Welcome to in the news for Friday, December 13th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett, you know, Friday the 13th should be a spooky day, but like it's too much of the Christmas spirit right now.

The holiday spirit.

I know.

We have our office holiday party today.

So it's a festive time.

You got a Christmas tie on.

It's beautiful.

I love it.

You're in the spirit.

Well, it is the season.

And so today is December 13th.

We're getting close to that, to the, to the merry day.

We're actually going to skip next week.

So that'll be December 20th.

We're not going to have an episode of the 20th, but we have already recorded a special episode that we'll release on December 27th, the Friday, December 27th.

I guess we'll call it our predictions for 2025.

You know, based on rumors, based on things we hear, based on our gut, on what we expect to see in 2025.

Well this week, Jeff, something we have been talking about and waiting for and anticipating, not just Santa Claus.

We have also been anticipating iOS 18.2 and it finally dropped.

I haven't had a lot of time to play with it this week.

I think that you have had a little bit more time.

Although I did say this morning, I already upgraded my phone and my iPad.

It doesn't take a long time.

And I'm already pretty hyped about all of the options and the upgrades and the, and the tweaks that are coming out.

And you did a good job covering a bunch of that this week.

Yeah.

Apple definitely gave us a lot of gifts this week with all of these updates.

You know, maybe it's just my, you know, I don't know if it's just my, my, my memory or something, but it just seems like the 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 updates are getting more and more substantial nowadays than they used to.

I mean, maybe I guess, you know, Apple's always had big stuff in there, but you know what, when I look at the list, I mean, look at any of these posts, like this one from Chance and Bella or the one from Gadget Hacks, and you look at all the new features that are here.

I mean, there's a lot, and this is just the iPhone features.

I mean, there's also the changes to everything from, you know, maybe not that much for the Apple Watch, but you know, even the HomePod got changes.

There's just a lot there.

TV, right.

And it's really, really exciting stuff.

So I mean, I guess, I guess you should start with the, the, in some ways, the biggest part of it, which is all the Apple intelligence features, right?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, we, we got our preview of Apple intelligence with 18.1 and we got to play around with that a little bit, but it's starting to come more into its own and again, it's going to happen even more next year when we get the real Siri improvements, that's going to be the big thing.

But, you know, today we have the integration with a chat GPT, so you can already, I mean, it's already improving Siri to a certain degree because instead of, or in addition to just asking the regular questions, you can now, you know, ask for a chat GPT or it'll sometimes do it on its own to give you even more information.

And again, I mean, I just installed this stuff, so I haven't tried it out, but it's just full of potential and you've got all of these image playground features where it can either create images for you, which is, I don't know, interesting.

Some of the images are a little, a little silly, but this is the nature of chat of any of these, you know, generative AI, you ask it to create a person and the person's got seven fingers and you know, strange things happen for sure.

But it is interesting.

The one that interests me a little bit more is this gen emoji, because I like the fact that it tries to make emoji characters that are very consistent with the style that Apple uses for its emoji.

And I've always really liked how Apple has really good artists that make their emoji.

I've always think that compared to like, you know, Android and some of the other operating systems and Slack and stuff, I've always liked Apple emoji.

They look really, really good.

And so to use that same style, but say, you know, I want to make my own emoji, you know, I want to have, I mean, this article that you're just flashing from Dan Morin, he says, I want to have a duck detective.

And sure enough, it looks like a duck with a detective.

I mean, if you had asked, you know, a professional artist to create that, that's probably what they would have done.

But now, you know, why would anybody release that emoji?

It makes no sense for the general public, but for your particular conversation, you may need a duck detective.

And so you could now create it.

So I'm excited about this.

You know, it's, you know, you want to wait until your friends and family have updated too, because otherwise it'll just come across as a picture, but that way it'll actually come across as an emoji.

So, you know, give it a week or two.

But I actually think that the, I think that the, I mean, I'm not a huge emoji person.

I'm like, not like the teens today that will have entire conversations purely in emoji characters.

But I do like to pepper them in sometimes.

I have to admit, maybe I'm a little silly about it.

And so the idea that like, if you can't find that perfect emoji, but you could describe it and you could have app create it, you know, give you a couple of examples and, you know, maybe they'll all look silly, but maybe one of them will actually, you know, be, be, be appropriate.

The, there was a funny example.

If you scroll right down there, the last one there, I think that the control that he said was something like watching the clock and instead, eyeballs on top of a clock.

But you know, it's, it's very weird.

So sometimes it does a better job than others of capturing what you want.

But right.

But I mean, this is stuff and you know, people talk about, oh, well, you know, you're putting an artist out of business.

I was never going to hire an artist, but to be able to do it on the fly easily.

And so that's just one little example of these Apple intelligence improvements.

They've also, I haven't even begun to really work with some of the other ones and working with text and stuff like that.

And, um, oh, I mean, it's, it's interesting stuff.

So the Genmo G what we were just talking about there, this, this is like creating an emoji and another one that he, that he, he, uh, the prompt that he gave was smart thinking and it came up with this light bulb that looks very mean and menacing, but the finger pointing to the nose, like you're on point anyway, Dan was just going through and doing this.

But then there is not just that for something, creating something like a duck detective or, you know, shrimp on toast.

But then this other article you linked to, which I thought was pretty fascinating, were from Steven Hackett at five, 12 pixels.

And he's talking about creating an emoji of himself.

Now we've had this right, the memojis to where you create it with your own face.

And he's talking about here that there's two styles.

You can do an animation style, which he's got on the left, and you can do an illustration style, which he has on the right there, which again, to your point earlier, don't, he says, don't look at my hand and the image on the right.

Cause it's like his finger is like weirdly cut off.

But just seeing that difference there is pretty interesting.

You know, and then we talked about this a while back is that Apple has very strict guardrails on what they're going to allow you to create.

Like you can't create a right now, at least a photo realistic image of yourself.

But you know, this is pretty close.

I mean, I see this picture here and I can see that this is Steven right on there.

So he's creating an emoji that's a little bit even better than I think what we've had, you know, for the past couple of years or so.

And just thought it was interesting that that like difference there that he showed.

Yeah.

You can create these pictures or I guess you call them whatever, based upon anyone that you have the pictures of in your photo album.

So you can't say, you know, make one of, I don't know, Taylor Swift.

I mean, I guess theoretically you can, but you would have to have a whole bunch of Taylor Swift pictures on your iPhone and you would have to have her identified as if she was one of your friends.

Wouldn't that be nice?

But otherwise it's going to be restricted.

So, but so again, as I've just, I've now just described how you can work around that guardrail, but it shows that they're trying to put a certain degree of a limit on it.

And if you don't have a specific person in mind, you can also just have a generic person in there too.

But you know, it's, I've seen the ones that someone I know that had the beta showed me a picture of me that he did on his phone a couple of weeks ago.

And I was like, I don't know, I'm not sure if it looks like me.

Having said that, you always have a different image of yourself than other people.

So like other people thought it was more like me than I did, if that makes some sense.

So you know, it's very, but, and again, are your friends going to think it's bizarre that you've created some little picture with that's a caricature of their face?

I don't know.

I leave that to you and your friends.

I mean, we'll see how it all filters out in the future, but you know, much like any technology, it can be used for good or it can be used for, you know, evil or at least silliness.

But it'll be an interesting thing that we have, you know, one little twist on it is there's also a feature that's related to this picture stuff called image wind and image wind is very similar to what I just described.

But the one thing about image wind is you yourself draw what it would look like.

And if you look at like the gadget hacks post, it's number six on that list.

So you can, um, like say this is, this is a sense of what I want.

And so in this example on your screen right now, someone has drawn a house with a tree and it's really the same.

I mean, this is not very different from image playground, except that instead of describing with words, the picture that you want it to create, this is you drawing another stick figure.

It's like you sort of say like something like this, and it uses that as just another input method along with the other stuff so that the end result is better.

So, you know, even if like, you know, I know what I want the picture to look like here, let me try to sketch it.

And of course you're sketched because none of us are artists.

And so it's going to look a little childish, like a stick figure, like you said, but it would at least be information that goes into the gender of AI engine.

It says, okay, well, I understand you want this type of a house.

You want the tree to look approximately here and you want the, you know, these features.

And so, you know, if you're trying to create like an image for like a keynote or a PowerPoint slide and you're finding that just describing it doesn't get you there, you could say, absolutely, let me give you more of a sense of what I want.

I sort of want to have like a computer and an iPhone, but I want to have an attorney or whatever it is, and you can just sort of sketch it out.

And again, I haven't tried it yet.

This is because this is all brand new, but it's a smart way to do it is that you can give it a little bit of a visual prompt as opposed to just your words.

So you know, I think it's cool that they did it that way.

And I don't use a lot of the generative AI image processors that are on the Internet.

I was not aware of any of them having a feature like this.

Maybe they do.

And I think it's pretty cool.

So I mean, suffice it to say all of this Apple intelligence stuff, I mean, you said it, right?

It's maturing.

We are watching it.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Before our eyes.

I mean, we're going to be so much more advanced from where we are now that we'll look back at this as just baby steps.

But right now, all of this AI stuff, you know, and every aspect of our life is so new that it's all really interesting.

The iOS 18.2 update is available if you have at least an iPhone 10 or XR or XS or above.

And so I just always like to, you know, throw that out there because usually that's one of the first questions people will get us.

I find most people are probably at least an iPhone 10 or higher these days.

But if you have that, which I got to tell you, that's pretty incredible.

The fact that we're using an iPhone 15 and 16 right now and still Apple is allowing an 18.2, you know, the current the modern day contemporary iOS to even go all the way back to the generation of the iPhone 10, eight, eight years.

So with that, it's been a while.

Yeah, you may not get all of the actual thing.

You know, some of the things we're talking about, like I remember in this gadget hacks, you talked to some of the things that are specific to the iPhone 16, right, Jeff, like that camera button, you know, there's some improvements on some of that.

Another thing that I thought we, I think we mentioned this last week, were some improvements to the photos app or some tweaks to that photos app, you know, the big change in iOS 18 and some of that 18.2, you can do some scrubbing now differently, you know, or you have some additional options on there.

Yeah, please, please.

If you take video, the scrubbing feature is sort of neat that it used to be when you take a video and if you later want to go back and you know what scrubbing means and sort of you go back and forth.

It used to be a little jerky and stuff like that.

But now on the phone, when you scroll your finger across, you can go really precisely and slowly.

And when you do it, you're basically entering a frame by frame, you know, as if you're analyzing the Zapruder film or something like that.

And you know, you're in that mode because the little, the little timestamp on the bottom left will indicate like not only that here a minute and the second, but like the point and then the actual frame.

And so you can, depending upon how, how accurate you are, it just gives you more ability.

Because sometimes I found that I want to do that with a video as I'm, I'm trying to like, you know, look at something really specific.

And and that's, that's a cool little feature there.

And again, it's just one of one of a million little features.

You mentioned taking pictures.

If you've got the newer iPhones that got the camera control button on it, you can now have it and I immediately turned this on so that like right now my, my iPhone screen is locked, right?

So earlier this week, if I wanted to take a quick picture, I had to press the button twice, once to unlock the phone and then to take the picture.

But now I've got it that I just turn it on and it instantly jump.

I actually, the first time would unlock it and the second time launched into photos.

But now with just a single press, I'm instantly ready to take a picture and click.

I've just taken a picture.

So it just saves.

Now what that means is if your iPhone's in your pocket, I guess if you accidentally click the button, it could now, oh, I'll turn the mode.

But again, because of the way that this thing is flush with the side of the iPhone, that's not something I do very often.

It's probably not going to happen.

You'll have to look to turn that feature on, by the way, I thought it was going to be part of the camera settings.

It's actually not.

It's actually because you're bypassing the controls of the display screen.

You actually go into settings.

I'm trying to think of a, you actually, you go into settings and go into display and brightness, which is not where I would expect it to be.

And when you're in display and brightness, then you go down to camera control.

So it's, it makes sense when you think about it, but it wasn't intuitively the place that I looked for.

So, and this is a perfect example, this tiny little feature hidden in the settings app and a place that you might not even find it.

It's big for you.

It's going to improve my life.

And that's an example of what this point to, it's like a bunch of little bitty features, but each one of them is like, that's a pretty cool feature.

I really, I really liked that feature.

I'm seeing other ones that there's, there's just a lot.

There's a lot.

I was just saying there's so much here.

I think even more, I'm a little overwhelmed.

Like if there's more here than I anticipated, even though you and I have been talking about this for several weeks, that I knew this was going to be a big update, but seeing this all in one place well, the good news is we have several weeks that we can we haven't even had time.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Forever.

So one of the things I did not like about photos, I know I get excited about this stuff.

I'm a geek.

Give me a break.

But you know how it has, we've had that feature in a while for photos where you can do, is it called live photo live?

It's like the, it's like, yeah, if you hold, if you hold down a little, a little video, right.

What I do is when you would swipe through photos, those life things would start to play.

And I actually, I used to find that distracting.

It's like, if I'm swiping through photos, I just want to swipe through stills.

Now I love the fact that on any one of those photos, I can hold my finger down and watch the little video and like, Oh, isn't that cute?

I can actually, so I like doing it manually, but I don't like it happening on its own.

And now thank goodness we have an option.

I think this is also in settings.

I don't have it in front of me.

I think it's in photos.

I think I was looking for that other setting I just described when I found this one and you can turn that off.

Yay.

And so now I don't see those little previews unless I really want them.

It's one of the things that I hate, by the way, I haven't checked yet, but Apple updated all the operating systems this week, including the Apple TV.

One of the things I don't like about the photos app is if I'm in front of my TV and showing off pictures, when I swipe through pictures, if they've got those live previews, they load and it gets a little jittery.

I want a way to turn that.

I don't know if that's, that's in here.

I haven't checked yet.

Hopefully you got to check on that TV.

So, but again, it's a tiny little feature.

Is it the end of the world?

No, but it bothered me and now I'm happy.

It makes a big difference to you.

Okay.

So I'll, I'll get off my thing.

There's a million examples like that.

Okay.

So, but one, before we get off 18.2, one thing I do want to just ask you, cause you, you mentioned this, um, is the fact that you mentioned it right at the top of, of this, uh, section and you mentioned it in your post today.

We finally now have that, like what I call the third tier of, of Apple intelligence is like if it can't answer it from the phone, it can't answer it from your own, like sort of an iCloud LLM or AI, then it goes to chat GPT.

It's almost like, and I think you had a link here to Frederico and max stories.

Uh, he likened it to, you know, when Siri, uh, would say, um, I'll check on the, can I check on the web for you?

Right.

Kind of a thing, right?

Uh, okay.

So, but it sounds like you were starting to experiment a little bit more with chat GPT or you resubscribed or something, Jeff, because you want to start using this.

What are your, some of your thoughts about how that is sort of like that next level of going to like, to the, to the Apple intelligence aspect?

So again, this is all new stuff, but here's what I'll say.

There's a certain level of this chat GPT stuff that works for free just right off the bat.

But then to go to the next level, um, you have to have a subscription and the natural question that you would have for me is, okay, Jeff, I want you to tell me what is the line?

Why would you want to have the $20 subscription?

And the answer is, I don't know.

I haven't figured that out yet, but I used to have a chat GPT open AI subscription because I was playing with it a lot for, for, for work stuff.

Not that I was putting confidential data in there, just trying to play it out.

And then I canceled my prescription because my script descriptions, I wasn't using it enough to justify the $20 a month is, you know, more of a real cost.

So I figured I would at least have it for a month.

I'm like, let me spend 20 bucks for a month big so I can get the quote, full experience.

And then I hope that at some point in the future, I'll be able to say, okay, is it worth spending the $20?

Here's what you get.

And here's what you don't have.

I'm just not there yet.

But I figured I would, you know, the, you know, let, let, let's see, let's see, but there's going to be a difference between how much you can do.

One of the big differences, for example, if you're actually using the chat GPT app, if you ask chat GPT to create an image, as opposed to the clip image playgrounds, you can only do like maybe two or three images a day.

And then it says you're done for the day.

You got to wait for 24 hours.

But if you pay, then you can do more.

Likewise, when you have accounts and stuff like that, it saves past history.

And anyway, so there's, there's, there's lots there.

We sh we shall see how much having a subscription helps.

I don't know yet.

I'm just, I haven't done enough in chat GPT over these last couple of years either.

And I'm, I think I'm, when I read what you were doing, I almost want to kind of do the same thing, subscribe for a couple of months and try it out.

But it just got me to thinking, you know, I've listened to Alex Lindsay on Mac break weekly talk about this and how he uses the chat GPT app and interacts with it.

Like not just like, Hey, you know, what's, what's the, a bird that lives in Southern California, you know, but he continues to ask, well, what about if it has red feathers or you know, where did it migrate from?

Where did it, and, and I just hearing him how he would interact with the chat GPT app specifically.

It's like, okay, is that going to shift now into just interacting with Siri?

I mean, we're not there yet or Apple intelligence, whatever we want to call it.

I still call it Siri.

Cause I think that's always been a, you know, kind of an AI tool in and of itself.

But anyway, that's where I was just kind of going.

This article that you linked to from Frederico, of course, as usual, he just goes into, well, he calls it a deep dive into working with Siri and chat GPT.

I almost want to read this two or three more times just to kind of get my head wrapped around some of the things that he's doing.

And to be fair, he also talks about the fact like this isn't going to happen without your approval.

Right?

Like it doesn't go out just automatically to chat GPT.

And he goes through all the details on how to make sure, you know, it's going to ask you, okay, well I can't answer this now.

But I got a friend that can, you know, want to phone a friend, you can phone chat GPT and we can help you out a little bit more on this.

You can, I immediately, I knew that was going to be annoying to get the permission to phone a friend.

And so there's a setting within, if you end the settings app, you go to Siri and you can turn off that.

Okay.

And so I figured, you know, give me, give me a seamless experience.

Let's see.

Cause I already turned that off.

But again, it's, it's guard, like you say, guardrails, it's all guardrails to, you know, well I'll make sure that I have all these links, you know another one of the writers is Neil, Neil, Ian from max stories pretty much since Federico covered the chat, GPT nearly ended iOS 18.2, everything else except Apple intelligence.

Anyway, you have some really good articles that I'll make sure that we link to them all.

You know, what are the things like even this, like again, there's so many things you can now copy text from a web browser and the link and the highlight text, you know how you can do a Google search sometimes and you'll click into it and it'll take you to that page and it'll have that text highlighted.

You can even do that now in Safari on the iPhone and you know, just little things like that, that to me are just, we were going to be talking about this for several weeks to come on there.

Um, but anyway, good, good articles there.

Last couple of things you mentioned already, we can just cover this real quick.

Uh, lots of other things, got updates.

I got my iPad updated.

The home pod has an update 18.2.

You link to a story from Julie Clover and Mac rumors.

I don't know if there's too much else to say there, but I'm glad that the home pod finally got an update again.

The one feature.

And again, I haven't tried it in my home house yet, but you can now, uh, you could always ask a home pod to play music for you and it'll just do it.

But now you can actually describe what you're looking for.

Like, you know, I'm looking for, you know, pop songs from the 1980s that are such and such and it will, it will try to, to create what you want just to paste upon your description.

Gotcha.

I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds good.

TV OS 18, I guess 18.2.

Yup.

That came out as well.

Big news here.

Uh, finally gets the Snoopy screensavers apparently.

I haven't seen it yet, but I look forward to it.

I'm sure it's cute.

I've, you know, my wife's still on the watch, right?

I love Snoopy on the watch, so I can't wait to see him on the TV.

Yeah, go ahead.

That's the thing.

I showed, I remember showing my wife that day that that Snoopy, uh, watch face came out and I'm like, Oh, you know, this will be cute.

Just try it out.

And she has never changed it since she loves it.

And even to this day, she still giggles because every time she raises her wrist, it's a different little, you know, Snoopy's doing something different with Woodstock.

It's a little funny on that.

I, on, you know, on my personal Apple watch setup, my main Apple watch screen I'm looking at right now has got the time and some other indications, but you know how you can, you can decide what, you know, to the left or to the right, just a single swipe for mine.

If I just swipe left once I bring up, that's how much I enjoy it.

Just, I'm always one swipe away from a little funny and now Snoopy is wearing a boiler hat and, uh, you know, always funny.

So that is probably enough for 18.2, I would think.

I mean, even though we have barely even scratched the surface, but we've been talking about this for a while and I know over the next several weeks and over, frankly, over the next couple of months, we'll be talking about this a lot more.

One device, I don't know if it got updated is maybe possibly your Apple vision pro, uh, at the very least popular science magazine named the Apple vision pro the innovation of the year, which that's a good way to start.

That's a pretty good way to start off.

I mean, if popular science, they see a lot of stuff and they are picking this right.

But I know you have been utilizing your vision pro this past week.

You wrote about the fact that you are utilizing the ultra wide desktop, which I want to hear about a little bit more.

You even tried out a new headband for the Apple vision pro.

So this, I guess, was our Apple vision pro segment here, but man, lots of good stuff coming on.

Yeah.

I mean, I feel like I always have to start with this disclaimer that we all know the Apple vision's too expensive and I know that very few listeners have it, although some of you do, cause I hear about that, but, um, but the Apple vision pro is basically, you know, if you want to spend $3,500, you get to view tomorrow, today.

It's like, it's like going to Epcot at Disney world.

You know, you get that.

That's a good way to put it.

And I tell you what I have heard, and we've even talked about it on this podcast is the feature that you've always been able to use your Apple vision pro to have a display, like a virtual display or a Mac.

But what they've done now is not only do you have a standard size display, but you have a wide display or an ultra wide display.

And when I read about this feature, I thought, okay, so if you have like a portable computer, like a Mac book or something, you know, obviously you have a relatively small screen.

And so this would be nice to be able to have a bigger screen.

It's sort of like the reason that many people connect a laptop computer to an external to show all the time.

Literally in my office right now, that's what I have my laptops over there and my displays right here because it's much bigger and brighter.

But this, um, this, uh, you're showing this funny Al Gore picture.

I loved how you introduced this today.

You went all the way back to 2007.

Do you remember this picture?

Is it something you've seen before?

I do remember this picture because I remember drooling over this picture in 2007.

Yes.

I remember that too.

But this idea of this huge having displays all around you.

So anyway, I thought it was really just something more useful for laptops.

But last night I decided, let me try this out.

I've updated my vision pro to the latest operating system.

I've updated my Mac.

Let me just, you know, because my Mac has an Apple studio display 20.

It's a beautiful display.

It's really nice.

How can I get any better than that?

Brett, I am here to tell you, I have seen the future and I love it.

This is so, I, words are escaping me because this was so, so cool.

You know, you click one button and suddenly you have this amazing wide display and like I don't need to have windows on top of me.

I could put something over here and over here and over here and I still got extra space and it's crisp.

I'm so jealous.

It's the sort of thing that you turn it on and you're like, this is really cool.

But then once you actually get to work, I found out, cause again, I was using it last night as I was typing in the news post.

I'm just sitting there working at my computer.

My regular display has gone black because you don't need that.

And in front of it I have this virtual display that is so huge.

There's no seams between two monitors.

I was just working.

And then like after I'm typing for about 20 minutes, I just sort of pause and say, it's taken me no time at all to just be totally like, this is normal.

Like of course Jeff has an ultra wide display that if you literally went to go buy this in a store right now would cost $10,000.

Oh yeah.

Easy.

There you go.

3,500 Apple Vision Pro is a bargain.

And it was just so cool.

I don't want to just say it's cool.

Cause that's like, it's like the neat new gadget.

It was so useful, Brett.

It was really like, this is the future.

You were so productive.

I can tell.

It makes a difference.

And again, I know what a dual monitor setup is.

I have that in my office right now.

I've done that before, but there's something about like the monitors, you got to line them up.

If you have a window that's partly on one monitor and partly on the other, you can't do it cause you have, you know, the seam in the middle.

So you always have to have, you know, anyone that has a dual monitor or a triple monitor setup like Al Gore here knows what I'm talking about to just have one seamless monitor.

It's just, it's, it's magical.

It is really, it was so, it was so useful.

And so like now I'm at the point, Brett, that like every time that I sit down on my Mac at the future, I was going to say, how can you work at your office now?

Why would I, and that was the thing.

It's like, I wish I wasn't using this stupid windows computer at my office.

If my firm was using Macs like they did back in the 1990s, I would be able to work with this and how productive, I mean, the people that are out there that are attorneys or other professionals that use Macs, you know, I'm now jealous of you because if you had this setup with the vision pro and, and one day we all will, as this, as the cheaper, you know, this is, I would so love to do my work.

You know, writing my legal briefs with like this huge monitor that's all around me.

And especially if you're like a swivel chair, you just sort of like turn, you're looking at this thing and you turn, you're looking at it.

It's mind blowing.

And so maybe it'll be the sort of thing that the novelty will wear away.

Again, I only used it once last night, only for, for a while I was doing this post, although that was probably an hour or two that I was working on this.

And it was amazing.

So again, it's, if you have, if you have the technology, like I happen to have, you got to try this.

It's amazing.

But my real message to people is this is the future.

You know, we're going to get to the point where a vision pro is going to be the size of a pair of glasses.

You know, we've seen little versions of that too.

Like the, the, the Ray brand, the Ray ban glasses that, that's right.

From meta, you know, that of course it's much more simple, but we are going to get there.

We are absolutely going to get there.

And in five years, maybe, I don't know, I can't predict the number, but whatever that number of years, X number of years from now, people are going to be using this routinely because it's so cool.

And I'm ignoring, I mean, this is just the monitor aspect.

I'm ignoring all of the other cool things you can do with the vision pro.

Like you can have your other vision pro apps at the same time.

So at the same time that I had this ultra wide monitor, I could look up and I could see another thing over here and another thing over there.

If I just wanted to glance and see the time or glance and see my messages or glance and see my email, of course I can do that too.

So anyway, I'll stop raving except to say, wow, yeah, no kidding.

And it's a nice place to be.

So I look forward to everybody joining me there at some point in the future.

Amazing.

If you're just listening to this picture that Jeff and I keep referencing is from 2007.

It's Al Gore in his office and you can't even see his desk because there's so much paper and books on his actual desk, but he, he doesn't, he's not even looking at his desk.

He's turned around to a desk behind him that has three.

What did you call them?

These are like the, um, the 30 inch Apple cinema displays.

Apple's.

Now this is in 2007 and like you said in that time they were $3,300 each, but you can just see how clean he is working with all of these apps open and everything.

I have long, long been a disciple of multiple monitors.

I have told folks, you know, from a professional level for so many years, Jeff, it's like your, your quote desktop is your actual computer desktop.

It is no longer the desktop that we were, you know, people have desks, you don't work in like a, you know, a 10 inch square on your actual physical desk.

So why would you limit yourself to a 14 inch or 27 inch area from the work that you really do?

Uh, anyway, I don't know if I've ever seen you this animated and happy about something, but it doesn't surprise me at all because we know this is what allows us to be so much more productive.

And just the fact that you can see everything and it is so seamless.

That's the word that I took out of you because you're right with multiple monitors today, we do have a seam, you have to jump and it's like, even though it seems like it's easy to do that, your, your brain is still like, okay, well I gotta go to this monitor or this monitor, but no, I want the entire breadth of everything.

So it was just really fun to hear you talk about that today.

And it looks like you have a new head strap for that as well.

You mentioned your head strap, you reviewed the Belkin head strap today, uh, which you know, to me, I'm just encouraged that not only are you so excited about what the vision pro does and what it means today and what it will mean for the future, but we're already starting to see additional accessories for it, which to me tells me it is a rich market for that.

Yeah, I like this Belkin head strap.

It makes it a little bit more comfortable for the Apple vision pro.

I've never found the vision pro uncomfortable anyway, like some people do, but a little bit more comfortable.

Great.

So you know, this was a $50 accessory.

I'm a fan of it.

I will use it forever.

But ironically, right after I wrote this review on what Monday or Tuesday of this week, I then saw this announcement that this company called contour K O N T O R, a medical supplies company.

They make things like these, um, these, uh, CPAC things that you wear if you've got like a sleep apnea and stuff like that.

And so for decades or for a long time, they have been making things, medical devices that fit in your head.

So they have experience in this area.

They have made a strap.

It's more than a strap.

It goes on the top of your head at the back of your head at the top and at the back of your head at the bottom.

And having those, those three straps that are actually weighted too, so that it distributes the weight to the back at least.

And again, no one's had these yet.

It's just an announcement.

But the claim is that this really distributes the weight.

Now, don't get me wrong.

What we really need is the future that you and I referred to a second ago, where you have something like the metal radio glasses that are so small that you don't need.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But while we're having the baby towards that future, having a company like this that has a lot of experience with this, they're like, oh, you know, I'll show you how to make this to have them come up with this.

You know, anyone out there that would find the Apple Vision Pro to be uncomfortable or heavier or whatever, this looks like an interesting option.

Now it's like 120, you know, it's not cheap, but for the right person, it could be great for me.

I'm, you know, even the Belkin strap, I didn't really need, but now that I have it, I'm glad to have it.

But it just, it just struck me as an interesting device.

So yeah, lots of tough going on in the world of Vision Pro this week.

This company is ResMed because they work, like you mentioned, with medical devices and immediately all I can, you know, we reported, there was one story you reported a while back that it was a surgeon performing a surgery, right?

But the fact that he had the Vision Pro on meant that the surgeon didn't have to like turn back and forth to like look at different monitors and whatever.

Everything was just displayed for him in an ultra wide kind of an environment.

And this just to me stabilizes that Apple Vision Pro.

So even if you are moving like a surgeon or somebody like would be doing typically, that just looks really, really cool on that.

We have always thought that Apple, the company was managed pretty well.

And now the Wall Street Journal also agrees with us.

This is a story you link to Apple tops the list of best managed companies of 2024.

I don't know how many companies were there in here and Apple apparently came to the top.

So they ranked, and it wasn't the Wall Street Journal, it's somebody that they're reporting on, but they ranked the top 250.

They took a look at 800 companies.

So it's a lot of companies and they looked at them and apparently in five different categories.

Of course, they looked at their financial performance.

You know, you want to have a company that's making money, but they also looked at customer satisfaction, innovation, things like the Vision Pro, social responsibility.

Of course, Apple has always been good with that.

Employee engagement and development.

And there's like 35 different indicators that they used to look all of these companies and they came up with the list and Apple was on top.

So number one, Apple is doing well, well-managed, people like them, all the things that you would want your company to be, Apple is the best.

And so that's not surprising.

The other interesting thing is if you look at the article, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, or if you're like me and you have Apple, what is it?

Apple One.

Apple News.

I have Apple News for free.

You can read it there.

The full list, like the top 10, six of the top 10 are tech companies, which just sort of tells you something that, you know, the companies that are not, that are, first of all, in our society today are doing really well in terms of money, but also doing well in terms of trying to do well, you know, social things.

So like Apple was number one on the list.

Okay.

But, but Nvidia is number two.

And, you know, all we hear is that how Nvidia is a very well-run company.

That's like so important to the AI future that we talked about earlier.

So that's number two.

Number three is Microsoft.

You know, amazing.

Microsoft has been around forever like Apple and they're still doing really well.

Yeah.

Intel is number four.

Now Intel has had some issues.

Interesting.

We'll see how they've stayed that far.

MasterCard's number five.

The first one that we get to that's, I consider MasterCard a little bit of a tech company.

I don't know if people do or not.

Number six is Johnson and Johnson.

So that's the first one that certainly have a tech aspect.

You know, it's, it's not.

And then number seven is Procter and Gamble.

Number eight is Alphabet, AKA Google.

Number nine is Adobe, AKA Photoshop.

And then number 10, Philip Morse International.

So it's very tech dominated in this list, but it's an interesting list.

And, you know, I wasn't familiar with it before reading this Wall Street Journal article, but it seems like it's pretty well done.

Like the standards that they are analyzing companies by have been recognized by a bunch of business experts and stuff.

So again, who cares?

It's just a popular, it's more than a popularity list.

It's just a list.

It doesn't really mean anything, but it's interesting to know that the same company that makes products that you and I love using and love talking about is also like being managed well.

And again, sometimes you can't have one without the other.

If you're not well managed, your products aren't going to be good and people won't be happy and you won't make money.

So it's all related.

But I thought it was interesting.

I know you mentioned you would like to be using Macs in your office, but you are relegated to using Windows computers.

However, you lead to an interesting story this week, Jeff, that now Microsoft has released, I think it's called Link to Windows.

It's an app that you can run on your Windows that will let you share files between your iPhone and your Windows PC.

Now I typically have always just kind of done this through kind of a little bit of a back door, right?

I've put files in iCloud drive or frankly, even one drive or I can Dropbox and I can put it on my phone and on my Windows as well.

But this is interesting.

I think I want to just try this out to see how it works.

It's just a little app that will run that will connect with your iPhone, I guess, over Wi-Fi.

So here's what's going on here.

The app itself has been out for a little while.

I forget when Microsoft came out.

It's called Link to Windows.

And on the Windows side, it's built in to their operating system.

On the iPhone side, you install this app called Link to Windows.

And the first time that you run it, the app tells you what to do.

You go into your Windows, there's a QR code, you hold your iPhone up and you scan the QR code and they link to each other and talk to each other.

So the current version of the app, the one that's been out for a while, it will do a few things.

It will allow you to have notifications, like any notifications that will show up on your iPhone can also show up on your Windows computer.

So that way you get to see it there, just like on a Mac, you could see all your notifications everywhere.

Some usability.

Another thing that it allows you to do, sort of, sort of, is it works with messages, but it's not great.

So like if I'm using the Windows computer, I will not see my entire history of messages like I would on my iPad or my iPhone.

But the most recent messages that have come in, I will see them.

And like the one real advantage is that you could, you know, if my keyboard's connected to my PC and I get a text from my wife or from you or from somebody else, I could use my PC keyboard and I can respond.

And basically it's, it's typing the response on the PC and then it's sending it to the iPhone and the iPhone sends it.

Okay.

Okay.

Personally, because I have one of these Logitech keyboards that I just click a button and the keyboard changes from my PC to my iPad.

I personally have found that it's just as easy for me to type my, you know, if I want to type a text message, just switch to my iPad where I'm living in the, in the true iMessage and messages world as opposed to doing so.

Up until today, I haven't really found this app to be all that helpful.

But what the new feature is, which I noticed it's not working on my Windows computer yet.

I guess Microsoft's rolling it out, but this new feature will be similar to AirDrop.

And this is solving a real problem because my solutions have been exactly what you described, right?

This backdoor that like, I will have a file on my iPhone and I want to get it to my PC and I'll end up like emailing it to myself, which is not the most, you know, good use of email, or I would put it in a cloud service and get it over or vice versa.

And it's just clutchy, you know, I, all I want to do is just quickly get this over, just like you can do on the Mac and Apple ecosystem using AirDrop.

So I haven't tried, I can't try it.

I tried this morning before we started recording and it wasn't working for me yet.

Hopefully it'll, it'll, it'll be on my computer soon, but I, this might be the first time for me that this link to Windows program is actually, you know, pretty useful.

It's neat that it works at all.

I mean, you can even do media control, like if I'm playing music on my iPhone, I can actually use my PC to hit play and pause.

I sort of, I guess, I don't know, whatever.

Just as easy for me to pick up my iPhone.

So far, everything that this software has done is a little bit of a, okay, who cares?

But this sharing files would be the first time.

So that's why I'm excited about it.

The story is, is dated December 11th.

So just a couple of days ago, and I do, I noticed down here, it does say that you need to be, at least for this new feature, you have to be registered in the Windows insider program, which I think is just one of these.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's almost like a beta thing stuff, but that's right.

If it's in the Windows insider program, it means, and I'm not, it means that the rest of us will be getting it, you know, once they, exactly, it's coming.

They're just, they're rolling it out slowly.

And just the people that signed up for the Windows insider program, which I think at one time I was signed up when I was doing that.

But anyway, just good.

I'm glad you reported on that.

Cause we, I, we know so many people that will have an iPhone, but they'll have a Windows computer, right.

For either work or just personal use or whatever.

And you know, I love to see kind of these things.

In fact, every time I talked to somebody on a Windows computer that has an iPhone, you know, I have to say, did you get the, like, there is that software, right.

That you, that's like iCloud software on the windows.

I forget what it is.

I haven't looked at it in a long time, but you can, you know, link your photos.

For example, you can get access to your iCloud drive, all that kind of stuff.

So anyway, just, I'm really glad to see that, that you just mentioned even, you know, Microsoft is doing some good stuff and just the fact that they are supporting this is a, it's good as well.

I think last week or maybe two weeks ago, we talked about Apple's what did they call it?

The, the app store awards, I think Apple app store awards that are coming out, which is, whatever it was.

Yeah, exactly.

No.

So that's one list.

But I like that Frederico and the whole Mac stories teams came out with their own best apps of the year.

I, now I just kind of ran through this pretty quickly this morning, Jeff.

But I found some, some, some goodies in here that I don't think I was even quite aware of.

We'll make sure we link to it in the show notes, but just some really like the new, the best new app, the new features, the new watch, the best watch app, the best Mac app, which I think they picked Moom, M O O M for the best Mac app.

And I completely agree with that.

Anyway, just a really good list.

And I like how they go through and they give the reasoning, not just for the one that they selected, but also the runner up for each, each, each category.

Yeah, this it's definitely worth scrolling through the list and seeing if you want to try out any of these apps.

Many of them are apps that I am, some of them I am using and I, and I agree with you that they're great.

Others I haven't tried yet, but I've heard about it.

Like the very first one that they list is the, the best new app is called croissant, which is an app that allows you to easily cross between threads and blue sky and mastodon and stuff like that.

Um, so I haven't done that.

Maybe I should be using it.

I, another one of the lists that's interesting is called simple scan.

It's by Greg Pierce.

I saw that.

Yeah.

And you know, I've always used PDF expert from reedle when I love PDF experts, but simple scan it's, it's worth looking at because true to its name, it's so simple.

What he's done is, you know, how Apple has the ability to scan documents within the notes app, right?

Sure.

I don't, I mean, Apple did a nice job with it, but like, do I really want my scans in the notes app?

That just doesn't make sense to me.

And so what he's done is he's taken that, that API, he's taken that technology of Apple scan and he's put it into a standalone app.

And so it's, you know, everything good, bad and otherwise, and mostly good.

Because Apple scanning is really good, but he's put it in an app so that you can use tech technology to scan.

But instead of the scan going into notes, you can say, I want all of my scans to go, you know, in this folder or here or whatever.

And so it's just a very, and you can, and it also has OCR built into, so you can like, you know, read the document.

So it's, it's, I think it's worth considering as an alternative.

And again, one of the things I like about PDF expert is it keeps track of my scans and it has more, it's not PDF expert, I'm sorry.

What's the read all app that I use all the time?

Scanner pro.

That's it.

I was just trying to think of a scanner pro.

Cause I use that all the time too.

Yeah.

Scanner pro gets me do things like adjust the page size and, and black and white or color.

I like the features that I get with scanner pro, but if you just want something to simple, simply scan things, this app I downloaded and I tried it and it absolutely lives up to its name.

And this is, I would not have even known about this app if it wasn't for reading this list.

So again, I encourage you go through the list, see what jumps out at you.

There's some interesting things there.

I didn't recognize a developer when you named it, but I go to the app store link and it's agile tortoise, which I, first of all, it's just a great name for a development company.

And they're the ones though that have put out the drafts app that, you know, we have used for very popular.

I still continue to use the drafts app.

I just like it as a quick place to do that.

Anyway, just some really, really good apps in this list and we'll post it.

And I appreciate the Mac stories team, you know, going through all that time and doing that.

How about a quick link to some smart home technology here?

I like this, you know, you've talked about what is it?

Your Lutron components, you know, to, to, to manage the lights in your house from your phone.

This though is an interesting thing because it's not like an extra add on plug.

This is built into the outlet here from a TP link, which is the Tapo smart in wall outlet.

That's pretty exciting.

I like that.

I want to, I want my whole entire house to be built in like this.

Yeah.

I mean, that makes perfect sense.

I mean, I can't believe I've never really thought about this before.

I remember years ago when companies came out with the first replacement outlets that had USB built into it so that you wanted to charge your phone, you wouldn't have to put the little adapter on there.

You could just, and I'm like, Oh, that really makes sense.

And so this is the next level of that is to have the smart home technology built into it.

And so if nothing's plugged into it, it just looks like a normal wall outlet.

But if you do want to have something plugged in that you can control from your iPhone or have, you know, automatically controlled, you can plug it in.

So I think, I thought it was a cute idea for a product.

I will tell you, as I alluded to in my post, I am particularly partial to Lutron because unlike every other home kit threads company out there, they are the one they've been doing.

They've been doing this for so long that they have their proprietary wireless standard.

And I mean, I can just tell you from experience, the things I have in my house that rely on wifi or Bluetooth, they're like 95% work the time the Lutron stuff is rock solid.

It just always works.

And so, as I think I alluded to this in my post just last week, we had some, my son put up on the front of our house.

We have like a balcony.

And so we put some garland in the front of our house that has some Christmas lights in it, but I didn't want to have to manually go upstairs and unplug and plug that in.

And so I just bought yet another one of these $45 Lutron things, put it in the wall.

And I said at sunset, come on.

And then I decided not to leave it on all night.

Like at one o'clock in the morning, you know, by then go ahead and turn it off.

And so it was easy to do that.

And then, and so now when Christmas is over, I'll have another one of these devices and you know, I'll find someplace in the house that I want to use it.

So.

We are both big fans of the Apple watch.

And I was thrilled to see our friend David Sparks over at max sparky.com.

Wonderful blog to follow where if you just want a short and concise Apple watch buyer's guide for the holidays, either for yourself or for somebody else, boy, this is the place to go.

I just love how he distilled it all down for us today.

Yeah.

It's like the, what is it?

The three bears it's, you know, it was too hot.

You know, there's the three Apple watches that he says you should consider.

And I agree with this a hundred percent.

There's the current Apple watch 10, which I wear in love.

There's the current ultra watch to Apple watch ultra two, which you, which you have in love.

And then there's the SC, which is the less expensive one, which is what my daughter has.

And you know, if you're getting something for yourself or buying for somebody else, it's a simple little, here's what you should consider.

I think I agree with almost all of his advice.

And again, there's no one Apple watch that's right for everybody.

It just depends upon what's what you're looking for, how much money it's worth spending for the circumstances, et cetera, et cetera.

In the show, I need to come up with a little, like, you know, a show show tune to do our quick, let's just go through this quick.

You mentioned several things this, this past week, Apple announced that four of their Apple TV plus series received golden globe nominations.

Again, that, you know, just the fact that it hasn't been around this that long, the streaming service, and they're coming out with such great quality stuff.

This was slow horses, disclaimer, shrinking and presumed innocent.

That in and of itself is pretty amazing right there.

You know, the best thing I can say about Apple TV plot, not the best thing, but one of the good things I can say about it is that unlike the early days when there were so little content that it was easy to watch everything.

Now there's so much good stuff out that I just can't keep up, you know, just life.

I know it's getting crazy is of the ones just, just these four slow hosts horses.

I am caught up with.

It's awesome.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Yeah.

We did that too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know you watch it too.

Shrinking.

I watched the first season of shrinking and loved it.

My wife did too.

And we know that it's on our short list to watch the second season, which I think the second season like ends like this weekend or something like that.

And so now all the episodes are there so we can do it.

We're going to do it over.

We're going to do it on the next few weeks, but I can't, I've heard that the second season is great presumed innocent.

I enjoyed it as a, as a, as a show.

It was a good book.

And then disclaimer, I, which I think is starring Kate Blanchett, if I remember correctly, but I haven't watched that one yet, but I've been hearing good things about it and it's like, it's on my list.

And so I can't even keep up with the good stuff that they have out now.

And this is just the really good stuff.

This is the stuff that's award worthy.

I will admit though, I really love that slow horses is up for top drama because it is such a good show.

And I looked at the other ones on that list and there are some other ones, like for example, the diplomat, which I love with Carrie Russell on a, I think that's on Netflix.

That's that's a fantastic show too.

And they have some other ones on there too.

But when I looked at the list, if, if I was voting in the golden globes and I am not a member of who is at the Hollywood foreign press, but if I had a vote, it was up to you.

It would get my vote.

Not that the rest of the list are not really good, but it was, it was just awesome.

You know, I got to tell you this because we finally finished this the most recent season.

Is it four right.

That finished her.

And you know, we have been doing this long enough that I always, I have low hopes for like the third season, the fourth season.

And it was just as good job.

I mean, that's just what blows my mind.

It's just as good.

I'm like, well, I am still so interested in this, you know, even after all these seasons, anyway, that's good.

We've talked a lot about this.

Two other quick things that you mentioned.

Brett Goldstein, great name.

Yeah.

Otherwise as the what was it, what was his name on Ted Lasso?

The soccer player, Roy Kent.

I knew you'd come up with it.

He's got a new film that they've announced.

And then you also mentioned another thing called the gorge is coming out too, which looks pretty good.

I think it starts the star from the Queens gambit.

Is that right?

Yeah.

She was so good.

Yeah.

Great stuff.

I watched the trailer.

It's a real horror thriller.

And I personally have never been a real horror fan, but I do thrillers.

And when I looked at the preview for this, it's one of those previews that I can't tell if it's giving away too much or maybe there's a lot more secrets.

But if you're into things that like, you know, I think back to the old show lost and stuff like that, like there's a secret on and something, you don't know what it is and you're on the edge of your seats.

This one looks like it actually could be good.

It comes out on Valentine's day.

I'm going to watch this in this.

I'm going to I'm really hoping that this is going to be good.

And if people come out and say, ah, it doesn't work, I'll be disappointed because from the preview I'm like, hey, this could be a good movie.

So I'm excited about it.

And these are both movies, this one and the one that was starring Brett Goldstein.

These are movies, not not series, but you know, anyway, just just really exciting stuff on their last video that you posted.

I love this because not only does a star what I consider to be like one of the Christmas standards, Michael Buble today, it is a video that Apple released talking about an improvement that they made in an app that you noted in your post today that it's like we know it's been there forever.

This is is it called Voice Memos?

Yeah, the Voice Memos app has been on the phone forever.

I've used it off and on, you know, but barely, I mean, maybe once or twice a year.

I would even at that, Jeff, I don't even know.

But they have improved it now with doing what I would consider to be like multitrack recording now on this.

And this video just does such a great job of helping you understand why that could be pretty significant here.

OK, let's talk about the apps first and then I want to get into the video and then I want to talk about the song.

So let's start with the apps.

Turn back the clock about five years, OK?

About five years ago, there were two different iPhone apps.

One of them was the Voice Memo app, which I think Apple really thought of as a way to like I want to remind myself to do something later.

So I'm going to yeah, I'm not I'm not even going to write it down.

Just give myself a voice memo and then I'll look at it in the future and I'll remember it.

Or, you know, here's a good idea for such and such.

Let me jot down that idea or just, you know, just get it down.

The voice memo.

And they used to have an app called Music Memo, which was for musical artists.

And the idea is, yeah, actually lay down a track like you could record something on the piano, which is what I play or guitar.

And it would not only record it, but it would even figure out what key you were in.

It would and it would just play it on the screen.

You know, this is the key of C and it would figure out the beat.

And if you wanted to add like a little simple drum track just to give a little background, you could do that.

And so it was a way for a musician that's like, you know, I'm out and about and I've had an idea for a song.

Let me just jot it down quickly, much like for a voice note.

And so it was a nice app.

But Apple discontinued it back in, I want to say, 2020 or something like that.

And I was interested, you know, to make it personal, my dad, my dad's an architect by day, but he also plays music.

In fact, you actually did.

He does.

I have seen him play before.

I have seen him.

It's good.

And so he writes songs and he has ideas for songs.

And he used to love using the Music Memo.

I mean, my dad doesn't use iPhone apps, but he used the Music Memo app.

He used that.

And he was disappointed to have it go away.

So after it went away, many music artists continued to do something very similar, but they would just use the Voice Memos app to do things.

But again, it was simple because you're just recording like that one track.

So what Apple has done is to recognize that musicians use it.

They now have done two things.

First, you can now add tracks on top of tracks.

So you might have your first track, playing it on piano or guitar or whatever else that you just record yourself.

And then you can go back on top of it and you can record the vocal track.

OK, so that's the first thing you can do.

And then, of course, if you don't like the vocal track, you could delete it and record again to get a better take.

But the second thing that they've done is up until this week, to do that well, you would have to be wearing your headphones, because if it was playing the piano track out loud, that would be recorded on the vocal track.

And so it would make it messy, right?

You wouldn't want that because you want to have every track be pristine so that you can edit and stuff.

Sure, it's like garbled a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

But now Apple is so good.

They've got such smart people working at all this technology that deals with audio and stuff.

So, I mean, this is something we've seen in different versions of this and Final Cut Pro and Logic and stuff like that for a while.

Even though you're just playing the iPhone.

And so in theory, it should be recording the music that you're playing as you're singing.

It removes it takes out the part that's playing.

And so it just records your voice.

So you get this clean voice track.

So from a technology standpoint, what they have done with voice memos and I go, you know, how many people are artists?

Well, probably more than you think.

I mean, very few of us are Michael Buble.

But a lot of people may have ideas for songs.

And so this was great technology.

So my first thumbs up is to Apple for updating the voice memos app in iOS 18.2.

My second thumbs up is what a fun way to show off this technology.

I know.

So good.

You say the king of Christmas.

I mean, when you think of Christmas, think of Mariah the Queen.

Oh, my.

She's the queen, but who's the king?

And so they have him.

And not only do they have him make a Christmas song along with in fact, I apologize.

I forget the name of the of the female singer.

Oh, Kat.

Oh, what was it?

I'll find it for you.

I know that she's accomplished as well.

And I don't mean to diminish her, but it's Michael Buble.

And so not only did they create a song and that would be cool in itself, but the video that they have here, Michael Buble, I just think he's hilarious.

You know, he, he, he, Carly Pierce, Carly Pierce.

Carly Pierce.

Thank you.

Michael Buble, he knows that he has this reputation.

He's happy to make fun of himself.

He can like look at you and give you that wink.

And so I watched the video that's at the end here so many times because I think he is hilarious.

He's, he's both showing off a feature and he's having fun with it.

And you can tell he's having fun with it.

And I love it.

And the video was fun and that's awesome.

And then the last thing I'll say, Brett, is the actual song that they created called, is it a maybe this maybe this Christmas or no, is that it's a legitimately good Christmas song.

I mean, I know it's a little fun to lay off, you know, it's two people singing to each other about how much they miss each other for Christmas, but I listened to it.

I had not actually heard the song until I came into work this morning and I said, I want to listen to the song.

And so I listened to it and it was really good.

And I liked it so much that I, when it got to the end, I played it a second time.

And in case you are curious how long it takes Jeff Richardson to drive to work every day, I live two maybe this Christmases away from my office because by the time I finished playing it the second time I had pulled into my parking spot in my building.

So that's how far away I am.

And it's a really good song.

And so before you and I started recording today, I was joking to you that, you know, how you get a song in your head and you just can't, I, my brain is singing maybe this Christmas because it's a pretty good song.

And so that's awesome.

This is, they have a great feature, a great way to show it off.

It's a fun video.

Check it out.

Even if you're not a musician, I still think it's fun watching Michael Buble be silly, but also talk about how much he enjoys.

I was going to say, yeah, in some of the video, he's a little corny, but the point that he's making even through the corniness is like, I don't even need a recording studio anymore.

Now I know that that may sound a little crazy, but he literally can record everything without having a professional studio.

I know there's producers out there that would want to tweak things and everything, but the fact that you can record on multiple layers now in your hand without any special microphone even, or one of the points they also make in this is they don't even need headphones anymore because some artists don't like wearing headphones when they record.

They want to hear the natural sound of their voice and everything.

And that started to blow my mind after, in fact, Michael Buble said it blew, it blew Buble's mind as well.

He says that in there anyway, just a great video.

And it's a really cool way to understand like some of that new feature in there too.

In fact, to be fair, we mentioned two artists.

We mentioned Michael Buble and the female singer, but we should actually mention there was a third Grammy winner too.

And the third Grammy winner in this video is the guy that does the production song.

So the way that they look at this is the two singers recorded into their iPhones and then they gave those tracks.

This is very realistic.

This is what happened in real life.

They gave those tracks to, and I forget the guy's name, but he's clearly a very accomplished music producer.

And he put them in Logic, which is just the Apple software that you can lay tracks on top of each other.

And he added in the instruments and he did the adjustments that you would normally do in Logic of somebody recorded in a studio, but he's doing it based on recordings on an iPhone and the end product.

I mean, the actual song that's released in Apple music, it sounds like a professional song.

And if you told me this was recorded and I'm sure they had pristine conditions, but even so if you told me that someone just sang into their iPhone and it produced this song, I'd be like, I mean, if you had said that years ago, I would have said, ha ha, yeah, there's no way that that's going to work.

But today this is the technology we have.

It is a producer.

Greg Wells is his name, but even just getting his perspective to, in addition to the artists, you know, from the production side side is a, it's just really, really cool.

Okay.

Good stuff.

That was a fun video.

Thanks for linking to that today.

It explained it a little bit more in the know.

I thought we could do our favorite so far.

IOS 18.2 tips.

Here's my favorite.

This is a bit of a cheat because we've been, we've talked about this for a couple of weeks, but because I travel quite a bit, I was so excited about how I could share my air tag or my find my tracker location, uh, specifically with an airline, but my family, we're getting ready to go on vacation.

And it's like, first of all, I got to make sure all of our suitcases and bags have an air tag in it because if at any point that it's lost or misplaced or stolen or whatever, if I need to now go into the, find my app on my phone and I want to share that now with either the police department or an airline, for example, I can do that easy.

I didn't know how this was.

I didn't really read up on how this was going to work, but just quickly, I'll put a link in the show notes here to where we're talking, but I can go into find my app now and I can generate basically generate a link that I can then share with somebody.

And they open that link in a web browser.

Uh, they don't even have to have an iCloud account.

In fact, one of the options down here is you can continue as an apple partner, which apparently the airlines have the ability to put in an email address and then they could just do that and they can go and then you get this link that will continue to update with the location of whatever is the, is the device that I've shared with them on there.

So I'm just, I'm thrilled to see that.

I tried to experiment it with it before the show Jeff, but if your air tag is next to you or in the same room, it just gives you the message that your air tag is with you.

In other words, there's no reason for you to share this leak.

I'm not going to generate a link for you.

You don't need to right now.

It's right there with you.

So I guess I've got to experiment with this when I'm separated from my air tag at some point.

Um, but it's a very easy to do.

It's all built into that.

Find my app, which I just continue to find.

They're doing a great job with the find my app all over the place.

You know, just that's the way that my family and I keep track of each other when we're traveling in around the fact that I can, I can track my devices on top of all of that.

It's just really good.

So that's my pick today is they finally have implemented this and based from what I've seen so far, they did a really good job.

I just liked the fact that it shares that link.

The link can expire after such, you can set the time, how, you know, how long do you want that link to even be available and accessible.

And I just think that that's really cool too, because you know, from a security aspect, you would just want to say, Hey, I want to share this with you for, you know, for 12 hours or whatever the case may be.

So that's the find my app, the improvements in 18.2.

That's my pick today, Jeff.

You do so much travel breath that I'm not surprised that this is your pick.

I mean, right.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking right now.

I'm in new Orleans, but you're on the West coast.

And so I really hope you don't get to try this again, because I don't want to know, but it's nice having security of just in case that's always good.

So here is my favorite, favorite tip so far.

And again, there's so many of them, but Apple changed.

They made some big changes in the mail app.

I mean, mail is important to me.

I communicate via email with so many people on the iPhone.

They have made a bunch of changes to mail.

And the one that's not my pick today is they will now automatically group messages so that things that might be from retailers or on one set and other people, it's very similar to there.

There's a, there's a product called sane box, which has been a past sponsor of us.

But in fact, they're a current sponsor of my website, but they do it at the, at the, at the mailbox level, basically so that it works for everything.

What I don't like about what Apple is doing for mail is right now, it's only on the iPhone.

It doesn't work on iPad.

Um, I don't find it works as well as the inbox, but the idea of it is interesting.

So, you know, but so that's not my pick, but for some reason, as a part of that change to mail, they've made this little change so that, you know, how in like the messages app, you can see like a little, uh, a circle with the person's face on it so that you can see what they look like.

And so if I'm looking at messages, I can just look down and I can see, oh, there's my wife.

So that's a, that's a text.

Who is it from?

Right.

There's my friend, John.

They now have that in messages too.

Now this assumes that in your app, you have pictures associated with people, which I actually do tech.

Yeah.

There's my wife's picture.

And so as I'm scrolling through my, my emails, you know, of course I can see the name of the person, but the face I find jumps out at me even more.

And I really liked that.

Um, now again, some people are looking at my list.

I don't have the face.

Um, but for things that are, even if you turn off and I immediately turned it off cause I didn't like the way Apple was doing it.

Even if you turn off that mail sorting feature I was describing, it's still there in a way because if you don't have like a specific picture associated with a, with a company or a person, it will still put like a little, a little symbol there.

And so for example, things that it looks like are like sort of more of like a news or work thing have one picture and then things that it thinks are a newsletter have like a purple I get a restaurant and it's like fork and knife on this.

And so it's still, it's like that visual, it's just a little visual aid space in the left column.

But like this just showed up.

It makes it bigger.

Yeah.

The funny thing is I never heard anybody talk about this feature in the betas, but like I really like it.

It's, it's, it's really cool.

Now unfortunately, much like the other mail changes, it's on the iPhone, but it's not yet on the iPad.

Come on.

How complicated is this?

I presume that at some point, maybe 18.3 or four or five, they will bring all of this to the iPad and when they do, I'm sure they'll bring little pictures of people along with it and I look forward to that because that's really cool.

So for now though, I mean I really do use mail a lot on my iPhone, so I'm glad that it's on my iPhone now.

I look forward to it soon being on my iPad.

Very cool.

I had not opened this up after I upgraded Jeff.

I'm glad that you highlighted it because I gotta tell you though, it may be just because you know, we look at mail so many times during the day, so it looks a little bit different now.

So I have to get used to that, but I feel like it's taken up a little bit more room because it's, you know, it has to shift everything over to make room for that little icon.

So am I like, am I not seeing as many messages on one screen as I was before?

I don't know.

I, that said, it's just going to take me, you know, probably five minutes to get used to it because I do like having those icons there because then now at a glance I can look down and I can see if it's an email from somebody that's in my contact, just like you said, or if it's, if it's, you know, something else like a newsletter of some kind that I can just ignore.

I like that very much.

That's good.

Exactly.

Cool feature.

I wonder if that's going to go to the Outlook app at some point.

That's just in the Mac mail or the Apple mail app, by the way.

I don't know that they have that yet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

That's right.

Whoo.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much, everybody.

Um, as we mentioned, we're going to take off next Friday.

So December 20th, there will not be an episode, but we'll be back with a special predictions episode on December 27th.

We'll get that in the pipeline so that you can listen to that.

And then Jeff and I will be back live in person on January the 3rd.

It's a, it's a new year.

So with that, happy holidays, Merry Christmas, happy new year, Jeff.

And we'll talk with you, uh, in a couple of weeks, but in reality, we'll talk with you next year. - There you go. - Thanks. - Thanks, Brett.