- Welcome to In the News for March 21st, 2025.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com. 

- And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

You know the date Brett, but do you know the month? - I do, but maybe our artificial intelligence friend possibly may not.

We talked quite a bit last week about, I don't even know how to describe this.

It's like something that we really haven't seen in a long time with a reflection on Apple and the Apple intelligence issues.

And we are of course referring to Siri, which has sort of been, well, even sort of predated sort of the Apple intelligence initiatives that we've been having, but it still continues to be the name plate for a lot of Apple intelligence aspects.

The fallout continues this week, Jeff.

It seems like a lot of people took notice of John Gruber's messaging about this last week, where he had this long post about how he was so upset with how he didn't recognize that some of these features were not gonna be available.

Lots more people have been talking about this.

And then we are seeing more comments from John Gruber and so many others this past week about the fact that Apple kinda had to do a little bit of a face plant here, it sounds like.

I don't know how they're gonna turn this around, but they're already making some changes, right?

They've already made some executive changes and stuff.

So, wow, we're gonna continue to watch this story for sure. - Yeah, I mean, the black eye this week was the report.

And you know, there have been issues that Siri has messed up for many, many, many years.

The new in this, because that's somebody on Reddit noticed that if you just ask S-I-R-I, what month is it?

It's a simple question.

You know, it seems like most people would know the answer.

You can ask what the date is and you'll get a correct answer but if you ask the month, you know, it will give you lots of different answers but none of them is correct.

Ironically, if you say, if you ask, you know who to ask ChatGPT what month it is, it will get the correct answer.

So ChatGPT knows the month.

She who shall not be named does not know the month.

But I mean, that's just a little momentary problem.

The bigger problem is the overall, you know, AI issues at Apple that we talked about in extensively last week.

But the big news, and you know, I normally don't talk about executive overhauls because I mean, how the company runs itself it's its own business.

But there does come a point where when something's just not working right, you need to make a change.

And it looks like Apple made that change years ago.

We thought that Apple was getting in gear by hiring this guy, John G.

Andrea from who had previously worked on AI at Google.

And he was supposed to be the one to sort of, you know, really jumpstart Apple's AI efforts.

And yet we are where we are today and Apple is behind.

And so they have replaced, according to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, they replaced him with Mike Rockwell.

Mike Rockwell is one of the superstars at Apple.

He's the one that has really, you know, spirited the entire Apple Vision Pro effort.

And which I know has, you know, very small usage right now because it's such a revolutionary, cutting edge, expensive product.

But the product itself is good.

The software keeps getting better every day.

And I hear great things about him.

So he's now going to be in charge of Apple AI and Siri.

As someone who the Apple Vision Pro is near and dear to my heart, I do hope that the Vision Pro is in good hands.

I know that one of his, somebody working under his, is now in charge of the Vision Pro.

But, you know, sometimes I think you need to do a shakeup to change things.

And so hopefully this will, I mean, obviously a leadership change is going to take months, if not years, before we start to see the implications of that.

But it just, you know, on the one hand, it's another black eye for Apple in that it shows that they recognize that they've got some problems.

On the other hand, they're at least taking some steps in a number of different ways, including changes at the very top.

And hopefully they will get it sorted out.

I mean, to a certain degree, I will say, Brett, it's almost like, it's not really much to do about nothing, but I will say this.

I think that AI is the buzzword right now.

And there are some very practical things that you can do with AI right now that are totally awesome, which is good.

But the reality is that AI is more of like something for the future, not unlike the Vision Pro itself.

The Vision Pro is cool today, but what really matters is where it's going to be in five years from now, 10 years from now.

And I feel the same is true with AI.

So Apple has time to get its act together.

I mean, we all know famously, Apple did not have the first cell phone.

There was a trio and BlackBerry and a million things before.

They took their time and then they did it right.

Apple did not have the first MP3 player.

There were lots of MP3 players out there.

And then they came out with the iPod and did it right.

So it is okay.

It's okay for Apple not to be first.

They have a history of that.

I'm totally fine with that.

They didn't have the first tablet computer.

There were Windows tablet computers for years that had problems.

And then the iPad came out and really solved it.

So, you know, they've got time to get their cards in order with the possible exception of the, you know, people that worry about the stock market that's more worried day to day.

So, you know, we'll see where this all goes.

So I'm hoping, I'm trying to be glass half full about it and look at this as positive.

Apple realized that they bid off more than they could shoo.

So last week we talked about how they have, you know, extended some of the deadlines for the things that they promised last summer.

And then now with this new announcement of the leadership change, hopefully they are riding the ship. - I completely agree with you on all of that, Jeff.

I say the only thing that I would say is we feel a little bamboozled because it's like all of those examples you gave, like with the phone or the MP3 player, they waited until they had something that they could actually show.

And I think for me personally, it's like those commercials.

We all remember, was it Bella Ramsey, right?

That commercial, it's like, if it wasn't, like if there was a chance that maybe it couldn't potentially possibly be ready, just don't show us that commercial, don't show that.

And I think that's where it's coming from because that's almost like, I'm taking it personally now.

I totally agree with everything and you're right.

And I do believe, and I do completely agree, Apple is gonna get this around.

They have got so many resources that I know that they're working on it.

The executives at Apple are not happy about this.

I mean, this is what John Gruber's referencing is this, the meeting of the top 100 executives at Apple that they've just had this meeting.

And I'm sure there was all kinds of stuff getting slung around that room.

So I know that they're working on it and I have confidence that they will turn it around.

It's just that I almost wish they would have waited a little bit longer and not just given us that hope because it seemed like it was there, that all the announcements from last July.

And I would have been a little bit more comfortable with that, I think. - That's the biggest mistake, Brett.

It's not the substantive issue of how far along they are with AI because that's the part that's gonna be okay in the longterm.

It is the own goal.

It's something that's very uncharacteristic for Apple.

They don't pre-announce products.

There's been very rare examples of them.

We gotta think of what was that magnetic charging pad, that something power that they announced that they never ended up being able to ship.

I mean, there's so few examples.

They normally don't announce something until it's ready.

And then when they do, they say, "And you can pre-order it starting this Friday."

That's the typical Apple.

It's unlike other companies.

And so I think that they felt pressured by Wall Street, the tech press, to say something in the AI arena because so many other people were talking about it.

And they got, they bit off more than they could chew.

If they had just remained quiet about this, if they had not over-promised, then they'd be in the same situation, but they wouldn't be getting all the bad press.

So I mean, hopefully it was a learning experience for the company.

It's certainly a learning experience for all of us that you don't wanna pre-announce things too early because things change.

And then you can't do what you said for legitimately good reasons.

But now people feel like you say that they were promised something that wasn't delivered.

So we shall see. - Well, John Gruber is not the only one taking Apple to task.

You had another story here from Jason Snell, who is always very, very balanced, I believe, in just his coverage on everything.

But he did a little experiment comparing his Apple TV, the actual device, the Apple TV, to a few other popular streaming devices, like the Google TV.

He had Roku in here, Amazon Fire TV, 'cause he was like, "You know, it hasn't been updated."

Or I think it was actually, it was a comment made by Mark Gurman again that the Apple TV had not been updated since 2022.

So Jason thought, "Well, okay, you know what?

I'm gonna give some others a chance."

'Cause he lives in the Apple TV ecosystem, it sounds like, for a lot.

But I just thought that was very balanced the way he went through all of this, explained his experiences with these other streaming devices, and ultimately came back around to the Apple TV for a variety of reasons.

But what a great little read of the story here. - Yeah, and showed that it was really unfair for Mark Gurman of Bloomberg to say that the Apple TV was a laggard because it hasn't been updated. - Yeah, he said laggard. - Yes, it's true that the hardware hasn't been updated in three years, but the thing is, the hardware is perfectly fine.

I mean, it's not like, how often do you change the TV in your house?

You know, every 10 years?

I don't even know. - Good point, good point. - And so, you know, it's totally fast enough to do 4K HDR.

I mean, what more do you need?

Sure, the software can be improved, and that's one of the things that Jason talks about.

But I think that the box itself is fine.

If they wanna improve it, that's fine.

I'm sure there'll be some new features, but I mean, it's totally fine.

I'm perfectly fine not having to buy a new box 'cause the current one is fine.

But what really intrigued me about the article was, you know, maybe it was Mark Gurman's comment that prompted Jason Snell to write this article.

But what I really loved was his look at sort of the state of the art.

Because like I said, in my post, I've been using an Apple TV box for so, so, so long.

I mean, even longer than I've had an iPhone, that I haven't paid much attention to the market.

I mean, I vaguely look at it, but I certainly haven't used any of these other devices.

So it was interesting for Jason to use them.

And you know, the big, so many of these devices are, you know, poor design, and the Amazon one is particularly horrible for having ads everywhere.

I mean, he probably said, even when you just first turn it on, you see like a TV ad, and he has a picture of it.

It's Mancini's Sleep World.

I mean, the last thing you want to do when you watch TV is turn on your box, and you have to watch a commercial for a mattress company before you can even start to watch them.

Oh my goodness gracious.

But putting that aside, one of the things that these other boxes do that the Apple box has not done, and I actually think he's right about this, to feature it, is there's all of these, you know, quote unquote, live channels.

They're just streaming channels.

Sometimes they call them fast channels.

There's all these acronyms, but it's just the idea that you could just turn on a channel and just start watching what's currently on.

And there are tons of them that are out there.

Roku sort of started this innovation, and there's now tons of them.

And there's not really, I mean, on the Apple TV, you can download an app, and then you can stream that app, and that's fine.

But what they don't have is like a grid, like a typical TV grid, saying, you know, here are 50, 100, 600 channels, and here's what's streaming on it right now.

And so you can just sit down and just watch something.

And so that's a feature that these other boxes offer that Apple doesn't really offer it the same way.

And I think he makes a good point on it.

Now, another suggestion that Jason says, and I don't know if I agree with this one, Brett, I'm curious what you think.

Many of these other boxes, the default interface is that traditional programming grid, like you would get with your cable company TV box or something like that.

Whereas of course, the Apple TV, the default grid is the icon view, which, you know, the app icons, which is a holdover from the iPhone and the iPad and everything else.

And Jason said, you know, what we should have is a home screen that shows you what's on.

I don't know if I necessarily, I mean, I guess I could do it that way.

I actually don't have a problem with the app approach because for me, oftentimes when I sit down to use, to watch television, like I know I'm gonna go to Hulu because my wife and I are watching, you know, Paradise or whatever, or I'm gonna go to Netflix because I wanna watch The Diplomat or whatever.

You know, I will go to the Disney Plus app 'cause I wanna watch a Star Wars show.

I don't mind viewing it from that standpoint, as opposed to just, I'm sitting in front of the TV and just show me all the possibilities that are on and I'll just slip through it.

But I guess it just depends upon what approach, I mean, what do you think?

I mean, do you, you have an Apple TV box too, obviously. - Yeah, yeah.

But you know, and it's funny 'cause I remember the day where we had an older Apple TV, we still had a Roku connected to the television and because I would maybe wanna watch Netflix through the Roku device, but then there would be an app that I would have on my phone that I would basically stream from my phone and airplay it through the Apple TV.

Now, all of that's kind of gone away.

I only use the Apple TV and I like it.

And I mean, I'm exactly the same way.

In other words, all of my programming, whether I go to Hulu or Disney or Amazon Prime or Netflix or YouTube or any of those, we just boot up the Apple TV now.

And I think Apple-- - Me too. - You know, I don't know that Jason really went through this and I don't think this was the target of his comments, but I think that has improved from that.

To me, it makes it a more all-inclusive experience and being able to just, I just turn on the Apple TV and then I head to whatever system or environment that I wanna go to to watch the show, exactly what you were describing.

I feel like if I came up and turned on something like this, he's got one of these images here from Google TV, that to me looks like I'm in a hotel room, turned on the television and I've got like a whole grid of all of these channels.

And I don't want that.

It looks old and outdated and frankly, it's just too overwhelming.

Like I don't wanna scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll through 533 channels.

I just wanna go straight to, okay, we were watching this show, it was "The Night Agent" on Netflix.

I know exactly where I gotta go.

The only thing that I have to remember now is which show was I watching.

But even Apple TV has done a little bit of a better job of that.

Like it'll show on my Apple TV home screen, I think Jeff, right?

Like, hey, continue this episode, but it's not an Apple TV+ episode, it's a Netflix episode.

And so it still does a good job of aggregating.

I think it can be better, but that's sort of my experience, the way that I go.

I could not stand to look at a grid view anymore today.

Like I just don't want that. - Now let's point out that in terms of what to watch next, actually Netflix does not plug into that system.

They famously don't wanna give all their stuff to data. - That's right, yeah. - But the other ones do.

And I like the fact that, like you say, I can go to the TV app and it will suggest that I continue watching something on Apple TV+, or continue watching something on, you know, Amazon Prime, or Hulu, or one of the other ones, or DirecTV.

In fact, my quote unquote TV is DirecTV, the satellite, but I almost never switch over to my DirecTV box, because there's a DirecTV app on the Apple TV, and the few times that I wanna watch live TV, 'cause I wanna watch the local news or something like that, I just go to the DirecTV app and then watch my channel there.

So I really, 99% of the time live in it.

So anyway, it was an interesting article by Jason to have a sense of what the rest of the world is, but it's also nice to know that, you know, especially if you're in the Apple ecosystem, that the Apple TV continues to be, you know, the one to use. - That's it, and he just came back to it and said, you know, even though there could be many improvements here, just like, and I really, I truly, 'cause we've known Jason for so long and followed him for so long, like I don't think it's just because he's on the fanboy side.

Literally, he did a very good job testing all these things, and he just decided that the Apple TV is the better one to go with.

Well, let's talk about something that Apple is apparently doing very well, actually.

If it's not artificial intelligence, if it's not the Apple TV, how about a modem?

We've been talking about this for several weeks.

This was a big deal when Apple put their own modem in the 16E, that's the only phone that it's available in right now.

And this was a huge deal, even though it was really under the hood and the vast majority of people could really care less.

They just want it to work, which is a big deal because if the modem didn't work, people couldn't make phone calls.

People couldn't be able to use GPS services.

And so the fact that Apple was putting in their own modem instead of the Qualcomm modems that they have been using for decades now, this was a big deal.

We're trying to follow this.

And this was a great story from Ryan Christoffel at 9to5Mac, where it's not just like somebody's testing it in their own.

This is actually from a company called Ookla, who is something like, I think that they're speed test people, right?

Or they're affiliated with speed tests, which everybody knows, right?

If you want to test the speed of your internet, you go to speedtest.net and you can find, well, they actually did ran some tests and I thought this was a really good report that they found that it's doing really well.

There were some areas where it could do better, but in those areas where they could do better, the vast majority of people are just not even going to recognize that there's an issue or it could be better.

And so, I mean, to me, I feel like all in all, this is a great report for the Apple modem, the C1 modem. - It really is.

The initial reports that we heard when the 16E was first released was that it was a fine modem, it was good enough.

And there were some high-end features it couldn't do, like some of the high-end 5Gs that most of us never do anyway.

And I was like, okay, well, that's a good report for, at least you're not stepping backwards.

But this is the first time, I mean, Qualcomm, if anyone knows speed, it's Qualcomm, 'cause that's what they do, is speed test.

Like you said, and what was, this report was so interesting to me because they're saying that at the super, super high end, the Qualcomm modems can be a little better.

But the reality is, is that when you're getting a great internet connection, great data speed, whether you're 100 megabits or 120 megabits, you're not gonna even notice 'cause it's all super fast, it doesn't make a difference.

Where you notice it is when your modem struggles.

And that's where they said that in their tests, when your modem is struggling for a signal, the, you know, in most overall, the C1 does a better job than the Qualcomm, which is, that's the situation in which you really do think about your modem.

So yes, you want to do better in that situations.

So when you combine that with what we already knew about the C1, which is that it uses less battery life than the Qualcomm modem, so therefore, you know, you don't lose a battery.

I mean, that's the combination.

My iPhone's got great battery life all the time, Brett.

I don't know about you, but the one time that I really feel it in my iPhone is when my iPhone struggles for a cell phone signal, it can eat up the battery.

And the best example of that is, I will often have to take like depositions of like in another lawyer's office and because of the configuration of where they are, like I'm in an interior conference room.

And, you know, of course, if I ask for the wifi password, I can use that.

But sometimes I just want to use, you know, the internet on my cell phone and use that from my iPad without having to get on, you know, my opposing counsel's network.

And if it's a poor cell signal, it will eat through my iPhone battery.

That's where it really goes through.

And so I want a modem that does a better job in poor signals, and I want a modem that is more power efficient so it doesn't drain my battery.

And so if that's what this first, I mean, if that is what the C1 does, Apple's out of the gate initial effort that it's only putting on the low end 16E, this is, like I said in my post, great.

When the C2 and the C3 and the C4 come out, you know, the Apple could have a real winner on its hand.

And again, most people are not going to notice it day to day.

They're just going to know that my phone isn't slow and I'm not losing battery as much.

And that's what matters.

That's all we want.

That's all we want.

So this was a very promising report. - I like at the bottom, he says, the company is still shipping Qualcomm modems in all of its flagship devices.

So the iPhone 16 Pro and, you know, it's like we still have the Qualcomm modems in there.

And it makes me think, you know, of all the things we talked about the 16E when it came out a couple of weeks ago, it's really just a vessel, a test vessel for the C1 modem.

I mean, that's really what it comes down to because-- - I agree.

I agree. - I think Apple knows if that is successful and it looks like from every account that we've seen so far that it is doing a very good job.

Of course, they're gathering all the data.

And I predict, I'm hoping, we talked about this before, maybe not this year, but certainly by next year, maybe in the, you know, the iPhone 18, if that's the numbering scheme that they continue to use, then we'll start seeing some of these modems.

And maybe the C2 by that point, I don't know.

But I mean, that 16E is really just a test vessel out there.

I'm glad people are enjoying the phone, but more so than anything else, I think Apple is really concerned about making sure people enjoy that C1 modem in there.

Here's another small thing that Apple is doing right.

Ryan Christoffel is also reporting that Apple Maps and iOS 18 got a tiny new feature, but boy, this is a big one on here.

And I feel like it's the difference between searching nearby versus searching near here, which I didn't think that there was that much of a difference but Ryan does a great job of going through all of this. - And I've experienced this in the past.

Like I'm looking on Apple Maps because I'm traveling to, like for example, Chicago, where you and I are going in two weeks.

And so I'm looking around the hotel and I'm like, what restaurants are near here?

And I start to type in restaurants and suddenly it's showing me restaurants near me in New Orleans.

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

I don't want that.

I want the ones not near here.

I want the ones near where I was just looking.

And I have to admit, I almost forgot that this was a feature in iOS 18 last fall, but it's nice of him to highlight it that once you're looking at another place on Apple Maps, and if you then search for gas stations, restaurants, whatever you search for, it will look in that area where you already are in your map.

So that was nice for him to highlight that. - I'm glad you did.

One way that I've gotten around this, and typically I'm probably using Google Maps more than Apple Maps, but here's what I do.

It's like, for example, if I search in Chicago, I'll find like the Hyatt Hotel that we're gonna be staying at.

And then I'll cancel out that search, but leave the map where it is, and then start a brand new search right there for like restaurants in that area.

But I didn't like that because it's like, well, now I can't see the directions or distance from the Hyatt Hotel to this restaurant in the new map.

Does that make sense?

And I feel, anyway, I'm gonna try this out 'cause I didn't know that they changed it.

I just assumed that it wasn't gonna work the way that I thought it was gonna work.

If you said, I wanna search nearby, no, that means nearby to where you actually physically are at the moment, or your phone is physically at.

But what I want is I want you to search for a Starbucks near this area where I've gone to in the map.

And if that's a nicer, little quicker way to get there, I think that that's really fantastic. - Agreed. - Okay, we're not done.

One other thing that Apple is doing a good job at, apparently, we have announcements that iOS 19, which we expect toward the fall of this year, is going to improve texting with non-Apple users.

I'd like to say it that way because I feel like it's a little more inclusive than just saying Android users.

But really, that's really what we're talking about.

But if you're texting with somebody that is a non-Apple iPhone, that's non-iPhone, we already see some great improvements with iOS 18, and Apple is going to improve it even a little bit more with iOS 19.

Now, this is several months away, but I'm already glad to see this. - For a long time, when we texted with our green bubble friends, we lost a lot of the features and messages.

And Apple started to improve that this year, or last fall, with the current version of iOS.

And I have already noticed, for example, that when I'm texting with friends that use Android phones, that you can have like tap backs features where like you need a little thumbs up or something.

Which is nice.

Tap backs are silly, but they're actually pretty useful because sometimes you want to acknowledge something that said something, but you don't want to start a whole new message.

And so, but anyway, as the RCS standard that many of the Google things work with has been adopted by Apple, and now that they are expanding that standard, it means that in the next version of the RCS, we're going to have a lot better features.

And Joe goes through a bunch of them in this article.

First of all, and perhaps most obviously is end-to-end encryption.

So if you're communicating with a third party, no one can interrupt your messages or attachments when they're sent being devices.

We've had this on iManage since day one, but as soon as you started to text your Android friends, or if you have a group chat, as soon as you have one Android person in there, one green bubble person, you lose all the end-to-end encryption.

So that's going to be nice.

But there's other ones too.

It's going to have these inline replies, where like if there's something a couple further up and you want to respond to that message from further up, you can respond just to that.

You can edit a message after you send it, which is a nice feature that I actually use when there's a typo.

You can unsend a message.

And then the last one that he lists in this article is full-fledged tap back support.

Now, of course we have tap back support now, but apparently it's going to be better and it's going to make sure it always works.

So, you know, it's improve it.

So this would be nice.

I mean, again, for whatever reason, most of the people that I text message with are blue bubble people that use iMessage, but I do have some friends that use Android.

And so I'm all in favor of improving communications between all of us. - And I just was thinking of these last three or four bubble bullet points here are things that I use probably every day, mostly with like my family or very close friends, like with you, you know, like the inline replies.

And I guess I've just, I've always associated that, like it has to be communications with other iPhone users.

And the fact, because I remember when we didn't even have that, even on just the, you know, in the messages, I mean, some of these, like the editing, I think is not that old, right?

That might've been iOS 18. - No, that's pretty new, yeah. - And so the fact that that can be imported even into the other communication channels, that's fantastic.

I really like the fact that they're- - Yeah, added messages are so nice.

So many times I type something, Brett, and I hit send, and it's not until after I send it and I look at it, I'm like, oh, did autocorrect change it or did I mistype it or whatever?

I'm like, oh, I did not mean to say this.

I like that you can go back and fix that.

You had your own review today of the Anker laptop power bank.

I loved seeing this because we talk about, you know, portable batteries so often, but really only in the context of like mobile devices, right?

And I gotta tell you, sometimes I've tried this because I've been desperate where I have my laptop, I'm getting low on power, I'm not sitting anywhere around an electrical outlet.

And so I've tried using my little portable power banks to charge my laptop.

Doesn't usually do it.

At the very least, I might, the laptop might just think it's plugged in, but it's not actually charging, you know, 'cause it's so weak, but I just, that's why I was so interested to see your review this past week.

And this is good.

And at a really good price right now too. - I tell you, I love, love, love this device.

And I should not love something that's as simple as a battery, but it's just so nice.

It's so smartly designed and it's so useful.

And, you know, I started my review pointing at that.

I mean, I laugh that one of the very first reviews I ever had on iPhone JD way back in 2008 was a portable battery.

And I have been using portable batteries for so long because sometimes your iPhone, your iPad, your laptop, whatever, you just don't have enough power.

And sure, you can sometimes have an outlet close by.

And if you've got a cord that stretches long enough, but then you've got to have the cord and you're tripling over it.

It's just so nice to have a little portable battery with you.

I use them so much when I'm, I was just talking about taking depositions in other lawyers' offices, going to conferences.

But even just like I'm at home, I mean, I've been noticing with my Vision Pro, 'cause the Vision Pro only has about two hours of battery power, which is fine if I'm just watching a movie but like if I'm actually getting some work done, I, you know, especially with the new mode that you can, you have a bigger screen for your computer.

You know, it's fine if I'm sitting in a place where I can plug in, but if I'm sitting on the couch, I don't, you know, or sitting at a table in my dining room, I don't have easy access.

And so it's nice to have a little battery power.

So portable batteries are great.

This one is amazing.

I should have brought it with me today and I forgot it at home because it's so heavy.

That's the one problem is it's heavy enough 'cause it weighs about the same as my iPad Pro, which I don't mind carrying my iPad Pro back and forth every day, but I don't want to necessarily carry two iPad Pros back and forth every day.

And so I don't keep it in my bag all the time.

And right now it's at my house charging, but when you do have this thing, it is just so nice because you just set it down.

It's got a nice little rubber foot under it so it can stand up straight and not move over, or you can put it on its side.

And you've got so much power.

I mean, you could recharge a laptop, you could recharge an iPhone many times over, an iPad, you know, multiple times, and you can have multiple devices.

I mean, that's what you expect from a battery.

But what makes this one cool is it's got these two built-in cords.

The one in the top, which stretches out, which is so cool that it tucks away when you don't need it.

And then, you know, you could extend it out.

And then even the lanyard, the carrying case on the side, doubles into an extra little cord.

And so it's- - Oh, nice.

Okay. - I mean, that it's, I just find it so useful to not have to go hunt down a cord.

It's just built in, you just carry the battery.

And that alone would make me love this thing, but the display on it, to have a display and a battery.

And I know that you've seen batteries- - Yeah, I've seen these pictures. - Have this for the last few years, but this is the first time that I've owned one of these.

And it is a crisp, very nice display.

It's got green when it's getting in charge, it's blue when it's sending out charge.

You can see what device is charging, what ports are you using, how fast is it.

One of the best things is when you plug it in to recharge the battery, it will actually tell you, here's how many minutes you have left before I'm gonna be fully charged and what I am now.

So I know like, oh, I wanna plug this thing in, I wanna take it, it's gonna be ready in 30 minutes, it'll be fully charged or it'll be charged enough.

Everything about this battery is awesome.

The only downside is it's a little heavy, like I said, but it's worth it for the trade-offs.

And it's a hundred bucks, so it's really useful.

I originally bought it mostly for my Vision Pro, but I've since used it extensively.

And again, I shouldn't be excited about a battery, Brett, but I love this thing.

It is a great, it's a great device.

I love it. - Look at that.

Yeah, and it's now, you can get it.

So you purchased it at $109, but it looks like right now, you can get it for just under 100, 99.99.

There's a code on the Amazon website here where you can put that in and get it for, some people may say $100, but you know what I think about?

Both with the price and number two, with the weight, it's like, I'm already carrying about three or four different little small power banks and batteries with me, Jeff.

And it's like, if I could replace all of those with this one, then to me, that's worth it.

I come out ahead, right? - And you can charge multiple devices at once.

Yeah, it's really, really nice.

On the price, I actually bought it at 94.99, which was a temporary sale price.

And then it went up, but the list price is 110 and there's a coupon on Amazon to bring it down to 100.

So whether you pay 95 like I did or 99, I mean, that's the same, but the point is it's about 100 bucks and it's totally worth it.

So I give it a huge thumbs up.

I'm gonna be taking it with me to tech show in two weeks.

I have another coupon for that. - I might have to get one for that too. - I used it in a deposition earlier this week.

I'm using it all the time.

So big thumbs up. - Beautiful stuff.

Okay, let's do an end the show segment, but my friend, you cannot provide any spoilers.

Today is the season finale of Severance season two.

And I have not seen it because I'm better at waiting than some of my friends, because little known fact, like even though it comes out on Friday, Apple actually releases it like, what is it?

Like 11 a.m., 11 p.m. at night on Thursday or something like that.

So you stayed up, you said, and watched the season ending.

I have not seen it and I've gotta do that.

So no spoilers, but we could talk about the fact that the season finale is tonight.

And thankfully, 'cause I knew already when I saw the season finale tonight, I was gonna wanna know what's coming next.

And thankfully season three is coming next.

I don't know exactly when, but it's coming. - And it won't be quite as long.

So we had heard rumors before that there was gonna be, I mean, of course there's gonna be a season three.

It's Apple's most popular show ever.

They're gonna give them a million seasons if they want.

And I think vaguely, maybe I heard that they say that Ben Stiller has maybe a five, I can't remember how many.

He has an idea of how long the show's gonna last.

And I'm sure Apple will let it last as long as they want.

But it is nice to have confirmation that we have a season three.

I will tell you, last week's episode was really good.

The penultimate episode was excellent.

But because of- - Yeah, it was last week.

I saw that one. - It changed so much that I was like, I think you and I were talking about this, Brett, like, how are they gonna put it together?

Is this gonna work? - Yes!

There's so many questions.

I was truly apprehensive because the season one finale of "Severance" is one of my favorite TV episodes of all time.

It was really, really good.

And so I'm like, are they gonna nail it for the season two?

And so no spoilers, but I will tell you, they nail it.

It's really good. - Okay. - Really, really good.

You're gonna see things you've never seen before.

And it is so, so, so good.

I loved it. - There better be some goats involved.

Don't tell me, but there better be some goat questions answered there.

Those who enjoy goats will be happy.

And it was really, really good.

I'll say, I am not the sort of person that will speak out loud at my TV.

And I was sort of laughing at myself because there were a number of times during the episode that I found myself yelling everything like, watch out, or oh my goodness, or laughing out loud.

And then I laugh at myself 'cause I was just having such a different reaction.

So thumbs up, you're gonna love it, Brett.

Oh, it's so good, so good. - Another show that probably could, Apple would allow as many episodes as they want would be Ted Lasso.

Which was weird because there were two seasons, right?

And then we had this third season that Jason Sudeikis, right, wasn't gonna be in, which I thought was weird.

Like, how do you call it Ted Lasso when there's not even a Ted Lasso?

And now we have a season four announced that apparently he's coming back in.

And he's coaching like, I think, did you say, like a women's soccer team or something?

It's like, oh my goodness, how much more can you milk this?

I don't know.

And I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

I'm just like, okay, this'll be interesting. - So the original show was clearly meant for a season three arc.

I'm sure, I don't have to worry about spoilers 'cause you've either seen Ted Lasso by now or you should.

But you know, it ends in a very natural place.

And you know, all of the outside of the show stories were that Jason Sudeikis, although he loved filming the show in London, he didn't wanna be away from his son that much.

And he wanted to be back home in the United States.

And so he wasn't gonna do a season four.

The show had come to a natural end.

He didn't wanna do the travel.

So then we heard the rumblings that there might be a season four, maybe without Jason Sudeikis, or maybe he would just phone it in and show up on like a FaceTime call or something.

So the big news was that apparently, and he revealed this on a podcast that he was on.

He said that, it was the Kelsey Brother podcast or something.

He's like, yes, there's gonna be a season four and we're writing it.

And yes, he's definitely gonna be in it.

And the other rumor we had heard, and hopefully this is not too much of a spoiler, is that to sort of freshen it up, you know, the big thing now is, you know, women's sports being such a big deal from basketball and soccer and everything else.

And so I guess, I'm guessing that Richmond, you know, the fictional town of Richmond in the show is going to have a woman's team as opposed to a man's team, and that he's gonna be the coach.

So does that mean he's gonna start off as the coach or are they gonna have a problem and then have to bring in Ted Lasso to save the team?

Who knows?

But I'm all for it.

By having a woman's team, it means that they'll have some new actors, some actresses in it.

But I'm sure that many of our old favorites will come back and be involved.

And again, Ted Lasso was such a special show.

It was so good in its heyday.

We all needed it so much during the pandemic that I'm excited about a season four, whenever it comes out.

I doubt it will be this calendar year, probably 2026, but I don't think they've announced the date yet.

So cool stuff. - Well, you just mentioned COVID and one of my fond memories of COVID is the lawyer that got on a Zoom call and insisted that he was not a cat, even though he had a filter on his Zoom call that indeed he looked like a cat.

We have seen, I mean, surely everyone has seen this.

In fact, I've heard, I've gone to a conference where the judge was like the speaker and talking like this the whole day. - Oh, that's funny. - So everybody I think has milked this aspect of it as well.

But you know what?

I was so, not only does it make me smile to think of, you know, I am not a cat.

It just makes me smile that, what is the gentleman's name?

Rod Ponton, who's a lawyer, I think, yeah, out in West Texas.

But he, so this was a story that you linked to in the New York Times.

The cat lawyer figured out his Zoom settings and his response all of these years later is, you know what?

I'm glad it happened, even at my own expense.

But he's like, he knows, he knows how many people have smiled over all of these years about it.

And I am just so thrilled.

I was so happy to hear him be happy about it as well and kind of turn it into lemonade, right? - I agree.

And you know, I watched the infamous, you know, 30 second video again last night.

And you know, I've seen it a million times, but when I watched it, it still made me laugh.

It really is. - So funny. - You know, with the cat moving his eyes and saying, you know, I'm ready to go forward, your honor.

I'm not a cat, I'm actually here alive.

Oh, it was just so classic.

So if you haven't watched the video in a while, read it again.

And here's, this New York Times article is very short.

It's a gift article.

So even if you don't subscribe, you can read it, but it's worth looking at.

It's very funny. - Thank you very much.

And then lastly, for the video segment, oh my goodness, I enjoyed this so much.

It's about a five minute video.

It's from Apple.

It is produced and filmed by Spike Jones, the, you know, the Herald director here, but it stars Pedro Pascal, who he has been in several fantastic shows, but of course I know him best.

We were just talking about this a little bit earlier.

I know him best from "The Last of Us."

And so the only thing about this little video as it was going through, Jeff, is I kept thinking that there was gonna be some zombies jumping up all of a sudden as we go through the little video.

You may know him more as, well, he was in "The Mandalorian."

Is that right?

Or what was the star? - He was in "Andor."

"Andor" was the show. - "Andor," okay, "Andor," okay.

And so, I mean, I know he's been on several great movies.

I mean, he's just a fun actor, but not only is he an actor, apparently he's a dancer.

I mean, it was just so fun to watch this entire little, you know, there's not a whole lot of vocals or text, you know, that goes on in here, but just a fun little video, worth watching.

I just love the style that it's put in and the dance moves and everything, really good. - My wife and I were talking about this one this morning over breakfast.

It's the only knock on it is that it's probably a little long, although I don't mind it.

I mean, it's worth watching. - I don't mind that, yeah. - And I'm sure Apple's gonna cut this into 30 seconds, 60 second versions to be running as commercials on TV and stuff like that. - Sure, sure. - But I didn't mind the length because it's so nicely done.

I mean, the colors, the videos. - It's fun, it's fun. - I presume it's all CGI, but it's just so nicely done.

And Pedro Pascal's emotions through his face are just so good.

He's an incredible actor.

If I remember correctly, - So good. - He was a very popular actor in, I think, Mexico, but I had never heard of him.

And then he was in one of the "Star Wars" films.

I guess it was "Rogue One."

And then of course he was in "Andor," which was amazing, like the best of the "Star Wars" TV shows. - Okay, okay. - And then, as you say, "The Last of Us."

So I've now seen him in a bunch.

My wife had not seen him before.

But one funny thing is he's an actor.

He reminds me of Hugh Jackman.

When I first saw Hugh Jackman, I thought of him as being a great actor that was very serious.

And then I learned years later that he's actually an amazing singer and dancer and is a huge Broadway person.

And I'm like, "Oh my goodness, how do I take Wolverine?"

And also he is this amazing- - I didn't say Wolverine, right?

(laughs) - And it's the same thing.

So Pedro Pascal is this amazing, serious actor who's been in all these serious roles, like fighting zombies and stuff.

But the guy can dance, the guy can be funny, and you see it in the video.

So I'm sure Apple spent too much money on this commercial.

But the funny thing is, I know it reminds me, we've seen commercials for way back when, the iPods of the silhouette people dancing around.

We have seen commercials.

Apple's done so many different variations in the theme of walking down the street wearing now AirPods, and it used to be others in the past, that I love that they found to take the same genre and do it, obviously, when you have an amazing actor and an amazing director like Spike Jonze, they could do something really special, and they did a great job with this.

So it's really fun to watch.

If you haven't seen it yet, I absolutely, big, big thumbs up.

It's worth watching.

A little long, but still really good. - I think I neglected to say, this is actually an ad. (laughs) - It's an ad, yeah, it's an ad for AirPod.

For noise cancellations. - It's so beautiful. - Yeah, exactly. - Right.

But it's done in a beautiful, artistic manner that I don't even think of it.

I mean, I know it's an ad, I know what's going on here, but I'm watching everything else, and it's just like that sentiment that you take away from it is really good, the way that they did that.

I thought that was excellent.

Thanks for always putting some kind of a fun little video at the end, Jeff.

That's always fun.

In the know. - In the know. - We talked about, I am not a cat, Zoom video.

So I thought, I'm gonna share a quick little tip that I have with using Zoom on my iPhone.

I find myself doing this a lot more often, especially if I'm traveling, more and more we're traveling these days, or I'm out and about, and I have Zoom calls, and I can still take them, even though I'm not sitting in front of my computer.

The Zoom app on the iPhone and the iPad, I think I've gotten much, much better over the years.

And I have enjoyed using that, and I usually do it with my AirPods Pro, and I have that in.

But I'm a little nervous sometimes that I would accidentally unmute myself, or go on camera when I don't mean to, right?

'Cause many times I'm just listening in.

And I'm usually walking around, there's other things going on.

So here's a quick little tip that is in the Zoom iPhone app.

Now, I call this the quick mute swipe, but officially Zoom calls this safe driving mode.

So when you're in a Zoom call on your iPhone, you typically can see like the person talking, or you can sometimes swipe to the left, and you'll see like what we call the gallery view in Zoom, right?

You'll see all the people that are there in the meeting.

But if you swipe back to the right, so you're at that main screen, so that you're seeing either the person talking, or you're seeing like, if they're sharing their screen, you're gonna see that there.

But if you swipe again to the right, that's how you can go into the safe driving mode.

So when you're in a call, you can tap the mute button, or the camera on and off button at the very bottom.

Now, I have my controls showing on my screen all the time.

So I can quickly get to those mute buttons down there.

But if you don't have that turned on, and you just wanna quickly mute and turn your camera off, you can go into the safe driving mode.

All you gotta do is just swipe to the right.

And I don't have a picture of the screen, I should probably pull one up.

But it is clear as a bell that you have muted everything 'cause it tells you on there.

There's actually a little button that you will see there that says your microphone is muted, your camera is turned off.

And there is no way that you are going to be unmuted until you actually swipe to back to the left to get back to the main meeting.

I know that that's a little complicated the way that I'm describing it there.

But the next time you're in a Zoom meeting, or frankly, you could just start a Zoom meeting yourself and practice this quickly.

You don't have to have anybody to join.

But this is called safe driving mode by Zoom.

It's just a quick way if you're on a Zoom call on your iPhone, just swipe to the right, it mutes everything.

You can still hear everything going on, but at least you have a very clear indication that you are muted and your camera is turned off.

And when you're ready to go back on the mute, you just simply swipe back to the left and you'll be back in the call just like you always were.

And again, nobody knows any difference.

You're just basically making sure that you are muted and your camera is off.

And you can do that through safe driving mode.

Although, like I said, I like to call that the quick mute function on that as well. - I had never heard of this before in my life.

And this is good. - Oh, okay. - The few times that I have done a Zoom call in my car, and I have had to do it from time to time, because I'm using the CarPlay app, that's the interface that I'm doing it.

But what you're talking about is what's on the actual iPhone face.

So if you happen to be a person that has your phone mounted in your car or otherwise, that is useful.

I mean, I've definitely been in Zoom calls before where the other person didn't realize that they were, they're driving around and they think they're on mute and they're not, and it's a background noise and it's annoying and blah, blah, blah.

So I had never heard of this before.

Thank you for sharing it. - Very cool. - You know, to be clear, and this is why it's a little queer.

I don't know that I ever hardly get on a Zoom call in the car.

I'm sure that I do sometimes, but that's why I think this is silly.

I mean, I know why Zoom calls it safe driving mode. - Yeah, but you can use it no matter where you are. - I don't use it ever when I'm driving.

This is when I'm just like, I'm walking around, I'm in the airport, you know, like I just don't wanna be in front of my computer.

So I'm walking outside with a dog or something and I'm on a Zoom call and I'm using just my phone.

So yeah, Zoom calls it safe driving mode, but don't think you have to be driving to be able to use it.

I use it anytime that I'm joining a Zoom call from my phone. - Good tip, I appreciate it.

Okay, so my tip of the day is, I did not come up with this tip.

I found an article in Gadget Hacks this week by, and I'm gonna butcher this name, Jovana Novoveski, she's from Serbia and she writes those articles.

But anyway, but she said the iPhone Compass app is more useful than you think.

And I'm like, come on, Compass app.

I mean, talk about an app I never really use.

I guess the Stocks app I use even less.

But this article points out all these cool things and it's like, oh, this was a nice refresher.

And so I just wanna sort of run through them.

The most, you open up the Compass app on your iPhone, of course, we all know it's got like the little Compass screen on it.

And of course it shows you, you can point it around and it gives you your direction and degrees.

That's what a Compass is.

It can be the number direction or it can be the cardinal direction, North, South, East, West.

But, and that's interesting.

I live in a city in New Orleans where nobody uses the directions North, South, East or West because of the weird way that the city is shaped with the river.

People in New Orleans say you're either towards the river, Mississippi River, towards the lake, Lake Pontchartrain, or you're uptown or downtown.

Those are the four directions in New Orleans because as the city moves, we have parts of the West Bank that are East of the East Bank, New Orleans, it makes it directions.

But anyway, the Compass app is interesting.

And so those are the features that you knew about.

But some other things that were in this post that I did not know about.

One of them is you can lock your heading by tapping the Compass face.

So if you're hiking or something else, if you're like, I want to go specifically this direction, you know, point yourself in that direction and then tap once in the middle of the circle.

And then when you do that, as you move, you'll see like this red line left to right, and it helps you to stay on track.

And you're showing it in the picture on screen right now.

So you can stay on track.

I'm like, oh, that's sort of nice to know in case you want to do that.

There's this, if you go to the settings app, you can change the Compass to switch between true North and magnetic North.

And if you understand the significance of that, it's good to know.

That makes no difference to my daily life, but whatever. - That's from like my high school. - Here's a cool thing though.

There have been times, especially when I'm using like, I'm trying to find something on Google Maps or elsewhere, that I want to know my precise longitude and latitude.

You know, I generally know that the city of New Orleans is 30 North, 90 West.

In fact, 30, 90 is a phrase that we often use in New Orleans.

Everybody knows 30, 90 refers to New Orleans, but that doesn't mean I know my precise longitude and my precise latitude.

But if you open up the Compass app, it will tell you that in nice big numbers.

So I'm not exactly 30, I'm currently 29 and 57 inches and two and I'm not exactly 90, I'm 90 degrees, four inches, 16.

So, or whatever the numbers are.

So I can get a precise meaning.

That's pretty cool.

You can also determine your precise elevation.

City like New Orleans, you're often below sea level, but it's nice to know when you're above sea level.

But I was just sort of looking up beforehand.

My office building is in a building in downtown New Orleans that for many, many, many years was called One Shell Square.

It's currently called the Hantock Whitney Center, but my building is 697 feet tall, according to Wikipedia.

And I'm seeing that right now, according to the app, I am, I'm on the 46th floor here.

It's telling me that I'm at 580 feet.

So I'm about a hundred feet away from the top of my building, good to know.

Wow, okay.

But it's the only way you get elevation in New Orleans.

And then one final thing about the Compass app is for a long time, it had this cool feature that the very center of the app has a crosshair.

And then if you sort of set it flat, it's got like this very, it's sort of hard to see circle on it.

And you can place it like on something like a flat surface to see whether or not it's level.

Now I will tell you, you don't need this anymore because for many years now, iOS 12 introduced another app called Measure.

The Measure app.

And the Measure app can either measure, you know, heights or distances.

But if you put it into the mode, you can set it flat and you can see, is this furniture completely flat?

Do I need to adjust a leg?

Now keep in mind that if you don't use a case like I do, your phone's gonna bump up.

So when you set the phone down, if the camera bump is sitting on the table, it's not flat.

But so put the part of the iPhone that doesn't have the camera bump on the top of a surface.

And then you can see using the Measure app, or also if you want to using the Compass app, how flat it, how perfectly level it is, which is good to know.

And then the last, she also mentions in this article, the Apple Watch version of the Compass app, which I didn't even think about that much.

And one thing that she mentions that I had never heard of is, I mean, I don't hike, you're a hiker, Brett.

So this is a more use for you than for me.

But she says that there's a target elevation alert.

So if you say like, I want you to tell me when I get to a hundred feet, or I'm just climbing up a mountain, I want you to tell me when it gets to 200 feet, you can actually give yourself an alert.

And if you're doing serious climbing, you can say like, I at a certain height, my body should pause to acclimate properly to the elevation and stuff.

And so I didn't even know that was a feature in the Apple Watch version of the app.

So it's good to know.

And she has some other ones too.

So, you know, the Compass app is not something that I've paid much attention to over the years.

I use it from time to time.

And so it was interesting to know, it's actually a pretty full featured app.

And if nothing else, if you're traveling, you ever want to know what exactly is this longitude and latitude, this gives me the precise exact amount right here in the app.

So I enjoyed reading this article, lots of good tips in there. - My goodness.

I know that I have pulled up the Compass app several times on my Apple Watch, but it's really just from a very simplistic standpoint.

Like, I just want to know which direction that I'm facing right now.

Or if I want to go, if I, you know, if I have some kind of instruction to go East or so that I can use the Apple Watch, but my goodness.

Yeah, there's a lot more in it.

I love this digging deeper into like stock apps that we've always known that's there.

But didn't know all those cool features existed.

Very good. - Yeah, in fact, one more thing I want to mention about the longitude and latitude is that if you tap on it, on those numbers in the Compass app, you'll see a little pop-up thing that says copy.

And so then you can actually copy the precise longitude and latitude.

And you can go into Google Maps and paste it in there.

And then you can look around where you are or whatever else.

So something good to know too. - Very good.

I'm glad that we're in there.

We're going the right direction. (laughing) And we'll go the next direction for next week.

Always good talking with you, Jeff.

And we'll talk with you next week.