this one.

Yeah, this is the one I have right next to my nightstand and it's so good.

In fact, it even has, I mean, so you can charge three devices at once, right?

So it's got the Qi charger, which I usually use just to sit my AirPods pro on there so that they're always recharged.

Although they hold charge for a long time.

I don't have to charge them every day, but you might as well, cause you could just sit it there at night.

It's a place to put it at night.

And then you put your iPhone on the MagSafe charger.

So it charges at night.

And of course it also supports standby mode.

So, you know, at nighttime, when I sort of glance over, I'm looking at my phone and it's as if it's a, you know, like an old clock radio or something like that with the big numbers on it.

So I love that.

And then in the front, it has the fast charging for the Apple watch.

And I'll say that I have been for a couple of months now, I've mentioned this before, I've been wearing my Apple watch at night just because I like having it on at night.

And it used to be that that was a luxury that I couldn't do as much cause I didn't have like what you have, the ultra that has such ridiculously long battery life.

But with these fast chargers, which again, they come with the iPhone, but this one has a two, it does a really good job.

I mean, I find that even if I wear it all day long and all night long, I'll wake up and my watch might be at 15% or something like that.

But then I throw it on a fast charger and as I'm getting ready in the morning, by the time I'm done, you know, 15, 20, 30 minutes later, it's charged, you know?

So fast chargers are, they, you know, it really, it's, it solves the issue of, I don't have the super duper duper battery life of the Apple watch ultra.

But as long as you don't forget to charge it in the morning on a fast charger, you're going to be good for the day.

Now, if you do forget to charge it, well then you're going to be in trouble.

And that's why I actually like that every once in a while I do.

And so here in my office, I also have one of these little things that I can charge my watch so I don't really have to charge my watch during the day at the office, but if I forgot to throw it on my HiRise 3.

But also one more thing I want to say about the 12 South HiRise 3, it looks nice.

I mean, it's a nice feel to it.

It's got a nice bulk to it.

It's just, it's, and again, it's just my bedroom.

It's not like anyone sees it but me, but I like the way it looks and it works really well.

So I love this device.

So it's 25.

I mean, I paid 150 bucks for this device and I 100% get $150 of value out of it.

You can now pay $112 and get just as good of a device as I got.

I think in your post, you said $119.

I think it's even gone down a few dollars since you posted this morning.

Oh, Leo, you're right.

Look at that.

Black Friday.

Wow.

It's, yay, Black Friday.

All right, let's go to a little something else.

If you're looking for a portable hard drive, there's many, many, many, many, many of these on the market today, but this is a good one here that you link to the Samsung T9 portable SSD, two terabyte, just under $200.

So that's a hundred dollars per terabyte.

But number one, that's still a pretty good price, even though some people may scoff at that, but the read write speeds on this are pretty amazing.

So this is the thing they have other, the, first of all, do you own one of these devices or something like this?

Not this one.

No, but something that, you know, I've had a few down the, down the, down the years, but not as speedy as this.

Samsung has had the T, you know, that this is the T9.

They had the T7, the T5, all these sort of T numbers and people love them because they're portable, they're tiny, they're SSD.

So it's super fast and you just hook it up to your computer.

And some people like use them hooked up to the computer all the time, which is why I was asking, you know, when you buy a Mac mini today, Apple charges a lot of money for a space.

And so I remember when I bought my Mac mini about a year and a half ago, I spent, I mean, I want to say a thousand dollars, Brent, more than a thousand dollars to get four terabytes because I really wanted to have the internal space, but I hated paying the Apple price for it.

And I ultimately decided I was going to splurge.

I'm going to have this for a while.

I just like having the internal device, but it is a very smart idea that many people that are a little bit more pound wise than I am.

You get an external SSD like this, you plug it into your computer and therefore they're cheaper, but they're still really good.

And like you say, this one, the T9 has a very fast read write speed.

If you want to spend less money, did I link to it?

I may have linked to it today, but you can actually spend less.

I didn't link to it, but it's another Black Friday sale that if you get like the T5, which is not quite as fast, still pretty fast, it's SSD.

You can get like an eight terabyte for about the same price.

So you can just decide, do you want the super, super fast speed or do you want something slower?

But you know, these are great because they're so small if you just connect it.

Or if you want like a portable SSD, these things slip into a pocket.

So I don't own one of these, but I have come so close on pulling the trigger.

And now that I'm looking at now, it's less than $200 on it.

It's very tempting.

It's very tempting just to have some great and fast SSD storage.

You know, it wasn't that many years ago, Brett, that the only real option we had was hard drive storage.

And those are big and they're expensive.

And you know, we're not at the point where SSD prices are so low that it's nothing, but they're starting to get there. - Getting close. - I mean, 200 bucks for two terabytes of super fast. - Yeah. - You know, and just quickly on that, I don't think that people understand why we're emphasizing that read/write speed.

You know, if you talk to nerds, probably like us, we always prefer what we call onboard storage, right?

The fastest thing you're going to be able to access any information on your computer is in the built-in hard drive because they are configured to give you the fastest read/write access.

When you have an external hard drive, if you don't get that same or close to it speed of read/write access, you're probably going to be fine other than you will notice that when you're accessing photos or videos or something from that external hard drive, you could slow down a little bit.

It could stop or jitter or something like that.

And so paying a little bit extra for the faster read/write speed is a pretty big deal.

Now, again, I think it's really for those top tier folks.

If you're doing a lot of video editing and you had the video stored on there, it's almost imperative that you have something, you know, fast.

If you're just kind of storing things on there as a backup and you're not accessing it in real time, maybe you don't need that faster read/write speed.

So I just wanted to let people know about that.

You know, and I just remembered quickly, I do have something similar to this.

It's an older version of this, but one of the pictures here talked about you can have it connected not just to a computer, but to a gaming console.

And I remember that we actually have one of these connected to our Xbox downstairs because for exactly this reason, we had more games than what could be stored locally on the actual console.

And so I use that external hard drive to have quick read/write access to those games that are stored on the external hard drive.

Yeah.

One thing I was going to mention about speed is that, and this gets to the limit of my knowledge, but USB, like these use the USB-C connector.

We know what those look like because the modern iPhones and iPads all use them.

But USB-C, the one thing I don't like about the connector is that the same, it looks the same, but it can support very, very different read/write speeds.

Yes.

Depending upon the cable you're using and depending upon what the device supports.

This Samsung T9 supports USB 3.2, which is the standard, Gen 2x2, which is a lot of words there.

Make sure, depending upon what computer you're going to be using, that you can support that.

Because for example, I don't believe, you know, you can use external storage with an iPad, but I need to check this.

I think that my current iPad, even though it's the top of the line iPad Pro M4, I don't know that it supports this.

On the other hand, the current Mac mini, as I understand it, the current Mac mini with the M4 chip in it, the one that came out, you know, a couple months ago that looks cute, I believe it does support this.

But if you have an older Mac mini, like the one that I use at my house, which is about a year and a half old, I think that mine supports USB 3.1, not 3.2.

So don't quote me on this.

My point to listeners is not to, you know, take this as the Bible, but is to double check, see what device you want to use it with, and make sure that it works with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2.

Now, having said that, even if your current device doesn't work with it, maybe the next time you upgrade it will, and this will still be around.

So you can also future-proof by getting this.

So there's always an advantage to getting something that's really fast.

But you know, if you want to take advantage of the top speed now, double check what your own device can support.

I'm looking at the iPad Pro 2024 USB-C port supports Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4, and it can handle transfer speeds of up to 40 gigabytes per second.

But now that doesn't answer.

Is that 3.0?

You need to actually see if it supports the...

Right.

So anyway.

Yeah.

Okay.

I don't know.

We'll come back to that.

But that's interesting on that as well.

Another gift idea, of course, we talk about quite a bit is the Apple Watch.

This...

I think my wife even texted me this morning when she saw this price, Jeff, because it's the brand new Apple Watch Series 10.

I think it's the 42 millimeter case.

That's the smaller one. $329 it's gone down to.

That may not sound like a lot off of the $399 price, but that's an incredible deal for a watch that was...

How long ago was that released?

Maybe two months?

One month?

Yeah.

Brand new.

Incredible price there.

There's discounts across the board on Amazon, even if you get the larger size and stuff like that.

We mentioned this a week or two ago that this is the decision.

If you're going to get somebody an Apple Watch, you can get some really good sales on Amazon for the next couple of days, save about 20%.

You can get some good deals from the Apple Store as well.

But remember, their deal is that you don't save money initially, but instead you get an Apple card for it.

The advantage of the Apple Store is you have until January to return it or exchange it.

Amazon, you don't have quite...

I don't know what the specific return period is for Amazon, but I don't think it's that generous.

But there's pros and minors.

But the point is that if you're going to give...

I mean, Apple Watches are perfect holiday presents.

They're really, really good.

A lot of people already have an Apple Watch, but they have an older one and it's nice to get it, take advantage of a newer one.

It's got better battery life.

And the Apple Watch 10, I would recommend without hesitation.

It's a fantastic device.

So if you're going to get something for someone or if you're going to get a gift for yourself, you can save yourself a few bucks by getting this weekend.

I think some of the return policies on Amazon depend on whether you're a Prime member or not.

But I do see here in the bottom right, it says returnable until January 15, 2025.

There you go.

So that's good.

Yeah, I think that's an Amazon specific requirement, but I don't know.

Anyway, just buyer beware.

Make sure you do your research on that and doing that.

But it's just like you and I have been saying, at least for the past two or three podcasts, it's that difference between buying an Apple product from a different store like Amazon versus buying it directly from Apple, which, by the way, I think Apple is having some Black Friday sales.

I didn't.

They're usually nowhere near as amazing as what you could find price wise, but they might be worth it if you just want that little bit of extra peace of mind on there.

A couple of more things quickly on the Black Friday thing.

This this may be the best you can get today.

The Bird Buddy.

We talked about this, didn't we?

We talked about it in the past.

Yeah.

OK.

I'm going to go back and save some money getting it.

It's a bird feeder that you put in your backyard.

But when the birds show up to eat the bird, there's a camera there.

So it senses their presence.

It records them.

And I will I will warn you that I have read about these and I've heard mixed results on them that, you know, say that it's not as good for one thing.

It purports to identify the actual bird.

And I've heard people say it doesn't do a good job identifying.

But, you know, I don't know birds either.

So if it tells me it's a blue jay and it's actually a cardinal, I would barely know the difference except for the color.

But but it's a cute idea.

I've also heard people say that you need to find a good spot in your backyard because if it's too close to a tree or a fence, squirrels will get to it.

But, you know, regardless, putting aside all the caveats, it's a fun idea to come to take a close up look at the birds that visit your house.

And it's got a nice price this weekend.

You don't need to see the birds.

Look, this gives you the ability to name your favorite bird visitors with a special nickname, Jeff.

And so you can say, hey, Bob came back to say hi.

You can say hi to Bob every time he comes back.

I like that.

The last little Black Friday sale that you lead to was to an app called Things, which I remember several years ago when this came out.

I think they're based in Europe.

Right.

But they have continued to stay strong.

You know, this is this is basically a task management app similar to Omni Focus or some of the others.

I think you have used things quite a lot.

Maybe you're still using it.

But 30 percent off today, the Black Friday week sale.

So but you can, you know, from November 25th through December 2nd, that's Monday.

You can get 30 percent off a things subscription, which is really good.

Yeah, I use things every day in my law practice to keep track of the things I need to do, the things I need to do.

And I love it because I have it on my iPhone.

I have it on my iPad.

In fact, I literally have it on the home screen of my iPad as a widget.

So when I'm where I glance at it, I can just sort of see.

And for me, I just use it as a simple thing that you click things off of and you can drag up and down.

My wife actually started using things before I did.

She's more of a power user.

She has different lists.

She has dates associated with it.

She really uses it extensively, much more impressively than I do.

But it's a nice app.

It's been around for a long time by Culture Code.

So this is a great deal at a third off.

But I will actually tell people that a lot of apps, a lot of indie apps and stuff like that are doing great deals this weekend.

And so if there is an app that you've been thinking about or maybe you have the app, but you have been thinking about an in-app purchase, you haven't done a while.

Take a minute and just look and see.

Because I saw one post somewhere that hundreds of apps are doing some, including a lot of indie apps, are doing some great sales this weekend.

And if you were trying to decide whether to go over the fence, do I get this, do I not get it?

This might be a good time to do it.

I mean, just to give you one example, this goes back to things.

I haven't yet paid for things on my Vision Pro.

You have to pay for things individually for each device.

The normal Vision Pro price is $30, but this weekend it's $20.

And now that I'm thinking about it, I might, you know, for maybe for $20, I will splurge for it.

So there's some great deals out there.

I see here on the things website, I don't remember what year this was, but things is so nice that it won an Apple Design Award.

I don't know if you remember what year that was, but I love how Apple continues.

It really is.

And speaking of which you link to the fact, I think we talked about this a little bit last week.

It seemed like there was one Apple we talked about.

Apple has revealed the 45 app and game finalists for the 2024 App Store Awards.

And I always enjoy looking through this list.

And I think like you mentioned, I feel almost a little terrible sometimes because I'm like, I don't even know some of these apps.

I mean, they got to be really good if Apple is selecting them for the finalists of the 2024 App Store Awards, and you know, they got to be good.

A few of these that I, of course I recognize, but man, there's some really nice ones in here.

I always like to see the iPhone app of the year finalists.

The three that you have here.

I don't think I've used any of these three, Jeff, but I want to now.

I think this is good.

So it's funny that I was going to ask you, Brett, because Tripsy is one of the three and Tripsy is an app that you use for organizing your trips.

I have been a TripIt user for the longest period of time.

And I also use my Flight Track app, Flighty, which is fantastic.

As I understand it, this app's called Tripsy.

It looks to me like it's a true alternative to TripIt in that it holds all of the details of your travel, your airline, your hotel, your rental car.

It's one central location.

And I will tell you, whenever I travel, it is so convenient to have a central location for all of my travel stuff.

So I know where to go.

Absolutely.

If I'm just telling myself what time something is or if I need to pull up a confirmation number or whatever it is, I love it.

But I've been using TripIt for so long that I haven't really looked at alternatives.

And since you travel a lot more than I do, Brett, I was going to ask you, and I guess you haven't heard.

Like when I saw this on the list, whenever this came out, just a few days ago, I looked around the internet and I found all these people raving about Tripsy saying it's such a great app.

So you don't know it either, huh?

I don't.

But like you, we've been doing this long enough on some of these apps, Jeff, that I feel like we just got established with TripIt.

And at one point, I was a TripIt Pro subscriber as well.

But just like you, I don't subscribe to it anymore.

I know that you do.

We talked about this before.

I do subscribe to Flighty.

But those two apps or services together are pretty much everything that I need.

I put everything in there from having just one location where I can have access to all my confirmation numbers for the hotel, for the rental car, for the flights, and to track all of that information, which is really good.

But no, I mean, I feel like, again, we've been doing this long enough that while we still worked with something that may have come out several years ago, like TripIt, what's great about apps is that new people come along and say, hey, I can do that a little bit better.

And I just think that maybe that's what TripIt is along.

I mean, I feel like I need to try it just so that I have the flavor for it.

But I'm also so very used to TripIt.

I don't want to change what it could do on TripIt.

But yeah, I've got to try TripIt.

When I saw this, I thought the same thing.

And I looked down here.

There are in-app purchases.

And I think for $40, you can do the TripIt Pro for a year, I would assume.

And that's just a little bit less than TripIt.

Which I would assume is similar.

Yeah.

I think TripIt Pro, I think it's $45 or $50 for a year.

But both of them are excellent to do.

And I think really sometimes, like I said, it just kind of comes down.

Maybe I download TripSea.

I'll look at it a little bit.

And I just like the look and feel of that.

Maybe it's a little bit easier to organize.

TripIt has been around for many, many years.

Nothing against it.

It's such a valuable app for me and a service.

But again, things just could get a little old on the vine sometimes.

And maybe you like staying with that.

Maybe something like TripSea would be another one to try.

So I'm glad that you pointed that one out.

Well, that's why I love the list.

Because I mean, TripSea looks like a beautiful app.

It would not have bubbled up to my attention if it wasn't on this list.

And so now I'm paying attention to it.

And I may want to look into it a little more closely.

But many, many, many other apps in here.

I'll mention one just to scroll down.

I keep hearing people talking about this app called Bellatro.

You just scrolled off, but it's a game.

B-E-L-L-A-T-R-O.

It's been out for a while.

It's been out for other platforms.

It's like a card game, but it's unlike a card game in that you spend your little fake money you earn in the game to get different cards.

You can get different kinds of jokers that do different kinds of things.

You get it for free.

It's included with Apple Games.

So Bellatro Plus is the version that you get.

Apple Arcade.

And since I'm an Apple One subscriber like you are, I just have Apple Arcade.

So I downloaded it about a couple of weeks ago when it came out.

Everybody was raving about it.

I tried to play it for about 10 minutes and I guess I'm not smart enough, Brett, because I'm like, I don't get it.

It makes two of us, Jeff.

So you probably do.

What I want to do, somebody out there, if you are in the New Orleans area and you love this app, let me know.

We'll meet up for lunch because I want somebody to show me because I'm convinced the people that play this say it's the best app ever.

It's so good.

And maybe if somebody just showed me and I understood it better, I don't know.

If you're listening to this and you want to try something out, I guess I recommend the app.

Even though for me, I don't understand it, but so many people love this app.

And I love the idea of it, right?

Because it's not like a shoot them up game.

There are some time modes to it, but it's more of a casual gaming.

That's what I am, a casual gamer.

And so everything about this game looks like something I should love, but so far I don't.

Once again, maybe six months from now, it'll be my pick of the week.

And I'll be telling you, Brett, that I've had my moment.

Now I get it.

But so far I'm not there yet.

So anyway, if I was funny, I would be in the list.

I remember specifically hearing Jason Snell talk about this on Make Break Weekly.

He was just going on and on and on.

It was his pick.

And so maybe that was when you did the same thing.

I'm like, well, I got to download this if Jason likes this so much.

Not that it gets to you, Jason.

You're much smarter than we are.

But oh my goodness, I've tried figuring this out.

I just couldn't.

I was going to point that one out, too.

So I'm glad that you beat me to it on that.

Anyway, just some other great ones on here.

Anything quickly, they have some Apple Vision Pro app of the year finalists.

The first year that they would have this category, right?

You've actually talked about a couple of these, the What If, an immersive story from Marvel and the NBA app as well.

I remember talking about that app.

When I saw that, I was like, oh yeah, I know Jeff would agree with that.

Can't be a whole lot of apps in here, but I'm glad that they're opening this up as another option for this year, which is great.

Yeah, so great stuff on the app.

So check out the list.

So, you know, look for anything that jumps out at you.

Some great recommendations there.

Speaking of apps, another one you linked to, which at first was having a head scratch moment for me, Mercedes-Benz introduces a new app, not for the iPhone, not for the iPad, for the Apple Watch.

But I read through this and then I'm thinking, maybe I need a Mercedes as well, just so I could have this Apple Watch app.

This is pretty cool here.

Yeah.

And this is the thing.

I mean, I can't do this with my car yet, but perhaps my next car, I'll be able to use my Apple Watch to unlock the doors or check whether the doors are locked.

You know, you know how you have that thing where you walk away from your car and you're like, yeah, lock my door.

You have your key fob and everything.

Exactly.

So at least you could use this as your key fob or to double check whether it's locked or not.

And you can get other vehicle information about the car and stuff like that.

So I love the fact that more and more car companies are starting to have like really nice apps, really nice Apple Watch apps.

This is the also nice.

So anyway, anyone out there that uses a car that this works with, this is worth checking out.

Well, just when I saw this, that's exactly what I thought of.

It's like, why can't my Apple Watch act as my key fob?

And then I would just hear a lot of people in my head say, well, you're crazy.

Like somebody could just grab your Apple Watch then and unlock your car.

And I'm like, can't they do that with the key fob now?

It's the same thing.

Plus, my Apple Watch can get locked if it gets off my wrist.

And then I thought, started thinking we Apple has been talking about this for several years now, though, Jeff, right?

With BMW or Jaguar, they had some other things and we just haven't seen a whole lot more.

But anyway, I saw this and that got that's what got me excited.

I'm glad that you linked to that today as well.

Well, one more app that I wanted to mention here, and this is going to be a little bit of a niche app for any legal professionals out there listening to our our podcast.

For a long time, Jeff and I have known the developers of lit software.

They started developing apps for the iPad when the iPad came out in 2010.

And at lit software, if any of you are out there listening to us and you were in the legal profession, you probably already know about trial pad and transcript pad and doc review pad.

Lit software makes some excellent, probably some of the best legal specific apps for the iPad.

And they have been talking for several years now about a brand new app that they're coming out with called Timeline Pad.

And if you can't tell from the name, which you should be able to, this is a specific app on the iPad that can help you generate a visual timeline.

Now Jeff, I just know you and I have been talking about this for a long time, just, you know, kind of off off the air because we're both very excited about this.

But you can now finally get into the beta software program for Timeline Pad.

Yeah, the app itself is not quite out yet.

But since they now have a public beta, my hope is that it's going to be out soon.

For people that pay for this already know that they have a the way that the company works now is that it's a subscription suite.

So just like you would write Microsoft for like the Microsoft Office suite, you you pay lit software for the suite of all their apps.

And so when this app comes out, it'll just be part of the suite.

As you also know, if you're a lawyer, especially a litigator, timelines can be so important in cases because you have all these different things that happen, you know, whether it's a slip and fall case or a product's liability case or whatever kind of case it is, you know, different things happen at different times.

And so then you put them into the timeline.

And then once they're in the timeline, suddenly you have this view of everything from beginning to end.

You're like, oh, now I and it's, you know, both for understanding your strategy, for presenting to a jury or to an arbitrator, a mediator, you know, here's how things happen.

And so there have been sophisticated timeline programs for computers that attorneys use for a while.

But the idea of having something that's right there on your iPad, you touch it with your hands, all the all the advantages of fantastic lawyer software on the iPad.

And I just so the beta became available the day before Thanksgiving and I immediately downloaded it.

You have to sign up for something called test flight.

You go through a little process.

It's not it's not very complicated.

They so but you do have to go through some steps just so that you know that because this is beta software.

But once you download it, like you can see like you can have different graphics associated.

Like if you wanted to have like, you know, if it's a personal injury case, a doctor's visit might be like one kind of icon and something else.

And you could put tags on things.

And then you create this timeline that you can either expand to zoom out or you can zoom in at the very bottom of it.

You see that they have sort of like a bar of the entire thing.

And you can see like, you know, some where there's a lot of events.

It's more color dense where there's some gaps.

In fact, sometimes spread that I've had cases where the most important information is the fact that nothing happened.

Nothing.

Right.

That that that is the key thing.

So anyway, I have just started to play with this.

I'm not yet ready to talk about it, except to say that I'm very excited about this software.

And I can't wait for them to have the final version that I can use for real.

And I'm going to have some fun playing with the beta.

So if this if this interests you, if you're a lawyer or other legal professional, consider signing up for the beta, which is free.

And and then if you get into the beta, you'll get to know about it.

And then the really good news is my hope is that I mean, what are we almost in December now in the beta?

So wouldn't it be great if early next year, you know, the actual app is available for everybody and that's going to be awesome.

So I'm very excited about this.

You know, I'm just going to go back quickly on, say what I'm saying.

This, you know, it contrary to what maybe Jeff and I've been talking about, this is not just something that would be for legal professionals.

Jeff and I have been looking for timeline apps for a long time for the iPad.

And really, the only one that's the one that's been out there and still out there and still available is called Timeline 3D for iOS.

It's a beautiful app, but it's been around for a very long time.

And there are some I wouldn't call them limitations, but I wouldn't use this for a very big, extravagant timeline.

It's really nice if you have maybe 12 to 20 different events and you can zoom in on those things.

And it's very visual in the way that it works.

But that's really all that we've been working with.

And so I just wanted to bring that up to say there, unless you know of a good timeline app for the iPad, Jeff and I have been looking at this for a long time, and I don't know of another one that will allow you to develop something similar to what Lit Software is offering in Timeline, Pat.

So I just wanted to throw that out.

Don't, you know, hopefully you just didn't turn this off if you're not a legal professional, because this I feel is it has some very wide appeal to a lot of people that, you know, for if you're doing some kind of a storyline from a book or something for a school research pay project, there's not really other good timeline apps available that will, you know, create this for you.

You can always do it manually on like Keynote or PowerPoint or something like that.

But anyway, I just wanted to mention that because I think it's also important to know that, hey, it's not just for legal, legal nerds like us as well.

Okay, I think that's enough on apps.

Let's get to a little bit of hardware, not for the Black Friday aspect of it.

But this is a great article.

I remember seeing some of these from Mac Stories every year, the Mac Stories holiday gift guide for the Apple nerd in your life.

That's us.

I like this because it breaks it down all of the all of the authors on Mac Stories from Frederico and John.

And these are some really good options here to Jeff.

Yeah, I mean, we're tis the season.

So we're going to start to see as we get past Black Friday into people's holiday gift guides.

And you know, I certainly don't intend to talk about every holiday gift guide out there.

But this one I actually thought, I mean, maybe it's just because they're speaking to me.

But for the Apple geek in your life, there's some really good devices here.

I mean, they started at the very top.

Yeah, yeah.

We're just talking about the idea of a portable battery.

And this is another example of this Ugreen device.

And I haven't used this one, but you know, it's a big portable battery.

It's something that, you know, I don't know if you would necessarily use that one outside or just inside.

But it's just another example of this category of devices.

And they had some other really interesting things in here, too.

One that that they have a bunch of chargers and stuff like that.

One that I thought was interesting, and I'm sort of thinking about I might need to get this from my car, is John Voorhees had recommended a portable like an air charger, what do you like, something to blow up the air in your tires.

Or you could even use it with.

Oh, really?

Oh, yeah.

You'll find it eventually.

Okay, I'll keep going.

But it was like, it was cheap.

It was like 20 bucks.

You know, you can just toss it in your in the back of your car if you ever need to recharge.

There it is right there.

The tire inflator is portable.

Astro AI.

It plugs into your what I call the cigarette lighter port, but it's not really what it's called now, the power port.

Right.

And it automatically cuts off.

So like you type in what your pressure should be, what your number is, and it'll fill the tire and then stop at that point.

And he said that has little adapters that you could also use it for like, you know, blowing up rafts for the kids at the beach and stuff like that.

So I thought that was a cute idea.

But there's all these sort of electronic electronic adjacent things.

Some of them are really cool stuff. iPhone, other than that.

So they have a nice list here.

It's it's worth it's worth looking at.

Even this one caught my eye.

This is really nerdery here.

This is an HDMI splitter, which again, you know, if we're talking about when I think of software and I think of trial pad, sometimes I'm using a trial pad, but I've got to go to multiple different, you know, TVs and with an Apple TV, I could split that signal now to multiple TVs.

Again, you know, that's sort of a high end geekery aspect of there, but just some really great stuff in this list.

I'm glad that you linked to that.

I thought I thought that was really cool.

And then for the like, I would just say some people like the splitters, because in addition to going from one to two, as I understand correctly, when you have HDMI, like these high quality things, they have the protections on them.

But if you want to basically break that copy protection so that you can record the video on your computer, it allows you to be more sort of like into this for for splitting things up so that they have more flexibility with the video.

But anyway, yeah, well, it's good that you know about that, Jeff.

I like myself, but I know about it.

OK, but if you really want to go high end this Christmas for having a portable Mac mini with a screen that is not just, you know, 21 inches, 17 inches, 27 inches.

How about an almost an unlimited screen on an Apple Vision Pro?

I chuckled when I read this story.

The smallest Mac yet is a perfect Apple Vision Pro companion.

If you have the right battery pack, this is great.

So I had been thinking about this for a few weeks.

And when I saw an article by Wesley Hilliard, I'm like, wow, two, you know, two people are thinking the same thing.

So the premise here is that an Apple Vision Pro with the upcoming software updates, it's going to be out in like a week or two.

It allows you, as we've talked about before, to create a virtual monitor that has a high fidelity so it looks just as good as a really nice monitor.

But it's a huge monitor and it can even be like a surround monitor.

So it's like the equivalent of like two, two or three monitors around you.

So it's a perfect monitor for a computer.

But the question is, is if you have a laptop computer, sure, you can just connect it to the laptop.

But if you don't use a laptop computer, you know, you wouldn't want to have it connected to like a big computer.

So you can connect it to like a little Mac mini, which is so cute.

But if you wanted to use your Mac mini to go somewhere, like, you know, throw a tiny little Mac mini into your bag and go off somewhere, then you have to find a plug.

So where are you going to plug it in?

So the idea is that if you have a portable power supply, again, we're talking about portable batteries, just like before, something that has enough output that it can actually power a Mac mini and he found one on Amazon.

And Wesley points out in this article that this brand works for him, but he points out that it, although it's really inexpensive, it has some drawbacks.

Like it's got a fan that's sort of noisy, which is a little less pleasant.

But the idea is that you have your Mac mini, which is so tiny, you have your tiny little charger, they sit on top of each other and then you don't need any wires or connectors.

It just sits there.

It's incredibly powerful Mac with an M4 processor.

You have this huge display in your Apple vision.

You know, you probably want to have an external keyboard that's Bluetooth, but like you have this little portable station.

So it's a cute idea.

I love it.

But what I really enjoy thinking about is this is sort of like, you know, what I would love to have is maybe have the power of a Mac mini in the, in the next generation or a future generation of the Apple vision pro itself.

Now the problem with my theory is that, and again, this gets direct to the iPad because you know how we know that a current iPad, the iPad with an M4, the iPad pro, it's, it's more than powerful enough to be a computer.

Like it could run the Mac operating system.

Apple just doesn't let you do it because they want to have, let the computers be computers and let the iPads be iPads, which I understand because with the touch interface, you know, I do like that.

There's like an iPad version of Microsoft word.

There's an iPad version of certain apps.

But every once in a while I think to myself, wouldn't it be nice if I could just turn my iPad into a full blown Mac and just use as a real computer.

And this is the idea.

So this makes me think with the vision pro, you know, the vision pro has its own interface.

It's, it's a, it's a looking interface as opposed to a touching interface, but you know, wouldn't it be nice if you just had this all sort of built in, you know, the power of a Mac mini inside of a vision pro.

So anyway, this is one of these articles that just gets me thinking.

And so if this is of any interest to you, I recommend that you read his article.

It's a, it's an interesting thought.

All you need is the $60 battery portable battery that he found on Amazon $60.

Although the $800 Mac mini and the $4,000 Apple vision pro are not included, but for $60 Jeff, you could have this, you know, just reading through this again, I chuckled at this, but it's this kind of stuff that just gets me excited because even though this is now multiple products that you have to have just, we, we know the future is coming in this aspect.

It's going to be smaller.

It's going to have that power built in.

And that just continues to get us very excited.

One last little story you linked to about the vision pro just really amazes me.

And I feel like we just had to address it here is the fact that the vision pro is actually 16 years old.

Okay.

Well, the genesis of the idea of the Apple vision pro is 16 years old.

And I thought this story just does several things to highlight the fact that again, once again, Apple is not usually the first to enter a specific product category, but that doesn't mean a, they haven't been thinking about it all those years and B when they do decide to get into that product category, they're probably going to take it over.

Yeah.

There are so many companies that love to pre-announce things.

So much like, much like, you know, car companies will show a, a concept car, even though they have no intention of actually making it anytime soon.

And you know, many other electronics companies will show products.

I mean, just the other day, meta, i.e.

Facebook showed that thing that they call, was it the Orion?

It was like the glasses that, that it looks like this futuristic.

And then they said, Oh, by the way, we're not making this because we, you know, we're just doing it internal.

Yeah.

It's not available.

It's not going to be available because we just can't do it cheaply, but Apple works on things in private and they don't announce it until they're ready for it.

Anyway, this patent filing that was from back in 2000, I mean, what was it?

2008, excuse me.

In 2008, somebody had the idea and it got far enough along to be into a patent that Apple got a patent on.

And if you look at the diagram associated with this patent, wow.

It's a vision pro.

I mean, it is now I'm sure the final version was a lot more complicated than this design idea back in 2008, but it just shows you how long, and, you know, remind yourself 2008, the iPhone was like, you're like the app store was barely even out yet.

It just came, it came out in 2008.

The iPhone was only a year old.

And it just reminds you that, that Apple has all these ideas percolating, you know, the, the Apple history will tell you, there's lots of books written about this, that Apple first had the idea of making what would become the iPad.

And they worked on that for years and years and years.

And they decided, you know, you know, we're not going to do that where you're not, we're not ready to do that.

But then they said, well, maybe we could do an I something smaller, like a small iPad.

And that became the iPhone.

So the iPhone comes out in 2007.

And then a few years later in 2010, the iPad comes out, even though Apple had been working on what would become the iPad long before the iPhone came out.

And so this is just another one of these things.

Apple had this idea for the vision pro way, way, way back when worked on it for an incredibly long time.

And then it was finally 1516 years later that they have something that they're ready to show off and then ready to sell.

So I mean, as I concluded my little write up on this today, you know, that there are smart people in Apple that have all of these incredible ideas that we just don't have the technology for today, you know, and of those a thousand ideas, maybe one of them or 10 of them or 50 of them will ever see the light of day.

But some of them are going to be great ideas that Apple is just waiting for the technology to catch up with their with their mind and for the right, the components to be cheap enough.

But, you know, it wouldn't it be fun to just have this walk inside of a secret Apple laboratory where you could see, you know, the things that they're thinking about for the future.

So I was surprised to find out that the vision pro had been in development at one stage or the other for so, so, so long.

This is a good story from Dan Morin, but I like how you put in your post today you were listening to a podcast where it was a former Apple employee that in 2016 was working on the Apple Vision Pro.

But there was about 200 people working on it at the time.

And then two years after that, there were 2000 people working on the project.

And I just like the fact that you were talking about that and thinking about that and then reading this little story from Dan Morin.

He linked to a story or a post that he wrote for the Macworld's now defunct Mac user blog in 2008 when he was referencing this patent.

And it's just kind of neat to go back and see that historical component there.

And anyway, just thanks for posting that today and giving us a little bit of a flavor of man, what are they working on now in the dark, you know, deep tunnels of Apple that we have no clue what they're even working on.

I still get pretty excited about that.

In the show, let's talk about in the show today, several things.

I mean, not only is it, you know, the Black Friday weekend, but a lot of people probably have off, right?

And so they are staying at home and here are some great shows.

You mentioned number one, which I haven't started yet.

So no spoilers.

It's Silo season two.

I'm excited about that.

And then another movie I've seen some commercials for is the Blitz movie on Apple TV plus as well.

Yeah, this is good.

In fact, when I first saw the advertisements for Blitz, I actually thought it was a TV show.

And so when I sat down to watch it, I'm watching it.

I'm like, wow, this first episode goes really long.

And then I like, oh, wait, this is actually a movie.

So I actually stopped it halfway through about an hour in and then I picked it up and watched it the next day.

But but I enjoyed it.

It was good.

It's, you know, it's not the most sophisticated plot in the world, but it was good enough.

But as I put in my post, I mean, to see this vision and it's beautifully done.

I mean, I don't know how much money they spent making this movie, but they did a great job of showing London and what it's like to be in a city that's like a real metropolitan city.

And yet every night you have this terror that the Germans are bombing the city and you never know is my is my building going to be hit or the next one.

So it's it's it's a it's a beautiful.

The actors fantastic.

The the the dress is fantastic.

It's it was really fun to watch.

So I enjoyed Blitz.

I love Silo.

Just just good stuff.

The one that was an interesting story that I look plenty to I see on your screen right now you've got that George Clooney and Brad Pitt movie called Wolves.

You know, this is an interesting behind the scenes story.

So when Apple signed up to make Wolves, they had this agreement with George Clooney and Brad Pitt that they were going to have like a big Hollywood release.

It was going to be in all the big theaters and everything else.

And then Apple changed its mind.

And there's a lot of speculation as to why.

But Apple has released a couple of movies in the theater that that have not performed.

They have just haven't performed very well.

And it's not that they're bad movies.

I mean, the theater business is a tough business nowadays.

Napoleon left something Napoleon was Napoleon was one.

And they had the other one called I think was called Fly Me to the Moon that came out, which I still want to watch the Scarlett Johansson.

But, you know, unless you are this huge, you know, the Wicked movie that's in theaters right now or, you know, Oppenheimer or, you know, there's a couple that break through certainly some of the Marvel movies as things that people will go to the theater for.

But so many other things they don't.

And if you're a major Hollywood producer, that's OK, because even if you don't make up your money in the theater, you could then make up the money in the back end when you sell the rights to the movie to all the streaming networks and stuff like that.

But if you're someone like Apple TV Plus, you're not going to sell it to Netflix.

You're not going to sell it to I mean, you're going to keep it for yourself.

And so what they're realizing is sometimes it might make the most financial sense for a movie to just to just go straight to streaming, which is fine from an Apple standpoint.

But the story here is that John Watts, who's a very famous director, who's done lots of big movies, Spider-Man and other stuff like that, you know, he signed up for with Apple for this movie because he thought it was going to be a big Hollywood release in the theaters.

You know, people, if you're an actor or director, you want to see it in the big screen.

And he was very upset with Apple for changing its mind.

And so he told Apple, according to this story, and this is just one side of the story, but Deadline, I'm sure, was talking to him.

And he says that although he was originally going to do a sequel and told that to Apple, once Apple made the decision to not have the big release in theaters and to really just have it be a direct to streaming movie, he said, OK, well, then don't say anything about the second version because I'm not going to make it.

And then Apple, when they had their press release a few weeks ago announcing this movie, they actually said, oh, we love the movie.

We love John Watts.

We were looking forward to a second movie.

And at the time, I was thinking that Apple was doing it to be nice to John Watts and to be nice to Brad Pitt and George Clooney of like, even though we're not going into the theaters, we have so much confidence in you that we can't wait for the second installment.

But apparently, John Watts was not happy because Apple is like, I told them, do not say anything about the sequel.

Now he tells Deadline, you know, I'm not making the sequel.

I don't like Apple.

I'm upset at them.

And you know, on the one sense, I mean, hearing creative people get upset at decisions made by a major Hollywood studio, this happens all the time.

It's certainly not unique to Apple.

But if you are the people at Apple that make movies, you certainly don't want big name directors like John Watts badmouthing you.

So it's a little bit of airing dirty laundry in public.

And again, this is his version of the story.

I'm sure there's an Apple version of the story, too.

But so it's if you're interested in sort of the gossip and the behind the scenes of some of this stuff, it's interesting to read the article.

But anyway, well, I just quickly I remember we talked about this several episodes ago because I specifically remember seeing a video by Casey Neistat talking to the director, John Lyman, Doug Lyman, or no Lyman, Doug Lyman, who directed the recent Roadhouse movie with with Jake Gyllenhaal.

And I specifically remember like he wanted to boycott the premiere because, again, he wanted this movie to go originally to the theaters.

Because I remember in this video with Casey Neistat, he was talking about the fact that I made this to be like a group, a group experience, like I wanted, you know, a big fight scenes and everything.

He ultimately ended up going there because he's like, it's the only time that they're actually going to show it in a theater.

And then it just went straight to streaming.

But I you know, I'm just bringing this up because seeing the story you link to and thinking about this, the Gleiman movie as well, it's like, is this is this sort of like a curve?

Is this where things are going?

So, you know, why?

Yes, I sometimes some of us are interested in sort of the gossipy behind the scenes of this, but it's almost like I feel like this is kind of going to a different trend a little bit to some of the movies.

And I'm not sure yet if it's good or bad on this.

We've talked about this, you and I a little bit every once in a while on this, but just kind of interesting to see where this is going to go.

To be clear, the Doug Liman movie that you're talking about, which was the Roadhouse film, that was Amazon, not Apple TV Plus.

Correct.

Yes.

Correct.

Exactly.

The point is that if you're going to take money from Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV Plus, you any of these streaming networks, you need to know that their number one business is their streaming network.

And that's what they're looking for.

Right.

And so maybe they'll go into the big movie theater to let you be eligible for Oscars and stuff like that.

But that's not the focus.

And so you just need to decide what you're going to do.

So it's interesting to hear the sort of behind the scenes stuff.

For me, I enjoy reading about this stuff because it's just sort of reading the gossip trade things.

Ultimately, I just want to watch a good show.

And I personally did enjoy Wolves.

It wasn't the best thing ever, but it held my interest.

I liked the music.

Yeah.

I liked the fact that the characters in the movie look are so charismatic on screen that it was fun to see them together.

My wife watched it with me.

She said it wasn't quite as good.

She didn't enjoy it as much as I did, but I enjoyed it enough to stay there until the end.

So it's but it's another it's another one of these movies that if you're looking for something fun to watch this weekend, I certainly enjoyed that one.

Maybe the ultimate behind the scenes.

If you like the show Severance, you can hear the director do a podcast.

I mean, I feel like this is sort of the flip side of this.

It's like, right.

If you are streaming, maybe you can try to take advantage of some of this and just kind of embrace maybe the new trend if this is a trend.

And it's like the director should do a podcast about it.

So this is none other than Ben Stiller and Adam Scott are doing a podcast about behind the scenes of the Severance show.

You're excited about this.

First of all, Severance is such a great show.

And if there's ever a show you want to talk about, it's a show like Severance.

Severance reminds me of way, way, way back when, when Lost was the first season of Lost on TV.

And there was so much to talk about because it's like the mysteries of it and what are they doing.

And it's just one of these shows you want to talk about.

And so in the modern day, you know, yes, you can still talk about shows, but what's sometimes just as good as to have a podcast where the people that are in your ears can be talking about the show.

It's sort of a substitute for the water cooler conversations.

But I love this idea of having really good podcasts about shows.

And a great example is when Game of Thrones was out and then the House of the Dragon afterwards, there were some good podcasts that HBO itself produced.

And the advantage of having a podcast produced by the network is it's going to have the host is not going to be Joe Schmoe, like you or me talking about shows.

It's going to be the director and it's going to be the stars and they're going to be actually recording it.

It's Ben Stiller.

I mean, come on.

Exactly.

So that's what this is.

So this is going to be Ben Stiller, who's the guy behind the scenes of Severance, you know, Adam Scott, who is the star of the show.

And you know, as they describe in this article in Deadline, they're going to you know that every episode is going to have the actual actors talking about it.

They even said if I remember correctly, they said that some super fans of the show, like maybe even Jon Stewart might come on an episode or something.

So it's going to be and I've got said they probably recorded all these episodes already just to sort of stream them.

So I'm going to love the show when it comes out in January.

I'm so excited.

I cannot wait to be able to be able to like watch the show.

And I want to think about it.

I can listen to the podcast as I'm driving to work the next day.

I am so excited.

I wish Apple would do this.

And the Apple, they basically they didn't invent podcasts, but they certainly popularized podcasts.

It's called podcast because the iPod.

So why doesn't Apple make a high quality podcast for every single one of their TV shows?

I can't explain that.

I don't know.

They absolutely should.

So anyway, but at least it'll be good for Severance.

They should do one for Ted Lasso.

Maybe they did.

I'm going to tell Lasso fans.

But this is a nice little story.

You also link to which I have to be honest with you.

I had no connection between Ted Lasso and the Wizard of Oz until I read this article you link to.

And then I'm like, how could I be so ignorant and not be able to see this?

Good story.

Yeah, they have some funny links.

The connections I had heard those fan theories before.

And it was funny for Brett Goldstein, who, of course, is both one of the stars of the show, but he also is one of the writers of the show, too.

In fact, first he was a writer.

And then when they came up with the character of Roy Kent, they said, hey, you know, what if Brett played the role?

And sure enough, he tried out for it and he got it.

So he, you know, if there's any person that is, you know, a full Ted Lasso person besides Jason Sudeikis, it's definitely him.

And so for him to actually confirm that, oh, yeah, we were thinking about some of these Wizard of Oz things.

I will also mention that this article, what is it in Entertainment Weekly?

I think at the very top of the article, there's a video that if you watch it, it's if you're a big Ted Lasso fan like I am, it's worth watching because it's like a seven or eight minute interview with Brett.

And he just talks about, you know, how good the actors are.

And he has some little behind the scenes stories.

Yeah.

So I recommend that if you're a Ted Lasso fan, it's worth it's worth watching the video and reading this article.

Well, you can have a lot of fun this weekend watching lots of fun shows.

Thanks to Jeff, you can get your one minute and 30 seconds little tearful, a tear jerker video in.

Oh, my goodness.

You even you even warned me in your link today, Jeff.

If you're ready to shed some tears during a very touching commercial, then Apple has something ready for you.

But of course, I took the bait.

I went and clicked on the heartstrings little AirPods Pro to video and I had to grab a Kleenex.

So thank you once again for a little tear this morning.

But man, it's such a good commercial.

I mean, some of the best commercials just coming out with this.

We mentioned the AirPods Pro to if you weren't convinced to get it at the incredible price where it's at right now for Black Friday, watch the video and then go and click buy.

Every year Apple comes out with their end of the year Apple holiday commercials, which they're always almost always the best commercials that they're very nicely done.

They will often tug at the heartstrings.

This one literally tugs at the heartstrings, hence the name.

And I don't know if this is the only commercial that they're going to do for their Apple holidays this year or if this is just one.

We'll have something soon with Santa Claus and stuff, too.

But this is a good one.

And, you know, maybe it's because I'm a dad and I've got a daughter and stuff, but I don't want to give away.

But so when you watch this, I'm like, oh, what?

I'm not going to spoil it.

I want you to see it.

I can't.

Yeah.

So good.

So if you haven't watched it yet, click on the link that I have at the end of my post or click on the link that we have in the show notes here.

You're going to want to watch this one in the know.

I wanted to come up with a tip today, which is actually it's like I got some bonus stuff in here.

So hear me out quickly.

Time for travel, right?

Hopefully people have already come home, maybe from the holidays.

Maybe you're going to somewhere for the holidays.

You got you got some holidays coming up for the Christmas aspect on there, whatever it may be.

Let me tell you, one of the things that I think is going to be so useful is a VPN, a virtual private network.

Now, many of you have heard about VPNs before.

I know that I've talked about VPNs.

What do you need them for?

If you're going to be traveling somewhere where you're going to be at a coffee shop or you're going to be at a hotel using the VPN, and if you're any kind of a professional, not just legal professional, but anybody that has some sensitive information, you want to make sure that you're being as safe as possible on what we typically call open Wi-Fi networks.

And even if you go to like if I'm on a plane, I turn my VPN on.

If I'm at a hotel on the Wi-Fi, I turn my VPN on.

If I'm at a Starbucks coffee shop or frankly, even if I'm at my grandmother's house for the holidays, I will turn my VPN on if I know that I'm not at my office or my home where I've taken some, you know, secured my router.

I will turn on the VPN just because I know that's an extra layer of security that secures all of the data between me and the Wi-Fi hotspot.

And it just makes sure that I know that, you know, no one, it's at least another step you can take to protect anything you type in, your passwords, your email going back and forth.

So if I've convinced you, that's what you need a VPN for, where do you get it?

Well, there are several out there called Nord VPN.

In fact, you can see it here.

There's another one called Surfshark.

And a third one I'll throw out that I typically use is called TunnelBear.

You can see that listed here.

Now I'm pointing to a site called Rakuten because a couple of things here that I wanted to point out is that if you go to Rakuten, you can sign up for a free account and you can get cash back.

And some of these VPNs for Black Friday are offering up to a hundred percent cash back on these.

So basically you can get them for free.

You can, you can go in and you can, you can purchase it and you can get it for free.

So now you have no excuse to say like, I didn't want to pay for it.

These are typically annual subscriptions, although sometimes you can get it for two years, you can pay month to month if you want to.

You do all of them offer trials so you can try it out.

It's very easy to turn off and on.

Basically it'll run in your little system tray or on the Mac.

It'll be up in your menu bar.

You can turn it off and on.

People say, well, it slows the things down.

It might slow it down incrementally, but most of the time you're never even going to know.

I've even recorded things on zoom with my VPN on and it's never been a problem on anything like that.

In addition to getting all of that back, I'm going to put in my Rakuten affiliate link, all those things.

I'm going to put the links for all the products that we talked about on Amazon.

I'm going to put an affiliate link for Jeff.

So if you want to click through Jeff's link, you can do that.

And it just gets him a little bit of a kickback, a little bit of a percentage on this Rakuten link.

The reason I'm posting it here is because if you click through it, then you will get $40 back on signing up for Rakuten.

If you've never done Rakuten, and this is R A K U T E N, it gives me 40% back as well.

So we both get a little bit of a kickback, but basically if you're following this now, you can go to Rakuten, use my link, sign up for a free account, get $40 back, sign up for something like Nord VPN, get a hundred percent cash back.

You're basically getting paid to get a VPN.

It's literally what it comes down to all the way through.

Now you don't have to sign up and use Jeff's Amazon affiliate links.

You don't have to use my Rakuten link, but we just put it in there because it'll link you right to those services in there.

And I'll just make sure that you have the ability to go in.

Any of those three, I highly recommend.

In fact, CNET talked about Surfshark is the best all around VPN.

CNET also talked about Nord VPN is the fastest.

I've always liked TunnelBear, even though that's only 50% cash back on Rakuten, but TunnelBear is very, very easy to use and set up.

All of them are really easy to use, but I've just liked it for a while.

So that's my big tip.

Get a VPN, especially when you're traveling.

And all of these, by the way, will have multiple connections for all your devices and all your family members.

I'm going to do this.

My family and I are going to travel to Europe over the holidays, and I'm going to make sure all of us have VPN connections for our iPhones, our Macs, our iPads, and everything, just because I know it'll be a little bit of an extra layer of security.

But just make sure you sign up through Rakuten if you wish.

That way you can get the cash back, and you can even make some money on it too if you use the $40 reference affiliate link that I have.

So that's my tip today.

Like three or four tips built into one, Jeff.

Yeah.

And in fact, you talked about travel internationally, Brett.

VPNs, not just for security, but they're also nice because it can change the location that you appear to be coming from.

So if you're abroad, but if you want to make it still look like you're visiting websites from America so that you still get the American version of it, that can be useful too, or vice versa.

So yeah, there's all sorts of good reasons for that.

My tip of the week is not something new, but instead is something that's been around for a little while, but I want to remind you of because it's probably not something you use very often.

And what it is is now that we're getting, we just had Thanksgiving, we're about to have the holidays of Christmas and Hanukkah, et cetera, great times to get together with friends and family.

But when you can't physically be together, it's a great time to do so virtually.

And we're all familiar with like Zoom and all these sorts of things.

But about a year ago in tvOS 17 and iOS 17, so this was the fall of 2023.

Apple introduced this technology where you can use an Apple TV to have FaceTime calls and like, well, how do you do that?

Just the Apple TV doesn't have a camera on it.

Well, yes it can, because you can use the very high quality camera on your iPhone and use this thing called continuity camera to connect it.

It just like, it's so simple that you press one button to connect it to your Apple TV.

And so the end result that you have is, and we just did this at my house yesterday because one of my siblings lives across the country, he was not in town.

So we had my huge television, I don't even know how big it is.

I have a nice big, beautiful 4K HDR TV.

And then we had my iPhone that I was just sort of setting up at the very bottom of the TV.

And then my whole family and extended family were at our house, they were sort of on the couch and in front of the couch and around.

And the iPhone could see everybody and the iPhone camera is so good that it's a great image.

So I was able to share with my brother, he had it for his family, so he was able to share for us.

And it looks, I mean, I can't tell you, the quality looks so good on the TV and it doesn't, everything about it just works really well.

So if you're going to be, and that was just with a one-on-one conversation, but FaceTime can also work if you have multiple.

So if you've got, you know, one family member that's on the West Coast and one family member on the East Coast or whatever it is, and then you're wherever you are, you can have multiple things and Apple has done a really good implementing, a really good job implementing FaceTime in the Apple TV.

So if you have an Apple TV and you have an iPhone, and I suspect that many people listening to this already have both.

But again, this is not something, you know, this is something you should think about.

You might forget about it because, I mean, we used it yesterday for Thanksgiving, but the last time that we had used it before that was, I don't know, maybe over the summer or something like that.

This is not something you use every day.

So you might forget about it, but it works, works really well.

One thing I'll say is you do want to have a way to sort of prop up your iPhone and there's actually, I don't have a link to it in here, but Belkin makes a little device and they made it in connection with Apple to make sure it works really well.

It's got like a little, it's a stand.

It's made, it's like Belkin Apple TV thing that it sits flat and has a little thing you can hold up your iPhone.

I don't actually own one.

I actually put it on my Christmas list and maybe one of my family members will get it for me because that way it's made to hold up your iPhone at a perfect angle.

What I do is I sort of, I sort of just held, did something behind it to hold it up and I have this other Belkin thing that was actually made for a monitor, not for Apple TV.

But you know, you can make it work just by finding a way to prop up your iPhone.

But if you want to spend whatever, 30, 40 bucks, whatever it is, Belkin makes something that's made for this purpose.

But whether or not you have a stand for the iPhone, just the iPhone and the Apple TV works so well for FaceTime and again for friends and families and catching up with loved ones.

It's just magical.

It really, it works so well that it really is like having them there in the room with you and you can share stories, you know, see how the kids are growing.

It's just so nice.

So this time of year, especially, I wanted to remind people about this feature that just came out about a year ago, but it's so good.

So good.

Now, okay.

So, so in your house, you had the Apple TV connected with the iPhone continuity.

So you see iPhone's camera, you saw your family member across the country on the TV, but the family member doesn't have to have all of that, right?

They could just be on an iPhone or an iPad.

Is that right?

Okay.

Thank you for raising this because I've done it both ways.

I've done it sometimes that the other person that was my family or friend, they, they were sitting in their living room with their TV and with their iPhones.

They had the same as me, but you don't have to do it that way.

They could be on just a laptop, you know, just which means that they're not going to be able to use FaceTime on a laptop, which means that, so you wouldn't work with a P, although there's ways to do FaceTime on a PC, but it's better if you have a Mac.

So if they have a Mac laptop, no, unfortunately with a laptop screen or an iPhone screen or an iPad screen, because it's not really big, like an Apple TV, they'll be able to see you and you'll look very at a very high quality video stream.

It's really good, but it's going to be a smaller screen.

So like if they're, if they're huddled around an app, if it's just one or two people that are sitting in front of a laptop computer, that's totally fine.

That's fine.

Okay.

If it's like eight or 10 people, if it's a big group of people, you're going to want to be further back.

And that's what I love about the Apple TV is that I can have a big group of people in my house, or they can have a big group of people, you know, and you sort of sit back and everybody's in the couch or sitting on the floor or around and you can see everybody.

But no, you're right.

Not everyone that participates in this has to have an Apple TV or an iPhone.

They can just have whatever their one device is.

But when you're on the viewing side of it, it sure is nice to have that big TV.

Well, thank you for confirming that.

Because I was just thinking, you know, we're in Ohio, but my mother is in Texas.

She's got an iPhone and she doesn't have an Apple TV.

She barely knows how to do the iPhone.

But I was just thinking that, you know, last night we called her and wished her a happy Thanksgiving, but we were just, I was just on the phone, but I'm think I'm going to try this.

I, it has slipped my mind.

Just like you said, this was available where, you know, we were all sitting in front of the television last night where we called my mom, but it's like, I could have set this up with FaceTime and we could have seen her.

She could have seen all of us instead of just like, Hey, so how is, you know, the sun?

How is, how is Ella?

You know, all this kind of stuff.

So anyway, great stuff on that.

Thank you for the, the, uh, the reminder on that.

And I'll just mention that because you're using the iPhone as the camera, although I just talked about using things like the Belkin product to keep it steady, the iPhone's portable, right?

So you could pick it up.

So like there were times where like I actually picked it up and I moved around and I like showed people down the hall in the kitchen.

You could probably only get so far from the Apple TV.

I'm sure I couldn't have gone more than 30 or 40 feet, but you do have the ability if you want to be like a mobile camera operator, you can move your Apple TV around to change what they're seeing and stuff.

So not your Apple TV, move your iPhone around.

So anyway, I cannot, I cannot say enough good things about the feature.

Great feature.

Great tips.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Happy black Friday.

Happy cyber Monday.

I know there'll be a lot of stuff happening over the next few days as well.

Jeff, you'll be collected at all.

And then we'll talk with you next week.

Thanks everyone.

Thanks, Brett.