Welcome to In The News for May the 2nd, 2025.

I can't believe it's May already, Jeff.

I am Brett Burne from Appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Happy May.

Happy May.

Happy May.

It's like May Day yesterday.

We're in the May.

May the 4th is coming soon.

Okay, we'll get to that in just a minute.

First, let's talk about something that hit the wires today that, oh boy, people have been talking about.

Before we get to that, just real quick, we want to say thank you to our sponsor today, Lit Software at litsoftware.com.

Today, we're going to talk about one of their apps called Doc Reviewpad.

More on that to come later.

But first, let's get to an interesting court decision that didn't fare very well for Apple in this time, Jeff.

Maybe you can give a little bit of a background here because this has been a litigated matter for a long time with Apple and mostly Epic, although I think there's other parties that have been involved.

This, we've been reporting on this for a few years now.

And most of the decisions so far have kind of felt like that they've gone Apple's way.

But this one this past week went the complete opposite.

Yeah.

I mean, the big picture here is Apple's in-app purchases.

Since day one, when the App Store first came out, Apple has said if you have an app and if you want people to be able to buy things in the app, you do so.

That's great.

But we will take 30% just like we take that money when you per-sell an app in the first place.

And when the App Store was first created in 2008, that was actually great because instead of having to take your software, put it in a box, sell it in a brick and mortar store with all the costs associated there, the idea that you could have a digital delivery, Apple would pay for the credit card fees and everything else, it was a good deal.

But over time, we've gotten to the point where people would like to explore other ways of selling their apps.

And so there's been more and more pushback.

And Apple itself has changed its policies because of that.

Nowadays, the only people that have to pay the 30% are the huge publishers that have tons of sales of over a million dollars and stuff.

If you're a small publisher, the fee from Apple is 15%, which is closer to what the credit card fee expenses are.

But anyway, Epic, who makes a bunch of games, including most obviously Fortnite, which is hugely popular, I suppose it's still usually popular.

I know my kids used to play it when they were younger.

But Epic wanted to be able to have their in-game Epic bucks or whatever they call their Fortnite stuff.

But they didn't want to pay Apple the 30%.

And so they decided to basically put something in the app that made it through App Store Review because Apple didn't realize they put a Trojan horse in there.

And then suddenly it made it that Epic was giving all these discounts and letting you go through their store and Apple's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't do that.

And so they banned them from the store.

But it all resulted in this lawsuit where Epic challenged a lot of Apple's business practices as being uncompetitive.

And Apple won most of that lawsuit.

But there was one small part of it they lost back in 2021, where, and it's the part that I'm referring to, where the judge, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, Federal District Court ruled that Apple had to open up third parties to have the ability to say instead of using Apple's in-app purchasing system, you have to allow us to link to like an external website and so that you could go to our website.

And this goes far beyond games.

The perfect example of it is, if you're using the Audible app, you can't purchase an audio book in the Audible app because if you were to do so, Apple would make Amazon pay 30% and with all the simple profits on books that just wouldn't make sense.

And so you have to separately know to go to the Amazon website, purchase your Audible book there.

And then once you purchased it, it's available in the app, but you can't do it from the app or, you know, Comixology for buying comics, stuff like that.

And so the judge entered an injunction against Apple that basically said you need to open up your system.

And Apple, you know, there's a couple of different ways that Apple could have followed the injunction.

And what the discovery revealed is that, you know, they chose a way that was perhaps overly literal and not really what the judge was getting at.

Like for example, they said you could go to an external website, but we'll charge you 27% instead of 30%, which is not much of a change.

And before you go to the website, and you may have seen this before in some of your apps, you know, this big thing comes up warning you, you know, warning, you're going outside of the Apple ecosystem.

We don't know if this is safe, blah, blah, blah.

And, you know, technically that's true.

Apple doesn't know if you go to an outside website if it's safe.

But come on, in today's day and age, everybody knows what the internet is and that anything could happen.

You know, Apple doesn't have warnings in the Safari app, you know, danger, danger.

When you use Safari, every time you go to a website, Apple doesn't control that website.

We all know that.

And so I think it was a little far.

The most scathing part of the judge's decision.

So what happened this week is the judge ruled that Apple had not complied with the injunction and in fact, even accused one of the Apple executives about lying about their efforts.

But the phrase that has been giving a lot of play is this one.

I'll just read it.

It's just a sentence or two.

The judge says she's looking at documents and, you know, how Apple decided what it was going to do in light of the injunction.

And she says, quote, "Internally, Philip Shiller," who, parenthetically, is one of the Apple executives who's been around for a long time, used to be in charge of marketing.

"Internally, Philip Shiller had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction.

But Tim Cook ignored Shiller, and instead allowed chief financial officer, Luca Maistri, and his finance team to convince him otherwise.

Cook chose poorly."

And that's the line, you know?

"Cook chose poorly."

And, you know, I think it's interesting because as a lawyer, I'm often involved in cases where you have these internal emails that come out after the fact.

And sometimes people are, you know, a little more frank than I might, you know, want for my defendant than I'm representing.

But Apple did make a choice here.

And the judge thinks they chose poorly.

And I won't get into the discussion about whether they did or did not and what kind of legal advice Apple got and whether they got the right legal advice.

Who knows?

I don't represent Apple.

So, you know, they weren't asking me.

But it's an interesting situation.

And Apple has itself, you know, obviously in the eyes of this judge not happy.

Now, Apple has said that they will appeal, but they're not going to seek to stay the injunction.

And in fact, just days after this injunction, Apple has already changed their policies.

And I think that Chance Miller of Nine to Five Mac was the first person to notice this.

But now if you are an Apple developer, the developer guidelines for U.S. sales.

Now, this, the injunction only applies in the United States.

So, if you live in, you know, Canada or England or whatever, this doesn't affect you.

Although, of course, in the EU, there's some similar stuff happening with the EU stuff.

But now, you know, as of today, apps on the App Store can include links to external websites, stuff like that.

You can't, you know, Apple is no longer prohibiting it.

You know, Apple cannot, you know, Apple will allow people to use other purchase methods besides the in-app purchases.

You can't, you know, use some of these scare things when you go to external websites.

And so, we're going to start to see, I think pretty soon, how developers start to do this.

And maybe this will mean that in the Audible app, you can now buy audiobooks, you know, just buying them through Amazon or some other apps.

So, we will see, you know, who starts, you know, a lot of developers are going to continue to use the Apple system, especially if they're in the 15% or the 30% because it's just easier and cheaper than them.

But if you're a big mega company where you have your own payment processing system that you're using, someone like Epic, you might want this.

Now, let me just say one thing about Epic.

After this happened, you know, one of the, you know, there's the decision and then there's the hubbub about the decision.

And, you know, you can't necessarily believe everything that Apple says about this.

But you also certainly cannot believe everything that Epic has said about this because Epic, although what they have asked for, I understand and many developers are in favor of, Epic has clearly pushed the envelope, you know, quite a bit on this.

And so afterwards, Epic issued, you know, the guy that runs Epic, you know, Tim, what was his name?

Tim Sweeney.

Thank you, Tim Sweeney, of course.

You know, he published something on Twitter or wherever I was saying, you know, the other Tim saying that, oh, Fortnite's going to be back in the store next week and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, I mean, maybe we'll see.

I mean, let's not forget that Fortnite, you know, totally violated Apple's rules by putting this Trojan horse in an app that changed.

So I don't know that Apple is going to allow, you know, Fortnite to go back into the store.

Again, maybe they will because even though Epic has been a bad actor in the past, you know, maybe Apple will decide, you know what, it's just easy to let them do it.

I don't know what's going to happen.

Well, to your point, I mean, that's the practicality because I will tell you, I remember a couple of years ago when my kid, when my son was a little younger, we would play Fortnite and he played on the Xbox and I actually played it on my iPad at the time, Jeff.

I even used an Xbox controller.

You can connect an Xbox controller to an iPad.

And I will tell you that's when something like this really hit home.

You know, there's one thing for like up in the courts and people, you know, all this, you know, mechanisms going on and machinations and everything.

But like when my son and I just want to play Fortnite, I was unable to do that because Epic pulled the app out of the app store.

Even at the time that it was one of its heights, like it was so popular that it just yanked it out of the app store and knowing that they were going to really tick off a lot of people, right?

But that was their play.

And again, I think of it as like a realistic, like a practical real life example.

It's like we were upset about that.

But Epic was saying, well, this is, you know, this is why we're doing this because Apple is imposing, you know, these unfair, caught anyway, that just to give you a little bit more of an idea as to the fact that if this comes back into the store now, and as you mentioned that Epic and Tim Sweeney has said that the Fortnite app is going to be available now in the iOS store, even though again, that has to go through Apple's allowances on some of that.

It is still a private store that, you know, that they could allow or disallow things to go in to go into that.

Anyway, but just that's the things that I was thinking as we were going through here.

But to come back to this order, it was extremely obvious that the judge was not happy with Apple.

I mean, I think even at some point, it that she even suggested maybe that Apple be investigated for contempt of court issues.

I mean, that's going to another level and something like this too, Jeff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She, you know, one of the Apple executives that she thought lied under oath.

She, you know, referred it to the US Attorney's Office for them to investigate.

And, you know, this is, you know, nobody, I mean, look, this is my law practice.

I represent companies when they are sued, especially when they go up on appeal.

And, you know, I have read a million orders from judges describing about what my client did, you know, whether they were, you know, unfairly criticized for something that was nothing or on the other extreme.

Sometimes the client did something that the judge is not happy with.

And so I've seen decisions good, bad and otherwise.

And this is a bad decision.

I mean, nobody wants this type of a decision from a judge.

And you know what it really comes down to, Brett, is, you know, you don't don't tick off the judge, you know, it's one thing for the judge to rule against you.

But for a judge to believe that you have disregarded the judge's rulings, that's when you get in real trouble.

And that's what this judge believes that Apple did.

So, you know, people can have their own decision about whether the judge is right or wrong or otherwise.

But, you know, Apple is not found itself in a happy place.

And who knows what will happen on appeal.

But goodness.

Last thing quickly, I just want to ask you from your experience in this, as you were just alluding to, it seems like Apple made these changes to the App Store guidelines very quickly.

And, you know, just a little bit that I've been involved in this a major litigation like this.

You kind of know sometimes things like this are coming down the road.

I mean, I feel like obviously Apple is never going to reveal this, right?

But Apple and probably, assumingly their their counsel, they knew that probably things were not going to go right.

Like they had been preparing for this, even though they knew it was going to look bad in some of the headlines and stuff.

And, you know, only then do we get some of that in the public facing eye.

But I just, the fact that they've already made some of these changes, and you, I can only imagine surely Apple internally has been talking about this like, okay, what if this happens?

Here's what we're going to do.

And they have some of these plans.

Do you think that that's accurate?

Like that we're just going to continue to see maybe some changes on that as well?

Yeah.

I mean, first of all, you know, companies are obviously when you're in litigation, you're always planning, you know, what if what happens if this happens, whatever, you know, you plan your contingency so that you're ready to go.

And in this case, considering that the judge was ruling that Apple had violated a prior ruling, you know, that's the sort of thing that you need to respond quickly, because it's not an option for you to say, okay, judge, thank you.

We did not pay attention to your to your last ruling.

Why don't you give us another month or two to pay attention to it?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you need to act quickly.

And so they clearly did what they needed to do to avoid, you know, sanction for their sanctions, stuff like that.

But remember, as I alluded to, Brett, it's not just this particular lawsuit, because, you know, the European Union is pushing back on Apple on how they deal with developers and stuff like that.

Apple, it's not a man.

Apple may not be a monopoly because Android is, you know, worldwide bigger than Apple.

And yet it has a very important part of the ecosystem.

And within its part of the ecosystem, it does control things.

And the fact that Apple controls a lot is in some ways, it's a good thing for things like user privacy and security and everything else.

But it does mean that, you know, third parties have to play by Apple's rules.

And sometimes they don't like those rules, and they can make an argument that they're anti competitive.

And so, you know, when you talk about Apple planning for contingencies, it's not even just this one lawsuit in front of this one judge.

They know that, you know, the European Union is doing similar things.

Other countries are paying attention.

You know, they must know that at any point, you know, they're a global company at any point around the world, these types of decisions may be coming down, and they need to think through how you're going to respond to it.

And then there's the issue of, you know, as the evidence that I just read or the part of the decision that's talking about the evidence read, you know, there's different ways of having contingencies.

You can have, you know, plan, you know, B, plan C, plan C1, plan C2.

And if you decide on C1 versus C2, that has implications as well.

So it's a complicated, you know, the buck stops with with Apple CEO Tim Cook.

He ultimately has to make the decisions.

The judge believes he chose poorly.

And, you know, we will see the results of that.

But, you know, that's why they get paid the big bucks is to make these important decisions.

I wonder if this will change any Apple fans minds about being an Apple fan.

This was a nice article from Dan Moran, who probably many people have heard us talk about Dan Moran.

He's like, I kind of feel like he's like the second half of six colors, right?

Jason Snell.

Yeah, absolutely.

They do six colors, which we were just talking about this is a story from Jason Snell on this, the Hammer Falls on Apple's malicious compliance scheme.

But both Jason and Dan, I think have been working together for many years as journalists.

And one of the public many publications that both of them have been involved in is Macworld.

Well, Dan over the what is the last 10 years or whatever it's been now, he's been writing this article, this column for Macworld called Stay Foolish, which has always been kind of a nice editorial type of an article of a column here.

And he's writing his last one.

And in this, he talks about being an Apple fan in 2025.

And I just loved reading through this, you know, kind of what it was like to be an Apple fan 10 years ago versus the way it is today.

And it's quite a bit different.

Yeah, I mean, I remember back in the 1990s and even earlier, I mean, certainly back in the 1980s, when I was still in high school, you know, the way that I would read about topics of interest to me like technology and science and stuff like that is you would read magazine, you know, actual physical magazines.

I mean, I remember when I was in high school, I used to subscribe to quite a few of them, you know, popular science and stuff like that.

Well, Macworld used to be a magazine too.

So in the 90s, I certainly used to subscribe to a number of magazines, Macworld, MacUser, other ones, MacAddict, you know, and now the days of physical magazines have sort of gone away.

And many, many years ago, Macworld purchased MacUser.

I think that Dan Moran started writing for MacUser and then came over to Macworld.

But, you know, Macworld magazine was a going concern for a very long time and then then eventually moved into a website only.

So the Macworld of today is in my mind, you know, not at all what it used to be when it used to be the big magazine.

That was what everybody read was Macworld.

Now it's just one of many websites, but it does continue to work.

And a lot of people that used to write for the magazine like, you know, Dan Moran and Jason Snell and many others are still writing just for other venues.

So Macworld has continued to keep some of those writers on, you know, paying them for monthly or bi-monthly columns or whatever it is.

And Dan Moran for 10 years now, I think he left Macworld about 10 years, but continued on to write this this column called Stay Foolish.

Stay Foolish, of course, is a reference to when Steve Jobs was giving one of his, the big address for, was it Berkeley College?

I forget where it was.

It was the, with the graduation commencement address.

And, you know, he says, you know, stay, stay hungry, stay foolish, which was actually a quote from the whole Earth catalog.

But anyway, there's been a lot written about that.

But it's the idea of, you know, let's, you know, let's, you know, be, keep that silly side to you.

So it's been a great article in which Dan talked over the years.

So to go to this very last article, you know, he talks about what it means to be an Apple fan, which for many years, you know, gosh, I remember the 90s when Apple was like about to die.

And we weren't even sure if the company would be around in six months.

You know, for then the fans were the ones that were, you know, in some ways keeping the company alive.

And then, and then what it means to be an Apple fan changed so much when the iPod became so popular and then the iPhone and everything else.

And now Apple's the biggest company in the world, which is why, you know, what it means to be an Apple fan today is different from before.

So it's an interesting article.

It would be an interesting article anyway, but it's very apropos for this to be his final article for Macworld.

You know, just Dan says, he might, you know, in the future, they may hire him.

And he's going to continue to write on six colors and everywhere else.

So just even that he mentioned, you know, going back, I mean, 20 years ago when Apple changed to using Intel processors for their Macs, I mean, that was so huge because at the time people, I mean, I feel like so many people just kind of forgot that because it was such a quick turnaround and pretty an amazing turnaround too.

But at the time, Macs were using different processors that didn't always allow folks like us from a professional standpoint to use professional grade software like Microsoft Word had to be, you know, worked in a different way.

And when Intel came along, that's when we were able to actually run Windows on a Mac computer.

Anyway, just so many things like that, that as he's going through here, and that was one of the main examples that jumped out.

But Dan doesn't just write on the technology side.

You have some great little links today in the science fiction genre, the books that Dan has been writing for a long time.

Yeah, Dan has been an author for many, many, many years, and he's got all sorts of books, but his big series, which is called the Galactic Cold War series, the first book of that is called The Candelonian Gambit, and it goes on from there.

His most recent book, the final book in the series, is called The Armageddon Protocol.

It is, they're fantastic books.

And if any of you enjoy, you know, sci-fi, action adventure, thrillers, spy type stuff, you know, it's sort of like the good Star Wars type things, you know, these are a fantastic series.

And I really encourage you to check them out.

I have listened to just about all of them on Audible.

The only ones that I've actually read, you know, actually, you know, reading words on paper, so to speak, or digitally, is in addition to the major books that he has, he has some short stories that just sort of fill in, like they're quick reads, you know, 20, 30 minute reads that, you know, fill in some of the back stories of characters between the novels.

If you go to his website, he tells you the order to read them all.

And so those little short stories I would purchase through, you know, iBooks or Amazon or something like that.

But most of them I've listened to the audiobook versions of it, it's the same narrator for all of them, he does a great job.

And they are exciting, they are funny, you know, which you don't often see in some of these things.

There's like, very many times that I laugh out loud.

And so I'm not a huge book reader because I don't have the time.

I wish I did, I love reading books.

And when I retire, I would love nothing more than to start reading a ton of books again.

So for me, a book's got to be really special for me to take the time to read it, let it on an entire series of books.

But this one absolutely is.

So if you have an interest in that type of genre, I just give a huge thumbs up.

And so I thought it was funny that literally the day that I was, I had a court hearing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I was driving back home.

And so I had about 20 minutes left of my book.

So I listened to the last 20 minutes of it as I'm driving back to New Orleans.

And then I see that not only am I now finished with his books, because he has a ton of books and I've now read all of them.

But also he's finished his column of macro world.

I'm like, oh, that's just a little serendipity there of, you know, it's a transition time for my relationship with Dan Moran.

So anyway, big thumbs up for the books.

I'm just so glad to hear you say that because I've known a fellow Dan for so long.

And I feel like he was one of the first, like sort of independent authors that I mean, because he really does these on his own, right?

I don't know that he has like a major publisher.

Maybe he does now.

It's a small indie publisher.

I mean, they're not self.

Okay, the short stories are self published.

But the actual books, he actually does have, you know, he has an agent and he goes through.

I forget what it's, it's, it's not like a, it's one of the smaller, but it's definitely a publisher and stuff like that.

So I mean, there these are hard copybooks you can certainly buy.

It's not like it's a self published type thing.

Well, I knew that.

But I guess he was just one of the first people that I kind of like knew that, you know, this is not a science fiction writer.

But, you know, he's a journalist, a Czech journalist, as well as how I know him.

But he's writing these books on the side and he's doing really well with them.

Like he was just one of the first people that I kind of had this idea like, wait a minute, this could be something a little bit different, you know, because I mean, these books are fairly old, right?

It means he's been writing these for several years now, cutting quite a number of years.

And it's just, it's just been kind of good to kind of follow that, that, this, I mean, I guess I feel like it would be like a dream, like it's one of his dreams, right?

He likes writing, but not just the journalistic side, but also the fiction side, which is great.

He also does a lot of podcasts and stuff as well, which is always good.

I was going to mention that real quick, you know, one of the podcasts that I enjoy is called Clockwise, which has been around for a long time.

It was started by Dan Moran and Jason Snow, and Dan continues to do it with Microsurgeon.

And it's a weekly podcast.

It's only 30 minutes.

They cut it at 30 minutes every week.

And they always have two guests with them.

And I've been on it a couple of times, although it's been many, many years since I've done it.

And, and they talked about the tech, the tech topics of the day.

One other that I will recommend is if you are interested in Star Wars, he has a podcast called A Complicated Profession.

Now, that's a strange title, but it comes from when the, that show on Disney Plus called The Mandalorian.

When the first season of The Mandalorian came out in episode one, season one, there's a scene where a character called The Client played by the famous actor, a Warner, a Herzog.

He hires The Mandalorian, you know, the protagonist of the series to go out and get the asset.

And I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that the asset turns out to be who I still refer to as Baby Yoda, but I guess technically it's called Grogu.

We've all seen the pictures with Baby Yoda being a real hero.

Everyone's seen the, yeah.

And the phrase that The Client uses is that he should bring back Grogu alive, but he says, you know, although I acknowledge that bounty hunting is a complicated profession, and that being the case, proof of termination is also acceptable for a lower fee.

So that was his phrase as, you know, being a bounty hunter is a complicated profession.

But this particular podcast is talking about Star Wars shows.

So every time there's a new Star Wars show out, this podcast with Dan and his wife and Tony Senglar, they, it's one of these great sort of companion podcasts.

And I mentioned it right now because I am watching on Disney Plus, the show called Andor.

And I don't think you're as into Star Wars as I am Brett, but I will tell you of all of the Star Wars universes, the movies, all the shows, you know, The Mandalorian, all the things they have.

Andor is far and above the best.

I mean, it is a really legitimately good show.

And yes, it's in the Star Wars universe, but it doesn't have jet eyes or lightsabers or any of that stuff.

It is just a really, really good action adventure show about a society that is realizing that a lot of their rights are being taken away by a fascist government taking over, which turns out to be, you know, Darth Vader and the Empire.

But I will tell you that in today's world where, you know, things are going on, it's there's there's a let's just say there's a lot of parallels in, you know, the idea of people should fight back and defend their individual rights.

So it is an exciting action adventure.

It's got tons of great stars in it.

It's really good.

So the current season, I'm watching it right now and it's really good.

And this podcast, a complicated profession, is a nice companion because I watch the shows and then I'll listen to Dan and Tony and Kat talk about it.

And they'll they're so into the Star Wars lore so much more than me that they'll catch up details and I'll be like, Oh, I didn't even notice that.

But now I understand what that was talking about.

Now you know, that's so cool.

All right, great.

Well, some additional podcast recommendations, which is good.

And if you are interest interested in Star Wars at all, then you know in two days on May 4th is typically known as May the 4th be with you day, right?

Or Star Wars day, I forget what they actually call it now.

It just I feel like this is something that just has kind of grown up organically.

But everybody celebrates May the 4th be with you because it is a really cool thing that you can do all of that.

You had a nice lead to a story today that if you do get into the May 4th Star Wars day, you should have access to Jedi level Star Wars emojis and stickers in your iPhone chats.

And boy, this is from GadgetX.

I think I stopped after like the third paragraph because this really goes deep in here.

If you you really got to be a little bit on the nerdy side to understand some of this.

But that said, they look so fun.

Like I might have to try water two of these options here.

Some fun links there.

Something to check out if you're a Star Wars fan.

May the 4th be with you.

All right, well, let's go to a different aspect.

May the 4th be with enterprises as well.

We are now going back to Jason Snell at six colors.

Every year, I know he's done this for several.

I can't remember how many.

He does a report card on Apple in the enterprise.

And I guess you could probably better define this, Jeff.

This is really for like large corporations, large companies, including like large law firms like yours, for example, because you are even part of this report card.

I think you've done this once or twice before.

But this is just an interesting take that Jason does every year.

Sure.

So you and I have talked about Jason had another survey that he continues to do every year.

That's sort of the state of Apple where he, you know, interviews people like, what do you think about the iPhone, the iPad, everything else?

And he's been doing that one long enough that you can start to see these trends over time.

And he has these fantastic graphs.

So that's a fantastic thing that Jason has done for years.

Five years ago, a company came to him and said, you know, why don't you do something similar just for enterprise customers, you know, the government, big companies, big, you know, law firms, big, big, any big companies, because that's a different, you know, that's just, that's not individual people using their iPhones.

But instead, it's, you know, big companies that have to deploy it and worry about security.

And I think it was a fascinating idea.

So he has had a survey that he's been doing again for five years now, and I've been doing it for most of those five years, where he talks to a bunch of people.

They're mostly like IT administrators that he talks to, you know, I'm in it because technically, I sort of, you know, I'm the chair of our tech committee at our firm.

So I sort of have a sense of the big picture of how our lawyers are using Apple products.

And again, we don't use Apple computers, we use PCs, but we do have almost all of our attorneys use an iPhone and, you know, maybe many of them use an iPad and Apple Watch and other stuff.

And so I think it's interesting because since he has, I think he had 124 people that responded this year, it sort of gets you a vibe.

And it's sort of an interesting gut check because I know personally what I think about Apple hardware and software in a corporate environment, but it's interesting to see what a whole bunch of others see and what the trends are.

And so, I mean, just as, for example, one thing, and this part is consistent with what I feel that overall, these companies are very happy with Apple hardware.

Apple hardware is fantastic.

But, you know, a little more cautious about Apple software because it doesn't necessarily do everything that we wish it did.

And I think that this is a valid criticism of Apple that's been true for years is that we want more from the software, but the hardware is really, really good.

And the perfect, I mean, the case example of that is the iPad that I'm looking at right now, my iPad Pro.

My M4 iPad Pro is a beast.

It is so powerful.

And yet, it doesn't take advantage of that power.

And I say that because I know that Apple has its Mac laptops, which also use the M4, and they do things that can run circles around an iPad, just because Apple limits the software, you know, what you could do with sound and recording.

I mean, I could not record a podcast.

I mean, I could, but if I put something janky together.

But there's not really a good way to do podcast recording on my iPad.

So if I'm traveling and I just have my iPad, I need to figure out a way to do it.

And it's not ideal.

And Apple could totally change that with the software just by allowing, you know, more controls and they don't because they want to keep things more simple.

And that's just one example, but there's a ton more.

So it was interesting to sort of get the vibe of the industry on that.

On the other hand, security was one that sort of surprised me because I personally am incredibly happy about security on Apple devices.

You know, I feel much more comfortable and I'm constantly worried about my attorney.

I mean, any company is worried about this, but I'm especially worried as a law firm person because, you know, we have duties of confidentiality and attorney client privilege.

And, you know, and we're a big target because companies will often come to us and reveal their secrets that are worth multi millions of dollars.

And that cannot be leaked.

I mean, this, this is, it just cannot be, it would run my law firm if it was.

So I'm incredibly concerned about security and I, I'm actually very happy about the state of security on the iPhone and the iPad.

And yet the survey revealed that overall people are not happy and it's not because it's not secure.

But instead they believe that the practical implementation just has pain points.

For example, an excessive number of user prompts that can lead to dialogue fatigue and stuff like that, which I do.

I mean, I have to admit, I don't think of as much, but I am now thinking about it, knowing that a significant number of people in this type of work are concerned that Apple might be going too far with it.

And that's just something to think about.

So that was really interesting.

And one last thing I'll mention, Brett, that jumped out at me is AI because we all know, we all know that AI is the future, right?

And, you know, the survey of all of these folks confirms what I myself believe, which is the future has got to be on device AI.

And we are already seeing this today on the iPhone.

You know, one of the things I love about Siri is unlike the Siri that you and I used years ago, nowadays a lot of stuff is done on device, which means it's more secure.

If I dictate an email in the old days that would go up to the cloud and be transcribed to the cloud and Apple has security and I hope that it's secure.

But nowadays that's all done on device.

So I just feel much more comfortable about the confidentiality and security of me dictating a message on my email.

And I do think that we're getting to the point where in five, 10 years, if not sooner, just about all this AI stuff is going to be on device and good for Apple because they are just hitting it out of the park on the hardware side with things like the M4 and I'm sure we'll have the M5 this year.

I think the technology is going to allow that to happen that, you know, we will no longer have where you're using an AI model and it goes to the cloud and you wait for it to come back.

It will all be done locally.

And I think Apple is in a great place for that.

So it was interesting to me that this is what I personally think is coming and the others that are surveyed, you know, everyone's thinking that the same thing and everyone's thinking that Apple is going to be in a great position for this.

I think one thing that all iPhone users, regardless of where they are going to agree on is they like to see tips.

Here's another great article that you'll link to today.

Is this Make Use Of?

Seven iPhone features that feel like magic yet you're not using them.

What's unique about this, as you pointed out in your post today, is that these are all tips that are found inside the accessibility features, which I got to tell you, Jeff, more and more than I can see these things, I feel like that instead of Apple calling this accessibility features inside the settings, they just need to call it like amazing tips.

Like just call it what it is because I feel like there's so many really cool features and tips that are found inside the accessibility functions.

Obviously, I'm thrilled that Apple puts a lot of time and effort into this.

We've talked about this many times into the fact that they're making sure that their phones are accessible as much as they are.

But there's some really cool tips in here.

A couple of them jumped out at me as well.

Yeah, I'll mention two of them.

One of them is an accessibility feature, which is if you've ever had, and I haven't had this happen to me, but I understand how it could happen, you're talking on the phone, you know, you're having a phone conversation on your iPhone, maybe you're using your AirPods, and you accidentally press the lock button, you know, the one that's on the side there, the right side of the phone, and it hangs up the phone call.

And it's an accessibility feature because depending upon your motor control, you might, you know, press that button accidentally more often than others.

But it's a feature that anyone, it's an issue that anyone could have because you might have like your phone in your pocket as you're talking, and it just might bump against something and suddenly it passes that button and you pung up.

And so this article points out that if you go in the settings app to accessibility, there's something called touch.

And then under touch, there's an option called prevent lock to end.

And if you turn on prevent lock to end, it will make it that you can no longer hang up the phone call by pressing that button.

Now, again, this hasn't happened to me.

And I actually sort of like the idea that I can end the phone call by pressing the button.

So for me, I'm going to keep the default there.

But I'm glad to know that if I start getting into a situation where because I keep my iPhone in my pocket more often when I talk on the phone, and this happens, it's nice that this is to know that this is a feature that you can toggle off.

So that's one of them that jumped out at me.

This one called me to I'm just because I know I know this has happened once.

I can't remember like, but what I'll do is I will take a phone call, I'll have my earbuds in, but then I want my hands free, right?

So I'll usually click the side button to like lock the screen and throw it in my pocket.

And I know it's not like that this was a huge deal, but I went ahead and toggled it on on my end because this was the one tip that really jumped out at me as well, just because I don't want it to end if I throw it in my pocket, you know, while I'm doing something else while I'm hands free, but I'm glad I'm glad that that was one that you liked as well.

Yeah, almost all of the other tips or accessibility tips, there's one that's not and I just want to point it out and it's maybe it's obvious, maybe it's not.

But it's one of the first tips in this article is just live text, which is this thing that we've had for a while now that you can take a picture with your, you know, on the iPhone, just take a picture of anything.

And if there's words or numbers or something like that in it, you can, once you take the picture, you have to wait a very short period of time, but then you can select the text.

And I've had it before where I was like, I'm typing an email and like on my phone, and I want to get some words in there.

And I will just quickly take a picture with my phone and then, you know, I can just copy those words that are in the photo and then I can paste it in my email and I have it there.

Or if you have like a phone number, you can click it or URL, you can click it and stuff.

And that's just one of these useful features that and what's, you know, behind the scenes, the phone is smart enough to see, to understand that your photograph has words and letters and numbers in it and to parse them and to turn it into something that you can use.

And so this is not a new feature.

It's been around for a while in one form or another, but it's totally a useful feature.

And so it's a nice reminder of a very useful tip.

Good tips there.

I'll make sure that they are linked in the show notes.

Let's talk a little bit about satellites and more specifically our phones on the good old earth connecting to satellites up in space.

This I thought was a really nice overview of what some of the options are today.

And not just with iPhones, right?

He goes into a little bit of Android options as well.

Yeah.

So, you know, I'm an urban dweller, Brett.

I know that you like to hike and get outdoors and bravo to you.

You're a better person than I am for doing that and enjoying the great outdoors.

I tend to stay in a city most of the time.

So I tend to have a cell phone connection.

Now, sometimes it's not a great cell phone connection and I'll complain about that, but I tend to be in areas, but if you are, you know, in the great outdoors, maybe just even traveling between cities and you don't have cell phone coverage, it's great that with modern iPhones, they can communicate with satellites, whether it be for an emergency reason, you know, you're stuck and you can still call 911 through a satellite or just sending text messages.

And so we have more and more options for doing this.

You can now do it built in on the iPhone, you know, in a number of different ways.

And there's even T-Mobile recently teamed up with SpaceX to use some of their satellites.

And in fact, T-Mobile has a service that I think is in the beta software.

It's in beta stage right now.

It's coming out soon, but you can actually, anyone, even if you don't use T-Mobile as your carrier, like I use AT&T right now, you can sign up for this service.

And for, I think, the Super Bowl, right?

I think that's what we first saw that we talked about that.

Okay.

And that's where we talked about it.

And like for the first month, I think it's free for everybody.

And then after that, you have to pay like a monthly fee.

Again, even if you don't use T-Mobile for your cell phone, although it's cheaper if you do, and you can use their satellite service.

So if you are the type of person who frequently finds himself in a situation where you don't have cell phone coverage, nowadays, you don't have to have one of these standalone, you know, Garmin units that use his satellite communications.

You can just use your iPhone.

But there's so many options out there that it can be a little confusing as to what's the current state of the art.

And so this author, Jared Newman, did a nice job at his site.

He said he really did it for himself.

And then he turned it into an article of he went through his all the options that you have right now.

And so if using satellites to communicate as opposed to the cell phone network is something that is of interest to you, you should totally check out this article because he's got these are all the options right now.

And I'm sure that this will change over time because it's changed a lot in the last year or two.

But I thought it was a great article for that reason.

Yeah, just a good overview of like what's out there because we've talked about this several times where I'm becoming such a big fan.

Like I feel like in the futuristic aspect, like, I would love to see a world where maybe it's just the satellites, we don't have to have all of these towers anymore.

That might be a little bit over enthusiastic about it.

But I just would like to know that wherever I go, even if I am mostly an urban dweller kind of a thing, just to know that if you're driving between towns or something like that, even in the urban areas, there's still times when my my phone will drop if I'm on a phone call or so, you know, just for a couple of minutes or so.

But I don't know, I would just love to see this get more and more pervasive.

And I think we're heading there.

So that was a good article there.

How about a quick where you at segment?

Where you at?

This was a little close to home, literally about three hours away in Toledo, Ohio.

And this is another time.

Again, I always hate to say that because I don't want to take anything away from the fact that the Apple Watch saved this man's life pretty much.

But what was so unique about this one, Jeff, is we talk about these stories all the time.

But most of the time we talk about it and somebody has like written the text about how it happened.

And so we have to envision how somebody maybe fell out of a chair, or, you know, they got winded or had a heart attack and fell on the ground.

But in this one, we get to see it happen, actually happen, I think, thanks to like either his doorbell camera or something else that he had set up.

The gentleman who was so kind, I think, in this little movie, this is from a Toledo television station where they're interviewing him.

But he was so kind to let us use this video and to actually watch it.

He's jumping rope and he wants to kind of push it a little bit, right?

So he jumps a little bit more and you're watching him jump rope and then you watch him fall down on the ground because he had a stroke.

And it was just, I mean, to me, you know, as much as you and I talk about this, Jeff, to actually see it happen on an actual video, the moment when you can even see him like look at his watch and then put it down because he's ignoring it.

But then he literally picks his hand up again, touches the watch to say, yes, call emergency services.

And then there's a the next scene in this little video from his doorbell camera is showing the emergency personnel they're tending to him.

Anyway, and then they talked to his doctor and everything.

I just thought it was a real well done piece.

And for us that have been talking about this to see that his Apple Watch showed that he had that, you know, the stroke and that's how he was able to call emergency services because he could not get up off the ground.

His entire left side was like paralyzed.

Just amazing stuff here.

Yeah, you're right, Brett.

The video is one of the most compelling parts of the story.

But I think that there's even more.

You know, another thing that was interesting to me is we often hear stories of, you know, people want to give their grandmother or their, their, you know, elderly parents and Apple Watch just in case they are fallen and I can't get up to take the situation.

But this guy is like, you know, he's in good shape and he's jumping rope.

I mean, Brett, I haven't jumped rope since I was, you know, 10 years old, whatever.

I would, if somebody gave me a rope today, you do not want to watch me jump rope.

But this guy's in really good physical shape.

And yet even he could need an Apple Watch because, you know, apparently, I think he'd said he had been taking some blood thinner medication and he wasn't taking it regularly at the time.

And as a result, I mean, he was like, you would think this is one of the last first people that would expect to have a stroke.

And yet he's working out and he just pushed it a little bit too far.

And because he couldn't move part of his body and stuff, he at first thought he'd be okay.

But like the Apple Watch noticed that he fell.

The Apple Watch said, do you want me to call 911?

And at first he said, no.

But then he's like, you know what?

Yeah, I, this is not good.

And so he did and he had it called it.

And of course, when your Apple Watch asks you that, if you don't respond, it will assume that you really need help.

And it will call automatically both 911 and your emergency contacts, which is what happened for him.

And thank goodness they did.

So it saved him.

So it just goes to show that this can happen to any of us.

It's not just your elderly grandmother that's going to trip and fall.

It any of us, no matter what shape you're in, you might be in a situation where you want the Apple Watch.

I'll tell you, it hit close to home for me too, Brett, because, you know, you remember years ago, I had a brace on my foot and I got this, whatever it was aggravating.

It took forever to recover from that because I tore my Achilles tendon and I am not in the physical shape that this guy was in.

But it happened because I was on my treadmill one day and I was, you know, sometimes you feel good and like, I'm going to push it.

I'm going to really push myself hard.

Yeah, why not?

And I pushed myself too hard and I ripped my Achilles tendon.

And that's the thing.

I mean, you feel like you're doing the right thing and yet something like this can happen.

Now, I did not fall down and need to use my Apple Watch to save me.

But I could have, you never know, I could have been running on the street and have it happen.

So it's just, I love that.

You could have been home by yourself, right?

That's the whole thing.

It's like, I don't know if there was, there was no other family members that came into this video.

So this gentleman was outside his garage.

You can clearly see, and here I've stopped on the video, the exact moment where he's telling his Apple Watch, yes, call the emergency personnel.

And that's it.

Just having that capability, even if you, you know, he was obviously able to call people, but he's by himself.

I mean, I don't know if anybody else was home at the time.

So just being able to have access to that is great.

I love my Apple Watch for all of the convenience and the notifications and everything else.

But it is a nice security measure to know that it's there.

It's my little buddy to look out for me.

And if something bad happens, and this is why, I mean, I don't want to say that everybody has to have an Apple Watch.

But come on, if you're listening to this podcast, if you're enough, it's not for the techie and you don't own an Apple Watch.

Gosh, you should really get one.

We are going to have a quick little in the show segment, and we have an AI-generated song about Siri and our tips.

But first, we're just going to take a quick moment to thank our sponsor today, which is litsoftware.

Litsoftware.com.

This is a group of developers that developed some apps specifically mostly for the legal profession, all the way back in 2010, when the iPad first came out, and Jeff and I have been following them for all this time.

We are big users of their apps, and there's a suite that they offer.

So we've talked about, I think two weeks ago, we talked about Trialpad, which is mostly for trial presentation.

Last week, we talked about Transcriptpad, which Jeff, you used.

You did a great job of explaining to me about how you use Transcriptpad.

Another one of their apps is DocReviewpad.

So, you know, we were just talking about this Apple litigation, Apple V...

That's right.

That's right. ...legation earlier today.

And we were talking about the fact that the judge was reading some of the emails and documents that were either exchanged internally, or, you know, she was finding some of the, quote, "evidence" of what Apple did or did not do from those documents, right?

Part of the litigation that happens when we talk about civil litigation, right, instead of criminal litigation.

In the criminal side, we have the evidences like the smoking gun or the bloody knife, and we...

Everybody knows you don't go and pick up that bloody knife from the, you know, the scene of the crime.

That's the evidence you have to preserve.

Well, in civil litigation, like this Apple V Epic, the evidence really comes down to email messages and documents that they exchanged and reports that they made.

And this is, you know, spreadsheets and PDF files and all this other stuff.

Well, that is the evidence that you have to review to determine whether or not you're going to produce it to the other side.

That's the evidence that we produce back and forth in civil litigation matters.

Well, in order to do that, as you can imagine, if we just had, you know, 20 documents to review, that wouldn't be that big of a deal.

But in most of these cases, as you know, Jeff, we have thousands and thousands and thousands of documents that we have to review to determine whether or not that it's...

They're, you know, relevant to the case and whether we have to produce them.

And that's where a platform like several e-discovery platforms that come into play, including DocReviewPad.

DocReviewPad is an app that is on your iPad and you can pull those documents into DocReviewPad and then you can quote "review them," which is really just opening them up, looking at them, reading them through.

And one of the things that you're doing is you can apply tags to these documents.

Is this document responsive or not?

And if it is responsive to the case, is it privileged though or confidential and somehow, right?

We need to go through and maybe the entire document is not confidential, but maybe there is a social security number or, you know, somebody's health insurance or something.

And in those cases, that's when we need to redact the information in that document.

We still may need to produce that to the other side, but we may need to redact that little piece of information.

And so these platforms like DocReviewPad will allow you to redact that, not just by drawing a black box.

I mean, that might be what you do, but you have to go through that next step of like actually taking the text out from the back end, because there's a lot of stories today where, you know, in some cases we have seen redactions applied, but the text wasn't really redacted.

I mean, there's been some very high-profile cases with Sony and Paul Manafort documents, all this other kind of stuff that have come through that they produce documents, but the redactions didn't really work.

But you can do that within DocReviewPad.

DocReviewPad allows you to select that information.

You can fully redact it so that it is not going to be searchable then after that point.

Now, when you produce it to the other side, one of the things you need to do is you apply what we generally call Bates numbers.

And that's just, there's a whole history behind that.

But really what it is is just applying a number to the document so that it can be referenced later by the both sides.

Sometimes this is like a long number or, you know, in many cases people think of it as like, you know, plaintiff's exhibit number 453, that kind of a thing, right?

Now, those are really exhibit numbers, but these Bates numbers are just a way that we can control all of that.

DocReviewPad allows you to collect all those documents together and apply these Bates numbers appropriately so that it can be created as a production set.

And when you produce that to the other side, just like you've received many productions I know in your career, Jeff, that you have this listed, you know, it's numbered correctly and sometimes chronologically, sometimes not, but you have all of that capability so that you can search that and filter that appropriately.

And along these lines, DocReviewPad will also allow you to create reports.

One of the things that we do is what we call a privilege report, which is where we found documents that are responsive or relevant to the case, but we're not going to produce them because they are privileged for one reason or another, right?

The biggest example being that it's a communication between attorney and client.

And so we need to at least report that though, that there is a communication, but we're not producing it because it happens to be privileged.

And so all of these things I know sometimes if you're not in the legal world, some of this may just be a little overwhelming, but this is sort of all on the back end that happens, right?

This is the non-pretty aspects of being a litigator, whereas the trial side is really cool.

You know, this is really what goes on behind the scenes before you even get to the trial side on some of this.

And having a tool like DocReviewPad, an app like DocReviewPad, to keep all of those thousands of documents organized properly so that you can go back and you can search them, you can organize them.

And you know, the tags don't just have to be responsive or privileged.

The tags can be like, you know, Brett's favorite documents or the documents that Brett's going to use for this particular witness, whatever the case is.

Issue codes, yeah, exactly.

Issue codes, anything that you're going to be going through and looking at these documents as part of a litigator, you're thinking about these kind of things all the time from a strategic standpoint on how you are going to tag them or organize them.

Yeah, let me just add also that, yeah, go ahead.

Let me just add just one more here that, you know, although it's of course, it works on the iPad because all the LitSuite apps do, you can also use it in Mac if you want.

But I will say that there's something about working on documents that, of course, I could do it on a computer, but I just love the iPad because it's like this one device that does not weigh anything can have thousands of documents.

It replaces all these big books, you know, binders and, you know, Redwells and everything else, just to have everything right there and to review the document on the iPad.

I mean, it's just a, I think it's a perfect match.

It's really what the iPad is made for.

Well, I'll even go one step further.

Here, how did we do this before the iPad, Jeff?

I mean, you did this in your career and I've done this as well.

We had bankers boxes.

We had boxes and boxes of documents, paper documents, right?

We had stacks of paper documents on our desks.

And so when you had to re quote, review those documents, you're picking up the first page and you're reading it through.

But now I tell people this way, think of taking, you know, 20 bankers boxes full of paper and condensing it into one small piece of glass called the iPad.

The fact that you have, you can hold thousands and thousands of documents in that one iPad, Jeff.

It's just, I mean, it's amazing, right?

Because then, just to your point, you can quickly search whatever you need.

You can filter out documents and you can quickly get there as opposed to going into a storeroom like we used to and finding which box that document's going to be and it kind of still searching for that.

And just so frustrating, but being able to have all of that right there, you know, at your fingertips is pretty amazing.

And then the last thing quickly, I was just going to pull this around full circle is that this is the review side, right?

You're doing this long before a trial or hearing sometimes months before, sometimes years before, but at some point you may need to take a small subset of those documents and then get them into a place where you can present them with your adhering or trial or in court or something like that.

And what's great about it since Doc Review Pad is part of the LitSuite from Lit Software, you can export a set of documents from Doc Review Pad into the trial pad app so that it's very seamless in the way they do.

I've done this many times and it's just a matter of like collecting it into a certain folder or a group of documents and then just doing that quick little export over to trial pad and it comes into trial pad.

I think it comes in under like a sub folder.

So it's all collected in one place so you know exactly where you need to go.

You can move those and change them around once you get into trial pad, but they're already prepared, right?

You already have all of that information right there in trial pad.

So when you are ready to go from the review stage into a presentation stage, it's very easy to do to share those documents over to trial pad.

One last thing I'll mention is that even if you don't use this app for all of its features, it's a really good Bates numbering app.

Like if you just need to very quickly apply Bates numbers because I've done that before where I just had a bunch of documents and I just wanted to get some Bates numbers on it, you know, you start with a couple letters and then the numbers and then just run it through there and even if you end up doing something else with the documents, it's just a quick and I mean, I really don't know a better way on my iPad to just quickly Bates numbers and documents.

So anyway, great app.

Yeah, really cool stuff.

So that is Doc Review Pad and we thank them for being a sponsor.

We're pretty big fans of this company.

We've been fans of the developers, Tara and Ian for many, many years.

Doc Review Pad is one of the four apps.

Well, actually five, I guess, if you count them all, that you get within the LitSuite Trial Pad, Transcript Pad, Doc Review Pad and next week we'll talk about Timeline Pad, which you have actually written about and done some reviews on, Jeff.

And I just think that that's an amazing way to quickly create a visual timeline right on your iPad and that's pretty exciting on there.

So thanks again to Lit Software for being a sponsor.

You can go to litsoftware.com to find out a little bit more.

They even have the LitSuite Academy as well, which is a great way to learn a little bit.

You can get access to a free trial for seven days, which is plenty of time to play around with some of this.

And then if you want to continue that, then you can purchase a subscription right through the App Store and it'll come on to your iCloud account, just like anything else that you have some of those subscriptions.

So litsoftware.com to get some more information.

Let's do an In the Show segment.

This is a little bit of an exciting time.

I think as you said, you're post today.

It's a new month, which means we have some new shows coming to Apple TV Plus.

And you and I have talked about the one that I hear about is Murderbot.

You and I talked about this and I'm like, okay, well, it's a little geeky.

So of course, Jeff and I are enjoying this.

But Jeff, I've heard many people outside of my normal techie circles are getting excited about this show as well.

Now, there's others coming on, but I think this one's going to be a big winner.

Yeah, I think this one, it could be like the next great series again.

We don't know.

Maybe it'll be a dud, but the initial reviews, it's getting some buzz.

It's got some great actors in it.

And it's an interesting premise.

And I'm really looking forward to it.

So that's coming out on May 16.

That's going to be exciting.

Yeah.

The other one that I'm sort of exciting about, and again, I don't know if this is going to be awesome or if it's going to be silly, but this movie called Fountain of Youth, which stars John Kaczynski from The Office, others as well.

And it's sort of, you know, we mentioned it before, Natalie Portman.

It's like an Indiana Jones sort of vibe to it.

I'm curious, you know, I'm hoping that that's going to be a fun one.

So I'm looking forward to that.

And then the other one that I mentioned today is, you know, Bono from the band U2.

He had a one-man show called Stories of Surrender, where I think he like talks about some of his music and sings some songs and stuff like that.

And I remember the show got some buzz when he was doing it way back when, but they've sort of reimagined it and turned it into like, I guess you would call it a documentary.

I don't know what you would call this, but that's going to be, I mean, I love the U2 songs.

I grew up listening to them.

And so I'm looking forward to watching this, but I'm especially looking forward to it because it's also, I mean, it's going to be on regular Apple TV plus that anyone can watch, but it's also going to be an immersive thing as well.

So much like, you know, we, you know, you know, that Metallica video, that concert video, so amazing and immersive.

This would be, I'm hoping, we will see, but I'm hoping it'll be like you are there at the concert with this incredible front row seat that you could have, you know, would have had paid, you know, so much money to purchase and now you can just sit there and enjoy it.

So I'm really looking forward to that one.

The other one that I mentioned, Brett, is this one.

It's a French show called "Caremme" and it's about this famous French pastry chef from like the 1700s or something like that.

This is a real person in real life and that was one of the first celebrity chefs and he wrote some of the initial big cookbooks and stuff like that, but it's obviously, it's loosely based on facts.

It's sort of a historical, but I love the description.

It is a sexy historical culinary drama.

Words that you don't always hear together.

Whoa, okay, yeah.

So we'll see.

And it's in French so you're gonna have to watch it with subtitles and, you know, Apple has a lot of their, you know, localized content in different parts of the country, of the world, excuse me, but this is one that might be worth it.

And again, the tomato meter for it, Brett, you're showing it right now.

100%.

I mean, we'll see. 100 in rotten tomatoes.

Come on.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

So it's enough for me to say.

Even the last of us at Andor are only 95 and 96%.

And you're telling me this is 100%.

So, you know, I'm going to check it out.

Who knows, maybe it'll be a dud, but it could be good.

And I always love it when, you know, one of the reviews that I saw said that it reminds them a little bit of that show, the chef, which I love that show, the chef, because it's, you know, people say like it's food porn.

It's like showing, you know, all the details of making the meals and stuff like that.

I'm a big fan of that stuff.

So I'm going to have to check this one out.

I'm curious.

If you're feeling a little down and despondent about the Apple ruling this year, one of the great things about doing a podcast and following your blog is the people that listen and that read, Jeff, somebody sent in to you will keep them anonymous.

They went to sueno.com, which if you don't know is a AI song generator.

Correct.

And I've used several of these before.

I think Udio is one that I've used before, which is great.

But somebody after listening to our podcast and reading your iPhone JD blog for so long, just got a little down about Siri and the issues going on with Siri.

So they went to sueno.com and created the Siri blues.

I was playing this AI generated Siri blues song this morning for my son, Jeff, and he actually even liked it.

It goes, I woke up this morning with a question on my mind.

I said, Hey, there, Siri, play me Alicia Keys one time.

But what came out of the speaker was Carol King and her prime.

Yeah, they both play piano, but girl, you may out of line.

I mean, come on.

That's like you can't even invent something.

That good.

And what's fun about it is not only does it write the lyrics, which, you know, many AIs will do that you can they can write a poem or lyrics, right?

But you can actually tell it the style that you want.

And this person chose the blue style.

And it will actually sing the song.

And you know, is it and it's not bad.

It's not great for being generated.

And you know, once you generate it, if you decide, you know, this is a blues song.

But what I really want is a raps version of it or for really run as a country version of it, wherever you can change it and stuff.

So it's a cute service.

And again, as I pointed out in my post today, using one AI to make fun of another AI, that's just, you know, so, so, so beautiful.

All right, in the know, in the know, a couple of the tips.

Here's something that I found just the other day.

I feel like we've talked about this.

So one of my favorite things to do in Safari, whether I'm on my Mac or my iPad, or even my iPhone is when I've got a long article in Safari that I want to read, Jeff, I like to go into reader mode, which is a wonderful thing that Apple created to where you just have the text really.

And you know, if it's an actual photo or image within the story, that will come up.

And that's great.

But what I really like about it is that it gets rid of all of the ads.

Now, the reader mode in and of itself is fantastic.

But here's another thing that I also found.

The way that you get to reader mode is in the bottom of the like the little search bar, the URL bar, there is a little icon there that used to just be a reader mode.

But now if you tap it, it actually has a few other options there.

You can go into the reader mode from there.

There's other ways that you could like manage the extension.

So I'm talking about on my iPhone right now.

But one of the things that I had not played around with was this little button called hide distracting items.

And this doesn't put the story that I'm reading into the full reader mode.

But when I tap hide distracting items, it goes into this little mode at the very bottom, it says cancel and done.

And it'll tell me how many items that I have selected to actually hide.

And it's fun to do this.

Not only is it useful, but I'll go through here like I'm on CNN.com.

And if you probably know, there's tons of little ads that they throw in, sometimes they're just distracting.

And that's like, I want the text, but the text stops, there's an ad and the text continues at the bottom.

But if I just tap on that little ad in the middle of the text, it now circles it.

And there's a little tiny button that says hide on that ad.

And if I tap hide, it's just the loveliest little animation that it looks like it like puts it into dust and it just flies off the screen.

And I can now scroll down, find another ad that I don't want, tap it, I say hide and poof, it's like dust blowing in the wind.

So at the bottom now, my little button says three items are hidden because that's how many that I tapped.

And I can tap done.

And when I do that, I now can read the article without those intrusive type ads.

And like, I'm all for ads, I'm not anti ad on any of this.

But sometimes I just don't want it to be moving around.

I don't want to play, you know, knock the gopher in the whole game, you know, all that kind of stuff that comes on.

I just want to read the text.

And you could go into reader mode, but sometimes I do like to read it in the way that it's presented.

And I love the fact that I can now go in and say hide distracting items.

It does take a little bit of time to go and select them.

But just the animation of blowing in the wind is really fantastic.

And I like that.

Now, what I don't know is if I reload the page, does those ads come back on?

I don't know because most of the time once I read it, I just go to something else.

But they could come back on.

But again, it just doesn't really matter to me because once I read it, I'm done, you know, and I can move on to something else.

But anyway, just wanted to let people know about hide distracting items.

I'll make sure that there is a link here.

It's very simple.

Go into a story at the very bottom to the left of your URL bar at the very bottom.

There's a little button that has like a box with two lines under it.

You'll see you tap that, then you can tap hide distracting items.

And then you just simply tap the items you want to hide on the web page and enjoy the blowing in the wind animation.

You described it for getting rid of inline ads that are annoying.

And it certainly works well for that.

I use it extensively for the aggravating pop ups.

I mean, so many websites, you know, you're sitting there reading the article and you scroll down to read to the second or third paragraphs and it says, do you want to subscribe to our newsletter?

Do you want to do this?

Have you done this?

And I'm like, I'm just trying to read the article for goodness sakes.

And I almost feel bad for the authors because I know that the author wrote this really good story.

And yet the publication has decided that, you know, we're for engagement purposes and everything else, we're going to have all these pop up nonsense.

And you just make those go away.

And of course, most pop up ads, I mean, I guess in theory, all of them have a, of a, a quad you can click on the X and make them go away, but they make it so hard to find those things with this feature that you described.

You don't have to worry.

You know, as soon as they pop up, I open this thing, I just make that thing go away.

It disintegrates that beautiful animation that just makes me feel happy.

And then it's just gone back on.

I use it for pop ups extensively and it works really, really well.

You know, I'm just going to throw another thing in because sometimes I hardly ever tap on those ads, by the way, every once in a while, I will, but I don't like to, you know, it opens in a new site.

And so just getting rid of those just means that I don't accidentally accidentally into one of those apps, right?

And so I like doing that as well.

So that's my tip today.

Hide distracting items in the Safari web browser.

Okay, we've talked about Siri a lot today.

And my tip is Siri on the Apple vision pro.

And I realize not many people use a vision pro, but I know we have some listeners that do because I've heard from them.

And this may be my first vision pro tip.

I don't even know.

But my tip is I there's a great, hopefully for that.

But there's a great if if you use Reddit, there's a great Reddit board for the vision pro or I guess you call it board, whatever topic, whatever it is.

And I often find useful tips about the Apple vision pro on it.

And I found one the other day from this one Reddit poster, where he says, when you're using your Apple vision pro, there's a lot of Siri commands that you can use.

I apologize, I'm saying that word out loud because it's making my phone trigger.

There's a lot of you know who commands you can use.

And so you can just say, you know, I'm sitting there wearing the vision pro.

And if you want to, for example, bring up an environment, the environment is like instead of just seeing a window superimposed in the outside world, you could like see that window within like I'm on the moon or I'm you know, at Joshua tree or I'm in Hawaii.

And so I can just say, you know who show environments, and it will instantly bring up the panel where I can choose a different environments.

Or if I know the specific environment that I want, I can just say, you know who show environment, you know, XYZ, whatever that one is, and it'll bring it up.

Each of those environments has both a daytime mode and a nighttime mode.

And if I'm, you know, if I'm doing some work, I like sort of sometimes like making it look like I'm on the beach.

It's really pretty.

But if I'm watching a movie, I don't want the bright, you know, sun of that virtual beach.

I want it to be like a dark like it's the beach at night.

And so I will say, hey, you know who make it dark, and it will just change that environment so that it's the nighttime version.

So everything's a little down for when I'm watching the movie.

And that's just some of them.

There's also you could say, Hey, you know who subtitles on or subtitles off when you're watching a show.

If you want to open an app, you can say, Hey, you know who open app, you know, XYZ, whatever the name of the app is, and it will open it up.

And of course, you don't need to use, you know who to do these things.

I mean, you can, you know, bring up the menu, click the button, find the app icon, click on the app, you know, all that sort of stuff.

But it takes time.

And so much like with your with your iPhone, it's nice to just say, Hey, you know who set an alarm for 630 tomorrow morning, and you don't have to go through and tip all the fiddly little things to get there.

I found that it just never even occurred to me until I saw this post on Reddit that you can use it when you're wearing the Vision Pro.

And although the Vision Pro interface is pretty good, considering that it's, you know, based on what you're looking at with your eyes and everything else, there's just something very natural about just saying out loud what you want to happen.

And so this post has a ton of things.

I'll give you one last one, which is a screenshot.

Sometimes I want a screenshot and you can have a screenshot by, you know, holding down the two buttons on the on the left and the top right of the Vision Pro.

But but in the process of pushing it down, I've moved around, I can just be looking at something and I can just say those words, Hey, you know who screenshot.

And it just does it automatically.

And that's so much easier than even reaching up and pressing the buttons and make sure that I don't move my my head or anything like that.

So really useful set of tips here.

If you own the Apple Vision Pro, big thumbs up for me.

Check these out.

Have you found that the Vision Pro hears you when you say that?

Because I feel like you say that word and you've got an iPhone and iPad, your Apple Watch.

And now your Vision Pro could all be responding to your command.

No, it's a great question.

Because sometimes in the real world, Brett, I will be thinking that I'm talking to one device and another will pick it up.

But I'm like, come on.

But Apple has its software that it uses to try to figure out which Apple device is supposed to be responsive to you.

And when you're when I'm using the Vision Pro, these commands always go to the Vision Pro, which is exactly what I want to happen.

So it works really well.

And just because of all the sensors in the Vision Pro, it it does a really perfect job of understanding my voice and picking it up.

So it's one of the best experiences of she who shall not be named of any of my Apple devices.

And again, as we have joked throughout the show today about the good and the bad and the ugly of Siri.

But this is one of the thumbs ups.

This is one of the thumbs up.

It does a good job.

Yes.

Thanks again to our sponsor today, Lit Software.

You can go to litsoftware.com and get a free seven day trial.

So you can try out some of these apps.

Today we talked about Doc Review Pad.

They also have trial pad, transcript pad, and we'll talk about Timeline Pad next week.

Thanks again for your time as always, Jeff.

And we will talk with you again next week.

Thanks, Brett.