In the News

181: Bourbon Snow ❄️ Sickening Vitals 🤧 and OK iPhones!

Episode 181

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Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/49NisL_1B-Y

In the News blog post for January 24, 2025:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2025/01/in-the-news762.html

00:00 Where Y’at? Segment: Bourbon Snow!
15:50 18.3 - Equals Repeat is Back!
21:43 The Tip(s) of the iPhone
25:40 Sickening Vitals
30:54 CarPlay Update Still Vrooomin’
35:59 What Will Matter in 2025
42:40 OK iPhones!
45:54 Brett’s iTip: Customize the “Modular Ultra” Face on your Apple Watch Ultra
54:12 Jeff’s iTip: Navigating the iPhone Battery Life in Extreme Cold Weather

James Finn | NOLA.com: New Orleans got twice the snow of an Alaska city since Dec. 1. 'We'd like our snow back'

NOLA.com: What do New Orleans' most iconic landmarks look like covered in snow? See the photos.

William Gallagher | Apple Insider: AirTags prevent so much car crime that Colorado police are giving them away

Justin Meyers | Gadget Hacks: iOS 18.3 Is Coming Soon — Here's What to Expect on Your iPhone

Adam Davidson | How-To Geek: 10 iPhone Tips That Can Save You Time

Adam Engst | TidBITS: watchOS 11’s Vitals App May Detect Illness

Joe Rossignol | MacRumors: Apple Removes '2024' Timeframe From Next-Generation CarPlay Page

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy | The Verge: Matter will be better in 2025 — say the people who make it

Brett’s iTip: Add the “Training Bezel” Complication on the Apple Watch Ultra in the “Modular Ultra” watch face. It shows data from both Vitals (on the left outer edge) and training load (on the right outer edge).
https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/1gkzgbi/how_to_read_vitals_complication/

Jeff’s iTip: iPhone battery life in extreme cold weather
https://support.apple.com/en-us/118431 

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Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com

Welcome to In the News for January 24th, 2025.

I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD, also from apparently the Great White North.

I don't even know.

It's crazy in New Orleans.

We're going to start with the where are you at segment because I read your post today and I've been watching the news over this past week and I'm like, where are you at, Jeff?

I'm like, did you move to Alaska because that's how much snow is around your city.

But no, you're still in New Orleans.

Just insane.

You had a link to the Times-Picayune, the local New Orleans newspaper.

New Orleans got twice the snow of an Alaska city since December 1st, what is like 1895 or something.

Well, the record for New Orleans.

Just insane.

Alaska is actually texting New Orleans saying we want our snow back.

How has it been this week in snowbound New Orleans?

A phrase I would say.

It was, you know, I've lived in New Orleans my entire life, although I've spent time in other cities from time to time.

And so, you know, every once every five or 10 years, we might get cold weather.

There'll be a few snowflakes.

You know, people like me, a sprinkling, as it were.

Exactly.

We will go outside.

We will count the snowflakes.

We will think that it's amazing and stuff like that.

And that's it.

My wife, who's from New York, will roll her eyes at us because she grew up with so much snow.

And so when they said it was going to snow in New Orleans this past Tuesday, I'm like, yeah, yeah, we'll have this.

And then they're starting to say like it could be, you know, a couple inches.

And I'm like, wow, I've never seen that in my life.

That would be really interesting if we got like more than an inch of snow.

And then the night before, I was looking at the news and the news said, you know, we think it's going to be three to six inches.

And they said, we actually have some models that have like seven to nine inches.

And they sort of laughed at that.

And the thing is, this is something I'm familiar with, because since we live in a city where we always are worried about hurricanes, I don't know if you know this, but like when they have the weather forecast for hurricanes, they'll have all the computer models that will have like spaghetti, you know, it'll be like this has this track.

This is this track.

And, you know, most of the tracks will go in one area, but there's going to always be like the European track, the European model that will be like 200 miles to the west or the east.

And you just sort of say, OK, well, you know, whatever.

There's some some of these tracks are crazy.

So, right.

When they said we might get over six, seven, six or seven inches of snow, I'm like, yeah, that's really funny.

Brett, we got 10 inches of snow at my house.

It was I mean, I measured it.

It was it was on.

But leaveable, I I've barely seen that much snow in my life anywhere in the world, anywhere in New Orleans.

I mean, this tropical city, we don't have snow in New Orleans.

It was unbelievable.

Walking around was, you know, I walked around on St.

Charles Avenue, which is one of the main thoroughfares in New Orleans, where the where the Mardi Gras parades go.

You know, a place that I've been many, many times in my life.

And, you know, these beautiful trees that have been there hundreds of years, like our trees.

And I could not believe how beautiful it was.

It was magical.

I know you live in Ohio.

I know that you understand the beauty of New Fallen snow.

Yes, to take that beauty and to juxtapose it on a city that has never seen it before.

It's one of those things in life that is at the same time you're looking at it, you're thinking I can't believe what I'm seeing.

I mean, I'm taking pictures and I go home and I'm looking at pictures.

I'm like, is this real?

Is this Photoshop?

It was it was unbelievable.

You're showing some fantastic pictures right now.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm talking to Mickey and their photographers took some amazing pictures.

It was it was just on.

I'm still aghast.

And you know, even as I'm talking to you now, that was on Tuesday that we got right.

I'm looking out my window.

So I drove into the office today, which was a little dicey because there is still ice on the roads.

I took some of the main thoroughfare.

So it was OK where I drove.

But there's there's nobody in my office today.

They said it was open if you wanted to come in.

But otherwise, everybody worked from home.

And I decided to come in just to check it out.

So I'm in downtown New Orleans looking out my window, 46 floors up in the sky.

I can see the Mississippi River Bridge.

I can see the curve of the river.

And everywhere that I look, I see snow on the top of buildings and houses.

And it's now it's 41 degrees right now.

So it's obviously starting to melt.

But it is it's it's surreal.

It is surreal.

Just look at these pictures and, you know, some of these landmarks, Jackson Square, the French Quarter and even, you know, the parks around.

I've been here.

I've been there several times.

You know, obviously I don't live, but we visited many times.

And just just like you said, I like is that Photoshop?

Like, I mean, you can put fake snow into a picture.

It just does not seem real.

Like I can't even imagine it.

And I wasn't even there.

But it just it's just so so weird.

I mean, you know, and in true New Orleans fashion, there's somebody walking down Bourbon Street playing a tuba.

Why not?

I mean, why not?

This is great.

And you sent me a couple of pictures here just for you walking around your neighborhood.

And I'm sorry I said, well, this is one of the poorest looking snowmen I've ever seen, except for the fact that it's in New Orleans.

So that's the most amazing snowman that I've ever seen there.

And some of these others.

I mean, here's a house you said that's all decked out from Mardi Gras.

It's all covered in snow.

Yeah, it's just I can't fathom that.

It's it was it was just completely surreal.

And the trees were so beautiful with the snow on them.

You know, you mentioned the snowman.

One thing I noticed, and of course, you're going to laugh because you know what I'm talking about is like and for some reason, because it's a high definition image, it's not looking correct on your screen right now.

But that's OK.

OK, imagine this wonderful snowman.

But when I tried to build a snowman with my kids, the snow wasn't really sticking together.

And my wife said something about like it's too wet or too dry or something.

I don't I know nothing about snow.

But so I couldn't really make a big one, but I made a tiny little small ones.

But my kids did make snow angels, which were fun.

And it was just oh, it was it was just surreal.

You know, snow in the trees, snow everywhere.

It was it was beautiful.

So I'm I'm glad to have lived through it.

I mean, as you alluded to before, the last time we had a lot of snow like this in New Orleans was 1895.

So it's been a long time.

And you know, nobody alive today has ever seen this.

And nobody alive today will probably I mean, again, knock on wood, who knows climate change, but I suspect we'll never see it again in our lifetime.

So it was very special.

Just one last thing here, you know, like, please stay home because I just am thinking about, you know, here in Ohio, as soon as we start getting a little bit of snow, we've got, you know, trains of trucks that go out and start plowing and throwing salt on this.

And even then, like last night, we were we were coming back and there was another, you know, usually the wrecks aren't terrible, but, you know, people sliding off the road or something like that.

And that's in Ohio where we're supposed to be familiar with this.

Please, all the people down in New Orleans in the South like state, you don't even have any snow plows.

Yeah, you know, you're not crazy.

The roads are there.

Please stay.

We have we got drive.

We got alerts on our iPhones on Tuesday and even on Wednesday saying like, stay home, like unless you you know, you do not need to be out there because they had a record number of wrecks because like no one has snow tires.

The roads don't we don't we don't have salt for the roads.

We don't have plows.

They actually had to bring in plows from Indiana because to New Orleans to clear some of the major things because we don't have plows.

And OK, but you know, people are ill-equipped for people are not experienced with it.

And plus, the police officers were having difficulty getting to the wrecks.

So they said, like, just stay, stay home.

You know, as I'm typing this, as I'm as we're talking on Friday morning, it's starting, you know, the major thoroughfares are starting to melt.

They're OK.

The side streets are not again.

We're going to buy by Sunday.

I think we're going to be in the 60s.

So this is going to all be melted and gone very, very soon.

But it's it was great.

Well, I'm glad you had some time to enjoy it.

That's great.

Yes.

Stay safe.

Norlin and all the other people in the South.

OK, well, I called that the where you at segment because I just still cannot fathom that those pictures are from New Orleans.

But you did have another related where you at story today.

Sure.

Air tags prevent so much car crime that Colorado police are giving them away.

I feel like we've had a story similar to this.

I don't know if it was in Colorado, Jeff, but it was in D.C. last time.

Yeah.

D.C.

OK, that's right.

Some federal, you know, some law enforcement agencies have kind of, you know, gotten smart to this idea.

Well, like, wait a minute.

You know, if individual citizens are tracking stolen cars or stolen property and, you know, maybe we can call Apple like they're not that expensive.

And we can that can help us track things as well.

So I'm glad to see this story today.

Yeah, it's interesting to see the police really encouraging this.

And the one thing that made this Colorado story a little different than the ones we've seen before, because like you said, we have seen stories like this in the past, is that and you're showing it on your screen right now.

In addition to giving away air tags, they're also giving away stickers to put in your car, much like, you know, you might have someone have like a sticker on their house saying this house is protected by a security system.

Or sometimes you see that in a car.

They're actually saying, you know, this this car is tracked, which is interesting, because I guess the idea is, you know, the thief that's looking to break into a car, if they see that the car has a tracker, which, of course, they could probably find an air tag if they look around for it, depending upon where it's located.

But I guess there's a deterrent effect.

The idea is that if they're thinking about stealing the car.

So I just thought that was really interesting is not only to give up the air tags, but the stickers as well.

And you know, you wonder, is it better or is it worse?

I mean, who knows what deters criminals?

You're trying to deter something that's a little irrational anyway.

But but maybe it would work.

And it's it was really interesting because I feel like at some point you could just, you know, save the money, not give an air tag, but give a sticker, which I feel like is less expensive.

And I didn't even think about having thought about that before.

Like, I may not put an air tag in my car.

I think I do.

But I might put a sticker on there because I feel like in my mind, if you've got 10 cars, if you were a thief, I'm not a car thief.

But if you were, I would think if you've got 10 cars and eight of them have an air tag or they even have a sticker, you're going to pass those up and go to the other two that maybe don't.

Right.

I mean, that's the deterrent effect is the way that kind of, of course, it's perhaps more than that, because the police department, they're not going to, you know, from their standpoint, it doesn't do them any good if car A is not stolen, but car B is.

They want to reduce the total amount of crime.

So I guess the hope is that is that if the thieves see it and if the thieves see this news story, then maybe they just won't steal a car in the first place because they'll think the chance of them being tracked is just too high.

Sure.

Yeah.

It works.

Yeah.

You also linked.

I'll make sure you put your link in here today.

I mean, the fact that on Amazon, you can still get a four pack of air tags for sixty nine ninety nine.

I mean, the list price is at least one hundred dollars.

I've sometimes seen more.

But that's still the best price that I have seen.

And I've you know, I think I'm on my third pack, four pack air tags, Jeff, because I just keep seeing this price and it's like I keep finding more and more things to put air tags in.

So I'm glad that you mentioned like they're still on sale.

The reason I actually linked to it, and I should have said this in my post, is last year was, I think, the first time I had ever seen a four pack for just under seventy dollars.

And I was like, this is an all time low price.

But since then, they haven't stayed there consistently because they have gone a little bit higher into the 70s and maybe eighty dollar range.

Amazon's always had them discounted from the hundred dollars, but they have stayed at the sixty nine ninety nine price for a long enough time now that, first of all, I wonder if this is becoming the new normal.

This is what at least for Amazon.

I mean, go to an Apple store.

It's still going to be a hundred bucks.

I know I'm just looking up the you can get them for for this much.

And second of all, you know, we've heard these rumors that a next generation of an air tag is going to be released, perhaps sometime this calendar year.

And so I do wonder if maybe, you know, Apple is giving a discount to people to really sell them.

Now, of course, then that begs the question of do you want to buy technology if it's going to be replaced by something even better?

But in this case, you know, the rumors and again, these are just rumors, but the rumors that we hear is that the next generation of air tags, you know, maybe they'll have better battery life.

Who knows?

But, you know, maybe they'll also be a little bit more precise in terms of finding them, which I guess is nice, depending if you're trying to find a lost item in your house, you want to be as precise as possible.

But you know, for the general task of, you know, where is my car, for example, or where is my camera case or where is my suitcase?

I think that this my guess is, you know, without really knowing for sure what the next air tag will have.

I think this one's going to probably do the job for a while.

So I would not hesitate to purchase an air tag right now.

In fact, I did a review.

I believe we talked about it just a couple of weeks ago of this device that allows you to put an air tag in with a regular AA battery and it keeps it forever.

You know, I have no hesitation in purchasing them myself, recommending that people purchase them.

Not that the next air tag, I'm sure, will be better somehow.

But you know, my guess is it's not going to be so revolutionarily different that you're going to be regretting the purchase.

So that was the main reason I linked to it.

It's sort of interesting, you know, why is it at this low price?

Is it going to be at this low price forever?

You know, what does that mean for the future?

I like still today to this day that when they designed these air tags, that the replacement battery is so easy to get.

In fact, anytime that I order a four pack, I will go into usually I get the Amazon basics, you know, CR2032 batteries, you know, which is like an eight pack or something like that.

And they're fairly inexpensive.

And I think I, since I've had air tags, I could probably remember maybe three or four times, you know, maybe that first batch that I had that I've either gotten a little notice on my phone.

It's like, Hey, this air tag needs to be replaced.

And so to your point, I think that that kind of extends the life of that.

And you're right.

It's just like, you know, I still use many people use an iPhone from several years ago or an iPad from several years ago.

And it still does the job just fine, even though maybe you want them the latest and newest, the greatest.

But I think to your point, like even the older one, this current one is still worthwhile to have.

It's not like they're going to go out of stock.

By the way, I did look it up on the Apple store.

They are selling the four pack for the full price of $99.

Although if you go through the Apple store, you do get free engraving.

Although I feel like at this point you're paying $30 for the engraving if you go through the Apple store, but the Amazon store doesn't doesn't offer the engraving.

If you get it.

Yeah.

When I bought my original air tags, I did do the engraving through the Apple store and I had them like little note or one.

And I even called like one of them.

I had the number one, the number two.

And I thought that would be useful to like tell them apart.

But I've actually found an experience that you really don't need it because your iPhone can tell you which one it is.

And like if you're going to sort of hide it in something.

So I think there's nothing wrong with engraving.

It's nice that Apple does it for free.

But although it was something I did in the very beginning, my current thinking of it is it really doesn't matter.

I think it's better to save them for me personally.

I think it's better to save the money by buying from Amazon.

But you know, to each their own.

If you want the engraving, you got to go to Apple and pay a tiny bit more.

You know, I kept thinking about that just quickly to your point.

Like I, I don't think that I've missed it.

I've actually moved my air tags in different locations.

Like when we all went to Europe, there was one air tag I had in like my briefcase and I put it in my daughter's suitcase or something like that.

And all I did is I just went into the find my app on my phone and I just, you know, renamed it inside.

Exactly.

And it worked out just fine on that.

So that find my integration, that app has really, I think, done a great job of not just being able to track people, but the items that you have in there.

Anyway, just, just real good stuff.

It was easy to do.

Great app.

Yeah.

Let's talk about something that we've already talked about several times is the upcoming anticipated 18.3 iOS 18.3.

And there's a another bump update for the Mac OS.

And I assume we'll see this for iPad and the Apple watch as well.

This is a good story from Kulta Mac, Ed Hardy, going through what we can expect in 18.3.

You had two other articles too, which I thought were just really great.

They kind of broke down what we can be expecting possibly even maybe next week.

They're thinking maybe even the last week in January, it could be released.

Sure.

I mean, just to start there, the, the, the, you know, Apple releases beta versions so that developers can get ready for it.

And then when they're at the very end, the release was called the final candidate, which is usually about a week before release.

And that was released this week.

And in fact, I saw another story by John Gruber on Daring Prior Ball.

He just went out and said it.

He's like, they're coming out next week.

I don't know if that's based on inside information or speculation, but I think it's very, you know, suffice it to say there is a very, very good chance that when you and I are talking a week from now, iOS 18.3 will have been released.

But then, but you know, unlike some of the prior 18.1 and 18.2 that actually had some pretty significant new features, the, unless Apple has a surprise that they haven't, you know, let anybody know about yet, it looks like 18.3 is not going to be a major update.

This post that you're showing right now from gadget hacks does the best job I've seen of going through the new features.

But as you see, when you go through it, I mean, bug fixes is the big one.

A lot of the changes have to do with Apple intelligence, but even then they're, they're not major changes or tweaking the visual intelligence and make you a little bit better.

You and I talked in the past about notification summaries that organizations like the BBC have been so upset about it and Apple is going to tweak it so that instead of, you know, one thing they're going to do is when they have a summary of a headline, it'll be, or anything, any summaries, there'll be an italics on your home screen instead of regular text.

And so the idea is that when you see the italics, it gives you a little bit more of a sense of it's not the app telling me these words.

This is the AI summary telling me these words.

So if the words seem wrong, because we all know that AI makes mistakes, you know, that's why.

So there's, you know, but I would just call these minor around the edges tweaks because of the bug fixes, you know, I think it will make sense to do the update when it comes out next week.

Of course we all, you know, recommend updates all the time, but you know, this is not going to be some new one.

Oh, I can't wait for 18.3 because it's going to give me new features.

And typically there's some kind of security updates or something like that are important that come into that.

And that's one of the other reasons that we that we say it's worthwhile.

This one was, I laughed at what I saw this headline because frankly, I didn't even know it was something that was left out, but I'm glad that it's back.

The equal sign now repeats the last operation in calculator.

Apparently when I was 18 first came out the new calculator, uh, he goes as impressive as it was left out the feature that we had before being able to hit the equal sign to perform the last mathematical operation again.

Now it's back.

It's going to be back at 18.3.

Thank goodness.

I was, I was so worried about that.

I had, I had forgotten.

I didn't even know I had forgotten that Apple redesigned the calculator when 18.3 came out.

And it was just last night because I don't use the iPhone's calculator.

I use another app called, uh, uh, P calc, which I've been using for forever and just got all sorts of nice features to it.

But my wife uses the built-in calculator and I literally just last night was doing some work and I heard her remark behind me.

Um, Hey, wait a minute.

They changed the calculator app and I have forgotten about that.

So, um, but along with the new design, they, uh, they changed the equal sign.

So I guess that's good.

It's coming back.

So anyway, 18.3 coming next week.

Well most important you, the last story is we're already starting to look at 18.4 and of course, as I said, most importantly, there's going to be some new emojis.

I love reported on these cause I'm like, really?

I didn't know that, uh, face with bags under eyes was an emoji that people were actually screaming for, but there's now going to be a harp and a radish.

So Hey, we're, we're, we're doing good.

I suspect that I will use that faith.

I mean, if you, if you look at that, it's very funny.

You can imagine the sort of conversations in which you will send that as a response.

So I actually think I will use that one.

You know, the big thing, I mean, I'm a new emoji is always sort of fun and exciting to think about, but the most significant thing for me is, you know, we've, you and I have talked about this years, the many years I've been doing this podcast.

Now, you know, whenever Apple has a new update, you know, there's like two big steps.

Step one is the release, the new update in like the fall, September, October, and then step two is either the 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, or in this case, the 0.4 update somewhere along the way, Apple adds the new emoji and it's, everybody knows why they do this.

You know, many people will not update their phone for normal reasons, but they will to get the new emoji.

And so I always feel like when Apple releases the emoji, it's their way of saying, you know what?

We think that this new major update is now ready for you.

And so it's interesting here that, you know, if we get 18.3, like you say, in the last week of January, if 18.4 is going to come in what, February or March or something like that.

Right.

That's interesting because 18 has been out since what, like last September.

And so it's taken this long for Apple to sort of unofficially give it that thumbs up.

We're ready for you now.

If you haven't updated yet, come along and do it.

So so that's what I think is interesting.

And I think it's good because you talk about the fact that there are security updates typically in there, you know, and if people just either ignore the fact that the iPhone is telling them they need to update or they just don't want to take the time.

If you've got new emojis on the board that might, that might push you over.

It's like, it's like, do it then.

Another article you link to from Adam Davidson and how to geek 10 iPhone tips that can save you time.

Another good list.

Um, I, I feel like I, I was comfortable knowing most all of these.

There may have been like one or two.

Typically what I find in these lists these days, Jeff, just like we've talked about, it's like, oh yeah, it's good to remind myself of these, even if I don't use it all the time.

You've nailed the head.

I completely agree, Brett.

When I look at lists like this, you know, my hope is it's nothing you don't know.

And especially this list of tips is sort of high level.

I mean, it's, it's things like adding things to the control center.

He's not telling you to add any specific thing to the control center, just reminding you that the control center is something you have easy access to.

And especially with the, with the roast with iOS 18, you can now customize it and, you know, add whatever, so many different things to it that it's a good reminder that you can, you know, customize it and then add the things that matter the most to you.

And likewise, one of the other high level tips is that, you know, for some complex tasks, it's actually easier to ask S I R I, I will not say the name, um, as opposed to doing it.

So a good example for me is, you know, every night I set an alarm for the next morning on my iPhone and the time that I want my alarm to go off varies a little bit from day to day.

And so instead of having the same time every day, I will set it and, you know, you can set the alarm by, you know, going into the clock app, whichever one it is and doing it.

I actually have something in my control center to jump there, but the fastest way to set an alarm is just to say, Hey, you know, who wake me up at 6:00 AM and that does it quickly.

And so there are so many things that, I mean, not that it takes that many taps to do it, but it's just, it's the easiest way to do it.

And you know, we joke about, about, you know, who, because it's not perfect and it makes mistakes.

But one thing that Sally pretty much always gets right for me is setting an alarm.

I don't think I've ever had that not work.

And so that's a, that's a core function.

It's a dependable function.

So anyway, this is a good list of, you know, just reminders of the different categories of things.

He also mentioned, you know, using shortcuts and stuff like that.

And, you know, each one of these things that you do, you know, maybe it only takes you, you know, one second in terms of five seconds.

But that's not really the point.

It's not the four seconds you gain.

It's just sort of the, the ease of us and the idea that when you have something that's more responsive, it's just better.

It just makes you happier.

So that's why I really thought this was a good post.

I use Sally so much, so easy to create timers.

You were talking about the alarm, but I, oh, another perfect example, all the time for use setting timers, which I just feel like I'm so under using the capabilities when I do that, but it's so easy to, because otherwise I would have to open, you know, unlike the phone, I go into control panel, just like you have got a button that I would jump to whatever that is, that clock, there's like four different things, right?

You got to stopwatch, you got a timer and you got your alarm, like all of those items there.

But it's like, I don't want to dig through it all.

I just ask, you know, say it out loud.

And that's good.

And the last one here that I thought was just, again, a good reminder, even though I use it almost every day is this creating keyboard shortcuts.

Like this is built in to here, it's down here or text replacements.

I'm sorry.

I call them keyboard shortcuts, but it's text replacement or it's in the keyboard setting in an iPhone or an iPad where you can do text replacements.

And you know, so I think I have things, even if I want to write like the name of a court, I don't want to write United States district court of something, you know, whatever.

I just have like a little text replacement that I will do in there.

I use text expander a lot on my Mac and my, in my windows machine.

And there is a text expander app that I can still use my iPhone and my iPad, but I just love doing that.

And you can just copy and paste a lot of times and do that within the text replacement setting.

So to me, that was a good reminder, even though it's something that I do use every day, it's just now I need to be aware of it.

Like, Hey, if I type this over and over, or if I usually type something in, spell it incorrectly, I can just go into the text replacements and create one, which is good.

Yep, exactly.

We've talked several times about the vitals app.

And when that was coming up, this is in watchOS 11, or this is a story from Adam Inks talking about this, but I just got to tell you as much as we've talked about the vitals and I know how vital the vitals app can be and why Apple is going this way.

But I get to tell you over all of the months that we've had it, Jeff, I'm still a little confused about it.

Like what it is other than just kind of generally tracking what I'm doing.

But I thought this was a good story from Adam Inks that he was explaining how he kind of even didn't pay attention to it until he noticed that he had several spikes, right?

I think the story was he had a couple of spikes in the vital app that just indicated to him, like, Hey, something's not exactly right.

Turns out he had COVID on this.

So it was just a good way for him to kind of track, you know, some of the things that were going on, like leading up to the point that like, Hey, you may not be feeling well.

And here's the reason why.

This article serendipitously, we came at the right time for me because literally just yesterday I had been looking at the health app on my iPhone, not for any particular reason.

I was just sort of looking at it and you know, the first tab is the summary and you have different things in there.

Like you know, your, you know, you know, your weight and your heart rate.

I mean, whatever you want to put in there, if you're asleep, but I had vitals in there.

And so it was literally just yesterday I was like, Oh, I haven't looked at this in a while.

And so I was looking at vitals and you know, it was telling me things like, you know, things are typical and you know, here, but I just thought it was like, well, this is an interesting idea of it's sort of an, a big picture overall check on what, you know, what, what the phone and the watch think about what you're doing.

And so and it was just occurring to me that, you know, this makes good sense.

And then of course I saw this article from Adam Angston, which as you just described, it actually turned out that it was very accurate for him and predicting things.

We've talked about this in the past that, you know, I know that the people that work on health issues at Apple, especially the ones that work on the Apple watch, they really believe that they have the potential, especially with AI and stuff nowadays to extrapolate all sorts of information from the data that is sensed from you.

And you know, in theory in the future, you know, wouldn't it be great if you really could predict things like, you know, colds or even more serious things with a lot of accuracy in advance.

And they really do think that we're getting there.

You know, we're not quite there yet, but I like the idea that Apple has, has put their flag in the sand and said, you know, this is something that we think is going to be a bigger deal in the future.

So we're going to have this vital feature now.

And then in the future, as especially as things like the Apple watch have more sensors and stuff like that, you know, it's only going to get better.

And you know, it's a little bit of a sleeper right now, but my guess is that five years from now, you know, at some, some point of time in the future, this is going to maybe certainly 10 years now, you know, this is, you know, this could be transformative.

This could be the sort of thing that everybody is talking about.

Oh, well, of course you're monitoring your health and you're getting early warnings from the Apple vitals app.

And that will be because of all the new sensors that it has and the watch and everything else.

So, you know, it's, it's, it can do some things right now.

I haven't particularly found it, you know, making a big difference for me today, but I feel like this is setting the stage for the future and it makes a lot of sense.

Totally agree.

And I'm glad you put it that way.

I remember when it first came out, I would just like, Oh, this is new.

I'm going to go in and check it out.

And it didn't really tell me a lot in those first few days.

And I think he mentions it in here.

I've seen some other, you know, stories about this, that it does have to track all of these, these capacities over a period of time before it can give you some kind of an accurate, like baseline.

Is that, if that makes sense on there.

Correct.

And you have to wear it when you sleep too, because it gets a lot of measurements.

So it's important to wear your Apple watch while you sleep.

And not everybody does that either.

So I love the way he talked to this vitals app.

It tracks your heart rate, your respiratory rate, your wrist temperature, your blood oxygen, and your sleep duration.

And so it's all of those measurements together that I think is contributing because you can look at all of those measurements individually to your point of like in the health app, right, but the vitals app, I think is what it's doing is sort of aggregating all of that information together to just see if there's any kind of an outlier.

Okay, good.

So now I feel like I have a little bit of a better grasp on that.

And thanks to Adam, you know, for writing about this, because he even shows a little couple of screenshots here where it literally showed some outliers that everything else was in the blue, looks like it was normal.

But all of a sudden, there's like one couple of peaks in here.

And it actually says there was one outlier on your heart rate, three outliers on your respiratory rate, and three on your wrist temperature.

Okay, this has given me a little bit of a better idea of what the vitals app can do.

And I'm just glad that you linked to that.

And like you said, I think number one, to my point, it takes some time for it to gather these measurements to give you any kind of a big picture.

And then I write even on a bigger level, to your point, Jeff, it's just going to take some time for for, you know, for everybody.

And really, frankly, as Apple continues to aggregate some of these measurements that we might be able to see a little bit more of a benefit from a lot of that.

Let's go from sleeping in your bed, hopefully not sleeping in your car, but CarPlay continues to be a little bit of a sleeper.

Everybody knows that listen to this, Jeff, that both of us are pretty, pretty big fans of CarPlay.

And I remember us getting very excited several months ago, that Apple was going to introduce some big updates to CarPlay in 2024.

And we kept waiting and waiting and waiting.

Now it's 2025.

No big updates yet.

Yeah, yeah.

We're hoping to.

But you actually had another link here from from Mac rumors that they're still waiting on it.

They took down the language of 2024 from the Apple website, but we still haven't seen anything.

What's the hold up on this?

So it was a while ago now that Apple had I mean, first of all, Apple preview the next generation of CarPlay.

They're not calling it CarPlay, too.

That's what I call it.

They just say the next generation.

And, you know, the hallmark feature was that in addition to having the the regular CarPlay screen that we're all familiar with, although it can be different sizes or in some ways, different shapes, that there would be like an additional screen that would go across your entire car and would display all sorts of additional information that the current generation of CarPlay cannot display everything from how fast you're driving to information about your car.

You know, it would literally be the next generation.

Clearly, Apple can't do this on their own.

It has to be working with car manufacturers to make this work.

And so but Apple had announced, you know, and had even put on their website that by the end of twenty twenty four, this was going to be available.

And so as we got closer to the end of twenty twenty four, especially once we were in the month of December, when Apple doesn't release major updates anymore for the most part, you know, it became sort of a running joke of, well, I guess we've got three weeks left for Apple to do this.

And we knew that by that point it wasn't going to happen.

But the funny thing was that twenty twenty four ended and Apple still had not changed this language on its website up until a few days ago.

Their website still said coming in late twenty twenty four, which is very surprising that it took so long.

But they finally I think just yesterday or the day before, they finally changed, removed that sentence saying, you know, end of twenty twenty four.

But at the same time, Apple did have someone from their their their press relations department reach out to a couple of websites such as the one that you were showing on Mac Rumors where they're saying, you know, yes, the next generation of CarPlay is still coming.

We're working with I think they use the word several car manufacturers and I guess several could be as few as two or could be more than that.

And so, you know, eventually we will have, you know, cars with the next generation.

So, you know, it's things it takes a long time.

You know, a lot of car manufacturers don't make major changes to their cars except for once every five years or something.

So it's going to take a long time before we get there.

But it's good to know that even though Apple had been planning on making their own car and then apparently abandoned those efforts, according to the rumors, pretty strong rumors, it's nice to know that Apple is still working with car manufacturers.

There still will be a day that this next generation of CarPlay will be available.

Obviously it's going to only be in a few cars at first, maybe only a few high end cars that might be too expensive for most of us to buy.

But at least it's nice to know that it's still coming.

But again, the comical part was that it took Apple so long to remove that language from its website.

I have no inside information on this, Jeff, but my anger is towards the car manufacturers here.

And I understand why, and I could be wrong.

Maybe it's Apple, but I feel like Apple would love to do something like this.

But if I were a car manufacturer and I just, you know, one of the most important components of a car, at least from the driver's attention and providing all the information is the dashboard that's in front.

And number one, I feel like car manufacturers are, again, understandably, I understand why they don't want to give up having control over all of that.

Because if frankly, if I had that option, I would never look at a car interface.

I really do not enjoy car interfaces.

I have never found one that I have enjoyed more than I enjoy using CarPlay.

So as soon as I get in a car, I would just put on CarPlay.

So car manufacturers, I'm sure do not want to hear that.

And then the second thing, I heard this the other day from someone, if CarPlay takes over, then it's probably the Apple phone and CarPlay that is gathering information.

I mean, they can record a lot of this, right?

Well, the car manufacturers, again, I'm assuming, understandably so, probably don't want to give up access to that information as well.

So I don't know.

Again, I have no inside information, but I can only imagine there have been some heated discussions back and forth that Apple says, this is what we want to do.

This is the feedback we get from our customers.

And the car manufacturer is like, we don't want to give up that kind of control and power.

I could be off base on this, but I'm just like, I agree 100%.

Because I want every car to just be a shell for my CarPlay.

So when I jump in, because I want to be able to set all the settings.

I want to have all my music.

I want to have everything the same, no matter what car that I jump into.

But if I was a car manufacturer, I wouldn't want that probably.

Interesting stuff.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's go to something that I know is a little more near and dear to your heart is home automation.

We've talked about the fact that, you know, there's different products out there.

There is Apple Home.

And yet again, we're going to bring up Matter and Thread.

I was thrilled to see this story though, because I feel like talking about dragging feet, when are we going to see something useful come out of this?

Because I just want everything to work with my Apple iPhone.

And I was glad to see the Verge actually sat down with three people from these different groups that it sounds like it's kind of promising that they're still working together.

Yeah.

So the idea is you want to have your devices be able to communicate with each other, especially in your home, because you want to be able to turn off everything from lights to appliances to get information about the temperature and everything else, cameras.

And so you want everything to be able to talk to each other.

And so Apple initially tried to do that on its own with HomeKit.

And then of course, Google had its own proprietary system and Amazon had its proprietary system.

And it became so frustrating that, you know, do you buy a product that works for Apple?

Do you buy a product that works for Amazon?

You know, is it going to cost more if it works with HomeKit?

And so a number of years ago, the industry consortium got together and said, you know, we need to have a new protocol and it's now called Matter.

In the very beginning, it was called, I think, CHIP or something like that, C-H-I-P, but it's now called Matter.

And, you know, the surprising thing is that just about everything in the, everybody in the industry is on board.

You know, these fierce competitors have all come together for this.

You know, you're showing right now some of the logos.

I mean, it's basically everybody in this space.

So like this is so impressive.

And yet as promising as it was when the Mattern standard was announced years ago now, it's still, you know, not quite there yet.

You know, all new Apple devices and Apple has been sort of at the forefront of this, do support the Matter standard and something I'll talk about a second called Thread, but it's still, you know, it's still not there that you can just go in any, you know, Home Depot or, you know, on Amazon and you can't just sort of buy things with abandon and just assume that it's going to all work with each other.

So the Matter protocol is one aspect of this.

Another aspect of it is, you know, how do they, what technology do they use to talk to each other?

And, you know, historically the home or the office has had wifi, which allows you to have internet everywhere, but wifi sort of relies upon having, you know, a working, you know, internet system, not just within your home, but also outside of your home.

The Thread stand.

And then of course there was Bluetooth.

Bluetooth was good for very short range communications, but you basically had to be in the same room or, or close to that.

And so this technology called Thread allows, you know, it sort of has the range of Bluetooth or maybe a little bit more, but what makes Thread different is that you could have this mesh.

So if you, if one device can talk to a second one and that one can talk to a third one and that one could talk to a fourth one and you have these Thread border devices that are like in a fixed place, like your Apple TV or a HomePod that never really move and they could sort of act as these traffic cops.

You could put together this little mesh network of things communicating each other and Thread is very good because it's very low power and stuff like that.

And you know, Matter works with Thread, Matter works with wifi, Matter works with other things, Bluetooth.

And so putting all this together and having it all come together, it's, I mean, this is very complicated stuff.

Networking is complicated.

This is complicated.

And so, you know, years ago I thought maybe, Hey, in 2023, this will all come together.

It didn't happen.

In 2024, this will all come together.

It was a little further along, but no.

And so that brings us to this interview where, as you said, the, the, the, the, the folks at the Verge have sat down with the person that's in charge of the wifi allowance, which is a wifi alliance, which is, you know, they always come up with the new versions of wifi.

What are we on now?

Wifi seven, I guess it is now.

My wifi routers, I think support wifi five or, you know, all the different numbers.

And so they have the different versions of wifi.

They had somebody from the Thread organization and then they had somebody from the Matter organization.

And in fact, the person that is in charge of Thread actually works at Apple.

You know, he's just, he also was very surprised to read that.

Yeah.

He works, he's, he's head of this industry organization, but he also works at Apple.

So they all got together in this interview to sort of talk about how they're working together and just the thing, the simple, just hearing them all talk to each other.

It's like, this is exactly what we want.

We want all of these, these, these things to be taught, literally the items talking to each other, but including the people, but but they, they had a lot of promise to him.

And they said, we think that we're going to make great strides, not just in years, but like in months, this, this calendar year.

And you know, they got the, the, the, the, the reporter at the, at the Verge was very technical and some of it was a little bit over my head, but the big picture of it was it's, it's good to see that, that more stuff's coming along the next version of, I think it's Matter or maybe Thread.

One of the two of them is going to come out and it's going to hopefully solve a lot of the problems.

It's Thread, Thread version 1.4 is supposed to be coming.

So, you know, my takeaway from all of this is people haven't given up on this.

It's still moving forward.

We're getting closer and closer to the day where everything will just work together in your home or even in your office or wherever it is.

And I'm glad that they're still making progress in this, because this is what we want.

You know, you want to be able to just use your iPhone or if you're an Android user, use your Android phone, whatever.

You just want to use your phone, control the things, get the information and not have to worry about it.

I'm going to find other people that are smarter than me to make it all work behind the scenes.

I just want to use it.

And I don't, I mean, that's it.

I don't want to take the time to like learn so much information about like, I just want it to work, but okay.

I was, I was thrilled to see this, but I feel like at this point I'm like, okay, this is all good that you're talking together, but let's see some action.

And until then, I'm just going to kind of put it off to the side, but I'm glad that they're working.

I'm glad that there's something that could be going on.

So anyway, good, good article.

Thanks for linking to that.

And I mean, okay, we still have hope.

One more thing.

I mean like right now in my current home, cause I've got a bunch of smart home stuff, a lot of it works together, but like I have a nest smoke detector, which is a preparatory thing that can't talk to home kit or any of my other devices.

Most of my cameras are working with home kit, but I've got the one camera that I have from you fee on my doorbell that it just doesn't happen to be home kit compatible.

So I got to use the UFI for it.

You know, even within my home and I've tried to keep things on home kit as much as possible.

I still have all these things that can't talk to each other.

So again, the hope is that one day we will be where everything can talk to each other.

So, okay.

It just might take a little time.

We're too impatient, Jeff.

I want it to happen.

Last thing, the video.

So cool.

Oh, surely most people have heard of the band.

Okay, go.

Not necessarily because they're like the greatest musicians ever.

Although I think their songs are excellent, but they have made such a name for themselves over many years.

Now everybody might remember a quirky video from this quartet where they were using multiple treadmills and they were walking back and forth.

That's the one I was thinking of too.

Exactly.

Me too, because it was so amazing.

And then since then, that not only are they known for some really good music, but their videos are just absolutely not to be missed.

I was so mesmerized this morning when I was watching this latest music video.

Not just because, I mean, first of all, I can't even wrap my head around how in the world that they used 64 iPhones with videos to do what they did, which was amazing.

But at the end, in fact, your picture here that you posted from YouTube, I was laughing so hard at all of the spaghetti wires.

Like they literally had all of these iPhones plugged in and charging and all of those bricks and everything.

And I just thought that was so good.

So thank you for linking to this this morning.

What a fun video.

When I think of, you know, OK Go videos, of course the famous one on the treadmills, you know, they had one years ago that was this, I think it's called like a Rube Goldberg type of device where like this causes this, this causes this.

And you know, by the time you get 12, 15, 20 down the road, if it doesn't all work perfectly, the whole thing doesn't work.

So to have a music video where everything worked in succession was amazing.

They had one years ago that was like different colors of paint and stuff like that.

Yes, I remember that.

You could sit down for hours and just watch the great OK Go videos of all time.

And every one of them is, you know, like you say, often a good song.

But what is really amazing is like, how did they make this video?

And this one is the same way I would have never it would never have occurred to me to even try to do what they've done here.

And the way that they've got these different phones that are synchronized and playing things together and it was filmed with an iPhone.

Tim Cook, even I didn't link to it, but I noticed that he was somewhere on one of the social media platforms.

He had a link to it earlier this week because this was just so impressive.

It is just, you know, sit down, give yourself a few minutes, watch this video.

It is just so, so fun.

And you know, once again, who knows what they'll come up with in 2025 because, you know, they're already thinking about the next one.

It's just unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

I mean, for me, I look at something like this and I'm like, OK, how how did they do that?

Like this is a phone like we've all played with videos.

And I mean, I've only watched it like a couple of times and I'm still just dumbfounded.

It just is amazing because it's the same video, but then it's parts of the video.

And like, I don't know.

But at the end, if you watch it all the way to the end, at least a whole minute here at the end is all of the people that helped out on it.

Isn't that amazing?

It's not just the four members of the band.

I mean, there's got to be 300 people here that like worked on this, which, you know, that tells you like the scale of what this is.

But man, good job, guys.

I mean, just what an awesome video on that.

And thanks for linking to that today, too, Jeff.

That was fun.

Great stuff in the know, in the know, because we talked about the vitals app.

I wanted to address something really quick.

Now, unfortunately, this is only going to be a tip available for those of us that have an Apple Watch Ultra, because what I'm going to talk about, I have to scroll all the way down here for the right face.

Here it is, the modular ultra.

So all Apple watches, I believe, Jeff, correct me if I'm wrong, you can have modular watch faces.

There's the modular watch face, modular compact, modular duo.

But if you have an Apple Watch Ultra, there is also a modular ultra.

Now, remember, we talked about this before when you were exchanging multiple Apple watches and you had an ultra.

And one of the things, you know, obviously, we talked so much about the battery life on it.

But another one is this modular ultra watch face.

When this came out, and I had my my ultra, I have not moved away from this watch face.

I mean, I like to flip back and forth sometimes to some of the other ones, like the Snoopy one we talked about.

But I will always leave the modular ultra, mainly because there was the ability to put so much information on this modular ultra.

You can put seven complications.

It's like one, two, three at the top, one, two, three at the bottom.

And then you've got a big one in the middle underneath the time.

But not too long after that, they also offer the ability to put, I call it a complication still around the outer bezel.

Now when this first came out, there was only a couple of ones that were available.

One was like, it could be a depth meter.

Now I don't go snorkeling very often, if at all.

So it's like the depth meter to me wasn't that big of a deal.

It was kind of funny when I was in an airplane, because it was like off the scale.

But it was like, it didn't really do anything for me.

There was another one that you could do where it would like count the seconds around the watch face.

And I'm like, okay, that's fun, but it doesn't really help me anything.

Well, after the vitals app came out, they offered another bezel complication.

And this one is called the training bezel.

And I'm trying to figure this out.

And it's one that I keep on now because it's great.

On the left side of the watch face on the training bezel, you can put the vitals or it comes up with the vitals.

And it's just this weird thing.

In fact, here, I've got another picture I'm going to show you from Reddit that'll show this a little bit better.

On the left side is the vitals app, but it's just sort of like a straight line.

Does that make sense?

And so it'll tell you the blue is like your normal.

And then if there's a spike or an outlier, it'll show you.

Well, on the right side of the watch face, you have what they call training load.

I don't really understand that too much, but it is tracking your training load on Apple watch.

In other words, if you do some activity, it'll tell you if you had a spike in it or if it was normal or if you have an outlier.

And mine typically just says well below if I have an exercise in a couple of days, or it'll say above.

In other words, you're above your normal median training load on it as you were on there.

So I'm just saying it for me, there's so much information on the modular watch, ultra watch face, but I love it.

I love the fact that I can put so much in.

Sometimes I will swap them out.

I typically have like the weather is one of them.

My circles for activity is another one of them.

You can see on this Reddit page I'm linking to, they even have Shazam listed on there.

Then they have Apple music.

I just like the fact that I can put so much in from.

I feel like this is the most customizable watch face that Apple has come out with, but the modular ultra is only available on the Apple watch ultra obviously, which I kind of hate that because I feel like other people could deal with it and enjoy it as well.

But anyway, that's just my tip.

We were talking about the vitals app before and even though—the only thing I don't like, I'll just quickly say is even though I have the training bezel on, I can't tap on the vitals bezel to go to the vitals app.

Does that make sense?

But I typically just will swipe up on my watch face and I can get to my vitals that way.

But I kind of wish that I could tap on the vitals bezel and go to the app, but it just is kind of showing me just the general idea.

But I feel like that's the most helpful component, like the bezel in the Apple watch face.

So if you're having the Apple watch ultra, make sure you go in and check out the modular ultra watch face and you can customize it to your heart's content.

You know, I tried them as you know, the ultra two for almost a month last year and I really liked it.

Although for me, I preferred the Apple watch 10.

But when I think about the things that I missed, you know, beforehand, I would have thought, well, maybe it would be that you have this whole extra button on the left side of the ultra.

But the reality is I didn't use it that much.

Maybe it would be the amazing battery life of the ultra.

And I did like it, but you know, my Apple watch 10 has been fine with battery life.

The durability of the ultra, not a big deal for me because I'm not like climbing mountains and stuff like that.

Although this week I did have to experience the Arctic tundra, but you know, the number one thing that I missed about the ultra was the modular ultra watch face.

Because it displays so much.

I love all the information you can put on there.

I loved having two big widgets instead of just one.

I really loved that watch face.

And in fact, when I did my review of the Apple watch series 10, a couple of months ago now, I actually had like a side-by-side picture where, you know, the screen of the series 10 is bigger than previous generations.

So there's no practical reason why you couldn't put the modular ultra watch face on the series 10.

And in fact, I even took a screenshot of on my watch on the ultra.

And then I put that screenshot on my series 10 and yeah, if you're looking at my review, you may actually find it on there and it totally worked.

Like you could totally put that watch face on the series 10 and it would totally work.

And yet Apple hasn't allowed that feature.

And I really wish that they would.

I think it was up.

You missed it.

But it's the number one thing that I missed about it is I love that watch face.

I'm still hoping that maybe, you know, I know Apple wants to have a unique feature for the series 10.

It's that one right there.

And that is a screenshot of the, of my ultra just, just, you know, but it's on the series 10 and it totally works.

You know, there's enough space for it.

So I really wish, I really wish that Apple would allow it because I loved that watch face.

And I mean, like you said, whether you put the second story on the side or something else, that's what you want your watch to be.

You want your watch to be something that you glance at it and you instantly see the information that you want.

Of course, I'm talking about the time, but maybe the weather, maybe something about your mail, maybe a shortcut for something, maybe the seconds, or as you just described it, maybe you know, your overall health, especially as the vitals app gets even better in the future and the intensity of your overall work workouts.

So I love, I love that tip.

And I love the fact that Apple has that.

I wish all Apple watches could use it.

Who knows, maybe one day that they will, but we're not there yet.

So I see on your screenshot here, you had the seconds going around.

Cause I mean, if I'm not mistaken, the only two options you had when this came out, where's that depth gauge and the seconds.

I don't think that there was another one.

And it's like, neither of those, I don't, I don't want either of those, but I don't want to not have a bezel because I know I can't have a bezel and I don't want that Blake, you know, I want to utilize every little, you know, uh, space of that.

But I like, I see now, I remember looking at this picture when you reviewed this, cause you even had the, um, overcast app as one of your widgets.

You had weather as like the big fat widget there in the middle there.

And then you had your circles in your, in your calendar anyway, just really cool.

And by the way, I like the reason I didn't want the seconds going around the outside is because you can see on this watch face, you only have the hour and the minutes.

But if I go back to my Reddit here, you can see, you can even customize how the clock looks on there.

So it has hours, minutes, and even the second.

So I'm like, I don't want to be redundant.

I don't want the seconds going around.

You know, I guess if you're a nurse or something that would be helpful to have, but anyway, just really good.

So that's my, that's my tip that I wanted to share today was just looking, if you have an ultra watch, it's worth looking into the modular ultra watch face.

Great tip.

Great tip.

So my tip today as a resident of new Orleans, I am probably the last person who should ever offer tips on cold weather.

Having said that I do have one from this week, which is this when I was walking around outside on Tuesday, when there was beautiful snow, snow was still falling.

The temperature was, you know, right around freezing and stuff like that.

Of course I was taking a lot of pictures.

I was taking a lot of videos and I was totally surprised.

Well it was a little surprised.

I'll come back to that in a second that when I got home, even though my iPhone had been fully charged because I had been keeping my iPhone charged just in case we lost power or something like that.

When I got home, I had, I really had not been outside for that long, but I had been taking, you know, video and 4k, you know, all the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the most vigorous type of video you could take.

My iPhone was basically dead.

I was at like 1% and I'm like, wow.

But it reminded me that an Apple says this on the website, as you're saying, if you are in an extreme warm or in this case, an extreme cold situation, your iPhone battery life will go down a lot more.

And I say it wasn't a complete surprise to me because when I was walking around taking videos with my son, he actually reminded me, he said, dad, you know that when you're taking all this video, your iPhone is going to run down.

And the only reason he knew it is because last year around Mardi Gras time, we took a, that, you know, because the kids were off of school, we took vacation time and went up to go skiing.

I say to go skiing.

I myself know diddly squat about skiing, but my kids learn how to ski and snowboard.

They did a beautiful job.

I just sat there and watched them.

But I remember that when we were in, we were in, in New York at the time at a, at a, at a smaller ski hill.

But I noticed that when I was outside in that really cold weather, as I was taking videos of my kids, that my iPhone battery went down really fast.

And what I did do when I was on the ski slopes and I had forgotten about when I walked around on Tuesday was taking with me like an external battery.

I've got the one that Apple used to sell that just, you know, goes right on the back of the MagSafe one on the back.

And so my tip of the week is if you're going to be in, if you're going to be in a very cold, you know, freezing temperatures or below, and you're going to be taking a lot of video, take an external battery with you if you can, especially if you have something very small and convenient like those MagSafe ones, because you will run through just something about the way the iPhone works.

When it gets really cold, it really runs through battery.

My guess is that what it's doing is it's probably, you know, warming itself up so that it continues to operate and the cold temperatures.

And it's really using battery life.

I don't know technically why it is, but, and I mentioned this, Brett, I mean, you're the one that lives in Ohio for goodness sakes.

Now, maybe you don't spend that much time walking outside in the freezing weather, but have you ever noticed this before that if you spend a lot of time outside taking videos and pictures and stuff, or even just using your iPhone, that it really wears down the battery more? - You know, I haven't noticed that, but when you were talking about this, it made me think of there have been some times when I've been in like an extreme hot conditions, or it's like when I've gone to Texas to visit my mom, you know, like in the summertime or something like that.

And I don't notice the battery life, but I do notice, you know, there have been some times when the phone will get very, very hot and they'll even shut down, like at the bottom of this page here, a temperature warning will appear.

And it's, I mean, I say shut down, I don't think that it completely shuts everything down, but it'll give you a temperature warning to say like, hey, you've got to, you know, you've got to stop this.

Or I would even tell you there is a wireless charger in our Subaru car that I have.

And if I put my phone there, it'll charge it, but I guess it's a very small slot that you can put that in.

I don't know if it's because of it's a small area, you know, it's a car, so there's a lot of other things going on too.

But if I leave my phone in there for too long, it will start shutting down.

Like it'll give me this little warning and it'll just say, you know, it's going to go into this, I feel like it's some kind of a mode where it won't charge anymore and only certain things might be available.

It'll start shutting down some of the other things.

I mean, obviously you can tell by the way I'm talking about it, it doesn't happen very often so I haven't really, you know, it hasn't caused me concern.

But this is a little bit different than what you're talking about with the battery.

I guess I just haven't noticed it, but you know, most of the time I'm usually carrying an extra battery, especially like even when we were traveling over the holidays, taking lots and lots of video out, walking around, it wasn't like deathly cold or anything, but you know, I could see that I just ran down because I was doing more videos than I would normally do maybe.

But I just had never thought about like some of those extreme cold temperatures and I know you had never thought about it either going out in New Orleans.

Well the fact that Apple has a page on its website devoted to the topic of extreme temperatures, if your iPhone or your iPad gets either too hot or too cold, means that they absolutely recognize this and they have some suggestions.

And so, you know, again, my tip is if you know you're going to be in a really cold situation and you know, skiing or walking around when New Orleans gets 10 inches of snow or something like that are perfect examples, you know, just keep in mind that your battery life is going to go a lot faster than you expect and you're used to.

So you know, if I had been outside much longer, I would have had to go get my backup battery to use it.

And so just something good to keep in mind.

Yeah, they do say if you use it in very cold conditions, it might temporarily shorten battery life.

This is what you're talking about and could cause your device to turn off.

So I bet if you kept going, it might have shut off.

But I like this.

I guess this is somewhat encouraging.

Battery life will return to normal when you bring your device back to higher ambient temperatures.

And that's what happened to me.

Exactly.

Once I was home.

You just got to go inside, right?

Yeah.

So it was good.

Interesting.

Okay.

Good to know.

And like you said, I had no idea that this support article even existed.

So now I guess I'll be watching it a little bit more.

Well hopefully enjoy what's left of the snow, Jeff, because it sounds like it'll be gone in a couple of days.

And hopefully by the time we talk with you next time, I don't know, we don't want any other bad weather for you.

We certainly don't want any more snow.

It's certainly nothing else.

But good talking with you as always, Jeff.

We'll talk with you next week.

Thanks, Brett.