Welcome to in the news for February 14th, 2025.

Happy Valentine's Day.

I am Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

You know, you remind me with Valentine's Day, Brett.

I have, um, I don't know if it's an observation or a complaint or what it is.

You know, Apple has the watch bands for the Apple watch the, uh, that I liked that you're red and stuff.

Right.

So a while ago, um, Woot had this thing that you could get these Apple, um, I'm forgetting the name of these watch bands that go all the way around the, um, uh, the solo loop.

It's one of the loops, right?

Exactly.

The solo loop.

They come in all these different colors, every color under the rainbow, 50 bucks.

And Woot was selling them for like 20 bucks.

And so this was like months ago.

So I got the one that was, it was advertised as red.

In fact, it's, you know, how Apple used to have its thing, or maybe they still do that.

They would come up with red.

Yeah.

Product red.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm not a big fan of red for AIDS research, but this one right here, it's advertised as red and every person I show it to, including myself, it looks more orange.

You know, a little bit, it's got the tinge.

I put it on today because it's Valentine's day, but like I need something that's like schoolhouse red.

Not like this anyway.

I don't need anything, but it's the thought that counts, Jeff.

You're trying.

Okay.

And that's great.

Okay.

We may move on.

Speaking of what counts, we just want to say thank you quickly to our sponsor, Sanebox.

We'll talk a little bit more about them in just a moment, but thank you so much Sanebox.

For a way to help me and Jeff and many others kind of tame our inboxes.

You can find out more information to go to sanebox.com/inthenews, all one word.

And we just want to say thanks again to Sanebox.

You started out your post today, Jeff, with, well, I guess it was actually started by Tim Cook himself.

Put out a little bit of a teaser.

He said something along the lines of, get ready to welcome the newest member of the family.

It's almost like Tim Cook is like had early Valentine's day present or something.

You think along with many other people that that newest member of the family is going to be a new iPhone SE, which we haven't seen for what, a couple of years now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Apple comes out with a new SE every couple of years.

It's the low cost version of the iPhone.

It's usually about half the price, 400, 450, something like that, 430.

And you know, often the SE uses sort of yesterday's technology, but puts it into a nice small package and the SEs are good phones.

I mean, if you don't need all the fancy features, my wife uses an SE, my daughter uses an SE.

The big thing about the SE for many years now is it's been the only way to get an iPhone that has that home button with touch ID.

So if you, I've been using face ID for so long now that I really think it's better, but some people like the idea that you could not even just be looking at your phone.

You could just put your finger on it and log right on in.

And I know that my wife, for example, tells me that she's like, I don't want face ID.

I just like touch ID, which I understand.

So the rumor is it's going to go away and you can understand why because of Apple removes the button.

I mean, we learned this a long time ago with the iPhone 10, that with the button gone, you've got more space so you could have more usable screen space for looking at things.

Bigger screen, right.

Yeah.

So that's one of the rumors.

Right now the screen is 4.7 inch, which is the smallest iPhone screen you can get versus like the iPhone 16 starts at like 6.1 and goes all the way up to 6.9.

So that would be interesting to see if they finally get rid of the button.

Other things that I'm sure they're going to do is because of the European union standards, Apple has to put USB-C on everything instead of lightning.

And that's been phasing out over years now.

So I suspect it will no longer see lightning.

And so people that use the SE and that upgrade will have to, you know, have one less reason to actually have a lightning cord in their house, you know.

And another thing that I think is almost definitely going to happen is support for Apple intelligence, which really means it has to have more RAM, you know, and having more memory will be good because in addition to allowing Apple intelligence to work, when you have more memory, it means, you know, your, your phone's a little snappier, you can have more Safari tabs open, you know, all that sort of stuff.

So that's always a good thing to have more memory.

So those are some of the big things, rumors.

You know, whenever a new iPhone comes out, they always improve the camera a little bit.

So I suspect we'll see that.

Some rumors, it might be a slightly better screen.

They might go to OLED instead of LCD.

So we'll see, but it'll be interesting.

And we know it's going to be on February 19th.

We don't know if it's going to be like one of these actual events that Apple records a video for, or just a press release.

I would have bet good money that it would just be a press release.

And then when Tim Cook had this post on, on the service formerly known as Twitter, I thought, well, maybe if they're actually pre-announcing it, maybe it'll be a short little video.

So we'll see, but we'll find out in a few days.

Interesting.

Yeah.

You link to a post from John Vorhees over at Mac Stories, and he described Tim Cook's post as a cryptic post accompanied by a short video of a shimmery Apple logo framed by a circle with a rainbow border.

Now here's the thing.

Tim Cook didn't actually say an iPhone SE, right?

We're just assuming that, and Mark Gurman, and many, many other people are pretty much set and convinced that that's what we're going to be doing.

But it could be something else.

I doubt it, but it could be.

And this is going to happen next Wednesday.

So a week from now, you and I will be able to talk about it.

It'll be interesting to see what will happen there.

In fact, I'll give the counter story there, which is if you just look historically, Apple has often announced the new SE in March.

I think once it was in April, I put the dates in my post.

And so February is a little early, I guess.

So although this is sort of later February.

So I mean, you could argue maybe the SE is coming next month, and maybe Apple will be announcing some brand new robot that sits on your desk and moves around and dances when you talk to it, like we talked about last week.

Who knows?

It could happen.

Anything is possible until next week.

So just quickly, because you were mentioning this, it was March 10, 2022, when you posted on iPhone JD, this is the third generation of the iPhone SE.

So it has been now two, almost three years now, three years, crazy, when we had the last newest iPhone SE.

So, okay, it's a good bet.

We feel like that that's what's going to happen.

But still, the anticipation is killing me already.

And we'll see what happens.

One thing about the three years ago, this is part of the reason that the iPhone SE is always less expensive is because when Apple comes out with a new model, they keep it on the shelf for many, many years.

And that's what helps to keep the cost low.

And it's the reason why if you get an SE when a new generation is announced, it's actually pretty current with technology.

Now if you were to walk into an iPhone to an Apple store right now and buy the SE third generation that came out three years ago, then it's starting to show its age.

But the SE is usually a pretty good buy if you get it the first year.

Anyway, okay, enough about that. - Excellent, good stuff.

Apple might be in a little bit of hot water from the governments in Britain.

Oh my goodness, I saw this story come out.

And we talk a lot about Apple and their security.

Apple themselves tout the iPhone security quite a bit.

You and I have both discussed this, like I said, and trust it quite a bit simply because of how long we've been using Apple products.

But what an interesting story.

The government in the UK has ordered or at least strongly requested that Apple basically give them backdoor, what we call backdoor access through iCloud encryption.

Now this isn't the first time we've heard this story.

Apple has been in many stories before, especially from criminal matters when they need to get access to the criminal's iCloud account or the iPhone information to get access for justice.

Like to figure out who they were talking to, all that kind of stuff.

But Apple has pushed back on this.

Anyway, what could be the fallout of this latest story, Jeff?

Every time I see this, I get a little bit nervous of what does this mean that Apple's gonna have to do now? - Yeah, I mean, Apple has offered the ability to have this end-to-end encryption for all sorts of things, whether it's messages, whether it's the backup of photos and your messages and everything else.

And it gives you some security.

I know as an attorney, since I have some confidential information on my iPhone, you want everything to be as locked down as possible.

I don't want the bad guys getting back access to my data and stuff.

And if Apple could see it, then anyone could in theory, so anyway, but the story that was broke by the Washington Post last week, in fact, it posted literally one week ago today, it was right after we recorded last week's podcast.

That they told Apple, you have to build in a backdoor, a way that there's a secret key so that if we, the good guys in the government in the UK wanna get access, you will give us access even if it's for everybody else.

Plus, you can't tell anyone about it, so you gotta be quiet.

And so who leaked the story?

Was it somebody on the Apple side?

Was it somebody on the British government that's like, this is a ridiculous invasion of privacy?

Was it somebody in America that found out about it and thought that it was, we don't know who leaked the story.

But it doesn't surprise me because for many years, law enforcement have said, we don't want anything to be secret.

We wanna be able to get access to everything and trust us because we're the good guys.

And at a surface level, we're like, sure, I guess we trust the good guys.

But I personally think it's a bad idea.

First of all, if one government has it, then every government has it.

So you might think, hey, we love people in England, so that's fine.

But if they're gonna ask for it, then abusive governments in places like Africa or Central America or Russia or China, pick whatever government you don't like, they will get access to it as well.

And again, the UK stuff, it's not just we wanna be able to get into our own citizen stuff.

It's like, we want everybody around the world, we wanna be able to access it.

And then second of all, the idea that these "hidden back doors" remain secret is laughable.

In history, it has never, ever, ever worked.

There was this time many years ago where it used to be that if, I think I have it right, that DVD were encrypted in a certain way that they would only work in certain- Yes, right.

Region encryption, yeah.

Somebody discovered that there was an actual, here is the, I don't know how many characters long it was, 64 character long key.

And then once it became known by one person, it was known by everybody.

In fact, famously, there was somebody that recorded a YouTube song that was singing along to it.

It was like, "Hey, I'm just singing along to the encryption key."

So it's going to get out.

Things like this can't be kept secret forever.

And so then when that happens, all the bad guys will be able to break into your data.

And the bad guys themselves will know that we will just use, 'cause I mean, encryption is a mathematical thing.

I mean, anyone could create a mathematical program to do encryption.

And maybe all the governments around the world say it's illegal, but if you're a bad guy, you're doing illegal things anyway.

And so we're walking down the path.

What the UK has done is moving us down the path of having a world in which only the bad guys have encryption and all the rest of us lose privacy.

And for a long time, Apple has made the strong case in the court of public opinion to courts in the United States and elsewhere of, look, you don't want to open up this door because it's a Pandora's box.

And yet it looks like the UK is going there.

So I mean, as I posted today, there are some lawmakers in the US that are trying to convince the UK to back down because again, once you go down here, you can't unopen this box.

So we'll see what happens with this.

But from the standpoint of security and privacy, I think it's a pretty big story.

It's the proverbial rock in a hard place, 'cause I get it.

I want bad guys to be caught as well.

I want to help the law enforcement as much as possible.

But to your point there, just the very fact that this story alone got leaked from government, because the way that it proves it, that shows that eventually if there is some kind of a back door, it's going to get leaked.

I mean, especially in today's world and with the society, the way that we see so many things getting leaked from government, like eventually it will be known.

And so there is no way that any government would be able to confidently say that it's going to be kept quiet.

And I think Apple, at least I feel like Apple knows that and we'll see where it goes.

I mean, they don't have a whole lot of options here.

And I'm afraid, unfortunately, that if the UK government or any government continues to try to require this, that Apple is going to sort of, well, they'll take away certain technologies I think, security technologies maybe from citizens in that country.

I mean, I don't know.

I'm just saying that it's not going to end well if governments like this continue to push on it.

I understand why they're pushing on it, but I just hope that Apple continues to be as safe as possible in their response.

Interesting stuff on that.

If you watch the Super Bowl on TV like I did, you may have set up a little straighter when you saw one particular commercial.

I know that I did while everyone else was eating some nachos.

It was a T-Mobile commercial and it had Starlink on there.

So of course I'm already kind of paying attention a little bit better here.

But apparently this commercial was announcing a partnership with T-Mobile and Starlink.

I'm not T-Mobile.

And so then half of me was like, oh man, well that means I can't take advantage of it.

Until the very end of this commercial, I think, Jeff, they said, you don't have to be a T-Mobile customer.

You can actually enjoy access to Starlink, which is the satellite Wi-Fi basically, regardless of what platform that you're on, at least for a few months here.

I haven't taken the plunge to try this out yet, but I think I'm pretty close to trying it.

Yeah.

So we know high-end iPhones have been able to work with satellites for a little while now in emergency situations.

You have to have a clean line of sight, so you got to be outside and stuff like that.

But those are satellites that are much higher in orbit.

Starlink, which is a company owned by Elon Musk, they have satellites that are in lower orbit.

They're closer to the Earth.

In fact, that causes a lot of controversy because there's so many of them up there that if you like to look at the stars and stuff like that, they get in the way and cause pollution.

But regardless, as a result, it's easier to get access to those satellites.

And of course, Starlink allows for technologies like satellite-based Wi-Fi around the world.

So places in the world where you're completely off the grid, I know it's been a big deal in places like Ukraine with the war, you can get access to the internet just through line of sight.

So the idea is that the iPhone has the ability to communicate with those satellites as well.

And so T-Mobile has a service, and it's apparently free if you want to try it for now.

And then they start to charge for it in July.

Instead of only working with satellites for emergencies, you could communicate in satellites all the time.

And they're starting off simple with just text messages without pictures, but eventually they're going to have text messages with pictures, regular old data, phone calls.

And again, you don't need any of this if you're on regular old Wi-Fi, and you don't need any of this if you're within cell phone coverage.

But if you're camping in the middle of nowhere, it might be the sort of thing that you want to be able to access the internet for something, and this would allow you to do it.

So it'll be a little bit less expensive if you're a T-Mobile customer, a little more expensive.

I think that for, it's what, 15 or 20 bucks a month, which I don't know, you could say whether it's expensive or not.

I mean, it depends upon how often you find yourself off the grid.

Right, with how much you need it.

Yeah.

But I mean, I could definitely see that for some people that do a lot of hiking, camping, just traveling around the country or around the world, this might be really cool.

And you've had this ability for a long time now if you buy one of those expensive satellite phones, but those things are big and cumbersome.

Why not just do it with just the phone that's in your pocket?

So it's an interesting technology.

In the company that I work with, there is at least two people that I've talked to that have become what most people would call digital nomads.

In other words, they travel around in an RV, Jeff, or they move every two months or so to different cities, and they rely on Starlink, not just for the text messages, but I'm talking about the Starlink service itself completely for all of their access for Wi-Fi.

That's how they get access to work.

They can stream movies.

And they continue to tell me how reliable and amazing that it is.

I mean, the speeds that they get and everything is incredible.

Now to your point, they have to have direct line of sight, so they have to park the camper, making sure there's no trees overhead and stuff.

But once you have that set up, they say it's absolutely fantastic.

The other thing that somebody mentioned while I was at the Super Bowl party, that when this commercial came on, one of the gentlemen had T-Mobile already, and when he saw Starlink, he had said he had already been thinking, "Could I get rid of my local cable system at my house?"

Like at his permanent house, right?

And just go with Starlink.

And so when he saw this, he looked at me because he just knew I was a little bit on the techie nerdy side, and he said, "Wait a minute.

Could I get a bundle for that?"

So I feel like the beginnings of this is pretty amazing, and you know I've talked about this many times, even with Apple and how they're working, I think, with the text messages, like you said, and the iPhone.

I do see a day in the future where we don't necessarily have to rely all the time on cellular-based systems or maybe even wired-based systems on the Earth.

And I feel like, I hate to say there's going to be more satellites in the air, but I think Starlink is going to be a way to go.

I think this is going to be something, whether it's Starlink, another company, or even Apple eventually launching their own satellites or whatever it is, it just continues to get me excited that this could be a world, like it doesn't really matter where you have to be.

You don't have to be at a Starbucks to get a Wi-Fi.

You can get it from anywhere.

So okay, I'll stop now, but I just get pretty excited when I saw these stories, and like I said, during the Super Bowl.

But thanks for bringing that up.

And thanks also for bringing up another interesting little device that I didn't know that I needed until I read your review, the Kodak Slide & Scan Digital Film Scanner.

There was a couple of things you were talking about with the Photomator app on the iPhone, and you were experimenting with this little Slide & Scan Digital Film Scanner, but lots of cool things on the photo side here, including this.

Now I have to go and buy it for $180.

But based on your review, it looks like it's worth it, Jeff.

Yeah, I was fun playing with.

You know, it's funny because when I was at my parents' house and I saw in this closet all of these carousels of slides.

Yeah, you had a picture right here.

You don't know what's – I mean, that one says San Fran 1980 on it.

So – Wow.

And you know, you can hold up an individual slide to light and sort of get a sense of what's on a little bit, but you really can't see it.

So for all intents and purposes, these pictures were locked away, right?

You know, nobody could really view them because I don't have a projector.

I mean, there might be one somewhere at my parents' house, but I have no idea.

Right, right.

Make sure the bulb's out.

You got to put a screen, everything.

So I mean, these are basically, you know, unlike in a photo album that anyone could pick it up and look at.

So it was fun to – every time I opened up one of these carousels and went through and used this device to scan them, it was like, "Oh, look at this."

I mean, this is a picture of me when I was 10 years old or whatever, or this is like, you know, one of my friends that lived next door that we used to play all the time, or you know, this is – Nice.

You know, some event that I went to.

It was just totally walking down memory lane.

And as I pointed out, I mean, I want to be clear.

This product does not give you the best quality scan.

If you want to go to a professional – Okay, okay.

And you can pay, you know, anywhere from one to five bucks a slide.

Yeah, we've done that.

Right.

Which adds up because, I mean, I think I scanned like 1,500 pictures, Brett.

So if I had paid – Whoa.

Hello.

I mean, it would have been very expensive for a service.

Now, again, the quality would have been a little bit better.

But again, I'm not looking – I wasn't looking for the highest quality.

I just wanted something fun to – you know, I could look at it.

I could share it.

To digitize everything.

And then I may not look at it.

Yeah.

I mean, I've been using this for a long time.

I've been scanning pictures from way back when.

So I really enjoyed using it.

And it was a fun thing to do with my iPhone and iPad because that little scanner, you know, it just uses USB-C to charge.

And so I can plug that USB-C cord into my iPad, which provided power.

So I basically had like this little portable station just sitting there at my dining room table.

And I would scan a bunch of pictures.

And then I would put them in my iPad using the SD card.

And then once they were on my iPad, you know, you could crop them a little bit or you turn the ones that were placed the right way.

You could adjust the levels of the colors.

I used that app Photomator, which as you said, Apple just bought.

And you know, and I could go through and adjust them.

And I mean, you could totally tell that they're old pictures.

It's not like they look as clear as a DSLR picture.

And one thing – some of the pictures that had like high dynamic range, like a really bright area and a really dark area, those are the ones that I'm like, you know, they came out okay.

But I know they would have been much better if – like even one that you're showing right now with San Francisco, the stuff that's in the background, you know, that I probably could have gotten more out of that with like a professional scan.

But who cares?

It's just a picture of one of those crazy San Francisco streets that I look at the cars and I'm like, why are they not turning over and flipping because the streets and the hills in San Francisco are so crazy.

So you know, it was fun to go through.

And then once I had them scanned, I could – I put them up on like a SmugMug page and shared them with family members.

Exactly.

And that was totally fun.

And they loved it.

So I really enjoyed it.

That's the goal.

That's the goal is the memories here, Jeff.

Yeah.

So number one, I hear what you're saying.

Number one, you're not – you're only going to get so good of a scan.

It doesn't matter because these are old pictures on literal slides or on negatives.

Like it's – I don't know that even going to a professional service is going to be that much better.

And number two, even when you go to the professional service, you basically have to like pack up all of your slides and that's the only copy that you have and you have to send them.

We've done that.

I've done that with my – and it worked out great.

It was a service.

I think it was in the Philippines or something like that.

And then they send all the pictures back.

But what I love about this is that first of all, you can look at it.

You can decide which ones of these that you actually want to digitize.

And to me, as long as you can just get something that then you can share because what are they doing right now?

They're just sitting in a box in a closet, right?

And the fact that you can digitize them and share them with family, to me, that's the beauty of it.

Even if they're not as "as good as they could be," but it doesn't matter they're good enough, right, for the memory aspect of it.

And it's just so fun to see a very young Jeff Richardson here as well.

One thing about the good enough, Brett, is I noticed that like if I'm looking at one of these pictures on my beautiful iPad Pro, which is a huge, lovely, wonderful screen, I can look at the picture and I can see some of like the colors, not perfect or their little flaws.

But way back when, when you used to look at these in a projector, you totally didn't see that.

You didn't see the dust scratches, whatever.

And the same is true when I was looking at some of these pictures I scanned on my Apple TV, on my television, using my Apple TV.

Because you're sitting back from the TV, you don't see the little note.

You really don't.

So for the purposes of just casually looking at it and scanning with friends and family, it is more than worth it.

This is the Kodak Slide & Scan Digital Film Scanner.

It looks like $180, you can get it off of Amazon, but go and read Jeff's review.

I'll make sure the link is in the show notes there because just really fun.

I mean, and frankly, that could be a fun like a weekend, you know, go visit the family and you could be doing this all weekend.

And I just know from my past experiences after losing my father and everything, just sitting there day round as a family and looking at old photos, just a really fun, fun option there.

I like that a lot.

You and I are both big fans of AirPods and the AirPods Pro 2.

I pretty much use them every single day.

In fact, we're both using them right now.

But you know, I keep seeing people talk about the Beats series of headphones.

I've never had a Beats, either over the ear headphones or even in the ear, Jeff.

But man, this article you linked to today from Malcolm Owen at Apple Insider, the Beats Power Beats Pro 2.

That's a lot of beats in there.

But I mean, I still think I've got an edge to the AirPods just because the way they work and everything that I love about it.

But I am seriously considering now trying the Beats Power Beats Pro 2.

You had a couple of articles today that just really gets me interested now.

Yeah, I think I mean, from all the reviews that I've read, the Power Beats Pro 2 are truly on par with the AirPods Pro 2.

The highest quality.

That's saying a lot.

I mean, there's a reason for that.

They're both made by Apple.

Apple has owned Beats for a long time.

Which means that they both use the same, you know, H2 chip.

So of course, the sound quality is going to be theoretically the same.

There's so many things that they share that it's a really good product.

And it's got some advantages.

I mean, that little clip that goes around the ear.

I see that.

Yeah.

The big advantage of it is that if you are really actively working out, you're shaking your head and stuff like that, you don't have to worry about the risk of an AirPod falling out of your ear.

Now, the flip side is also true.

In the review, I think it was maybe the review by Chance Miller or maybe somebody else that I posted a review from was saying that if you wear glasses like I do, the thing that goes around your ear, like would sort of be on top of your glasses.

It could be a little awkward.

Yeah.

So there's pros and cons of having something that goes around the ear.

But for some people, it's a clear advantage.

I mean, I know that, like I mentioned, my daughter uses them.

She's a teenager and she has tried AirPods and they just don't stay in her ear.

You know, everybody's ear shape is different.

A little bit different.

Yeah.

You don't want to have an AirPod to be falling out of your ear for goodness sakes.

So for her, I mean, that go around the ear clip made all the difference in the world.

In fact, we got them for her last year, I think it was for her birthday because she really wanted them.

And I knew because the rumors have been out for months that there was going to be a Powerbeats Pro 2 coming out.

Now it's out in February.

But like when your daughter wants something last year and I'm like, well, maybe something better is coming in the future.

Something better is always coming in the future.

And I think she was totally fine with the first generation, even though it's been out for a number of years.

But now the second generation has better sound, a lot more features.

It even has some interesting features that are unique to this product, like the heart rate monitor, which, you know, I don't need because my Apple Watch does it as well.

But if you weren't wearing an Apple Watch, if you're an Android user, I mean, Beats Pro works just as well with Android, with iPhone.

You know, for some people that could be a nice feature.

There's a few things that doesn't have.

It doesn't have the hearing loss hearing aid, right?

It doesn't have the same U1 chip that's used to sort of help find them, although it's got some forms of fine line in it.

But it's got noise cancellation and a bunch of it is a it's it costs the same and it is a true competitor.

I see that.

Now, I will tell you, there is a rumor.

I mean, you talk about the next big thing.

There's a rumor that a new AirPods Pro is coming out this calendar year.

Uh huh.

Hello.

I know that Apple usually announces those around the same time as the iPhone.

So my guess is that won't be it this fall.

Right.

Um, but but right now, at least the power beats pro to AirPods Pro 2.

I mean, if you're looking to get wireless earbuds from Apple, there are advantages and disadvantages of both products.

And it's nice to have the choice.

I was laughing when you said if you're very active and your AirPods fall out, I got to be honest with you.

I've never had an issue with my AirPods Pro falling out.

But I was doing an Apple Fitness yoga session the other day, Jeff.

Now yoga is not like the most active, but I guess the way that I was doing my down dog or I was stretching back and forth, literally one of my AirPods Pro just like popped right out.

And of course, that pauses the workout and everything.

And I'm like, man, come on, I'm in.

I'm in my pigeon pose.

Like I can't stop now.

And like, unpretzel myself.

But that's why I was looking at this.

And I typically don't wear glasses when I'm working out.

And I was like, well, that could work there.

Anyway, it's weird because until today, I seriously have just said, you know what?

There's nothing that can really compare to my AirPods Pro 2, and I'm just going to stay with it.

But darn it, I mean, this looks like it could be something I definitely would want to just try it.

Not just because I'm going to be doing yoga, but because I mean, it's like if it is good enough and the fact that it is made by Apple, this picture right here, I like to show because I would have argued in the past, I think that my Apple AirPods Pro will pair much easier with my iPhone.

But now because Beats is owned by Apple, it comes up with that same little screen on the iPhone to say, you know, to connect, you can find it probably and do all the settings in your Bluetooth settings in the settings.

And if I can still access all of that, that gets me pretty excited on there as well.

Yeah, cool stuff.

We've talked about Apple and their initiatives so often when it comes to health.

And if you want to be part of that a little bit closer, this was interesting.

I haven't had time to sign up for this yet, but Apple has launched a major new long term health study.

Now we both know that Apple does several studies sort of, I mean, they have to just because of the stats that they can provide sometimes and some of their announcements and things.

But I don't know if I can remember a time when they sort of had a public health study.

This requires downloading the Apple Research app.

And it really is just going to track several things.

I think they've teamed up with, let's see, it's one of the, I can't remember the name of the hospital that they were, the health industry that they're partnering with.

But this really sounds interesting.

And I think I am going to try to be a part of it if I can.

It sounds like you already signed up for it too, Jeff.

Yeah, it's the Brigham and Women's Hospital who is a Harvard.

But this is not new, by the way, you said that you don't remember Apple doing a public research.

They actually released the app called Research a while ago.

And so for a while now, you have been able to participate in some of the studies that they have done in coordination with hospitals.

So for example, there has been a heart study that's been going on for a while now.

There has also been one for noise that's been out for a while.

And there might be one in women's health too, because I did obviously participate in that one.

Here's the three right here.

Apple's Women's Health Hearing Study and Heart and Movement Study.

Yeah, okay.

So those are the ones that are around.

And I've done the heart and movement study.

And they answer some questions and stuff like that.

But it's like for these researchers that are doing research, if it's something that can be monitored with the sensors that are on the iPhone, or watch, what have you, why not instead of enrolling 100 people in your study, why not see if thousands of people around the world, maybe even more, will participate in your study.

And you don't get paid anything.

You don't get compensation.

You're just doing it to help research.

But Apple anonymizes the data and stuff so that they don't know your name or your specifics or anything alongside.

And you feel like you're doing good.

I mean, heck, in this day and age, we're not to get political, but the current administration in America wants to cut all this research and everything.

And I know that a lot of schools are worried about it.

This is a way that you can do something to just help medical research.

So I love the idea.

What I really think is cool is this one.

This is the biggest one that Apple has been a part of.

It's called, it's just, what's the generic name?

The Apple Health Study.

But it's completely wide ranging.

What they're doing is we all love it when the AirPods or the Apple Watch or the iPhone comes out with a new feature like we can now detect X.

We can now detect when you might be having a heart attack.

We can now detect when you're, you know, all these other things.

Well, that doesn't just come out of the air.

That comes as a result of research and Apple, you know, looking at data on a huge basis and saying, you know what, we see a correlation between these data points and these diseases.

And so that's complicated.

And so the thing that's about this study is, as I understand it, it's open ended.

They're not saying we're specifically looking to find the cause, the cure of cancer or something like that.

What they're saying is we're going to take a look at all the different things that you can monitor, volume around you, your heart rate, your, you know, everything that can be monitored by your device.

And we're going to ask you these survey questions routinely.

And the surveys always take less than five minutes to answer.

It's like, okay, have you gotten sick?

Have you gotten COVID, whatever.

And then by correlating the two, they can start to see over time that, you know, maybe for Jeff Richardson specifically, we can't say that A, he was an indicator B, but if we look at thousands and thousands of people, we can see these relationships.

And so what I like about this is that, you know, when the study is finished, they will then figure out what connections they were able to make.

And I am positive that there is going to be Apple products in the, not next year, but in the coming years that they're going to say, we now know, we now have, you know, scientific studies, peer reviewed proof that we can detect the following things.

We can maybe detect when you're going to get a cold, we can detect this.

And so, you know, by giving you early information or maybe even the more serious diseases by giving you information early enough, you know, hopefully you can do something to prevent them before, before they become more serious.

So, you know, this is the big one.

I feel like everything that Apple has done with the research app up to now has been leading to this point.

And so I'm excited about it.

Now, again, if you don't want to participate, if you don't trust Apple to keep your stuff anonymous, even though I do, fine, don't participate.

I mean, it's totally fine.

But if you want to do it, it's right there on the phone.

And I think it's sort of fun.

And of course it's Apple.

So they have a beautiful interface for the app.

They have this number of how many questions you've asked.

And whenever you open the app, it sort of has an animation.

I mean, it looks pretty.

It's I like it.

I like it.

Well, number one, to your point, this is going back to an earlier story we talked about.

You have to trust that Apple is going to keep your data secure.

Like you said, they anonymize it.

And I trust it just because both you and I have been following the company and their activities for quite a long time now.

But not everybody might.

And so this is one of the reasons that we're a little nervous about earlier about governments kind of getting a backdoor because we just want to make sure that Apple and companies like this will continue to be able to aggregate some of this information.

And we trust them on this.

And then the second thing, like you said, so this is a this is an app that you download for your iPhone and it looks like it can be installed in your Apple Watch as well.

And it's like it's not it's not intrusive.

I feel like, you know, you don't have to go somewhere to do a study or sign up.

It's just like so you download the app and you just open it and you obviously log in maybe with your iCloud account if that's even if that's even necessary on that.

And like you said, you just answer a few questions, right?

It's that easy.

Just write on the app there.

Yeah.

You answer a few questions, you give it permission on a permission by permission basis.

Am I going to allow it to hear when there's loud noises around me?

Will I allow it to log that?

Will I allow it to keep track of how many steps I walk?

Will I allow it to, you know, all the different things that can be sent through your watch?

You just say, I mean, you could turn I guess in theory you could allow some and not allow others, but I allowed all of them because I know that that's the whole point is they're trying to look at a broad thing.

So so yeah, cool stuff.

Well speaking of apps, if you get this app, you may go through one of your iCloud accounts, but it might be different than another iCloud account.

This I feel like this is a little esoteric for folks, maybe Jeff that have only been working with Apple since iTunes came out.

You know, this is like what, almost 12, 13, 14, 15 years now to when we first had before iCloud came about like there actually Apple has had Mac.com and me.com and iCloud.

But most of us signed up with iTunes when it first came out and we have an account that is, or basically I would, I usually think of it as an email address that's associated with any purchases that we made for music.

And at the time when the app store came out, we used it for purchasing apps, but that may be separate than your iCloud account or the email address that you use for your iCloud account.

Again, I realize this is a little confusing for most folks that haven't been working with Apple products for as long as you and I have, but some may still have this idea of two Apple accounts and I continue to get frustrated with this every time.

Like if I need to buy something on the app store, I have to log in with one account.

But if I need to go and change something on my iCloud account or check at iCloud.com, I have to use a different account.

Now I use one password, so I make sure that I've got very long passwords, you know, for both and it's not that difficult for me, but I had to set that up.

And we've talked about this for a long time that at some point Apple probably has to allow us to combine them both.

And it looks like that they are announcing that this is available now.

But just like you did, you said in your post today, Jeff, I don't trust it.

I cannot even fathom losing access to all of these purchases that I've made over the years.

Yeah.

For many years, Apple called this and your Apple ID.

And then a few years ago, they changed the name of it to Apple account.

And again, if you are a recent person to the platform, when I say recent, I'm talking like when the iPhone was introduced in 2007 and later, you're not going to have this problem.

But if you go back even further, like some of us do, if you remember the days when the, you know, Apple bought the app called Sound Jam and changed the name of it to iTunes, you could buy songs from the download songs for 99 cents a pop.

Well then you may have been using an Apple ID, now an Apple account for long enough that you had an original one that you used for purchases and for apps and for music.

And then another one that you used for things like iCloud and maybe when you, you know, purchase a physical device.

And I fall in that category too.

And like you, Brad, I often forget, did I get this on this account?

Did I get it on that account?

What I have wanted for literally decades now is a way to merge the account.

Apple hasn't given us that.

And what they have done is instead of merging two into one, they have allowed you to migrate your purchases from one to the other.

It's not the same.

So the idea is that if you move all of your purchase history, you know, so for one of like my, my older one is the one that I have for apps and for songs and for movies I've purchased and stuff like that.

If you, if you migrate that entire purchase history over to the other one that I use for things like iCloud, well then I guess I really don't need the first one anymore.

That that first one with apps and music and stuff like that, that's the one that I share with my family.

So I don't want to mess that up because if suddenly, you know, my family loses access to all of their apps and their music and everything else, that'd be a problem.

So you know, I'm, I'm sitting on the sidelines, I'm letting other people test things out.

I've already seen reports that like, if you use this thing called test flight, which is used if you, most of us don't use test flight, it's, it's used for testing an app that's still at some testing apps that are not yet in the app store.

There's issues with this.

Um, I've seen one report of somebody who did say that they did it and his family members lost access.

I mean, there's going to be bumps in the road.

I know that this is technologically difficult.

That's why it's taken Apple so long to do this, but I'm going to wait a week, a month, who knows.

But once I see reports that this is now working and people aren't having problems, I do think I want to do this because I don't like having two accounts and worrying about which one is which.

I like to just know that everything is under one account, all my purchases.

I don't have to figure out, is it this one?

Is it that one?

I'd log into one log.

I, you know, I, I'm looking forward to having just a single account that works.

Um, but what I'm telling people is let's just wait a little bit.

Let's hold off when it's safe.

Yes.

I like to make the distinction between merging the accounts, which I think I would prefer as well versus migrating, because then you still have the two accounts, even though you've migrated, you know, one to the other.

I don't know.

I, I would love, I mean, I feel like this is even, even harder on the technical side to merge both of these accounts because I'm sure for you, just like me, so much history there.

I mean, I've got purchases going back for many, many years now and I just, I don't, I just, if I'm going to do anything, I have to have so much assurance that it's going to be as smooth as possible simply because we rely on, on, on the services and you know, I want to have access to my purchases.

I still go back and look at purchases from many years ago and anyway, just, it makes me nervous and cringe a little bit because I do know how difficult it is to be fair.

But man, it would be nice if we could get this ironed out.

I was looking at the other day, Brett, remember back in, I want to say it was 2005, 2006, there was a show on television called Lost and I remember that I had purchased like an entire season of that because I wasn't in New Orleans because of hurricane Katrina and stuff like that.

And this was pre-iPhone, right?

I was watching the episodes on the tiny little screen of my iPod.

I had one of those iPods at the screen and so I purchased a season of Lost.

I would sit there on my couch, I would hold my iPod up and I would watch the episodes and I laugh now.

But I mean, the reality, am I going to go back and look at those?

I don't know, but I did purchase them and they're in my purchase history and if for some reason I wanted to watch them on my huge Apple TV, I should still have access to them.

So anyway.

Speaking of many years ago, when the Apple Watch first came out, this is your article from August 2015.

When you got your first Apple Watch, you also got, which I think is the stainless steel Milanese loop, is that right?

Is this or is it aluminum?

I think it's stainless steel.

I think it's stainless steel, yeah.

The Milanese loop, which I have always found to be fascinating.

I think you still have the same one that you bought all those years ago, am I correct?

Yeah.

You still use that.

I wear it to work every day except for days like today where I'm wearing everything that's red but not red.

But yeah, I really like it and Apple has changed it a few times over the years.

They changed it back in, let's see, I bought mine in 2015.

I think in 2018 they made a slight change to it so that they changed the little buckle at the end so you could actually completely remove it and have your Apple Watch lay completely flat.

But the first major change was what we're linking to today.

I was linking to today because Apple now has the version that is, so that was stainless steel.

The version that is titanium, which matches the Apple, what you have, the Ultra.

Now technically my brand new Apple Watch Series 10 is also titanium, but because it's a brushed titanium, it looks shiny.

And so it actually sort of looks like stainless steel.

If I was to hold your Apple Watch next to my Apple Watch, just because yours is not like a brushed, yours is more of the matte finish.

That's right.

It's a slightly different, it's almost like a, I guess you'd call it a grayish sort of silverish color to it.

That's right.

So anyway, it looks more gray.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this new Milanese loop, it matches the color perfectly of an Ultra, but that's not the only change.

It also has like this different clasp on it and stuff like that, which I don't know if it's good or worse.

It looks like an angry, that's an angry looking buckle there.

Yeah.

So I actually thought about getting one because I use the Milanese loop just about every day.

I've had it for 10 years.

I'm like, you know, this is obviously something that I like.

Maybe I should get the latest and greatest version.

And I was like, well, maybe I'm fine with what I have.

And so that's why I read this review with interest.

And it still hasn't made me change my mind on getting one, but who knows if that.

Interesting.

But well, it'll set you back a little bit, right?

Do you remember what you paid for your stainless steel Milanese loop?

I remember it.

I mean, it wasn't that crazy, but it was a little pricey back in the day.

But this one, the titanium version is $200.

Am I correct on that?

Like that's, that's, that's a little pricey for a watch band, but I bet it looks cool.

I mean, if I go, I cannot go to an Apple store and look at this because if I do, I'm positive that I will probably want to get it.

It does look cool.

Even with the angry looking band on that, which is, which is awesome.

And by the way, I don't know that I have even ever thought of this, but this story you linked to today, if you don't like putting an Apple watch on your wrist for whatever reason, maybe try it on your ankle.

You know, it wasn't until I actually read this and I was like, Oh, wait a minute.

Maybe that could work because I see, I do see some people with different kinds of health monitors, you know, around their ankle.

Never thought about putting my Apple watch there though.

Jeff, is that what you're doing?

Maybe it's a day to change this.

When I saw this headline, Brett, you know what I thought?

What I thought was what goofy thing did some Tik TOK person do?

Exactly.

I thought it was a video of, you know, I put an Apple watch on my ankle.

I put an Apple watch on my dog, you know, but no, this is right.

New York times, you know, the, the journal of record saying that there are people that for fitness purposes and stuff, they just find it more comfortable to have it on their ankle as opposed to their wrist.

And so, you know, I guess if that interests you, apparently, you know, they found a couple of people enough to write this article, you know, the funny pictures, but it, it, I mean, it has literally never occurred to me to put an Apple watch on my ankle.

But I guess you could do it.

And I guess that I love this one little story that talking about here is a, is a mother that is pushing a stroller and she said that she would have to push a stroller with one hand so that her, the hand with her Apple watch on it could be free to swing back and forth.

So she gets, you know, she gets credit for the, her steps, but her arm was tired.

So she didn't want to just use one hand.

So she put it on her ankle and she said, not only does it work because it gives her all the step counts, but it apparently is a little more accurate for his, what, you know, according to her anyway, just, Hey, if it doesn't work on your, on your wrist, you know, I always get my son instead of wearing his Apple watch, you know, on a traditional in the left hand, he's right handed, but he wears his Apple watch on, you know, most people wear it on the left.

He actually wears it on his right arm.

And I sometimes I ask him, I'm like, is that, is that comfortable, you know, to each his own and you have an Apple is good.

Maybe watch, you can twist it around so that the button can be on the right side, you know, to accommodate all of that, but just never, never, never thought about, Hey, my Apple watch, I could use it as an ankle monitor.

Maybe that would be fun in the show.

Let's do a quick, can I tell you, Jeff, finally the day has come.

I am actually traveling right now as we're speaking.

And one of my commitments on this trip with all of my business commitments was like, personally, I'm going to sit and start the show severance.

I am now four episodes into season one and I'm trying to, I'm trying to slip in, you know, five or 10 minutes when I like I'm on the bus or I'm waiting on a phone call to just watch more.

I cannot believe I've waited this long, but you mentioned today that of course, in your post that season two is already out.

So I'm trying to catch up to all this cause it is amazing.

You know, I miss PD already, but in the Apple streaming world, we know that there are less subscribers to Apple TV plus than there are to, you know, Amazon prime or Netflix or whatever.

But even with that season two of separance got a bump in the latest Nelson viewership numbers.

That's incredible from an Apple TV plus show.

A lot of people are watching the show.

It's getting a lot of claim and it's well deserved cause it's really good.

I mean, I literally, one of the things that I look forward to at the end of the week, TGIF is there's a new episode of severance out.

In fact, technically, you know, it comes out around like 11 or 12 o'clock on Thursday night.

And there have been times in the past where I have stayed up late on Thursday night to look at, I haven't done it this week, but I actually subscribed to the official severance podcast, which is really good.

That's right.

It's called Ben Stiller, right?

It's still an Adam Scott to it, but it's a great podcast.

But I noticed this morning as I was coming into work, like the latest episode is already on my phone.

I'm like, no, no, no, no.

I haven't watched the episode yet.

I'm going to watch it tonight or watch it this weekend.

So anyway, it's a great show and I'm so happy that other people are, I mean, apparently lots of people have discovered it and are watching it cause it's so popular.

Including people on Android phones, potentially Jeff, you linked to this today.

I don't know that I even saw this coming, but Apple released an app this past week, an Apple TV plus app for the Android platform.

Maybe that's a contributing to it a little bit now, but if you have an Android, you want to subscribe to Apple TV plus you can now get the app for your Android phone and watch severance season two as well.

Yeah.

Apple has a couple Android apps.

They have an Apple music app so that if you want to use Apple music, you know, some of these services that Apple wants to get as many subscribers as possible.

They don't want it to be just some, you know, a little perk that you get as an Apple user of Apple hardware.

And so I think it makes perfect sense.

Why not let more people have access to this stuff?

And again, the thing about things like, you know, music and especially TV shows, you know, Apple is going to spend X amount of dollars on a show, right?

And that's going to be true whether one person watches it or a bajillion people watch it.

And so the incremental cost, you know, every time you get more and more people watching it, it means that, you know, you're getting more revenue from that investment.

So why not make this as broad as possible?

And this is the reason that we've seen for many years now, Apple has released apps for things like, you know, not just the Apple TV device, but like Roku and all, you know, television, smart televisions that have apps in them.

You know, Apple has wanted to let people watch Apple TV plus wherever they are.

And now you can even do it with Android.

So I say, Bravo, welcome to the party.

That's really cool.

Like that a lot.

Last thing quickly that you mentioned on the post today, if you are in the market for an original Steve Jobs business card, not just a business card, but actually signed by Steve Jobs himself, you just have it, you seem to have a little bit of money in the bank around $50,000 and it could be yours from an auction.

Well, let's see, this is our auction is auctioning off this year.

It's a business card purportedly from 1983.

Apparently it has been authenticated that it is the real deal.

Not only can you do that, but I like that you said in your post today, Jeff, that you can pay $50,000 for a Steve Jobs signed business card, or you would be happy to send somebody a business card that you sign of your own business card for what, 50 cents, I think.

What a deal.

Thank you, sir.

You're paying the cost of the stamp and you're good.

Yep.

It's all good.

Yeah.

From what I'm told, what makes something like this a little bit more rare is that Steve Jobs apparently did not like giving autographs.

And so there are authentic Steve Jobs autographs floating around.

And I don't know what the pedigree of this card is, why he signed this and who he gave it to or anything like that.

I'm sure you could research it through the auction house and find out.

But so, you know, if that's something that matters to you, I have to admit, it's sort of fun to look at the picture that you're showing on the screen right now, if you're watching the video, because, you know, it does have his signature, which he always, it's like lowercase.

I've always viewed the S and the J as lowercase.

You know, that's something that he's doing, sort of the E.E.

Cummings of signatures.

And it's got the original Apple computer logo.

So it's not just the original six colors, but also that font that Apple, I say original, it's not the very first, the very first Apple logo was sort of this crazy person sitting under a tree and stuff like that.

But when Apple became popular with the Apple II, Apple II Plus, this was the logo and this is the styling that Apple used.

So it's fun to see that.

So cool.

I like that a lot.

Awesome.

Awesome stuff.

Let's also go back quickly then and talk about SaneBox.

We are really thankful that SaneBox has come back to sponsor our podcast.

We have a special page set up that you can just go and learn a little bit more.

You can go to SaneBox.com/inthenews.

Not only can you learn about SaneBox, you can sign up for a free trial there.

You don't even have to put a credit card in.

And if you continue after, like once you see how amazing this is to help you with your inbox and tame your inbox, make it a little saner, then if you continue on with a subscription through this link, you can get a $25 credit towards that SaneBox subscription.

I mean, I feel like it's a win-win all around.

But go to SaneBox.com/inthenews.

You can read a little bit more about it and then you can try it out for free as well.

I know, Jeff, that you continue to take full advantage of all of the features that SaneBox provides today.

Yeah.

It's a great service.

And one thing to emphasize is that free trial that you're talking about because the thing about it is it doesn't change anything about your email.

Yes, exactly.

You set up the service and then you'll suddenly just notice that you have like some sub – whatever little sub inboxes you have, they have the @ sign and then Sane.

So like Sane News for your newsletters or Sane Later.

Yeah, it shows up at the top of your list a lot of times.

And you can control what the subfolders are.

But like you could try out SaneBox.

I mean, way back when, when I first started using the service, I wasn't sure if I was going to stick with it or not.

I had just heard people talk about it on like podcasts like this and stuff.

And so I just like try it for a month.

And if you don't like it, well, then you just turn it off and things just go back to normal.

Right.

But I was really surprised how much I did like it.

I mean, and for me, it's particularly useful for – I mean, I use it for a couple of accounts.

I use it for my iPhone JD email.

But for my Gmail account, I don't know about you, but everybody – many people have that one account that you use when you purchase a product, when you sign up for a service, for whatever.

And like my Gmail account is a real account.

I mean, I use it for real things.

But because I've used it for – when did Gmail come out now?

I don't know, 25 years ago, 10 years ago, a long time ago.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, a long time ago.

Yes.

And I think so many different companies have sold that address to other people that I just get so much junk in it.

And yes, the Apple – I mean, Google does have its spam filter and that gets some things.

But some of these are emails from things that are legitimate.

Like I mean, if I buy a shirt from Land's End, yeah, it makes sense for me to be on the Land's End email list.

And if I buy a shirt from so-and-so – but over time, there's hundreds of these companies and they're not spammers.

They're legitimate companies.

Yeah.

Sometimes they sell me about a good special they have that like I might want to take advantage of but I don't want it clouding up my inbox so that when I go look at my inbox, I've got a hundred messages but there's only ten of them that I really want to see.

And so this filter feature is so nice that when I open up my Gmail, I just see a handful of messages.

It's great.

I look at it.

I see what I need to do and then I'm done.

And then later, I can say now I want to look at the newsletters, Insane News.

Or now I want to look at the ones that it put Insane later because it doesn't think they're important.

Or the ones that I specifically tell SaneBox, "I am done.

I don't want to ever see something from this person again."

I put it in my Sane black hole and it's just gone.

And once a month, once every three months, every once in a blue moon, I'll just take a quick look at that Sane black hole folder just to make sure that nothing's in there that I actually did want to see.

But things don't go there in the first place until you tell SaneBox like I'm done with it.

It just, it makes it, it lets you get in, get out, do what you want to do with your email.

It's really nice.

So I encourage you to try the free trial.

If you don't like it, so be it.

Turn it off.

But if you see like, "Hey, wow, this is actually saving me time every single day."

And there's different plans.

I mean, you can have a one that you only have one or two folders, only have the same black hole or only have the same news, or you can get bigger plans where you have more.

The one that I have is called the Lunch Plan, which has six features and it works in two email accounts and great.

I like it.

Yeah.

And again, that $25 credit towards that will almost pay for, you know, it's not all of it, at least half of it.

Just one thing quickly I wanted to, I wanted to point out what I've always liked about SaneBox is sort of what I call the transparency of it.

Like every day you can get an email digest that tells you exactly how many messages they put into each of the folders.

And then you could even go and log into SaneBox.com and you could see, they call it the web app digest view.

And I always appreciated that because I know, you know, there's a little hesitancy when you are, you know, using a service like this that maybe points at a, at one of your email accounts is like, what is it doing?

But what I've always enjoyed about SaneBox is that they're very transparent.

Like you can, they'll show you everything that they, all the messages that they put in the different folders.

And so you don't really have to be that nervous about it.

And again, if you see something that didn't quite look correct on there, or you want it to do a little bit differently, you can just retrain it.

You can just change it up on that.

But I do, I do like having that daily digest.

I mean, that's another email that you can get, but you don't have to get that.

You can just turn it off and you can go and just log into the account and it will allow you to, to just give, I, again, I just like the fact that, Hey, it's going to show you exactly what it's doing.

It's not doing anything kind of hidden.

And I like the fact that those, those folders show up at the top as well.

So anyway, more information, SaneBox.com/inthenews, all one word, go there.

You can look at it, check it out, get some more information about it.

And then just, just try it out.

Just like, like Jeff said, it's really easy to toggle it on and off.

And if you decide that you do want to do a little bit more with it, you can continue with that $25 credit, which is, which is great.

Thank you, SaneBox.

In the know.

Okay.

I've got a couple of things quickly.

This past week, I've been having to help my mother who is in Texas with her iPhone.

Now several, well, I guess a couple of years, I want to say, maybe not too long.

But FaceTime and Apple gave you the option then that while you're FaceTiming with somebody, like I was with my mother, Jeff, you could share your iPhone screen.

Now this is wonderful for all of us that have been doing tech support for our families over all the years.

We like things like, you know, share screen or zoom, of course made that even easier, but we used to do things like lock me in and other systems, you know, that would allow us to share the screen so that I could be basically be doing remote tech support.

Well, this past week I was helping my mom with the phone and she was having a question about some settings and you know, it's hard for me to say, can you go to the settings app?

Well, I don't know where that is.

Okay.

Once we get to the settings app, can you go to general?

Where's general?

I don't have general.

I'm like, yes, you do.

If you scroll down, you'll see, you know, it's just having to explain to people where everything is.

And a lot of times I have to go on my phone and like look at it and try to give directions.

Well, this past week I knew we had shared the screen in FaceTime and I use that.

However, two other things that were just amazing for me this week was number one, while my mother was sharing her iPhone screen to me through the FaceTime call, I had the ability, Jeff, that I could use my finger and circle a button or a setting on the screen that she would see.

And it was just great.

And the, it goes away really quickly.

It's just enough to be able to say here, click this button here.

And I would like do my finger and do a circle.

And she was like, oh, okay.

And she would tap it.

And then my little drawing, it just kind of goes, it's like a little puff.

It's really cool.

A little animated puff that it just disintegrates in that.

But that was so much easier, Jeff.

I just loved being able to show, you know, my mother, instead of trying to describe it to her, it was less stress on her.

And we were able just to say, you know, I was like, here, just tap this and then go into here and then do this, you know, do this toggle.

And in fact, I remember one thing quickly is I was telling her to delete like a text message and you know how you can swipe right to left and there's a trash can.

I would literally draw a little arrow on that message to show my mother like swipe from here to here and then hit the little trash can button.

And that was good.

And then the next thing quickly, I just wanted to point out, and I feel like I knew that this was coming, but this was also amazing.

If I wanted to go the next step, instead of just drawing on the screen to show my mother where to tap, I could request remote control of her screen.

So basically we're on FaceTime.

She shared the screen with me and there's a little button in the bottom right corner that says request remote control and she has to approve it.

And in fact, it even says, do you know Brett Burney, this guy?

Someone's trying to take over your phone.

Are you sure you want to do this?

And she had to say allow and she asked me if that was secure.

And I'm like, yes, mom, you know me, it's okay, go ahead.

And when she did, I was literally working her screen.

Now I'm doing this over cellular, mind you, Jeff, I was out walking around and I was able to do this on a FaceTime call over my AT&T cellular plan and it worked flawlessly.

Like instead of even to show her where to tap a button, she would just give me control and I was able to jump around.

There's another article from CNET that I'll link to here, which I just thought was great.

This is Jeff Carlson from, well, just about a month ago where he was walking somebody through how a game changer for tech support is what he calls this.

And I got to tell you, it was so great.

Now obviously I'm using my mother as an example here, but it can work for anybody that has another iPhone.

And it was just amazing to me how flawlessly, there you can see the little drawings and arrows that he's doing here.

It just amazed me how flawless that it went and then it worked.

And it's like, it really was a game changer.

I mean, instead of my mom getting all stressed out about where to tap and you know, the call, instead of taking 15 minutes, only took about eight minutes because I was able to cut it down and just be able to do that.

So if you haven't tried out FaceTime and sharing the screen or even drawing on the screen in FaceTime, great little tip here that I recommend for folks to try. - Brett, this is one of the best tips ever.

I really think so. - Yeah, okay, great. - I have used this as well with my father and it is a game changer.

It is a game changer because you're trying to help them with something.

And I think I know what he's looking at, but it may turn out that he's not even the right at, he's completely else.

There's no way without seeing what they are seeing that you can help them.

And I like the fact that you can do it two different ways.

You can either give a man a fish or you can teach him to fish.

If you just want to, you know, if you want to teach them, you can say, here's a circle, look at this and let them learn it.

On the other hand, something that they're gonna do again in the future, that's what I do.

But if it's something that it's like a one-time fix, my dad never has to do that.

I was like, dad, I'm gonna take over your screen.

Hit okay, when you see the pop-up for sure, hit control.

And then I am just going to do what you need to do.

I'm gonna go into settings, I'm gonna go six layers deep, I'm gonna turn this off, whatever it is.

And he's thrilled because I've just fixed it.

And like you say, something that would have taken 20 minutes to describe, oh, I'm looking at something that looks like a tree or whatever.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

You know, just to do it myself is so much faster.

So this is the tip.

I mean, all of us have been in a situation where you're helping somebody else.

The canonical example is your mom or your grandparents or whatever.

But it might just be a friend of yours or someone else that just doesn't understand something and you can help.

It makes it so easy.

I love this tip.

I love this tip.

So I thought of just saying that your tip is my tip because it's so good.

But I'm gonna add one little wrinkle to it, which is this.

If for some reason you don't want to, you're not doing it live in a FaceTime call, sometimes you're just explaining something to someone via text message or something like that.

If I want to make it really clear what to do in a text message, what I do is I send an annotated screenshot.

And the way that I do it is first of all, I like to take a picture of the settings app or whatever it is.

And you probably know how to do a screenshot.

On modern iPhones, you press the buttons, you know, press the side button and the volume button at the same time.

Or if you have an old iPhone SE, you know, one of the buttons you press is that small button at the bottom.

You take a screenshot and then it's in your photos app.

And then you just want to annotate it.

And two tips for doing it.

If you don't want to pay anything, you can just use the built-in markup tool.

So you go and edit the picture and click the little thing for the pencil or whatever.

And you can circle and you can do whatever.

And that is totally fine and that may be all that you need to do.

And then you save the marked up picture and that's what you text to them and say, "Look at this screen.

Look at this picture I just sent you.

If I've circled the thing that you want to tap, just do that."

And that way on their own time, they can figure it out.

So that's one way to go.

If you want to go just a little bit up to the next level on annotating screenshots or annotating any picture, the tool that I've used for a very, very long time now is called Annotable.

And the app itself is free but then you have in-app purchases for some of the different features.

If you pay $10, you get all the features.

You can just buy some of them for $2.

But there's a couple of things you can do.

First of all, it can create like a perfect circle.

It has different – I think you have better tools for annotating things and so they look more clear.

In fact, sometimes on iPhone JD, I will share a screenshot that I use this app to like put a circle or put an arrow or something because it does such a nice job of it.

Second of all, it even has features like you can have like – let's just say that there's some text and you were just showing it just now on the screen that like you don't want them to actually read the words because it's confidential.

But you just want to show the overall picture.

It has this feature that you can blur the words or you can sort of scramble them.

You see this all the time on like – Sure, sure.

Just so that they – because that's not – it's not important that part.

Don't look at that.

I want you to see this other part.

And so it gives you a little tool to do stuff like that.

So you can be as complicated as you want or not.

So if you want to do sort of the next level higher, a notable is really good.

But again, if you're just doing simple stuff, the built-in markup tools are great and that way you can send somebody a picture from your iPhone or your iPad and then they can follow along on theirs.

Again, this is not as good as what you described where you're actually having the conversation you're talking to them live.

In real time, yeah.

But sometimes this makes sense.

It's late at night.

I just want to send something to my dad.

I take a quick screenshot, put a circle, send it off, say that's what you want to do, look for this.

Or what app do I open?

The one with this icon on it.

Look for this app.

Right.

And that's what you tap.

Works really well.

So that's the ancillary tip to your really good tip.

A notable.

I keep trying to say Anno table, but it's a notable on there.

But like you said, it's a free download and it looks like for the professional, all the features, unlike all the features, it's only $10, $9.99.

But you know, for something like that, I mean, I know that you've used this because I've seen when you do posts on iPhone JD, I like the fact that you show the entire screen instead of like cropping it or cutting it out.

And you know, the fact you can just obscure some of the text on there or like an email address or something like that.

If you send this, you just don't want that to be, you know, especially now with photos that can do text recognition.

Right.

It's like I like to obscure that kind of stuff out just so that it's not even searchable and things.

Oh, good, good stuff on that too.

Yeah.

Good tips today.

Really appreciate it.

And we just want to say thanks again to our sponsor, SaneBox.

You can go to sanebox.com/inthenews, all one word, to get a little more information and let them know that you heard it from us.

They've got a really nice little page set up.

They go, "Hello, In The News listeners."

So they are ready for you to go and visit this page, sanebox.com/inthenews.

Jeff, always fun.

Thanks again for all of the stories today.

And we'll talk with you next week.

Ooh, after we see the new announcement, right, on Wednesday.

We'll be ready for that.

That's true.