Welcome to in the news for December the 6th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett.

Good morning, Jeff.

It's good to talk with you as always, even on a little bit of a perturbing story that

came out this week.

You know, we often talk about like security fixes for iPhone or that Apple is releasing

some security upgrades, but this didn't come from Apple.

That was the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security

Agency did a warning to basically all Americans this past week to say, try not to use regular

text messaging.

Okay, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, Jeff, and you can do a better job here.

But I even had several folks, I'm sure just like you, send me this story and be like,

oh my goodness, am I not supposed to use text messages anymore?

The government is telling me I got to stop.

What is going on here?

Yeah, it's funny how sometimes you have these security issues that you and I might talk

about in the podcast, but most people don't know about it.

And then you have these things, which, you know, for for for darn good reason, do you

know, I had so many people at, you know, sending me emails about this because they just know

I'm into technology and stuff like that.

But you know, I think it's justified.

I mean, as some of the quotes I put in here, Senator Mark Warner said, it's, you know,

the most serious hack, you know, to our cyber, to our telecommunications industry ever.

And what's interesting is, although there's a certain degree of alarm because this just

came out and it's made news this week, the reality is that what they have uncovered is

something that this, you know, organization that is associated with the Chinese government,

I mean, I'm not Chinese government, of course, denies their involvement, which is what you

would expect.

And again, I don't I don't mean to say too much about it, because you know that the US

buys in other countries, too.

But the reality is that, you know, this this Chinese hacking organization has been doing

this for over a year.

It's just that they only discovered it now.

And what's really scary about it is that even though it's just been discovered, they say

that to fix it, it's going to revolve, you know, fixing individual routers that are used

around the country by AT&T and Verizon and other companies.

And that that would mean how long would that take?

Because it's it's it's it's replacing individual hardware.

It reminds me of when Delta Airlines had that that issue earlier this year from the hack

that they had to like upgrade every terminal, every.

Yeah, it just takes forever to do that.

So so it's a huge hack.

So the breadth of this and the the you know, the danger is just alarming.

Now, do we need to do individuals need to be concerned about not texting and stuff?

You know, the problem is that China was obviously trying to get into, you know, all the communications

so that they could, you know, gather whatever, you know, interesting intelligence that they

can get from chat messages.

There is from what I understand from the report that was on the federal website, the CISA website,

they said they had already figured out, you know, at least 100 people that had been, they

think, specifically targeted many of them in the Washington, D.C. area.

You can probably imagine who some of these people were.

They did mention that, for example, it included, for example, you know, Trump and Kamala Harris.

I mean, not that it was a specific election thing.

It's just people that they considered to be more important.

They tried to target the phones of them and the people around them.

But again, who knows how far this thing went?

I mean, I think that that's just it could have gone everywhere.

But what the key here is that what they're doing is, you know, text messages, SMS messages,

the old style messages.

That's the stuff that's completely unencrypted.

It's been around since forever.

And so as long as you can get into that network, if you can place a hack on any router that's

along the chain of the telecommunications network, well, then things that are plain

text, of course, you could see them.

And so they could see the plain text and frankly, even voice communications that were not encrypted.

They could listen to them as well.

I mean, it sort of makes sense.

It's you know, it's not much more than just standing outside somebody's office and listening

to what they say.

So that's right.

That's easy, low hanging fruit.

And so what the government has suggested is to protect yourself if you want to make sure

that communications are not interpreted.

And again, many of us don't consider ourselves huge targets.

But at the same time, you know, as a lawyer, I mean, I don't really communicate with my

clients via text for a number of reasons.

But were I to do so, that would be I might have confidential attorney client privilege.

You know, you could have medical secrets in there.

You never know.

And so you would not necessarily want to have those communications.

But if you were going to do it, you want it to be encrypted.

And the thing to look out for is end to end encryption, which people sometimes abbreviate

as E2EE.

But what it means is that from the time that you type something on your device, it is encrypted

on your device.

So as it goes from your device to the tele to AT&T or Verizon or wherever else, it's

encrypted the whole way up.

It's encrypted the entire time it's through that system.

And then it's encrypted down to the other side.

And unless you have all three parts of that, the end to end encryption, there's going to

be a vulnerability along the way.

And so Apple has always designed its iMessage system, which we use in the messages app,

to be that way from day one and FaceTime, too.

So FaceTime communications, using the messages app for your blue bubble communications with

other fine users, that's all encrypted.

So even if the hackers were to get into it, all they would get is a bunch of meaningless

ones and zeros that they could not de-encrypt and turn into what you're doing.

The danger, however, is first of all, the plain text stuff.

Second of all, the big thing on Android phones is they have this standard that Google has

been pushing called RCS that allows you to have more iMessage like features for non-iMessage.

Things like when someone's typing, you see the three dots that you know they're about

to type something and they're about to send it to you.

RCS has that.

So you can see that.

And RCS supports sending bigger pictures and bigger videos and a lot of those rich media

things.

One of the things that RCS in theory can support is end-to-end encryption.

But the way it's implemented is it really doesn't have it with the subs, except for

a few like certain apps on Android phones.

If you're communicating with the people that use the same app, they get it.

But the bigger universe of Android users don't have it.

Plus, any Android to iPhone and iPhone to Android communications, even if you use the

new RCS standard, which just came out in what, iOS 18 a few months ago.

This is brand new.

Even though you can get some of the features like better pictures and better videos and

the dots when you're typing, it doesn't have end-to-end encryption.

So emojis.

So again, I don't know how much regular people need to be concerned about it because you

have to assume that unless you're a really important person, you're not a target.

But at the same time, I'm sure that they're doing sweeps where they just pull up all sorts

of information.

And once the information is found by one set of hackers, another could get it and then

it could end up on the dark web.

You and I have recommended to people for years and years and years, use encrypted communications

just because you never know why it might matter.

This is just in some ways, it's a big story, but it's just another example of it.

There are third-party apps too that have it.

I haven't investigated the full extent of it.

I know that a lot of people around the world use WhatsApp and I think that there's a certain

degree of end-to-end encryption there.

There are other ones that perhaps don't have it as well.

I don't know the latest on WhatsApp signal, all those as to what their security is and

what, but I do know that from day one, Apple has had it.

And this gets to a bigger picture too, which is we often talk about one of the differences

between Apple and some of its competitors, most notably Google, is that Apple tells people,

we're concerned about your privacy.

And privacy is not only that we're not going to sell your information, but it's also that

we respect the confidentiality of things, which means from day one, when their products

are designed, they make them encrypted and private.

And Apple has the luxury of doing that because they don't make, with minor exceptions, they

don't make money off of selling your personal information.

Google, on the other hand, they are an advertising company.

That's where they get all their money, through ads.

And so the reason that the Google website is free, the reason that Android exists is

so that they can use information.

And again, not that they're evil or anything like that, it's just that they have a different

mindset and they're not going to always be privacy and encryption oriented from day one.

And I think that's just a decision that you make of, do you want the openness of Android,

which means sometimes you get to try out new features before they would ever come to the

iPhone, or do you want the security of the Apple ecosystem?

And you can tell from my bias which way I lean, but I mean, there's choices out there.

So it's an interesting story to me because of this particular hack, which is nasty and

big, but also because of the bigger picture of just reminding people.

And hey, if this story, getting all this news attention, like you were talking about, Brad,

if it results in more people understanding what it means to be end to end encrypted,

that's good.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, just a little more background on this.

The group, this hacking group, at least it's been identified, it's called Salt Typhoon,

or I think that came from Microsoft or somewhere that they're calling it Salt Typhoon.

And I just want to go back and underscore what you said quickly, that where this is

coming from is based on the short messaging service, SMS, which has been around since

I think the early '90s, right?

This is when, before the iPhone, when we had those little candy bar phones and we didn't

even have a full keyboard, right?

We had the dial pad and you had the three letters on the dial pad and you were like

typing out text messages in that way.

That's how old this standard is, which tells you that it works and has continued to work

for all of these devices over all these years.

And so I was just thinking this when I was listening to you talk about this too quickly,

Jeff, is that one of the reasons that I think that if you are going maybe iPhone to Android

or to even other quote, dumb phones or other places, it's like that standard has to be

a lowest common denominator, right?

That may not be as secure as what more modern day standards or protocols could be.

And so that is what really this is focusing on here.

And it's like you said, it's a low hanging fruit for anybody.

I mean, that's just like we tell people don't go to Starbucks and use an open wifi and not

use a VPN or something, right?

I mean, that's just a very simple thing because anybody could be sniffing packets of data,

that kind of a thing.

And so it's folks that might be using some of these, those aspects.

And then the last thing quickly I just wanted to say is that you're right.

If you're going iPhone to iPhone, again, there shouldn't be an issue.

I remember listening to a cybersecurity professional a couple of years ago, I think at the ABA

tech show Jeff, where they were just saying this, you know, I messages iPhone to iPhone

is the most secure messaging component just because of the way that Apple has, you know,

initiated all of that.

And another thing quickly is Apple takes care of the software and the hardware on the iPhone

side.

Now that doesn't solve all the issues, but to your point that I was saying, you know,

there's many companies that make Android devices.

But again, you have to go to that low common denominator so that everybody can communicate

on that aspect.

And people just would rather that it work as opposed to having to jump through additional

security hoops.

That's that constant battle between security and convenience all the time on there.

So all that to say, again, using something like iMessage, using even WhatsApp, I mean,

the rest of the world pretty much standardizes on WhatsApp.

Yeah, I think you mentioned that too.

And it like that is a perfect example or another app like Signal or Telegram or some of these

other apps that are out there that people will use simply because they know that it

has that additional security component on there.

I'll mention one more thing too.

Not that I'm terribly concerned if I pick up the phone and I, you know, call my dad

or something like that.

Is the country of China going to be all that interested in listening to us talk about,

you know, what we're doing this weekend?

Probably not.

But keep in mind that when you do use your phone, not for texting, but just for voice,

you know, you have an alternative.

You can use the regular talking, you know, methods or you could use like FaceTime audio.

And I know a few people do that, but I will encourage you, especially if you're talking

to someone that's maybe a little more tech savvy, that it's not going to throw them out.

I'm not talking about FaceTime video.

I'm not talking about seeing each other and having a video conference.

Yeah, that's fun too.

But yeah, don't forget about FaceTime audio because first of all, it's encrypted.

So it solves this problem.

Second of all, I find that the quality of the audio typically sounds much, much better

when you have a FaceTime audio conversation as opposed to using the cell phone, you know,

type signals.

So just something to keep in mind.

I mean, if there's if there's someone that, you know, if both of y'all are savvy enough

to understand what it means to have an incoming FaceTime audio call, it's a it's a call just

like any other call.

But it sounds better and it's more secure.

It's got more encryption and stuff.

It's just something to throw in mind.

Well, yeah.

And that even works on Wi-Fi, right?

You could be on your cell data or it could be on Wi-Fi.

So there's a couple of extra options there.

One good reason to use it is sometimes you'll be in a situation where the cell phone data

is really poor because you're at the bottom of the building or you're you're in a dead

zone.

But if you have Wi-Fi access, you're golden.

There are parts of the country that don't have great cell signals or maybe they have

good Verizon and you have AT&T or vice versa.

But as long as you have Internet access, you can communicate, you know, using that that

through FaceTime audio.

So don't forget about FaceTime audio.

Just the last thing here, just that you said at the end of one of your comments, the awareness

factor like if this pushes a few more people to be able to say, are there other ways?

Are there other ways to communicate exactly what you were just talking about?

FaceTime audio.

That's an excellent option there.

Of course, that's only iPhone to iPhone.

It's like if you're calling somebody with an Android, but maybe use something, maybe

a Zoom call or maybe, you know, even WhatsApp.

You can do a voice call that way as well.

Anyway, just some other options.

And I think that that's really good.

Another story that you linked to today is in a similar vein.

I thought it was good from the Wall Street Journal, the iPhone's lockdown mode.

Now, we've talked about this.

It's fairly new, but I just kind of like the comment that everything goes from Amnesty

International, right?

I think they were kind of interviewing some of the folks there.

And just again, another good reminder that the iPhone does have this lockdown mode.

So in situations where you might need to just be a little bit more careful on the security

side, this is another good option.

Yeah.

If you are suddenly find yourself to be a public official that is in the news, or if

you are working for some organization that might be targeted by a foreign governor, you

know, if you know that you're in a situation where, wow, there's a real chance that someone

could be trying to intercept my communications, you can turn on lockdown mode.

It makes your iPhone a lot more limited, but it does give you just this incredible sense

of security.

Every time you go to load a lot of website, it's not going to load a whole bunch of stuff

by default.

And so things are going to look different.

It's more to go around.

There's more interference in your communications and what calls are accepted and everything

else, what text message is detected.

But it's the most security that Apple can offer you.

So if you want to give it a try, again, it's disruptive to try it.

But if you're in a situation where you think that you need it, just something to keep in

mind that it's there.

I've personally looked into it in the past.

And when I saw all the disadvantages and downsides and how it limited me to use the phone, I'm

like, this is not, you know, I'm not doing important enough stuff that I think I'm enough

of a target to turn it on.

But it is nice to know it's out there.

I mean, also, I love the idea that Apple is working on this super secure lockdown mode,

which they do improve over time.

And you know, eventually those features, some of them will trickle down into those of those

that are regular folks.

And you know, it's it's it helps everybody to have Apple working on that super, super

level of security.

I found that if you just go into settings, that you go to your privacy section of the

settings, you'll see the lockdown mode option there.

And as Apple is usually good to do, when you go in there, you have the toggle to say, turn

on lockdown mode.

But before you do that, there's a learn more link.

And it goes right to the Apple support website there, that it shows you exactly what's going

to be turned off.

Or, you know, you were talking about like, if you become a public official, but one of

the things I always think about is if you know you're traveling through a country, or

a place that may not be as friendly, maybe that could be a temporary way, you know, just

to make sure that things are locked down or, you know, a little a little more secure, that

kind of a thing.

Anyway, just go and read about it.

Because again, just at the last point that we made before, just an awareness component

on there.

And I don't remember when this came in.

I think it's maybe within the last two or three years, it's lockdown mode.

But it's just good to know that it's a it's there and available.

We like talking about Tim Cook.

And I like the fact that Wired magazine did a fantastic profile on him.

Oh, I might have to might have to see if I can get into this and show this.

But I would like for you to talk about this because it's the interviewer.

That is interesting.

Steven Levy, who's been around for, you know, 3040 something years, right, as a technology

reporter has written some amazing stuff over the years.

And just the fact that somebody like Steven was able to get full access to somebody like

Tim Cook.

There's just some really good nuggets in this in this story.

I'm glad that you linked to it today.

Yeah, Steven Levy is a fantastic reporter.

He's been covering the tech industry for, gosh, 40 years.

I mean, he's interviewed Steve Jobs as many as as much as anybody.

And he's been very plugged into the Apple beat for a very long time.

So he really knows his stuff.

So he's a great person to write the article.

And what I liked about it is it wasn't just on one topic.

It was on a whole host of topics.

So I picked out some of the nuggets that I put in my in the news post.

There's a couple more that I didn't actually identify that I wanted to talk about with

you.

But just to go through some of the things I mean, they started off by talking about

AI because it is really the top of mind topic for people, not only because Apple is, you

know, Apple itself is very interesting.

They just started to release Apple intelligence.

We have more features coming soon.

I think literally next week, Brett, is my guess.

We're going to see what are we on?

We're in iOS 18.

So it'll be 18.3.

Am I right with my numbers there?

But the next the next update to the iOS I expect to come out probably 18.2 is I'm sorry.

It'll be 18.2.

That's right.

Right now.

Yeah, it'll be the third.

It was 18.0 then point one disappoint you.

So I'm sure three after that.

But my guess is it's going to come out on Monday or Tuesday, and it's going to have

the next wave of Apple intelligence features, including the ability to to help you with

writing and stuff like that.

So that will be interesting.

So he starts by talking to Tim Cook about that.

People think that maybe Apple is behind some other folks.

And, you know, I've mentioned this in the past.

They are, quote unquote, behind in that companies like OpenAI with Chats GPT and Google and

some other companies, Anthropic with its with its what's the one, the Claude.

You know, there are other things that are out there that are more advanced than what

Apple is showing right now.

However, Apple is is very rarely the first one to come out with something.

You know, there's so many examples of that.

There were MP3 players before the iPod.

There were smartphones before the iPhone.

There were all these examples.

You know, there were there were people that tried versions of tablets before the iPad.

But then I sort of they do it right and they do it in a way that everybody else is like,

oh, that's how we should do this.

And, you know, we always joke about how smartphones before the iPhone had all these different

looks to it.

It looked more like a BlackBerry with the keyboards and stuff.

And then Apple comes out with the iPhone and suddenly all the other smartphones in the

world are like, oh, yeah, that's what they should look like.

It's like, OK, guys, I'm going to copy Apple.

But so the question is, is will Apple I mean, doesn't always work that way.

But will it work that way when Apple enters a I this is not a hardware thing.

It's more of a software thing.

But Apple's approach where instead of having everything on the cloud, you instead take

advantage of the processors, the incredibly good processors that you have on device, which

is it's got all of these these savings and it's in it's faster, it's distributed, it's

more private because you're so much of the queries are being handled on device.

And those that can't be handled on device are handled through that very secure private

cloud.

So it's got all of those advantages to it.

So anyway, that was interesting to hear him talk about that.

And he even asked Tim Cook what Tim himself uses of Apple intelligence.

He said that he likes the way he can sort of summarize a bunch of emails and stuff.

I personally have mixed experiences with the summarization of emails feature.

But I do know that that is going to get better over time because it's it's it is it's the

sort of the low hanging fruit of AI.

So so that was a one more thing that was interesting about AI was this comment of, you know, if

you have a draft something, is that cheating?

Is that really you?

You know, there's a commercial that's on TV that's a little controversial where this guy

who's the biggest doofus in his office ends up writing a letter and has the the Apple

AI improve it and sends it to his boss and his boss thinks he's so smart.

And you know, some people I thought the commercial was funny.

Some people said that the commercial is it makes it seem like, you know, AI is just made

for people that are idiots.

I understand that, too.

But but, you know, as Tim Cook points out, I mean, the fact that a musician uses something

like Logic Pro or the fact that you use a word processor instead of typing everything

by manual typewriter and and figuring out yourself where to hit the returns as opposed

to the computer word processor.

You know, these are all just tools and you're still ultimately the author.

And, you know, there's a distinction between, you know, you know, using tools to their advantage.

And frankly, given how AI is going to become bigger in the future, I want people to know

how to use AI.

I want people in my own office to know how to use it so they can take advantage of it.

So anyway, that's that's enough.

I think I stop.

I think right after that, you and that.

Yeah.

Right after that, Steven made the comment.

He goes, the counter argument, though, is that in the early days of the Internet, people

complained that no one bothered to memorize dates because they could just Google it.

Right.

They don't need to memorize anything.

And something about he's like the he Tim was like that is similar to people had a fear

the calculator would fundamentally erode people's math ability.

And Steven Levy says, I used to know how to do long division, but I don't do that anymore.

Tim responds, I haven't forgotten.

So good.

We know that Tim Cook at least can still do long division.

But anyway, it was a good point.

And I thought there's just a great back and forth here, because I see my in one part here

that we're talking about, you know, Steven was like, well, that's really convenient that

I can stand for Apple intelligence.

And Tim was kind of like, no, that's not what we were trying to you know, we didn't think

about that.

It's just it's nice that it kind of fit in there.

But anyway, I just be bad.

How, what kind of a silver platter?

You know, could it be nicer that could have handled the apple in there?

Because I do think they are coming up with their own flavor, all that to underscore what

you're saying, in the sense that, you know, the way that they're approaching it.

I mean, we I remember that that interview, you know, with Joanna Stern and Craig Federighi,

you know, them just talking about like, them being careful about it, them being, you know,

precise and thinking about it as much as they do.

I just thought that was that was good.

But I feel like by this time, Tim Cook and other Apple executives are probably sick and

tired of talking about answering AI questions.

Like, hey, where's Apple going with this?

You know, you and I have talked about this a lot.

I think we're just at the very tip of what's going to be and I know we're a little impatient,

we want to see things.

But just because we've been around long enough, Jeff, that we've seen how other kind of waves

have gone with Apple.

I mean, they're going to start swooping in here.

And it's, it's, it's going to be unique.

I'm not going to say it's going to be the greatest thing, but it's certainly going to

be unique and said, you know, something that has an Apple stamp on it.

What else in the story was was good.

So one thing that jumped out at me on the Apple Vision Pro is, you know, Stephen Levy

mentioned that not many people have it.

And Tim Cook says, well, it's an early adopter technology.

But the one thing that was interesting there is, you know, a couple of months ago, you

and I were talking on the podcast about how Meta Facebook had unveiled this thing called

Orion, which was it looked much more like glasses, but it had the AI built into it.

They were using it to look like the Ray Bans.

And he point blank asks Tim Cook, you know, is that the future?

And Tim Cook said, you know, you almost expect him to give sort of a non answer answer.

But he said, oh, yeah, I mean, I agree.

And he said that that is probably where this is going.

And so, you know, right now, the Apple Vision Pro, it's big and it's bulky.

And although I enjoy using mine a lot, it's not something I would walk around in the street

with it.

But I mean, Tim admitted that what they are doing is working towards this technology,

that it'll be something like a pair of glasses that you wear all day long, every day.

You don't think about it.

It'll just have this augmented reality component of it.

One reason that the Vision Pro is so much better than things like the MetaQuest and

other VR headsets is that it has this display with these dots that are so close together

that it looks incredible.

It's like a really high quality display.

And yet the real ideal product in the future, it would not have a display to show at least

the outside world, but instead it would just be see-through, you know, much like your glasses.

You could just see the outside world.

Now, of course, you want to have a nice display to put stuff on top of it.

But anyway, it's just sort of interesting.

But that was the thing that jumped out at me on the Vision Pro.

This next one that I listed, it's not extraordinary because it's not alarming.

It's not surprising, excuse me, and that we've seen it and heard it before.

But when he talked to Apple, to Tim Cook about Apple's focus on medical technology, you know,

the Apple Watch, and now we have the hearing aids and the AirPod Pros and stuff like that,

you know, Tim Cook, and he said this before, but he says, you know, if you look in the

future, at some point in the future, people are going to look back and say, what was Apple's

biggest contribution?

And he says, I think it's going to be in the health area.

And this is something that, you know, if you want to draw a distinction between the Steve

Jobs Apple and the Tim Cook Apple, you know, there are some big differences, but one of

them is the Steve Jobs Apple, you know, that was never a big focus.

Maybe it just didn't have the technology for it at the time.

But under Tim Cook's leadership, between what they've done with the watch and the AirPods

and on the iPhone device, health has been a big focus and it's getting more and more.

And so I just think that that was, you know, nothing new, but interesting that that's continues

to be the perspective he sees.

And then the last thing I'll just throw out is that, you know, Steven Levy asked, we have

the iPhone 16, next year, maybe we'll have the iPhone 17.

Do you see an iPhone 30 one day?

We're just going to keep having iPhones forever.

And but Tim Cook says, yeah, we really do.

I mean, not forever, perhaps, but he says, I do see a long future for the iPhone because

it really is such a nice form factor.

And of course, it's going to evolve over time.

But but, you know, at least what he's saying publicly, and I think he probably believes

it too, is that the iPhone is going to have a place for a long time.

And that makes me feel good because my website's called iPhone JD.

And so if the iPhone goes away, I got to change the website name.

So I don't want to do that.

I'm just joking.

But it's going to be forever.

So so that was interesting things from the interview.

I have a couple more things to say about it.

But anything that I've missed in there that you wanted to jump?

No, I other than I just like at the very end here to talk to your question about Steven

asking Tim Cook about Apple's legacy, what it's going to be.

And you know, you were talking about the health and I know that.

But just I feel like this is this.

This is so Tim Cook, like I like that.

But but at the end, he what he really kind of hones in on.

And yeah, I could see this could be a marketing ploy in a way.

But I feel like what we have seen from Tim Cook, this is sincere.

He goes, I got so many.

They want to make products that people can feel.

They feel it when they use the products is what he said.

I got so many messages when the hurricane hit in North Carolina and people discovered

that they had the ability to SOS and to message people, even when the infrastructure was down.

In other words, we reported on this.

We had a couple of stories.

I remember Jeff, right?

We talked about that people were able to call loved ones in different states in different

areas because those text messages just barely could go over satellites.

Right.

Or they could call as they could call emergency services through the satellite, even if people

didn't even know that their iPhone had that capability built in.

But we know just because Apple is good about doing this, that, you know, hundreds, thousands

of people write into Apple and say, thank you, you know, from the watch, save my life.

You know, I was able to lose 50 pounds by using the watch.

But you know, even things like this, they know, or that, you know, the AirPods that

the idea that people didn't even know that they could use the phone and it worked for

them in a, you know, in a, in a, in a devastating scenario.

It just good.

Like I, you know, to your point about Steve Jobs, Apple versus Tim Cook's Apple.

I mean, to me, that sort of epitomizes a little bit, I think of where, you know, Tim Cook

kind of leads in this area.

And it's an Apple that, that I appreciate.

I mean, you know, nobody's perfect, but I just appreciate the fact that it seems like

that's where Tim Cook, you know, his, I guess his heart and his mind is pointed.

What's the last couple of things on this story?

Yeah.

And that's that.

Well, before I go on, just go back to that last paragraph you had up on your screen for

a second, but he has that sentence.

And I know this is just a little, you know, touchy feely, but I like how he says, I think

Apple will be remembered for delivering great products that change the world, that really

improve people's lives.

And you know, I guess we'd all like to say that, but I think he definitely believes that.

So the last thing I was going to point out was just sort of a little bit of a meta issue.

When I went to go read this article last night and it happened to you just five minutes ago,

when you tried to pull it up online, I encountered some pop-up things and stuff that I thought

that it was only for subscribers and I wasn't going to be able to read it because I don't

currently subscribe to Wired Magazine.

But I'm like, you know, back in the day when I used to get paper magazines back in the

nineties and into the early 2000s, Wired was one of the magazines.

I remember when Wired first came out in the 1990s, I subscribed to it because at the time

it was a very revolutionary magazine in that it had big pages and big colors and they used

layouts that was unlike, it was, the graphic design was fantastic.

And I read Wired that way for many, many, many years and I loved it.

I no longer subscribe.

But when I was having trouble accessing the online version of this, I thought, oh, I wish

I could just read the magazine version of this because I know it's the cover story.

And so sure enough, using the Flickster app, I was able to, it connects to my public library

and much like I can walk in the public library and read the magazine off the shelf, I was

able to download the digital version of this entire issue and then read it that way.

And that's the version that you were just showing a second ago was from that.

But one of the differences is that when you have a print magazine, you only have so much

space.

But when you have an online article, you have unlimited space, right?

And sure enough, it even says this here that this is an edited trans, they always say that

when they have interviews, this version has been edited.

But there are some questions and answers that appear on the online version of this interview

that are not in the magazine version, which I only know because I then went back and looked

at it online.

And so one of them was, and this is just sort of a funny question, but you know, I love

the Vision Pro and you put it over and it changes everything that you see.

The question that Steven Levy asks is, I heard that Stevie Wonder had a demo of the Vision

Pro and loved it.

How did that work?

And what he's obviously asking is, Stevie Wonder can't even see, and this is the Vision

Pro.

So how did it even work?

And Tim gave this answer, which is really not much of an answer at all.

He says he's a friend of Apple and you know, accessibility is always important to us.

And so we wanted to get his feedback.

But I wish that he had pushed on that because I'm curious, if somebody is blind, the Vision

Pro, what feedback would you give?

I mean, maybe it's colors and shapes, if you can still have limited vision.

Now obviously there's an audio component to the Vision Pro and it's really good audio,

but it's not different than just wearing AirPods Pro.

So Stevie Wonder's impressions and suggestions for an AirPods Pro, I want to know about that.

Right?

Yeah.

His suggestion.

We need an interview of Stevie Wonder now.

Steven Levy, go interview Stevie Wonder.

But for the Vision Pro, I'm just really curious what thoughts he would have on the Vision

Pro.

I mean, but they cut that for space in the print version of it.

And then there was a couple of other things, but the one of them that jumped out at me

that was on the online version and not the print version is they asked whether, you know,

Apple used to do all these live keynote presentations when they had new products.

And you know, during COVID, they shifted to just doing the, you know, prerecorded release

it online and people would watch a video and because it's prerecorded, it's much tighter.

There's no mistakes because they can rerecord things.

And it's just a lot more polished of experience.

And he asked Tim Cook, will Apple ever go back to live presentations?

And Tim Cook says it just, you know, basically we found that it really works to have these

prerecorded things.

You know, so many people are not physically at Apple.

You know, they have a couple of hundred people there, but they have millions of people around

the world that can watch it online.

And so, although he did admit that he misses some of the vibe of that live experience,

much like live theater versus a movie.

But that, you know, he's basically saying this is how it's going to be going forward

is they're going to have these prerecorded ones.

I personally don't mind them because since I'm never there in person anyway, and I do

like the fact that when it's prerecorded, it's denser, it's more intensive.

They have interesting graphics that you can do as opposed to just having people standing

on stage.

So I actually think that they're more entertaining and I'm happy that they do it this way, but

I just thought it was an interesting question to ask.

So anyway, there's, as you can tell, and there's still other topics I didn't even discuss.

There's a lot of fun stuff in this interview.

It doesn't take very long to read, but I encourage you to look at it because I think he did a

really nice job with the interview.

Well, we learned that Tim Cook can still do long division.

I don't know that I can right now, but I like the fact that you lead to another story, Jeff,

from Andrew Orr at Apple Insider, how to use Apple Notes for instant equation results.

I know we've talked about this with this is sort of, I think this is sort of the genesis

of AI, even though people may not call it necessarily Apple intelligence or AI, but

it is baked into this, that in the Notes app that you can start writing an equation or

even just a math problem.

And the option here is like auto results or insert results, right?

It'll automatically pop results for you, even without you put in an equal sign or something

on there, which is great.

I wanted to mention this today because we had talked when iOS 18 came out a few months

ago that if you're using an iPad with an Apple pencil, you can draw things.

You can like hand write two plus two equals and from a visual, it will do that.

And that's really cool too, that visual notes.

But this article points out that you don't have to be using a stylus.

I mean, you could just be using an iPad.

You could just be using an iPhone and just typing the numbers.

And if you start the equation and then you just follow his directions here for how you

do the suggest results, it will actually do the math for you.

And in some ways that's better than using like the calculator app, because it's almost

like you're seeing the tape of a calculator in that you can write it and you can see your

result and you can put the next line.

And then if you want to go back and look at the number at top, it's still right there

on the top of your notes.

So I actually, I haven't started doing this much myself, but this article reminded me

that when I want to do calculations, I need to stop thinking of open up the calculator

app and I need to start thinking of actually maybe I do this in notes because then I can

see my work and I can go back and I can change a variable.

And if you change this to this, what does it change the answer?

And so, you know, this is as much for a reminder for me, don't forget to use the notes app

for calculations.

You know, that that's a good point about the notes app because you're right.

I'm doing the exact same thing.

I'm opening up a calculator.

I don't actually use the built in calculator.

I use Calc Bot from a company called Tap Bots that we like quite a bit because one

of the reasons is because it has like a history of my math problems, but sometimes I forget

to like save it in the history line and I have to go back and try to find it or recreate.

But I like that idea.

I didn't think about that even that you can even use this on the iPhone as well as even

an iPad so that you can use the notes and you can kind of, you know, have a big blank

space for all your work.

So that's a that's really good.

Last week at the end of last week, I shed a tear thanks to the fact that you shared

a an ad right from Apple called Heartstrings.

Let me see if I can get this pulled up on this.

I have heard many people talk about the fact that it has it has it has affected many other

people the exact same way.

I'll let you tell the story here, but I'm glad that we're coming back to it because

there were several things in that in that video that I wanted to know about that.

We got some answers now because it affected so many people on this Jeff.

Good stuff.

The video is called Heartstrings.

I'll make sure I have another link to it as well.

Yeah, and it's a great video and it's very touching because you see the dad who has hearing

issues and so he can't hear his daughter and then he puts in the AirPods Pro and he can

hear her and you know, as I've just described it, it sounds sort of bland.

But if you've watched the commercial, you've got to see it.

However, however, when I saw the ad, I just assumed that these were actors in this thing.

I was blown away when I saw a couple articles.

The first one that I saw was this article in Men's Health, but then there was an article

in a publication called Ad Age that say that no Apple actually they found I don't know

how they find these people.

There was this gentleman in Chicago.

His name was Pella John, a pellet row.

And he was he was exactly the story that he's somebody who he knew he had hearing issues.

He didn't want to go through the expense of buying a hearing aid like an and I think Apple

says that what 75% of people that have hearing loss don't even consider you right.

Right.

Hearing aid.

And so that's that's who he is.

And then he gets the AirPods Pro and realizes this.

I mean, the example that he gave that was funny was when he would watch TV with his

wife, he's like, you know, you know, her level is like a four.

But I want the TV volume on a 10.

And so we're constantly battling is that if the TV is loud enough for me, it's too loud

for you.

And if it's loud enough for you, it's too soft for me.

He's like, but now with the AirPods Pro, I can wear them.

And my wife and I are all happy because we could just watch TV.

So but anyway, the guy in the commercial is the guy.

This is him.

Now they say that the daughter is an actress.

The daughter in the commercial is like a teenager, a daughter in the commercial.

Right.

So in real life, his daughter is a little bit younger.

But when they have the flashbacks to showing the daughter when she was younger in home

videos, those are his actual home videos of his actual daughter.

So on your screen, right?

Incredible.

That's his actual daughter.

And they they picked out a teenager that that sort of looks like her.

So I just you know, again, it made me go back and watch the commercial again.

And in fact, I don't think he actually I don't think he actually has a line in the I was

just going to say he doesn't say a word.

He has a tear.

You see him tearing up.

He doesn't say anything in the entire ad.

Exactly.

And yet it wasn't until I rewatched the ad that I realized that he doesn't have a line

because he is such a central character.

The emotion that's on his face.

And so I just think that's fun is that they got the real person to do it.

Oh, that's so cool.

It also made me think that because this is one of those.

First of all, this is apparently the first Apple holiday ad.

You know, they always come out with nice hats for the holidays every year.

This is the first time they've done one in which accessibility was a feature, which is

interesting because Apple and some of these other articles have pointed out accessibility

has always been something that Apple has been very aware of.

They designed their products from day one with accessibility in mind.

So, you know, good on Apple.

I wasn't really thinking of it as being an accessibility commercial, but of course it

is.

And even though it's also a holiday theme.

So that was some one interesting thing.

It also made me think about the fact that, you know, I will probably be thinking about

this commercial for years to come.

And so this is a rabbit trail.

I didn't even tell you about this, Brett, but I put something into our little notes

here that you might see.

Brett, do you remember a series of commercials many, many years ago?

It was back in, I think 2002 back when Apple was doing the, why you would want to use a

Macintosh commercial.

I'm a Mac and I'm a PC.

I think it was before that.

It was actually before that series.

They had hired this filmmaker, Errol Morris, to have real people come on and talk about

the Mac.

And one of the commercials featured this person named Ellen Feiss.

And if you click on one of the links, you're going to probably recognize her because she

was this teenager that you know who I'm talking about that had this look to her.

And I just think it's so funny because it's now been 22, 23 years later.

And I still remember this commercial.

I remember this commercial like yesterday, people who were about my age.

And because she's like, oh, I wrote this term paper and my computer age.

It was a really good paper, really, but I had to rewrite it.

It wasn't as good.

It was just such a cute, relatable commercial.

And she had this look of like this teenager, you know.

And it's just funny that somebody who is a real person, apparently she was a friend.

Errol Morris was the producer of these commercials.

And she was a friend of one of his sons.

And so one of those commercials had his son and another commercial had one of his friends.

And she recorded at the end of the day and she said, I was taking Benadryl all the time.

So I look sort of tired and stuff, but it was just a very memorable commercial.

So I just wanted to mention that I typed it into Google last night and it turns out that

she's actually, if you click on that link, she's actually a professor, an art history

professor at the Providence University.

I have a link there in the show notes.

Hey, that's Ellen all grown up.

Exactly.

It's the grown up version of Ellen Feist.

It's so good for her.

If you have her class, maybe you would recognize her.

So it just made me think, you know, that's where Ellen Feist is today, all these years

later, and it's still a name that I remember and know.

Oh my goodness.

I do wonder if in this future, John Pelletro, who I think is like an electrician in Chicago,

you know, maybe 20 years from now, we'll be saying, what is John doing today?

Is he still listening to his AirPods Pro?

Anyway, that's my little walk down memory lane.

How her name on this was Providence College is where she is.

It's EC and then Ellen is in parentheses.

Maybe she stopped going by Ellen at some point because not everybody thought that that, well,

there were some other people that thought because she had, she was on Benadryl.

I've heard her interviews about this.

She didn't look like she was fully with everyone.

People thought that she was on drugs at the time, that she'd been smoking pot or something

like that, even though she said she wasn't.

I know.

Oh, that's so fun.

You know, just quickly, when you were talking about the Apple holiday ads, I remember one

specifically to your point that I can't, I don't know how many years ago this was, but

it was this, this kid who was, who seemed like he was on his phone the whole time while

the family was already around the house, you know where I'm going.

Right.

And he was like taking photos and stuff, but he was on his phone and people were like,

why are you on your phone?

Come on.

Like here's with the family.

And at the end, what he was doing the whole time was making a present for the entire family.

Right.

He had like a bunch of family memories that everybody would just like, thank you.

But it's that kind of stuff.

Like dang it, Apple.

Like, how do you come up with such great things that like, that are so memorable for so long?

It's really good.

I like it.

Let's switch gears to the Apple watch.

Just a quick little story that you linked to that I have been noticing and I'm kind

of liking the live activities.

Like if I'm playing music or I think you, you talked about like, you know, if you, if

the saints are playing in town, when you look at your watch, you don't see your selected

watch face, but what you'll see is the live activity of whatever is going on at the time.

I feel like I'm still getting used to it a little bit, Jeff, but I kind of like it because

that's, we were talking about that again.

This is sort of AI, like what's going on that you might be interested in that the Apple

watch is going to bubble that up for you as opposed to having you click through or go

into a different app.

But not everybody is happy with this.

So this article you link to shows you how to turn that off if you don't want it.

Yeah, I do personally like it because so far it is smart as Apple says, it's a smart stack,

it's going to show something that I'm most interested in and it's going to be right there

on my watch when I glance at it.

I haven't traveled since the watch, the new version of the watch OS came out.

At least I don't think I have, but I would, I would imagine that if I'm using like one

of these flight tracking apps that because it has one of these things, that's what I

would see, which again is the most useful information.

Perhaps I could open up my watch and it'll instantly tell me what gate I'm walking to

without me having to tap anything.

So I love this idea.

This is totally useful.

And it's not like you can't see the time because as we all know, you know, at the bottom is

the stack, but at the top right, it actually has the time in either digital or analog,

depending upon what kind of clock you have.

So you can still see what time it is.

Now, if you wanted to see your Apple watch face, maybe not because of the time, but because

of a complication that you put there, you might find it annoying that, Hey, I don't

want to be looking at this live activity.

I want to see my normal watch face so that I can look at this, this, this, uh, you know,

the weather widget I put on there or whatever other widget that you, my reminders widget.

So if you don't like this feature, this, uh, uh, post describes how you can go and you

can turn it off, um, the auto launch live activities feature.

But um, but I would encourage people to at least, you know, think about it and keep it

on because again, I do find it useful, but you know, it's nice that you can personalize

your Apple watch and have whatever experience you want.

Even if you have it turned off, you can always of course get to the smart stack just by either

turning the digital crown on your Apple watch or using your finger to swipe up and then

you'll see your stacks and the one at the top will be the smart, will be the one that

Apple thinks is most relevant to what you're doing right now.

Play and pause if you've got music playing on a home pod or something like that.

So, um, I, I, I, I really, I love what Apple has done here, but I can understand and there,

and don't get me wrong.

There actually have been one or two times when I did look at my watch and I'm like,

Oh, I don't want to be looking at that right now.

I want to look somewhere else.

And in fact, the article suggested that I think he said that he was, uh, his somebody

else in his family was watching TV.

He wasn't.

And so he looks at his watch and they had the play pause control for what was on his

Apple TV.

He's like, I'm not even watching the app.

I don't want to look at that right now.

So that would be an example of perhaps it's trying to do the right thing, but it just

doesn't happen to be what you're interested in.

So, um, anyway, from the same setting screen in here, he says that he directs you and I'll

make sure we have a link to this, but you can change which apps are in the smart stack.

And I've just barely done that.

I've barely changed.

Cause there was a couple of them that I'm like, I don't care.

I don't use this, but I remember I wanted to add the, uh, the compass app.

Cause when I'm walking around in a big city or something, I just like to make sure that

I'm facing the right way when I'm walking.

So I added that as part of the smart stack.

So before you turn it off, maybe just go in and see if you can add something, you know,

that might be more useful for, to your smart stack.

Uh, so that was watchOS something that people, uh, have liked and other people have not liked

in iOS 18.1, uh, so far even is the photos app on their iPhone.

They didn't like the changes that Apple made with iOS 18.

Um, I'm getting used to it.

I've kind of liked the direction, but I've also heard some other people that are not

happy with it.

So good news in iOS 18.2, Apple is making at least a few changes.

This is a story in nine to five Mac from Ryan Christoffel, where he highlights five changes

that Apple is making to the photos app that I think should appease some people that were

complaining about it.

The one that jumped out at me is the first one he has listed, which is I've absolutely

noticed this.

If you've got like a little video that you took with my iPhone, for example.

And so there's a video there.

Um, it used to be that if you're playing the video, when it gets to the end, it stops.

And currently when it gets to the end, it loops and it starts playing.

I have actually found it confusing because we're like, wait a minute, is the video still

going on?

I'm like, Oh no, no, it's restarted.

And I actually don't like that.

I prefer for when the video ends, if I want to listen, if I want to watch it again, I

will hit play and watch it again.

I'll hit play.

Exactly.

You may love the looping feature.

If you love the looping feature, good for you.

If you don't love the looping feature, then in a day or two, when iOS 18.2 comes out,

one of the things that we'll let you do is turn that off.

And it will be the very first setting that I change on my iPad and on my iPhone, but

that's just me.

Um, so anyway, that's turning off something.

He has some other minor things here that you can go through and change.

Actually, I guess it was the second feature he mentioned, but, uh, one thing I didn't

even mention in my post, but he also taught that this is a good feature coming up is apparently

you can actually do scrubbing.

You know, if you have a long video, you scrub through it.

And he says that you'll be able to do frame by frame video scrubbing, which actually sounds

pretty cool.

And so you can get really at a granular level.

It's sort of geeky, but something that I didn't even know was a possibility.

And when I saw this in the post, I'm like, Oh, that could actually be useful.

If I want to be very precise about where I end a clip or, or see your step through something

frame by frame to actually really see what was going on there.

So that's, that's a, that's a cool feature I'm looking forward to.

But anyway, as, as expected, there will be some changes in the photos app in the next

couple of days.

Last week was black Friday.

Uh, right.

Is that, was that last week?

And we went through several things that I know that we liked, or we were talking about,

you know, that were on sale from Amazon because Tis the season.

Uh, so I'm glad that today you provided another, uh, little gift wishlist here.

These specifically though, in nine to five Mac are the favorite find my accessories,

which you know, when I saw the headline at first, Jeff, I'm like, well, okay, just get

air tags, right.

And then you'll be fine.

But wow, there's a lot more to find my than just air tags.

Uh, which I, so I really enjoyed looking through this little list here.

I think what caught my eye was probably even some of the backpacks and I'm like, oh yeah,

there are backpacks that have find my built in, but there's a lot more in here too.

I'll make sure we put a link to the store here, uh, from a nine to five Mac and chance

Miller good list.

Yeah.

It's not just Apple that has find my stuff.

And so this list is a good reminder of that.

I think maybe you and I last week talked to her.

We've certainly talked in the past, Brad, about the, the, these thin cards, uh, like

yes, he has one other companies.

That's right.

You have one of your one on my wallet, but I mean, it's not made by Apple, but it works

with the find my ecosystem.

And, uh, and the other nice thing is that they have different shapes too, because although

the air tags are great, um, if you want to attach an air tag to something, you need to

buy a case for it, which, you know, you can buy an Amazon for like five bucks, a little

plastic case.

Right.

You might want to consider just instead purchasing a third party accessory that works with find

my, but which has the shape that you want.

Maybe it's got like a built in hole or it's got some sort of a lock thing that'll attach

to a belt or, you know, whatever it is, if, if there's something that would be perfect

for you consider buying it.

And then of course, as you say, some products have it built in when Apple first announced

find my support for third parties.

I remember they talked about, um, some high end brands of bicycles that had like, oh yeah.

And so that way, like a theft, a thief wouldn't even necessarily see, Oh, look at this air

tag attached to the bicycle.

It would just be part of the bicycle.

And likewise, you mentioned that it could be built into things like a luggage or a backpack

or something.

So there's lots of alternatives out there so far for me, the thin one for my wallet

is the only one that I've purchased.

I thought I can think of that's a third party find my item.

You have a one, right?

I have the UFI which works really well, but I suspect that they all work similar.

Yeah.

Very good.

I have one here called switch bot wallet.

And then Chipolo is another company that's been around for a long time, even doing this.

And I feel like sometimes they have their own proprietary apps that work with it.

But the fact that Apple has opened this up and allowed other leather devices to work

with the find my, to me is just, I mean, that it certainly is another reason that I might

buy something along those lines as opposed to, you know, just getting something that

has its own proprietary app.

Because I really enjoy having the find my app everywhere on there.

Here in the United States, when we think of Apple campuses, we think of what we call one

Cupertino infinite loop, or we think of the spaceship today.

But if you are in the United Kingdom, you might think of Battersea, where it's an amazing,

I don't even know when this building was built.

You link to the Wikipedia site today, that it's like one of the largest brick buildings

in the entire world, or it was when it was when it was built on the Thames River, because

it was a power station.

I don't know how long it's set there not being used until Apple has purchased it.

And apparently this is like London Apple office space, which looks amazing.

And I heard the other the other day I was listening to a podcast, somebody was just

saying that it might it's even it's even better looking in person when you go there.

But it's so such a unique property.

This is just so weird that there you can go to the property and stand outside and watch

a Wallace and Gromit movie, stop action movie that was specifically designed to be shown

on these two huge smokestacks.

I don't know if I'm doing the best job of describing this.

I don't even know if I can describe it.

You have to go and look you did a good job.

Apple has its own little page about this that you link to because you can not only see a

picture of it, but you can see a behind the scenes video of how the Wallace and Gromit

little short movie was made.

I gotta tell you, Jeff, my family and I are planning to take a year vacation and go to

London in the next couple of weeks.

And I'm trying to scheme how can I how can I say yeah, we might want to see the crown

jewels or you know, go to Buckingham Palace.

Can we also go and see Battersea in the Apple Wallace and Gromit movie?

Is that something that I could do as a family?

I don't know.

But this is really cool that Apple just such a unique and innovative idea here.

Make sure that you go between what is it 5pm and 1030 to see the show.

Yeah, that's where the show is.

Yeah, we just if you just happen to be passing through the area, you're like, how do we end

up here at this in this part of town after five o'clock?

Oh, that's why.

Yeah, I was looking at the Wikipedia entry.

Apparently, the building was finished in 1955.

OK, thank you.

And they used it until 1980.

But then it's set empty for like 30 years and apparently was in really bad shape, too.

And so it'd be on the market.

Nobody bought it.

And so now Apple has it and they've turned it into this really cool.

And I've seen the inside of this building before, because when Apple has done some of

its presentations, you know, they would have these viewings in this building for people

in Europe to go there and watch it.

And the inside of it looks really, really cool.

But I had never really thought about what the outside looked like until until this where

they're shooting ads up on it.

So so it's a fun way for Apple to sort of celebrate the holidays with some beloved characters.

Of course, it's also interesting that the the folks at Ardman Studio created this using

iPhones.

I mean, it's stop stop motion video.

But you know, you take a frame and then you move it, you take another frame, you move

it and it's incredible.

So this totally brought me going down memory lane because there's an app.

I'm sure it's still around today, but it was been around for a long time called I Stop

Motion.

I don't remember.

Yes, I remember that.

But I Stop Motion is one I remember when my son was younger, he would use the I Stop Motion

app.

I think it was on like an old iPad that he was using at the time.

And he would take his little Lego characters and some of his other toys and he would.

It's like the Toy Story movie.

He would make little stories and he would film these things.

And I and I when I saw this article last night, it made me go back and pull up one of the

videos that he recorded however many years ago, 15 years ago.

And it was just so cute because, first of all, I was hearing his voice being a very

young voice as opposed to the teenager he is now.

And you know, he had like this dinosaur character was interfacing with this other character.

And you know, kids, kids don't care that you can have different universes of different

types of toys.

Sure.

Oh, yeah.

That makes perfect sense to have a dinosaur talking to a doll, talking to a doll, talking

to Mr. Potato Head.

They all talk to each other.

And it was just really cute looking at.

Now, again, the level of his stop motion does not come close to Wallace and Gromit, but

it was cute nonetheless.

And this studio, Ardman Studios, they apparently also have an iPhone app that you can create

your own stop motion.

And so one of the videos they have on here is a how to you know, how you can do this,

whether you're an adult or a child or a child at heart and make your own stop motion

video.

So it's a fun thing on the side of the building.

But hey, if it inspires some people to create some more fun stop motion videos, I'm all

for it.

So many great things about this.

I mean, just hearing you talk about how the building was in disrepair made me think of

I had the opportunity to go to downtown Los Angeles to visit a theater that was in shambles.

And I don't know that Apple gets enough credit for that.

These buildings would just probably be demolished and make way for something else.

But the fact that Apple will go in and take the time and the resources, because I remember

how they were showing people meticulously repainting every little part of the facade

on that theater.

And I can just imagine that this Battersea Power Station is probably going to be something

similar and, you know, just just really cool.

Not to mention this Wallace and Gromit, you know, it's not just like it's a 16 by nine

video.

Like, it's made to fit specifically on these two huge smoke sections.

If people are watching the video, you can see the picture there.

And I just think that that's that's really cool.

Good on you, Apple, for doing something like that.

Merry Christmas on there.

Happy holidays and everything else.

In the know.

I was this past week, went to I was in Chicago for some meetings.

And as everyone is prone to do, I needed to get on the Wi-Fi network in this office.

So I asked somebody that, hey, can you know, can I get the password?

And most people know today that if I was trying to log into my Mac, they have their iPhone

connected and, you know, it could automatically offer to share the password with someone that's

trying to get on the Wi-Fi network.

That didn't actually work.

So the person came over and they pulled up their Wi-Fi settings on their iPhone, Jeff.

And if you tap into a known Wi-Fi network, I feel like I knew this, but I didn't remember

it quite right.

But if you tap the little I next to one of your iPhone Wi-Fi networks, it will now show

you there is a password associated with it.

Now this is I remember when Apple now that I recall this, I remember when Apple put this

in because we didn't used to see, be able to see the password at all.

But now you go into a known Wi-Fi network and you'll see password now by default, it's

all dotted out on there, right?

See, it's dotted out so you can't see it.

But if you tap on it, it will authenticate through face ID and then it'll show you the

password and then will also give you the ability to copy the password.

So in other words, this person, what this person did, I did not know this, they copied

that for me.

And then they just, I think they, through Slack or text message, they were able to send

the password, you know, so I could get on in this, in this office.

I know, I feel like maybe just because, you know, in the, in the past we knew we didn't

have the password and that was very secure, but it is still secure because the only way

you can actually see the password is if you authenticate with face ID.

The other thing in this, in this Apple article that I'm showing here is that if you go to

your list of Wi-Fi networks in the upper right corner, there's edit.

And if you tap on edit again, you have to do face ID, but it'll show you the known networks.

And again, for each of those known networks, there is a little eye that you can tap on.

And if you do that, it will actually show you where you can see the password, the same

kind of an idea.

Like you just have that little eye for the info and it'll show you in there.

And the last thing quickly on this, while I would probably go to the Wi-Fi settings

section and look all that up now with iOS 18 and the passwords app, Jeff, one of the

things, cause I don't use the passwords app.

I know you and I are big one password fans, but in the passwords app, if you go to the

passwords app, there is a little tile there called Wi-Fi.

And if you tap on that, it'll show you that same list of all of the known Wi-Fi networks

that you have connected to.

And you have the ability then there as well to be able to see the password or copy the

password if you needed to.

So I just wanted to make sure people were aware of that because the one thing that didn't

work quickly is I'm trying to remember, like if you connect to a Wi-Fi network that doesn't

have a password, you're not going to see the password option there.

And it seemed like one of the devices connected to a Wi-Fi network where it was shared with

me automatically and I didn't see the password.

In other words, I don't know if that was another security layer or not, but it seemed like

in one of those known networks where I didn't type in the password, I couldn't see the password

on there.

I hope some of that makes sense, but just, I'm just saying that in some cases I found

the password wasn't available, but if it's like your office Wi-Fi network or your home

Wi-Fi network, you can go in and you can actually see the password, which makes sense.

You may not need to know that cause you already know the password.

But if you wanted to copy it or you wanted to remind yourself what it was and send it

to somebody, that's an easy way to do that as well.

Okay.

This is cool.

I didn't know any of this stuff.

I see from the article you're showing that this has been out since iOS 16.

So this is over two years old.

I had no idea.

And then the thing that if you tap at the top, that edit button and you can see the

prior Wi-Fi networks.

I'm looking at it on my phone and I tell you, Brett, I'm getting nostalgic.

It's a little bit of a walk down memory lane.

I mean, there are hotels that I haven't visited since I was on vacation years ago.

It's giving me the password that I used when I once connected to my iPhone 6S, which was

in 2015.

So it's got at least nine years or eight or nine years.

So it's a lot.

I see other law firms that I've gone to for depositions and I've used their Wi-Fi.

This is an interesting walk down memory lane.

So you can delete them there too, by the way.

Right.

So on the left, you have that.

Don't do that because you can, but you know, if you know you're not going back to that

place or you just wanted to clean that up.

I mean, they have the little delete icon on the left there if you wanted to delete those.

But yeah, I didn't know that I had the whole list on there either.

And so that was kind of cool.

I think if I had recently done a reset my network settings, if that makes sense, you

know, you can go into the general and you can reset instead of reset the entire phone.

You can just reset your network settings, which basically clears out all of your known

networks and everything.

So I don't have quite that history.

So I'm just warning that if you reset your network settings, Jeff, you won't be a probably

see all of those on there.

You know, most people don't need to do that.

It was just something that I was doing because I was switching back and forth between a VPN

or something else like that.

So I was trying out some other things, but I'm just warning you that if you do reset

your network settings, you may erase those known networks there.

Yeah.

On the other hand, this iPhone that I'm using right now is one that I set up from scratch.

I did not use migration assistant to move over.

And so now obviously I connected to my iCloud.

So it brought my personal data that way.

But I just mentioned that, that it, you know, just, just through the stuff that it knows

about me through iCloud, it downloaded all of those old Wi-Fi networks to my phone.

So that's interesting.

So that's a great tip.

I had never heard about any of that.

It's always interesting to learn something new.

The tip that I have this week, so I'm, I'm giving, you know, attorneys have to have a

education every year.

It's a continuing education CLE.

I'm teaching a CLE this upcoming week.

It's part of a program.

It's a little bit of a pretentious name, Masters of the Courtroom, Brett, I suppose that means

that I am a master of the courtroom.

But the presentation that I'm giving, because I'm, since I'm an appellate attorney is on

brief writing tips and I am so looking forward to this presentation.

If anyone's in the New Orleans area, come see us on Thursday morning.

We're the very first one.

So I have hundreds of tips about how to be a better writer, which, you know, things,

and it's not just me, it's also like a federal magistrate judge and a Supreme Court justice.

And we have a great, great panel.

Anyway, of the many tips that I have, many of them are actually related to technology.

That won't surprise you.

And one that I just wanted to mention, because I use this all the time as a, as a lawyer

when I write briefs, but any type of writing that you do, that's, you know, more than just

writing a short little paragraph for an email.

If it's something like you're turning in something, you're writing a letter.

Here's my tip.

You should, of course, you need to write something and then you later want to go back and revise

it and edit it to, you know, make it better and make it tighter and stuff like that.

You know, there's a famous statement from Mark Twain that, you know, this letter would

have been shorter if I had more time.

The idea is it actually takes more time to write something that's shorter because you're

editing it and you're making it more concise and stuff like that.

But here is my tip is if you go back to edit something that you've written in the past,

I find it really helpful for me to revise it using a different medium than the format

that you used when you created it.

When I type things, I'm 99% of the time using Microsoft Word on my PC or sometimes my Mac,

but the interface is basically the same.

It's a computer setup, right?

And so a lot of people will go back and just reread things that they've written to edit

them on that same computer.

And I understand that.

What I encourage you to do is break out of the mold.

What I personally love to do is make a PDF and then send that to my iPad, especially

my iPad Pro with the big screen.

And that way I can sort of lean back in my chair with my iPad and read the brief.

And I find that just looking at it visually on the iPad screen, and again, you could do

the same thing by printing it out and by looking at the paper as opposed to reading it in that

word processing program where I wrote it.

It just gives me a different perspective.

You know, ideally you would want to have an editor that would edit your work, someone

who's fresh to it and can see things you didn't see.

And that's nice to do as well.

But when you're editing your own work, just using a different medium, I find it, I catch

typos that I didn't catch or the spell check didn't catch.

I look at my sentences differently and I think, oh, I could say this more efficiently.

It's just something about using it differently.

And again, the number one way to do that is if you have an iPad and you print a PDF and

look at it there, or you could actually use other modes too.

It's just a great way to do it.

A secondary thing, and this is not as good for a super, super long piece of writing,

but for something shorter, I will, even if I drafted in Microsoft Word on my computer,

I will open it using Microsoft Word on my iPhone or even my iPad.

And there's a view in the Word app called Mobile View, which it strips out all the formatting.

It just shows you the words and you can make the text bigger or smaller.

So you're not concerned about things like page breaks and stuff like that.

You're just looking at the words, but because you're looking at the words in a different

format, I find that you will catch things just like I said before.

You'll catch mistakes.

You'll think of new ways to draft things.

So anyway, that is my tip is to look, to use your elect your devices, your iPhone and your

iPad to reread your writing.

And I think you'll get a different perspective.

I use this in a similar way, Jeff, that if I'm writing a blog post or an article, a magazine

article or something like that, that I will draft it maybe even in something like notes.

And sometimes I even just even will dictate like a first draft in Apple, my iPhone in

notes, but then I'll copy that the next day.

I'll copy that into like Microsoft Word on my computer or in my iPad.

So it's a similar kind of an idea like that.

I know that I can get some ideas out and just use it in a different medium, like you said,

or a different perspective.

I think even subconsciously, we don't realize how much that that can be helpful and that

works as an editor.

So anyway, great, great tips on on on that, whether you use Microsoft Word or notes or

frankly any of the other writing, you know, there's just 100 dozens and dozens of excellent

writing apps even available for, you know, not just the Mac or even Windows or the iPhone

or the iPad.

That's a that's a great tip.

Thank you.

And then good luck on your CLE that that sounds fun.

I'm looking forward to it.

It's gonna be great.

That's that's great.

All right.

Well, great talking with you again, Jeff, as always, lots of good stuff already leading

up into the holiday season there.

But we are going to be around at least for one more Friday, maybe a little bit more.

We'll provide more details as we get into the holiday season, as we are prone to do.

But regardless of all of that, we will talk with you next week.

Thanks, Jeff.

See you next week.