
In the News
In the News
180: A Glass Cube in Grand Central 🧊 GPS Carrots 🥕 and Tim’s Spiced Apple Jam 🍎
Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/nlCaZS-1rZg
In the News blog post for January 17, 2025:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2025/01/in-the-news761.html
00:00 Snoopy Could Be Boring
09:30 Beta Headlines
18:19 It’s Raining Carrots
29:06 Walk-Thru Genius Bar
37:32 Tim’s Spiced Apple Jam
42:41 A License to Wallet
47:10 Iterative Isn’t a Bad Word
50:24 Where Y’at? Segment - A Tiny Voice from the Other Side
54:38 In the Show! Glass Cubes and Balloon Faces
1:02:00 Brett’s Apple TV Tip: Long-Press on Back Button to Home Screen
1:05:16 Jeff’s Apple TV Tip: Use Your AirPods Pro with Your Apple TV
Wesley Hilliard | Apple Insider: tvOS 18.2.1 now available with bug fixes
Graham Fraser | BBC: BBC complains to Apple over misleading shooting headline
Ryan Christoffel | 9to5Mac: CARROT Weather adds new CarPlay app, plus upgraded Live Activities
Joe Rossignol | MacRumors: Apple Previews New Store With Combined Genius Bar and Pickup Spot
Juli Clover | MacRumors: Apple CEO Tim Cook Shares Tidbits About His Life
Juli Clover | MacRumors: iPhone Driver's License Support Coming to Illinois
Oliver Haslam | Apple Insider: Apple Watch Series 10 three-month review: Iterative isn't a bad word
Zac Hall | 9to5Mac: Apple Watch Crash Detection credited with saving 55-year-old man who passed out while driving
Juli Clover | MacRumors: Apple Promotes Severance Season 2 Premiere With Lumon Industries Pop-Up and Visits From Actors
Brett’s Apple TV Tip: Long-press on Back button to jump all the way back to Home screen
Jeff’s Apple TV Tip: Use Your AirPods Pro with your Apple TV
Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com
- Welcome to In the News for January 17th, 2025.
I am Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.com. - And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.
Hey Brett. - Good morning, Jeff, and happy Severance season two day.
I know you've got plans for later this evening, but let's go through some of the things that you linked to today, starting with one of the first things, it was a pretty quick, we've got an update, not to iPhone iOS 18, not even to the iPad, not even the Apple watch, but you linked to Apple TV OS 18.2.1, did some bug fixes and includes Snoopy now, if that is interesting to you. - Yes, so Snoopy came out with 18.2, which came out, what, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, right before the end of the new year.
And whenever the operating system for the Apple TV hardware device is updated, they don't do major new things.
I mean, it's not like the iPhone that you make it a thousand new features.
You get just a few new features.
And so as a result, sometimes the new features, you notice them more, 'cause there's really not that many of them.
And so one of the big ones was changing the screensavers.
I will tell you, I mean, the idea of a screensaver on the one hand is not that interesting, right?
I mean, we've had computer screensavers forever.
I mean, gosh, and yet sometimes screensavers can be interesting.
I mean, back in the days when I was using a Mac in the 1980s, okay.
We're going way far back.
There was a screensaver called After Dark that, I mean, this is when they were black and white screens and stuff like that.
And one of the things the screensaver would do that was famous for is have toasters go on your screen that have wings on them, flying toasters.
What a surreal idea, a flying toaster.
And yet it became iconic to have flying toasters on your, so you can have some, you can have fun with a screensaver.
And one of the things I've loved about the Apple TV since the early days is that they've had really interesting screensavers.
Most notably these aerial screensavers, which are just such, I mean, the modern aerial screensavers, they're such high quality.
I mean, they're incredibly definition.
If you've got like a 4K TV or even a 1080P, they look so good.
They're so nicely done.
They update them throughout the year.
They're interesting things.
And you can choose, do you just wanna have, you know, what's, there's I think four different categories of those aerial screensavers.
There's really, really cool.
I love those aerial screensavers, but there's other ones that have been around.
You could have like, I think there was a music one.
You could have your own picture library if you want, which is fun.
So, but they haven't changed a lot over the years in terms of new features.
So it was a big deal when Apple updated in the tvOS 18.2 to add this Snoopy screensaver.
Now people will recall that Apple has a relationship with the Charles Schultz, I don't know what it is, the foundation, you know, whatever it is.
Peanuts, exactly.
And so that is why Peanuts is exclusively on Apple TV.
And in fact, even that was in the news because when Apple first took over the rights, so many people remember watching like, you know, it's a Charlie Brown Christmas and the great pumpkin Charlie Brown, all those famous Peanuts cartoons.
And so at first the idea that it was only available on Apple TV and what if you didn't subscribe to the Apple TV plus service, you know, would you miss these childhood classics?
And I think just about every year now, Apple has come up with some way that even without paying anything, you can watch it.
You know, for a while they were putting it on PBS at the same time.
And then I think it was last year, they said that there's like a day or a period of time where everybody can watch the Charlie Brown shows for free.
So anyway, Apple has been done a lot with Snoopy.
But I love the idea that there are, I mean, even though Charles Schultz has passed away for a long time now, I love the idea that there are still animators working for that company that are continuing to develop Snoopy.
And so that fast forwards to the screensaver.
The screensaver, I have it enabled on my TV.
Do you have it on your, by the way, Brad?
Have you seen it yet? - I don't.
I don't know if I've even updated, although the Apple TV is good about updating itself, but I gotta check and see if it's updated. - Whenever you do the update, you have to go in.
And like, unless you look for it, it's not gonna happen automatically.
You need to go into your settings.
You need to find the part of the settings that talks about screensavers.
And then you need to enable this Snoopy screensaver.
But once you do so, I will tell you, this should be my tip of the day.
It is delightful.
It is so fun because it features Snoopy lying down typically on his red house, just like is the most iconic feature of it.
But it's other things too.
Sometimes he's lying down in a swing set.
During Christmas, sometimes he was lying down on a dog house that was covered with Christmas lights.
Sometimes he's on all sorts of different things.
But most of the time he'll just sit there and not too much.
It's a screensaver, just sort of.
But then every couple of minutes, it will, Snoopy will have a little thought bubble where he is imagining something.
And then there will be like this, it's like this little 30 second fun video.
There's no sound on it.
It's just him sometimes by himself, sometimes with Woodstock.
And I mean, believe me, they're just silly little things.
And they may all be taken from original Snoopy. - But they make you smile. - They do.
And I don't know if they take them directly from Peanuts comic strips, because of course there's decades of those comic strips.
So there's so much to pull through or if they're creating something original.
But the artwork is beautiful.
Like it's so clean and crisp.
In fact, you can't tell on what you're showing on your screen right now.
It just looks like a yellow background.
But when you actually have it on your Apple TV, if you put your face close to the TV, you'll notice that the actual background that has a solid color, it's not a solid color.
It actually has like, you know how if you look close to like the comics page of a newspaper, it's actually got those dots, those halftone newsprint dots.
And if you look close, it's the same.
So it brings the feel of reading the colorful Sunday comics that you used to do as a kid.
And everything about it is delightful.
There have, I mean, for many times, I have been sitting in front of my Apple TV in the past.
And like one of those cool aerial screensavers would come on.
And even though I'm supposed to be doing some work or reading something, I'll find myself mesmerized just by watching, 'cause it's so cool.
These Snoopy screensavers are the same way, for me at least, is that I will often find myself, and my wife does the same too.
We're just there.
We just laugh at the silly stuff.
And again, this is all G-rated comedy.
You know, it's such simple. - Right, right, right. - It's cute. - It's fun. - It's fun.
It's something interesting to happen on your TV.
And I love it.
So I've been, now, you know, I pointed out in my post that, although I think personally they're great, my teenage daughter, who is like 17 years old, she marked in this past weekend.
My wife and I were just sitting there talking to each other.
Snoopy was on the TV.
We were sort of laughing at what Snoopy was doing.
And she just came in and rolled her eyes.
She's like, "Oh, this is so boring.
"You know, what's this?"
I mean, at least she knows who Snoopy is.
I guess that gives her some credit, exactly.
But she's like, "Oh, y'all, "bring back those aerial screensavers.
"I like them better."
So anyway, your tastes are different from mine.
Maybe you don't like them, but I think that they are likeable. - I can't wait to see this.
Because, you know, this immediately, this would not surprise me if this is original from Apple, because you remember, Jeff, when Apple came out with these Snoopy screensavers for the Apple Watch, which has been out for, what, two years now, right? - Oh, I should have mentioned that, yeah. - I remember specifically because, you know, my wife, probably like yours, you know, she loves her Apple Watch, but she doesn't really care what's on it, until I showed her putting the Snoopy face on there, Jeff.
And she has not ever changed it since.
She loves it, because it's similar to what you're talking about.
If you remember, on that Apple Watch face, Snoopy and Woodstock will all of a sudden, like, you know, hang on the second hand.
Yeah, you've got it on right there.
You're showing it.
It'll do different things every time that you lift your wrist.
And she just continues after two years.
Yeah, there you go.
It is on his red house there.
And I remember we covered a story or two where I think Apple did do some of these things original, right?
There was like a whole team that was working on this. - Yeah, there was a good story on that. - Yeah, I'm thrilled to see that they're bringing it into the Apple TV.
And I know we spent a lot of time talking about this, but it's just so nice and quirky.
And just like you said, to see something that I would not be surprised at all if this is original from Apple.
Like, I don't think that they're taking anything.
They could be repurposing some stuff, but they've got that close relationship like you're talking about that I think that's just wonderful. - Well, I mean, there's no question that the animation itself is being created fresh for the screen.
What I don't know is if like the quote unquote scripts, you know, the idea that, I don't know if that comes from the cartoons.
But back to your point, and I'm so glad you mentioned the Apple Watch thing.
I love the idea that when Apple first established this relationship with Snoopy, you know, it could have been simple, right?
They could have done nothing more than purchase the right to the old cartoons, Peanuts cartoons, and maybe commissioned some new ones.
And that way they just would have had shows in Apple TV+.
That would have been the easy way to go, but they went further.
They said, let's use this IP.
Let's put it on the Apple Watch.
Let's put it on a screensaver for the Apple TV.
Who knows what they'll come up with in the future.
And I mean, it makes sense because Snoopy is fun.
And again, maybe it's a generational thing, but I love that Apple is doing some cool new things.
They're basically taking the old comics from the decades ago, and they're bringing it into modern life by putting it in our modern electronic equipment.
I love it.
I love it.
So if you haven't found a screensaver yet on your Apple TV, find it, put it on there, and see if you enjoy it as much as I do. - Maybe tonight when you go watch "Separate Ways" too, right?
(both laughing) All right, so that's the fun update from 18.2.
Let's talk about a questionable update from 18.2.
And this one is actually on, well, I guess it's across iOS.
This has to do with Apple Intelligence, and even more specifically, how they're using it to basically summarize news headlines.
That's a kind of an overbroad explanation there.
But I remember there's been several angles to some of the stories about how people are upset about it.
People were laughing about it.
Some were serious, some not so serious.
But man, now it's beginning to make some news.
And I think, what did you point to today, that there's gonna be some changes to this feature in 18.3 when that comes out? - Yeah, so here's the issue.
I mean, the bigger issue is that Apple Intelligence, I mean, we've been talking about it a lot because Apple is putting so much money and features behind it, because, at least I say because, the impression has been that Apple was sort of behind others in the industry.
And so they've been very quickly ramping up their AI efforts, which is great.
And I think it's right, because there's no question that this AI stuff with generative AI is going to be transformative and it's starting to be now.
The problem is, is that it's still in such its early stages and it's not perfect.
I mean, when I look at everything that Apple's done with AI so far, because the last couple of, 18.0, 18.1, 18.2, we've had little Apple features.
None of them has been a big deal for me.
They can summarize email messages, whatever. - You didn't like that so much. - Yeah, you can directly have chat GPT part of questions that you ask Siri.
I've used it a couple of times.
Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not so much.
So, I mean, I have yet to find what I consider to be the killer app in AI, but don't get me wrong.
I'm glad that Apple is trying things and they're going to come across something new.
And so one of their ideas was, you have these summaries on your screen, and instead of having tons and tons and tons of little summaries, the idea was let's use AI to sort of summarize the summaries.
And in some cases it works great.
I mean, the great example for me is when you have something like a HomeKit device that's gone on and off or detected activity, instead of seeing 15 notifications about activity in my backyard, I can just get one summary notification that says, these things were detected, a cat was detected walking in your back, some sort of an overall summary to not have to look at all the things.
I like that.
Apple had an idea, which is a lot of these news apps tend to send a lot of alerts.
And part of it is the fault of the news organizations.
There are organizations like the BBC, the New York Times, others, NBC News, that they will send something that they consider to be a breaking news alert.
And in my mind, it is not breaking news.
I mean, this is just like, you know, dog bites man.
I mean, this is not all that.
And so I appreciate the apps, they're basically using it as sort of like an advertising, you know, oh, look at our app because here's a news story.
But I mean, some of this news is not life changing.
So I understand Apple's idea that instead of having lots and lots of summaries and lots of lots of news alerts, let's just summarize it.
And so we'll just give you one snippet of here's what's going on.
But the problem is, is that a headline by definition is pretty short, right?
You know, like eight words maybe. - It's already a summary, really. - And so if you try to compress that even further, you're gonna lose some meaning.
And sometimes you're not just lose meaning, you actually get it wrong.
And so this BBC article that you're pointing out has an example.
There was this thing that was in the news last year that there was a guy in New York who tried to kill the president of what pharmaceutical company was it? - Yeah, yeah. - Thank you, our United Health Company.
And so the actual news story was something about him being arrested.
But the summary that Apple created said that this person, Luigi Mangione shot himself, which was wrong.
He did not.
Apple, the Apple intelligence was confused. - But yeah, he didn't shoot himself, right?
So I feel like I can see where it got wrong, but that's the point. - You can understand why it got wrong, but that is a big difference.
You know, saying that somebody in the news has shot himself when he has not is wrong.
And so the BBC, many news organizations, but I think the BBC has been the most vocal.
They have said, you gotta stop this Apple because people are blaming us.
People are blaming us for fake news when we're telling you the truth, the true headline, and you're messing it up.
And so I think it's a problem.
So the question is, and plus on top of all of this, Brett, AI, Apple intelligence is still in beta.
So like things that are showing up on the front of your iPhone, as if it is the God truth, is a beta feature that's gonna make mistakes, even aside from the inherent- - By definition. - Problems of summarizing what is already a summary.
So there's just a lot here.
So as a result, what, you know, 18.3, which will be coming out soon, maybe this month, we don't know for sure when, is going to change this.
And the beta versions are already out there and people are reporting on it.
And so Jason Snell, and he's quoting something from Chance Miller of 9to5Mac, they're saying that Apple is doing a couple of different things to change these notifications.
First of all, is it's putting things in italics, which means that the idea is that it will sort of jump out at you more, that, okay, this is an italics.
And so this is an AI thing, as opposed to something else.
You can also disable where there's some of these functions come out so that you can turn it off.
I think there's actually gonna be a little warning that says maybe contain errors.
Apple's doing a bunch of tweak this.
And, you know, Jason Snell, who's been covering this extensively on Six Colors and elsewhere, you know, his take, again, if I can summarize his summary, 'cause I agree with everything he said on it, is, you know, number one, it's good that Apple is trying to do something.
Number two, however, this might just be inherently broken.
I don't know if you can accurately summarize something as short as a news headline.
AI does a pretty good job of taking a big text and summarize it down to a sentence or two.
If you've ever tried that on either Apple devices or anything else, if you give it something big, it can summarize it.
That's more or less, not that it's gonna 100% error-free, but it does a pretty good job with that.
But when you're trying to summarize something as short as a headline, I don't know that that's gonna ever work.
So we'll see. - I like this story from Jason.
He even says at the bottom, he goes, "In short, this seems like a good bit of damage control, but there's much more work to be done here."
So yeah, you know, I don't know.
I mean, as I mentioned at the beginning, like I've seen all kinds of different angles.
Some people, you know, we talked about it when text messages, right?
Where it's summarized a text message, which again, inherently a text message typically is very short most of the time.
And if you're gonna try to summarize a very short text message, sometimes it doesn't come across very well.
And I guess I can see from a logical standpoint, 'cause another example they had in here was when the New York Times was talking about the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.
And so, you know, that's not the same as him getting arrested, but the summary in Apple Intelligence was Netanyahu arrested.
I mean, I can see- - But just not at all to have it happen, exactly, yeah. - Right, I can see logically, I guess, from like a programmatic mindset of like where, you know, you can maybe get that.
That could be a summary and, you know, a computer and, you know, some kind of an artificial intelligence can come to that conclusion, but it's not the same when you have a human intelligence, read it on there.
So anyway, I mean, I would like to think that Apple knew some of this was going to be coming forward, but we've seen it time and time again, that Apple is much extensive, you know, testing and experimentation that they do.
Once it gets out into the real world specifically, that's when things, you know, can go off the rails a little bit.
And Apple usually is very good about, you know, coming back and like Jason says, damage control.
The fact that they're gonna say, you know, they're gonna make it clear that it's in beta.
Like you said, it's gonna have a little notification summary that say may contain errors, which by the way, if you go to chat GPT and you, you know, typically at least in the free version, I think in any version, there are those warnings there, right?
That's our proverbial, you know, fine print that says may contain errors.
You know, it's not, don't rely on this, et cetera.
And there's many stories even in our profession about lawyers using citations that were gleaned from chat GPT that were just hallucinations.
So anyway, I think this is as good as it's gonna get right now, but hopefully it will continue to improve as well.
Maybe we can also get some summaries of the weather.
We could do it with the Apple weather, but what are your favorite?
We haven't talked about carrot weather in a long time.
I don't subscribe to it, but I know that you do Jeff.
So I was glad to see that there's some updates here for the CarPlay app and now it's even available in live activities, which is great. - Yeah, so the live activities part was added a little while ago in a simple form, but not the version that's today.
So what they had before is, well, let me even back a little bit further.
One of the nice things that carrot weather can do with live activity and live activity, of course, is the thing that can show up at the very top of a new iPhone, where you've got that bar on top or on your lock screen either show, but it's a way for an app to sort of like be running in the background and be giving you information.
And so right now, or at least before the update this week, if you ran the carrot weather app, you know, just to check the weather or something, it would stay running for a period of time.
I don't know how long it is, if it's minutes or an hour or whatever it is, but for some period of time, it could stay running.
So that for example, if it was raining outside, it could give you an alert, like the one that you're showing on the screen for people watching the video, that it will give you a sense of, you know, it's going to start raining and it's gonna rain even more.
And it's a way for you very quickly to see, oh, okay, I can see that we're about to get a lot of rain and it's gonna last for this long and then it's gonna be over.
So if I'm gonna go outside to go grab some lunch, maybe I'll wait 20 minutes for the rain to finish.
So it's a nice way to sort of give you an indicator.
But that live activity would only appear for that short period of time.
What they're now doing is they have a new feature that whenever it is about to rain, if you wanna turn this on, and I did, it will automatically start running the live activity so that when you glance, for example, at your lock screen, you'll instantly say, oh, wait a minute, I see it's about to start raining.
So maybe I'll wanna, you know, do something else first before I go outside, or, you know, make whatever decisions you wanna make based upon it.
The way that I believe that that's working is I believe that the actual Carrot server is like monitoring weather in your location and sending you, like, it's like sending something to your phone to trigger the live activity or however that is that it works.
And so there's obviously a cost for Carrot, you know, because of offsite resources, the people behind, the guy behind Carrot.
And so that's why this feature is only available if you subscribe to the, whatever you call it, the ultra premium version.
So I understand why there's an extra cost, but what a useful feature that if it's about to rain, which is like one of those things that people, you know, way back when they used to love, people used to love the dark sky app before Apple purchased it, because it did such a good job of predicting it's gonna start raining, it's gonna be finished in seven minutes, and you could plan your life around it.
So this is a great feature.
I'm glad that they added it, bravo on them.
But the one that's, I think, even more interesting, and in fact, before I go into CarPlay, anything that you wanted to add on that live activity feature? - No, that's great.
But, you know, just to me, I almost like this as sort of, this isn't Apple intelligence per se, but in my mind, this is the useful thing.
I think about this when I use like the flighty app, for example, you know, when it's getting close to like two hours before my flight or so, that live activity for the flighty app, or even sometimes the, like, I fly United, like that will have a live activity on there as well.
And it'll start because it'll start telling you, you know, even a couple of hours before, is your plane delayed?
You know, is there anything?
And I just, I love the fact that that automatically will come on and give some information like that.
So I think this is just a good angle for Carrot as well. - Yeah, it's like having a little personal assistant that knows, you know, you're interested in your flight, you're interested in the weather, and here's what you need to know.
I love it.
In fact, like you say, even more interesting than some of this AI stuff.
Okay, so that's one of their new features.
The other new feature is something that I have been hoping that somebody would have something like this for a long time.
And the actual feature is a CarPlay app.
You know, as you know, apps can create a CarPlay app.
Apple has to approve them.
And if so, you know, there's only a limited number of apps that have CarPlay apps, but there are some of them.
And, you know, many of us have used them, you know, for example, there's the Apple Maps app, but if you instead want to use Google Maps for your driving directions in CarPlay, you can do that.
If you want to use Waze, you can do that.
You can go back and forth, which is nice.
And so what CarPlay has done, I'm sorry, what Carrot Weather has done is they have created a CarPlay app, and it just came out, I think, yesterday.
So when I was driving home from work yesterday, and of course I don't need a map.
I know how to get home from my work, but I turned it on just to sort of see what it does.
And what it does is it shows a, and you can see a picture of it behind you right now.
It shows a, like a weather map.
So it's up at sort of like, it's not at the street level, right?
It's up or like at the city level, or you can press the plus and minus button to get even more, but it allows you to see a weather map, just like you would watch on the nightly news, or just like you would, you know, use on an iPhone app to get a sense of where the weather systems are with, you know, the different colors of intensity, you know, green, yellow, red, you know, we're all familiar with those 'cause we've all seen weather maps before.
But what I think is nice is, you know, sometimes when you're driving, it's like, you know, I'm about to hit some bad weather.
I wanna know that, or maybe I'm in some bad weather.
How much longer am I gonna have this bad weather?
These are questions you have all the time.
It happens a lot when I take, and I'm sure this is true for everybody.
When I'm on a road trip, you know, you're on the interstate.
Whenever we go to the beach, we drive from New Orleans over to, you know, the panhandle of Florida, or sometimes the Alabama beaches.
And, you know, that couple of hour drive, invariably, you know, you're gonna hit some bad weather at some point.
We just went to Gulf Shores, Alabama for New Year, just before New Year's.
And, you know, you hit some really bad weather.
And when you're in that weather, what you wanna know is how long is this gonna last?
You know, is it gonna get really bad?
Should I like pull over and go to a, you know, a gas station or something to wait it out for a little bit?
And so looking at a weather map is a good way to do it.
And sometimes when we're driving, like if my wife's driving and I'm in the passenger seat, you know, I will immediately pull up a weather app and try to get a sense of, you know, doing exactly this, looking at the weather system.
Where are we gonna be in 20 minutes?
Is it getting worse?
Is it getting, you know, which way is it going?
And so if you're just by yourself, I think it's a great idea to be in, you know, don't be distracted while you're driving, but CarPlay is pretty good on this.
You can just quickly tap the button on your CarPlay to bring up the Carrot weather app.
And you could see the system right there.
And then you can get a sense of, oh, this is gonna get bad.
It's gonna get worse.
This is exactly what you need to know.
Now, Carrot has also built into the app turn-by-turn directions so that you could just make this your driving app.
And so that's what I used when I went home last night.
Now, I will tell you, it's not the best.
If all you're interested in is directions, you don't wanna use this app.
And the reason I say that is because it's not, it's not really down at the street level in terms of what it shows you, because that would be silly for weather.
You need to be up a certain degree.
You know, you need to be a little bit more of a bird's eye view or much higher.
And so from a map standpoint, it doesn't really make sense for turn-by-turn.
Now, the actual turn-by-turn directions that it showed on screen, and if you turn on the speaker, it will actually speak to you.
I mean, those were perfectly fine.
I mean, those were accurate.
I mean, it told me take a left turn here.
I mean, it uses your GPS.
It knows where you are.
So it gives you those directions and you could use it that way.
But what I suspect would be more useful going forward is, you know, let's say I'm taking that cross-country trip.
I've either used Apple Maps or Waze or Google Maps, you know, whichever one is your normal favorite, stick with that, but put right on the home screen of your CarPlay where you have like, is it like eight apps that you're on your first screen and then you can't map.
You know, I would put Carrot Weather on that app, on that screen so that it would be very simple for me to touch while I'm driving.
So maybe I'm using Google Map or using Apple Maps, either one of them.
But then if I want to quickly look at the weather, I can switch, I can see the weather, I can make my decision and then go back.
So I suspect that that is how I will want to use this.
But again, the idea of this, I think is a good one.
I'm almost surprised that companies like Apple or especially Google, 'cause they tend to come up with new features from a mapping standpoint before almost anyone.
Like I'm almost surprised that they haven't put something like this in their app with weather.
I've reviewed in the past, like there was an app that I reviewed a while ago on iPhone JD called Weather on the Way that like it was a weather app that's actually made for traveling.
Like you say, I'm starting here, I'm going there, and it will tell you, okay, well at 11 o'clock, you're gonna be going through Nashville and I can tell you the weather's gonna be horrible at 11 o'clock in Nashville.
It was a good idea, but that's more for like planning your trip purchase, right, you know, deciding maybe I want to adjust the time that I leave to avoid really bad weather in this city or something like that.
You know, the idea of an app that is giving you real-time information as you're driving on the weather, I think is a good idea.
Look at you, you found it real quick there.
So this, in fact, wouldn't, maybe Weather on the Way should have a CarPlay app.
Maybe that would make sense too.
So long way of saying, I love that Carrot Weather did this update.
This is, I mean, I just started using it last night, so I don't have a lot of experience with it.
It just came out yesterday, but I think that this is a great idea that could be really useful. - Anytime we can talk about Carrot Weather app, I'm happy.
Like I said, I did subscribe at one time, but then I just stopped at it and felt like I needed it that much, but now I'm kind of missing it, especially with the fact that they are, you know, I mean, it's just such a unique app in what it does.
And I just like supporting, you know, some of those independent developers.
So that's really good. - Yeah, we should just mention quickly, if you want to get all those features, the ultra premium or whatever it's called, it's like $30 a year.
You can also pay monthly if you want.
I pay $50 a year, which gets you all of those features.
Plus you can share it with up to five family members. - Oh, that's good.
Okay. - My son actually pays attention to it because he does a lot of astrophotography and stuff.
And so he's paying attention to weather and there's great things in there.
But you know, these are just the two newest reasons to subscribe to Carat Weather.
There are all sorts of other pros and advantages you get.
So if you care about the weather, it's a good app.
Okay, enough said about Carat Weather. - If you care about the weather. - Great app. - That's a good tagline for them.
If you care about the weather, go ahead and subscribe to us. - Oh, Brett, I should say one last thing about it. - Yeah, please. - I talk about Carat Weather as a serious weather app 'cause it really is.
But the thing that first made it famous is that it's snarky, right? - Snarky. - If you turn it on, it will say things that are borderline or across the border, insulting to you just to be funny.
And the Carplay app will do the same thing. - Oh, come on, that's awesome. - If you have a map track and then you go off track, it will complain that it has to reroute the map for you. - Oh, good. - It will call you a meat bag.
I mean, it's silly little things.
So if you want to be insulted by an insult comic as you're driving, the Carat Weather app offers that too.
Okay, enough said. - And if I recall, there's like a slider, right?
You can say how much snarkiness you want, right? - You can, in the app you can, yes, exactly. - And so you can be a little kinder if you want it to go all out.
Yeah, that's some good stuff.
I like it. - Okay. - Something we haven't talked about in a while is the physical Apple stores, even though, I mean, we mentioned it every once in a while, but I like that you linked to a story today about a new store that Apple is opening in China, but what's a little newsworthy of this apparently is that they are combining the Genius Bar with an Apple pickup station.
I don't really know what that's gonna look like necessarily.
I kind of already thought some stores already had done that.
I liked when they used to have like a separate Genius Bar and people would go there and it was usually always packed anyway, but then pickup, I could usually go, sometimes I go into a store and it's like different tables, like at the Apple Watch table over there, that kind of a thing.
But this looks like it could be an interesting different take.
I like the fact that Apple is still maybe experimenting a little bit with the stores.
Some of them are a little bit different. - So, the bigger Apple stores, all the flagship stores, for example, they will typically have these dedicated Genius Bars, which is a long bar.
It's like a bar that you would have a drink at, a long bar with chairs, and you can get support for your products, stuff like that.
At smaller Apple stores, they don't have space for a Genius Bar, so they will instead often dedicate one of those wooden tables to help people and stuff like that.
But even smaller stores, like we have a smaller store here in the New Orleans area, called the Apple Store Lakeside in Metairie, Louisiana, and at the very back of the store, there's a small table that only has enough space for like two Apple employees.
And it's basically the pickup table.
Like if you ordered something online and you want to pick it up, you could just go straight there.
Or for other very simple things, like if you bought something and you want to check out, you could do it there.
Of course, you could also do it on an app on your phone.
But like for those simple transactions, it's a central place to go.
Because one of the things that some people don't like about the Apple Store is the chaos that they've got their employees floating throughout there.
They sort of find you, you know, there's no clear cash register, you know, it's both a plus and a minus, depending on what you do.
So what apparently is occurring in this new store in China, and there's a picture of it you have right there, is at the very back of the store, instead of a short table that would fit two Apple employees, they have a long table that's like the size of a genius bar.
And the idea is that it sort of would have two functions at once.
Yes, it's the place that you go for returns and stuff like that, but also it's the genius bar where you could sit down.
And so this is, maybe this is just speculation by the author of this article, Joe Rosenal, but, or maybe he actually has some insight, but he's suggesting that this could be, you know, Apple is always tweaking the design of the stores.
And, you know, they will try something in one store, and if it works, they'll bring it to other stores.
Is that he's suggesting that maybe this is something that we will see more of.
And if they did, maybe in smaller markets, like I say smaller, I mean, we have a decent size Apple store in the New Orleans area.
It's just not like a mega store, but you know, maybe they will expand it to actually have like a genius bar and instead of it.
So that would be interesting if it happens.
I think it's interesting 'cause Apple has done so much to tweak this concept over the years.
I mean, when it first came out, in fact, I sent you some pictures, Brett, from, I was living in, I was living in New York city right after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
So from 2005 to six, which was some of the relatively early days of the Apple store.
I would visit many of the Apple stores in New York.
And these pictures are from the Apple store Soho. - I was just gonna say that's Soho, isn't it?
Yeah, I recognize it. - Which has this really cool glass staircase in the middle and stuff like that.
It's still does as I understand it.
But one of the things that I remember, and here's a picture of me, 'cause I purchased my iPod.
But one of the things, it goes back in time, this is all pre iPhone.
This is when it was the iPod was a big deal and people were watching shows like "Lost" on the iPod.
But one of the things I remember about this flagship store is first of all, they had a dedicated genius bar.
And one of the pictures I sent you shows that.
But the other thing that they had was a dedicated, so there was their genius bar.
And the genius bars of today are not really that different from this one back in, what, this is about 20 years ago, 2005.
So that concept in the stores has been around for a while.
But the other picture I sent you was, they had a dedicated iPod bar. - Oh, look at that. - Because at the time, the iPod was such the hot topic.
And so many people would have questions about their iPod or how they were doing, that they had like a separate just for the iPod.
And so I just thought it's funny that, this idea of Apple coming up with innovative and different ways to have this bar as it were, here we are 20 years later, and they're still tweaking the concept with what they're doing in China.
So that's why I just thought these pictures were sort of interesting. - That's so funny.
I do remember that.
I've only been in that Soho store, well, maybe twice over.
But I remember, at least the time that I was there, when you walk up these steps, I feel like there was a big theater that was behind that. - It is, it's at the very top of those steps.
That's exactly right. - Yeah, and it was like beautiful, like curved and everything.
Okay, so I don't know if they may have changed that because to your point, they often tweak the design, even of the individual stores.
I mean, even sometimes when I go to my local Apple store, I haven't been there for six, seven, eight months or whatever, and I walk in and I'm like, "Whoa, wait a minute, that used to be over there."
Or the accessories used to be over there.
Most stores are doing this, but I guess we're just a little more fascinated with how they're handling some of this on the Apple side.
The only beef I have with this picture, yeah, I was just gonna say, the only beef I have with this picture from the China store is that there's only like four people at the bar.
Have you ever walked into an Apple store where there's only four people at the bar?
I mean, Apple, I think they always do a good job of like, you know, navigating the crowds, but there's always a lot of people around there. - I tell you, I mean, in New Orleans, we used to have a smaller Apple store, and then about a year or so, two ago, they basically doubled the size of the store by taking a different location in the mall.
And when the store was small, it was so busy.
And when the store was twice as big, it's still just as big.
I mean, it's like- - Still so busy. - And you go to different parts of the country, you go to different Apple stores, they're always busy.
And you could go in the morning and midday, afternoon, weekend.
It's something about those Apple stores are always so crazy busy.
I was just, when you're talking about the different designs, when I started living in New York in the fall of 2005, that store in Soho was like the big Apple store.
But it was while I was living there, it was in early 2006 that they came out with the Fifth Avenue store, which is probably the most iconic one now, right?
'Cause it's got the glass cube and stuff.
And that was just such a new design to have a completely underground store.
And of course, they've come up with so many very interesting flagship stores around the country since then.
So Apple stores are fascinating. - Jeff, you and I need to take a field trip to this store in China, because did you see at the very bottom of this story, they are releasing special edition AirPods 4.
Look at that, with a little snake engraving, 'cause it is the year of the snake.
I just, I love that.
I mean, I know you can get AirPods engraved.
I typically don't just simply because of either like resale value or stuff like that.
But I just love that little thing.
Yep, field trip.
In the news, field trip going to China.
I like that. - Two things I'll say about that.
First of all, is that I do sometimes get the engraving, but what I don't like about it is they, it's not technically engraving, right?
It's just printing on the top of it.
And like, I don't know if you can see in the camera, but I'm holding up right now.
I wrote iPhone JD on my AirPods Pro, and like, it's all but faded out.
I mean, I suppose if you had mine in one hand and my wife's in another hand, because I have at least a little something and she has nothing at all, you could tell that one's mine, one's her, which is the nice thing about having the engraving, but it does wear out over time.
The second thing I'll say is you're pointing out that in China, they have this special year of the snake icon.
There's something about Apple in China that like Apple comes out with unique versions.
Sometimes it's for the year of the whatever.
Sometimes it's for like, they have a thing called what, Friends Day in China or something like that.
Or I may have the name wrong. - They have always acknowledged that. - They often come out.
It'll be special, like it'll be like at a little insignia on something or it'll be a special color.
Like China is the one place in the world that Apple actually does this routinely.
Here in America, they don't come out with specialty designs for Thanksgiving or Christmas or things like that.
But, and I guess I'm sure Apple knows what it's doing.
They must know that when they take the time to do something special for the Chinese market, people buy it.
And so I guess that's why they keep doing it.
But so when I see articles like this one that you're linking to, I just think it's funny because they always come up with those special things in China. - We regularly talk about Tim Cook, at least in his leadership role at Apple.
But if you wanted to get a few more personal details, this was fascinating to me.
A podcast that I don't listen to very much called Table Manners.
This is from Julie Clover at Mac Rumors was linking to this.
She kind of summarized it all as a human summarization of the headline, which is great.
But I just love that Tim Cook, apparently it was, if you go and look at the website, he was between a visit with like the prime minister of Great Britain, and then he was gonna go have tea, afternoon tea with the King of England or the Queen at some point.
So in between that, he stopped by the Table Matters podcast apparently and talked about this.
So many fun little things, including, including I had no idea the Apple spaceship, the ring is, I think it is built on former Apple orchards, if I'm not mistaken, right out in California.
And so there's still Apple trees that grow inside the ring, I'm assuming are on the ground somewhere.
And apparently Tim was sharing that Apple collects the apples and makes their own spiced Apple jam.
And so he brought a jar for the, for the host of the podcast.
I love this.
I can't wait to listen to the whole thing. - I had heard that before that, that whole area of California used to be a bunch of orchards, stuff like that.
And then when Silicon Valley became big in what the seventies and eighties and stuff, a lot of those, the agriculture was completely torn down.
The place where the Apple spaceship campus is, Apple Park, it's not called the spaceship campus.
That's what I call it. - Right, Apple Park. - It used to be just like this complete concrete boring, I think it was HP that was there.
And so when Apple purchased that, Apple tore down all those concrete buildings and they replanted, and then they built the circular spaceship campus, but then in the middle, they replanted, you know, not just regular trees, but also Apple trees and stuff like that to sort of try to return to the idea of, you know, what the land was originally.
It was one of those sort of, you know, lofty things that Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive would talk about way back in the day.
But I mean, it is very pretty. - I'm just going to jump in real quick because I remember specifically one of the last things that Steve Jobs did before he passed away.
If you remember, he went in front of, with the Cupertino town council or whatever.
Do you remember that Jeff?
Yeah.
And he was explaining this and that's why I remember that detail just because he was explaining the vision that he had and he was so frail at the time and so skinny, you know, you could tell that things were not going well at the time, but I remember even just then, he still had that passion of what they wanted to do, what Apple wanted to do with that area. - When the campus Apple Park first opened, I remember that they even made available for interviews.
The guy at Apple, I don't know if it's the same guy who is, was in charge of the trees and the agriculture and everything like that.
I mean, this is somebody that's, I'm sure Apple hired, like one of the best people in the world when it comes to burning trees and stuff like that is.
And I have, I've heard in the past that one of the things they do with those Apple trees, which of course at the Apple campus, it's so funny is they, they, they, they take the apples and they do make this jam and I've seen that it's something special that Apple has.
And so it's funny that people on the podcast, I know. - Do they sell it in the store?
Like I want to go get some apple spice jam. - You got to know, you got to know somebody who knows somebody who knows Tim Cook, basically to get that.
So that, that was just one.
That was just one. - One, I know. - I haven't listened to yet.
I plan to do so, but I did read a summary of it and, you know, things like, you know, he doesn't really cook.
He makes, he, he gets all of, most of his meals at cafe max, which is the, the cafeteria, very nice cafeteria on the Apple campus that, you know, he loves white wine, especially Chardonnay.
He loves chocolate. - Chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate.
Apparently. - He loves to hike.
I did know that, which was interesting. - Yes. - What one, I don't know if it's in this article or if it was in another article about it.
And, and this is going to link to something that we're talking about in a second, but Tim Cook shared a story that his father, who's no longer alive, but when he was alive, his, I can't remember if it was iPhone or his Apple watch.
I mean, I think it was his Apple watch. - I saw that. - Had used, had used fall detection.
And apparently his father had fallen down and then it, an alert went to, to people.
And if I remember the story correctly, I shouldn't be saying this cause I don't remember the details.
But I think that 911 had to like break through his door to get to Tim Cook's father.
And Tim Cook himself was so glad that emergency people saved his father's life because of his Apple watch.
But his dad was upset that they broke his door to come into his house.
I may be getting some of those details wrong, but you know, the funny is, you know, even Tim Cook has to, you know, deal with, you know, with the parents at the time, but it was interesting because of all the times that people have had stories about how an Apple watch or an iPhone can, can share your life.
If you have a crash through crash detection, this is the first time that I had heard that Tim Cook's own father had actually, you know, helped, been helped by this.
So that is, you know, there's many, many personal details about Tim Cook's life.
If you're interested in them, check out this article or do what I haven't done yet, but I do plan to do, which is listen to this podcast. - So fun.
Love that.
Love that.
Let's talk about driver's licenses.
And the reason we keep talking about this on the podcast is because now there's even more States that will allow you to add your digital driver's license to your iPhone.
If you remember, I think it was not even quite a year ago.
Maybe it was last summer or so.
I think at Jeff, when finally Ohio, where I am allowed me to add my driver's license to my Apple wallet.
And I loved it.
And it actually, it wasn't that big of a deal.
You do have to like, I remember now every state's a little bit different how they handle this.
Right.
But in Ohio, I didn't have to go through an application process, but it was all on the phone itself.
You know, I think I had to just verify my identity, that kind of a thing.
And then the, I guess in Ohio, it's our Bureau of Drivers, something or another, I can't remember.
It was like a different kind of a little bit of a different organization or agency, but they had to approve it.
And once they did, I got the approval right in my Apple wallet app.
And it was great.
It's at the top of my list.
In your story today, you're talking about several others that are being added.
I will just tell you quickly, the one thing that I have been disappointed in is that even though I have it in my wallet app now, I have tried at least at two different airports now when they have asked me for my identification to be like, Oh, Oh, I don't need to get it out of my, out of my pocket.
I've got it right here in my phone.
And they just kind of blankly stare at me like, you know, I don't know what, what you're, I don't know what you're thinking, dude, but you're not, you know, I need to see your, your actual license.
And, you know, I know that that was probably going to be some of the growing pains on this, but I'm thrilled to see that more and more States are adding, are adding this capability, which is great. - Yeah.
The Apple wallet app is such a, an unsung hero on the iPhone because it's so nice to have a central location for these things.
It's nice to have your license in there.
If you're in a state that allows it, it's nice that, I mean, tomorrow I'm going to a, you know, one of these touring Broadway shows at something called N Juliet at the local theater in New Orleans, the Sanger.
But my, my, my tickets are right there in the wallet app. - Right. - And when I go to, you know, even to watch high school basketball games to watch my daughter play my tickets from this thing called the hometown app.
They're right there in the mall.
It's like, it's a central location.
My, my credit cards of course are there on my Apple card and gift cards.
I love just having that one central location.
Now here in Louisiana, go ahead. - I was going to quickly just jump in real quick.
You know, I've, I've alluded, we need to have a show on this when I travel to Europe, but everything, everything was in the Apple wallet app, Jeff, to your point, when we got on the underground in London, guess what we had it.
We use the Apple wallet app because you can do a, what they call it transit express.
And then when we got to Paris, we use the Paris metro.
Guess what?
You can add a transit pass right in the Apple wallet.
They did this right before the Olympics last year, but it was so easy.
And to your point, like everything was available there.
I paid everywhere at restaurants and everything just using the Apple wallet.
So like you said, it just, you know, and we've talked about this many, many times.
It just continues to grow because it's, it's such a trustworthy system, at least so far.
I mean, I, you know, there's so many things, there's things that could go wrong with this.
I feel like, but Apple has really, I thought, I think has done a good job of making sure there's enough resources applied to this. - Yeah, it's great.
So, I mean, I was just going to say here in Louisiana, our state app is which sort of predated all this stuff.
We have a separate app for the right of place.
And so it's not part of the wallet, but it's still the idea that it's right there on your iPhone.
If I forget to pick up my wallet and I'm driving across town, I know that I still have my license with me, just a digital version of it.
So anyway, we should say the news item from this week is that Illinois is about to adopt it.
And some of the other states that are going to have it very soon, I guess, in, you know, 2025, include Connecticut, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana, and West Virginia.
So it's, it's a slow thing, but we will get to the point where almost every state will have either this or something similar.
And I look forward to that future because it's so useful to have your license on your iPhone. - And so much, and so much more trustworthy.
I mean, again, I know this whole thing, you know, with the way that humans have thought about technology for so long, it's like, well, no, that that's, you know, the actual car that you have is much more secure than having something digital.
And I know there's pros and cons both way, but I absolutely trust having something in a digital format, something secure like Apple wallet than I do.
And having the actual, you know, I mean, so many can be on the forgery side, whatever, but again, I know there's pros and cons on both sides, but that's just good stuff on there.
All right.
We talked about the phone.
We talked about the TV.
Let's talk about the Apple watch really quickly, just because it's another great review after what?
Three months that Oliver Haslam over at Apple insider has been using the Apple watch series 10.
And I was reading through this and I'm like, okay, I'm just going to, I think that Jeff agrees with that and with that and with that, with that, you've still are enjoying your Apple watch as well.
Probably after three months, I think, your Apple watch series 10. - Indeed.
Whenever Apple comes out with new hardware, I often enjoy reading reviews like right as they're coming out or even before it comes out, because you want to get excited about the features, decide if it's something you want to buy.
And so that's one time that I read reviews, but I also liked that there was many sites like Apple insider is doing that after you've been using a product for three months for six months, for a year, they'll come back and do a review.
And those can be just as useful.
But first of all, some people haven't purchased one yet.
And so it's still relevant for them.
But second of all, even if you own it, like I do by reading sort of a comprehensive review like this of features that somebody else thought was useful, it will remind me, oh yeah, you know, that's something I haven't been exploring enough, but I should be or something like that.
So anyway, it's, I enjoy reading reviews like this.
And the one that I mentioned in my post today is that he, what he was impressed about.
And it's something that you and I have talked about is that managing battery life on the Apple watch series 10 works really well because of the fast charging that it can do.
And, you know, this isn't something that all the modern Apple watches do including the ultra that you use, but it's just so nice that if you, if you put it on a charger for, you know, a half an hour, you can get 80% of your chart, go from zero to 80%.
And of course, if you're starting at 20%, then you can get even higher.
And so that's useful and it doesn't have to be 30 minutes.
I mean, you could just put it on there for 10 minutes.
And for me, you know, I, for years and years, I never used to wear my Apple watch as I slept at night.
And so I didn't take advantage of things like sleep tracking.
And then when I started using an Apple watch ultra for about a month last year, because it had such incredible battery life, as you know, I'm like, well, this is great.
I could sleep with it.
But I have found with the series 10, because I can get so much of a charge, you know, just when I'm taking a shower in the morning and I put it on there or every once in a while, I'll just, I'll just throw it on my charger at work or at home for a couple of minutes.
It's so easy to get that quick charge that, you know, the best solution would be to have a battery life that lasts forever, like what you have in the ultra.
But the second best solution is to make it such a non-issue when you need to recharge it.
And that's why the app, the series 10 does that.
And it does it really well.
And I, and I love it.
So it was just nice to see that I'm not alone.
And he talks about too, but he talks about a bunch of the other features too, like the larger screen and other things, and the things that make the series 10 great.
The series 10 is a great watch.
I still see good sales on it on Amazon, you know, from time to time it's, you know, he, the author of this post was upgrading from a series five.
He didn't actually buy the series 10.
He got a review unit from Apple that he's been using.
But like, when you go from, nobody needs to update an Apple watch every year, but when you go from something like the series five to the series 10, I mean, that's enough of a change that, it's great.
And so, you know, if you're listening to this now and you're using like a series six or a series seven or a series eight, you don't need a new watch right now, but whenever you do get that next watch and take advantage of like five or six years of updates, you're going to be, wow, this is so nice.
It's so many new things. - Speaking of the Apple watch, let's do a where are you at segment.
We haven't done one of these in a while, but I'm glad to see that you pulled a good story, which could be a potential, could have been a potential tragedy, turned into a life-saving moment with the Apple watch, similar to Tim Cook's dad, apparently.
Poor gentleman, a 55 year old man, apparently passed out while he was driving.
And I guess somehow started hitting the gas pedal, ended up in a neighbor's pool.
And I love how he kind of says this, it's not funny, but he says he woke up hearing a tiny little voice that he thought it was a voice from the other side.
Thankfully and happily, it was only the little voice on his Apple watch, which was it the emergency services?
Oh yeah, emergency services was telling him from his Apple watch, since the Apple watch called emergency services and they were telling him help is on the way.
And it was just, you know, once he understood what was going on and he kind of got his bearings again, I mean, this picture alone, 'cause not only was there a picture of the car upside down in the pool, there was footage from like the neighbor's, you know, doorbell camera show right before the accident.
So like he was able to watch exactly what happened and he just credits the Apple watch here with saving his life. - Yeah, I mean, apparently this was a freak thing that happened to the man that he sort of passed out.
I mean, this guy's 55 years old, I'm 55 years old.
So you're like, oh wow, like I guess this could happen to me too.
And, but as he describes the story, you know, he is, you know, you suddenly pass out and the next thing you know, you wake up and you're literally underwater.
Now we know it was a swimming pool, but he doesn't know where he is.
You know, all I know is that there's water coming into my car and I'm like, you know, he's starting to panic.
And then he hears, like you said, the voice that he thought might be St.
Peter at the pearly gate, but instead was 911 telling him, be calm, we have somebody on the way, here's what you need to do.
And he's, and what he says is that if somebody had not talked me through that, you know, I might've died, you know, just from freaking out and the water coming in.
And, you know, we hear so many stories like this and you always think that, you know, thank goodness it's not me, but it could be me.
And again, I hope that this never happens to you.
It never happens to me, never happens to anyone listening to this podcast, but it could happen to anyone.
And if it does, isn't it great that you have your Apple watch or your iPhone can also offer a cross detection too.
It's nice that you have something out there that will, you know, you talked about having like a little assistant that's next to you that tells you what the weather is or what the other things, you know, what you really want is this little helpful assistant that can call 911 when you yourself can't do so.
That is life-saving stuff.
So it's a great story. - Yeah, I didn't click through to the next story here, but I just liked this little paragraph here because not only did it call 911, but to your point that you were just saying, the gentleman says emergency service had contacted him through the watch and then coached me through everything.
He goes, there was no way I would have gotten out of there.
I could barely hear anything outside.
He goes, I knew there was commotion 'cause I'm assuming his windows were up and everything.
Right.
But I could barely understand what anybody was saying.
So I didn't know if that was a person.
And so the person would just said, you know, stay calm.
And they coached him through what was happening.
And I mean, that's so powerful, Jeff.
I mean, we would think of it as coming through a phone, but the fact that you could have the Apple watch do that as well, it's just, just really great. - If you do click through, 'cause I did last night, if you click through to the story and then you watch, it was like a news report on local news as these things often are.
But they actually, one of the people that they interviewed for the news story was somebody who actually lived at the house.
And he said that as soon as he saw what was going on, he picked up the phone and called 911.
You know, it makes sense.
And when he did so, 911 said, oh, we are already on top.
Like we already know about this. - Oh my goodness. - We've already got people on the way.
And you know, when you're in a situation where seconds or minutes can be the difference between life and death.
I mean, I'm glad that this guy called 911 to make sure, but they said, oh no, we already know about it.
We're already there.
We're already talking to this guy.
And so it just goes to show you how it can, it can, it's fast, it's calling it immediately.
Oh, just a great, great story. - I predict this story will be one of the next commercials from Apple.
(Jeff laughing) Speaking of Apple's video interest, let's get to one of the last things quickly here we'll talk about.
Today is the day, my friend, Jeff, I know you have been waiting for the opening day for Severance season two.
And boy, Heidi, hasn't Apple kind of just gone hull hog into promoting this over this past week.
I saw, first of all, you can take this where you want to, but I just love this idea.
We talked about the square cube of the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
There was another glass cube in the middle of Grand Central Terminal this past week.
I think it was only three days ago or so, to where the entire cast of Severance was set up in this glass cube so that everybody that was going through Grand Central Terminal could just stop and watch what was happening, including by the way, the producer of this, Ben Stiller himself, somebody described him as the proud papa.
Like he had his iPhone out, he was filming, video filming, what was going on with all the people around.
This was just a brilliant promotion right there. - Very, very funny.
It started out apparently, they just had it set up and it's this glass cube and it says Severance, starting today's date, January 17th.
And so people are just walking by and seeing it.
It's like, oh, that's a cute little thing.
But then at some point in the afternoon, the actual cast members show up and they start, and apparently they're in there for like three hours and they're just pretending like they're working, just like they're on the show.
If you do see the show, you'll see that they do these crazy things called data refinement, which is totally bonkers of moving numbers around.
And these people are just in there, just like, so it's almost like you're watching a live, like a play version of the show.
So I just thought it was a cute idea. - And of course, of course Apple did this for the publicity.
Of course they filmed it.
Of course it was the video that I linked to at the end, but that's the point.
It's a non-traditional way to buzz up, to increase excitement about the show.
You know, I will say there are so many shows on Apple TV+ that I love.
In fact, I linked today to an interview with Bill Lawrence, who's been responsible for quite a few of them.
Bad Monkey, which I really love, Ted Lasso.
But you know, there are some shows that are just some of the very best shows in Apple TV+.
Ted Lasso was obviously one of them.
I think Severance is good too.
That first seasons of Severance, which came out three years ago, was so quirky and weird and bizarre, but so good.
I mean, such a good story.
And I remember loving it at the time.
And then in anticipation of the new series and starting today, I just started to do a rewatch.
And I'm the sort of person, Brett, I very rarely rewatch a show.
I just don't, I don't like to rewatch movies.
I don't like to rewatch shows.
I don't reread books.
But I will do it in some cases.
And I did it here just to remind myself.
And I'm so glad I did, because there's so many details that I had forgotten about the show.
And as I mentioned today, there's a new podcast that Ben Stiller, not Jerry Stiller, that was his dad, Ben Stiller, and the star of the show are doing, where Adam Scott and Ben sort of talk about each other, Adam Scott.
And so like, it's great.
So like I watched season one, episode one, and then I listened to the little podcast episode talking about that episode.
And then I watched season two.
As I'm sitting here today, I think I've got like two or three episodes left to go.
So I need to finish first season, and then I'll start this weekend, season two.
But the podcast is great.
So it's fun to see the different things. - Well, you got good company apparently.
John Gruber's also rewatched season one, 'cause he was talking about, you leaked to his story today, that they're excited to watch it again, he and his wife, and then, you know, they wanted to do this leading up to, I didn't realize it was three years ago.
I thought it was maybe a year and a half or so.
So, you know, it would still be fresh in people's minds, but that's almost a nice play right there, that they waited so long, 'cause everybody's gonna rewatch season one now, which is amazing. - I'll tell you another joke that John Gruber make.
Go to apple.com right now, Brent.
If you go to apple.com, you'll see that there is an ad.
And if you scroll down just a tiny bit, first we see the iPhone 16. - There's balloons coming up. - There's balloons.
I didn't even know this.
This is brand new for today. - Yeah, yeah.
Oh my goodness.
Oh, there they are.
There's balloons floating up in the website.
First of all, with the face of Adam Scott character.
And then, oh, they're coming out of the elevator. - Yeah, this is different.
So last night, what it was, was just a static image.
Oh, this is too funny.
I gotta go look at this later on.
Last night, it was just a static image of the quote unquote computer that they use on this show, "Severance."
And John Gruber made a funny joke that this is one of the very rare times where you will see a computer on the Apple website that is not made by Apple, which I thought was sort of funny.
You know, it's a little bit of a silly joke there.
But now it's even more funny with the balloons.
And of course, you've got balloons behind you because another thing Apple came out with this was the website where they will create a balloon.
Now, I don't exactly know the story on the balloons.
This is gonna be something in season two, episode one, I suspect.
Where I think it may have come from is one of the many things that's so great about "The Severance Show" is the opening credits are just crazy wacky.
Apparently, the way that they made them is they did like, you know how you can have like a person go and they have a computer and cameras do like a 3D body scan of you?
They'll sometimes use this for special effects in movies to sort of create.
And so Adam Scott, he describes it on the podcast I was describing before.
They had like a 3D body scan of him and they sent it to this artist in Germany that creates like bizarre videos.
His name is Oliver Latta. - Oliver Latta.
Also known as Extra Weg. - There you go.
He created the opening credits that like use this, it's a 3D model.
It sort of looks like the main character, but sort of a little bit, little freaky.
And like, it's not just him.
He duplicates himself.
At one point he's holding what is like a balloon, but it's a bunch of balloons of himself.
And maybe that's what inspired these blue balloons for season two.
I don't know.
But it's a very distinct, you know, so many shows nowadays have been quote unquote opening credits that last two seconds.
There's nothing to it.
You know, but then some traditional shows, they will have a theme song.
They will have an opening credit.
You know, you think of something like Game of Thrones.
It becomes iconic.
Exactly.
And so this guy did a great job with Severance season one.
In fact, he won it.
He literally won an Emmy for the opening credits.
It's so good.
I have no idea if the opening credits will be the same for season two, if they're going to update it, but it's just, it's a great sequence.
So anyway, you can tell my enthusiasm.
I loved season one of Severance.
I'm excited for season two.
Anyone out there who shares my excitement, that's great.
And if you are somebody out there like you, my friend, Brett Burney, that have not yet seen season one of Severance, on the one part, like, how could you not watch it?
But number two, I'm so excited for you because you have a treat.
Whether you start this weekend or next month or next year, at some point, Brett, you're going to sit down, you're going to watch it, and you're going to send me a text that says, you were right, Jeff, it's a great show.
So you have that to look forward to in your future.
Honestly, I can't even wait just to see this opening credit.
Like I don't, I've never seen this.
And when you sent this to me today, I'm like, wait, is this, was this for the original show?
I mean, I was mesmerized just by this video alone.
Speaking of, quickly, another video, if you want to see that little Square Cube publicity stunt, although I hate to put it, that sounds negative, 'cause it was brilliant, I thought, you, at the bottom of your post today, you had a little short video where you can watch, you know, the crowd at happening at Grand Central Terminal.
I just thought that that was great.
In the know, I thought, in some way or another, most all of us are probably gonna be watching Apple TV, or, you know, because just from our enthusiasm alone about Severance and other shows, get to the Apple TV.
And I'm not talking about Apple TV+, I'm talking about your Apple TV itself.
Whether you get on Plus, you can get some, you know, there's ways to get free trials of the TV+, but, you know, I also watch YouTube pretty much exclusively on the Apple TV when we're sitting down, you know, Amazon Prime, the Max app, Hulu, you know, whatever else.
I think Apple has just continued to do a very good job.
So I thought, we'd be good.
Let's just share a couple of our quick little tips for using the Apple TV.
And mine is really almost silly stupid, but it's simple and I love it. - No, it's actually a good tip, yeah. - There's a back button on the remote.
So here's the remote.
Now this is if you have some, one of the, second generation or later, which has been around for a long time.
But the Apple remote, I mean, we've talked about this many times.
I think the Apple remote is just brilliant in and of itself.
The more modern one today.
First, you got a little circle, which, you know, you can move your finger around and there's a main button, which is like the select button in the middle of that main circle.
But below that, there's a back button.
And this back button, all it is, is just, it looks like a little Chevron arrow pointing to the left.
And that's all that it is, is the back button.
That is good if you get very deep into a show, for example, with whatever system.
So typically when you get on the Apple TV, you know, you're selecting YouTube, then I might go and select a channel and I'm using that main circle button to select those channels.
And then I might go deeper and deeper and deeper into whatever show.
And this is true if it's the Apple TV Plus app or Amazon app, you know.
Well, if you wanna get back to the home screen, if you are five levels deep, well, then you're gonna have to hit that back button five times, right?
To get back to the home screen to maybe if you wanna go to something else.
But a little known fact, a little tip is, if you're way deep into something and you wanna quickly jump back to the home screen, you can just click and hold the back button, press and hold the back button.
And that will, you know, you have to do it for like a second and a half or maybe two seconds at most, right?
It's just a quick little pause, but that will jump you all the way back to the home screen from whatever level that you're in.
I constantly use that because we may be sitting there watching a YouTube video and it reminds me of a show or something like that.
And I'm like, oh, wait, I'm gonna go see if that's available on Amazon Prime or Netflix or something else.
And I'll go and dig into that.
But I love to be able to quickly jump back and forth in that silly little tip.
But you know, it's not something that is obvious, I think a lot of times.
And if I'm sitting somewhere with somebody that's using Apple TV, I'm like, oh my goodness, how many clicks are you gonna have to do to get back to the home screen?
Just click and hold the back button and it'll jump you all the way back.
And by the way, that tip, you might wanna try it on some of the other buttons as well, because there's not as many buttons on the Apple TV remote, which I think is great.
But in some cases, some of those others, I think that TV control button, also if you click and hold it, it will get to like the settings app or something like that.
So anyway, I use that back button tip all the time.
Instead of just click, click, click, click, click and hold the back button and that'll jump you all the way back to the home screen on the Apple TV. - Great tip, I use it all the time.
In fact, that leads into what my tip was gonna be, which was talking about using AirPods with the Apple TV before you even get there.
So that back button that you just described, right next to it, it has like a little picture of a TV on it. - Yeah, that's the TV button right there.
There you go, right there. - And so that button, if you press that button, it will bring in the Apple TV app on the Apple TV device.
It's Apple's name, it's confusing.
But if you hold that, much like you just described holding the back button, if you hold that TV button, it will bring up the control center on sort of the right side of your interface.
And there's lots of things you could do in control center.
If you've got like HomeKit video cameras in your house, you can see like little previews of what's going on in the backyard or the front yard.
So it's nice.
But one of the things I like is that control center is a quick and easy way to change the audio.
And so, although usually when I'm watching my TV, I've got surround sound 5.1 speakers in my house and you of course want the best quality sound and I use those, but sometimes I'm watching TV but I don't want to disturb other people that are nearby.
And if you have AirPods or maybe other Bluetooth headphones as well, but certainly with AirPods, it works great because you can just go to that control center that you access by holding down that button and you can change the output to be your regular speakers on your TV or your surround sound, whatever you have, to your AirPods.
And it's great because it sounds really good.
I mean, in fact, if you've got the AirPods Pro that have sort of that spatial thing, it can recreate that.
So it's almost like a 5.1 experience and yet nobody around you hears it.
And so I will use it if I don't want to disturb people around me.
I will also use it if I'm using, sometimes I will do exercises using the Fitness+ app on my Apple TV.
You know, like I'm following the people on screen and they're doing the weights and I'm doing the weights, but people around me, they don't need to hear the professional trainers telling me what to do.
And so I will just have my AirPods and I'll connect it to the Apple TV.
And so that way, you know, if somebody sees me, they'll see what's going on, but nobody else around the house needs to be hearing all that stuff.
And so that's just a nice feature that of course it's great to listen to your regular speakers, but it is so useful to be able to use your AirPods with the Apple TV.
So remember that you have that function.
Don't forget how to get there and turn it on.
It's a really great feature. - I have almost gotten to the point where that's my preferred way to watch Apple TV because I like being in front of, I mean, I do this all the time on my iPad or even my iPhone, right?
As I have at the AirPods Pro, but I love being in front of a huge television screen, right, with the Apple TV, and then it connects to my AirPods and whatever magic wireless stuff that they have done, there's no hesitation.
Like I would think, you know, I'm further away from the Apple TV.
So maybe there would be some kind of a Bluetooth hesitation, but never experienced that.
And just like you said, the experience to me is so much more engulfing because I don't have like, you know, humongous 5.1 stereo speakers in my living room, but just 'cause I've been in yours and yours is very nice, we have it.
But even if I'm just sitting there, like even at night, like I really, it engulfs me so much more into, because even if I had the speakers, just having it in and do noise cancellation, boy, that's the best.
To me, that's like the best way to watch it, other than the fact when the dog walks in the room and, you know, scares the pants off of me because I'm in the middle of a movie, but it's really a great way.
I'm still glad you put that tip in there.
That's good stuff as well.
Okay, well, Jeff, enjoy watching both season one and season two, hopefully.
You'll get started in Severance this weekend.
And my promise to you is I'm gonna try, I wanna start watching Severance now.
I'm so excited about watching it.
I gotta start with season one, but yeah, I'll report back.
And so maybe we can compare notes by next week this time.
So we'll talk with you next week, Jeff. - Thanks, Bret.