Welcome to In The News for May 23, 2025.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

Hey, Brett.

Good morning, Jeff.

Good to talk with you as always.

And man, it's like sometimes I read your blog and I'm so excited about it.

And then I realize, wow, I'm really old with some of these stories.

24 years ago, you started off your blog post today.

24 years ago, Apple opened its first retail store.

I mean, on one hand, I can't believe it's that long ago.

On the other hand, it's like, yeah, I still enjoy going.

Like, it feels so fresh.

I mean, they've made changes over the years, and there's been so many unique locations that we've gone to that I'm just thrilled that they're continuing what I feel like.

Like, when I go to a city sometimes, Jeff, you and I have talked about this.

I mean, sometimes that's almost a highlight.

It's like I want to go to a specific Apple store, and I just hope that that never stops.

Yeah, it's funny.

It's interesting today because we're going to be both looking at the past and looking at the future.

I'll put a pin in the future part.

We'll get back to that in a second.

But on the past stuff, I remember when the store first came out, and that first one was in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, which I know that area because I went to law school at Georgetown.

So I was in Washington, D.C. for three years, and we used to go down to that area to shop and stuff like that.

So I totally knew that area.

And when I heard that that store was opening up, I'm like, how interesting is this?

But it was even more interesting because I remember when the store first opened, we learned that in the process of developing it, Apple had had taken this big warehouse and basically built a store in the middle of a warehouse that nobody would ever see.

Just so that they could get the feel of it and the sense of it.

What if we put this over here?

I'm like, who does that?

Who builds a fake store just for the sense of getting, you know, just just to sort of understand what it would be like.

But they put a lot of care and thought in it.

And of course, the nature of the store has changed substantially.

I mean, the inside of an Apple store today looks very little like it did back there.

And yet some of the same, the idea is there.

The tables.

Yeah.

All right there.

The tables, the idea that you can get help from somebody that knows what they're talking about.

The idea that there's no, no one's on a commission.

So like there's no hard sale.

It's just like, and the idea that they want you to just sort of come there and see things and, you know, talk to people and enjoy yourself.

You know, that has remained the same.

And the stores have obviously been.

That's what's amazing.

I just got to, you linked to this story from Tim Hardwork at Mac Rumors.

And in it, he embeds this little video of Steve Jobs unveiling the first retail store.

And Jeff, I just kind of skimmed through this.

But when it first started, it occurred to me there was no store like this at the time that you could walk in and the computers were open and turned on and working.

Like you could go and surf to the web.

Well, at that time, that was even amazing that you could do that.

But you could open the applications.

I mean, this was the time when I remember the first computer stores I went to were like Babbage's, right?

Or Best Buy.

I mean, CompuServe.

I mean, these were places where they were behind locked glass.

Maybe one thing you could touch.

But even Steve Jobs in this video is encouraging you to go and pick it up and to look at it.

He even said you can see what it's like to carry a computer around and still be connected to the Internet.

There was nothing like that at the time.

And I think that just took me back those years to remind me, like, this was truly revolutionary from a retail perspective at that time.

So the big thing they had at that time in certain parts of the country were the Gateway stores.

And it's been a long time.

Yeah, that's right.

Gateway was interesting because, you know, PCs, especially at the time, and you could argue about today, but they were certainly uninterested.

I mean, they were all the same.

It was commodity hardware.

It was, you know, lowest common denominator.

Gateway tried to come to be different from others through marketing.

They had this motif of the cows.

Yeah, exactly.

I had one.

It was – oh, did you really?

A computer, not a cow.

Yeah.

It was just a thin cosmetic layer because the computers themselves were not really all that different.

And the stores themselves, they weren't very inspirational.

And many people said, oh, well, since the Gateway stores have not been successful, and of course, they eventually closed.

And I don't even know, does Gateway even exist as a company anymore?

I don't even know.

No, no.

I doubt it.

And so people confusingly thought, oh, well, Apple, why would they do the same thing?

But the reality is that I understand where Apple was coming from because at the time, because the PCs were so much more popular, that in a, quote unquote, regular computer store, when you would go in and see the Apple products, they would be relegated to a corner of the store.

There might be one computer that was broken because some kid had stolen the ball out of the trackball or something like that.

And it was just a pitiful experience that made Apple look horrible.

And I would have been embarrassed if I was Apple because it was showing their products in the worst possible light.

And they had tried to fix that in the late 90s, early 2000s by starting an agreement with CompUSA, which was one of the big computer stores at the time.

And the agreement was we would have a separate section of the store that Apple would help them.

I don't know that it was an Apple employee, but they would make sure that it was manned appropriately.

And at least in that one little corner of the store, it was supposed to be a little bit better of an Apple experience.

And it was an Apple oasis.

But the thing is, it wasn't quite the I mean, that was the idea.

No, the reality was always far from that.

And and then the other thing that we had at the time were in different parts of the country, some independent computer shops.

We certainly had one here in New Orleans and Veterans Highway at the time.

And people are like, well, is Apple going to take away these, you know, great independent stores that have been so important to Apple since the 1980s?

And the reality was they did.

I mean, Apple did eat their lunch, but it was still a better experience because as much nostalgia as there may have been for those small mom and pop type computer stores that catered to Apple products, they really weren't nearly as good as a true Apple store.

And so there's no question in the long term, it was for the better.

And then, of course, I mean, the statistic that I referred to that always amazed me is that the most successful store in the country, if not the world, was Tiffany's, the jewelry just in terms of revenue per square foot of the store.

And Apple before long was double that because they were, you know, you're just selling so much stuff.

So it's an incredible success story financially.

But just as, I mean, again, I don't care about the fan holders as much.

I'm glad that Apple did well, but just from a user experience, I mean, I don't need to tell you.

I mean, you agree.

We all know.

And I still enjoy going to my local Apple store.

And like you, when I travel, I mean, my wife and I went to Italy a few years ago is we're walking around.

I made a point to let me walk three blocks this way to go check out this store in Milan, Italy, just because it's an interesting architectural, like they're architecturally interesting and to see, you know, how they approach things.

So it's just been a true success story.

And, you know, kudos for Apple for continuing to do it.

And one more thing, I mean, I didn't realize until I started typing the post for this morning that you think of like the iPhone completely changed Apple.

And then before that, the iPod was, of course, such a big deal, although, you know, pales in comparison to the iPhone.

But the stores actually opened a few months before because this was what this was May of 2001.

And that first iPod, which, of course, was back only and, you know, very limited, had Firewire and stuff like that.

You know, it didn't come out until the fall.

So although Apple was working on both at the same time, this was the first time, you know, I would argue since both the Mac in the 1980s.

And then the iMac, which we recently talked about the anniversary of that in the late 1990s, this is that significant.

You know, having these stores, it was that important to the future of the company.

I really think that it was part of the reason that Apple came back from that brink of that literal brink of bankruptcy in the late 1990s.

This was one of those incredibly important things that put them on path to what they are today.

Two other quick things.

Genius bar.

I mean, that was I remember we made jokes about that.

Like, like, are you kidding me? Like, this is the genius. So they must know. And to this day, I don't even know that there's really there's some stores that still do have something called the genius bar.

But I think they just kind of spread that idea. Like you can go in and get almost like white gloves type service for whatever, you know, tech support question that you had.

I mean, and again, that was just revolutionary, you know, before you'd be going to some kind of a, you know, like you were talking about CompUSA or some kid behind the counter, you know, that may or may not know what they were doing necessarily.

And tech support was just a joke back then.

And just having that, I mean, that was something I don't know that that opened in the very time the first store.

Maybe it was.

But I just remember that was something that, you know, that's become almost part of like our social culture.

People talk about the Genius Bar.

And that was started even in the Apple stores.

And then the second thought quickly, I don't know if you have been in, they were like, I think there were Microsoft stores or Windows stores.

I can't remember.

The point that I'm getting to is Microsoft started opening their own stores.

And what did they look like?

They, to me, they looked almost exactly the style of what you would find in an Apple store.

And to me, that was just the flattery component, right?

That was like, wow.

Like I remember walking into a mall because I don't even know if they exist anymore here in Cleveland.

And there was a Microsoft store and I'm like, well, I'm going to try this out.

And I just stood there like, well, there's like wooden tables.

I can touch everything and play with all of these devices.

Like this looks very similar to an Apple store.

And it just is amazing to me how not just the idea of, you know, what it meant for retail, but what it meant for retail in the bigger picture of like other so many stores copied what Apple was doing back then.

And that was just revolutionary in and of itself.

Yeah.

I mean, in the New Orleans area where, you know, when we had the Windows Store here, it was like catty corner from the Apple Store.

So like the imitation and the contrast could not have been more dramatic because you would walk from one to the other.

And you would just see, oh, my goodness, you are totally trying to copy this.

And there would be some interesting things.

Like, I mean, I remember playing with one of those first tablet computers that had the real big screens and stuff.

But again, it paled in comparison to the experience.

One of the things I'd like to say about the Apple stores, and I've always enjoyed this, is that not only can you go in to talk to somebody about your questions, whether it was at the Genius Bar or just talking to someone, and they've always been so open for that.

They don't charge for that.

But I've loved the fact that they have always had these classes that you could go to.

And just last night, I happened to look at the page for the store here in my area, and they were talking about, oh, you can come in a few weeks, and we're going to have a class on taking pictures with your iPhone.

And it's going to be like an hour class.

And we're going to give you tips.

And we're going to show you some recommended apps.

And I'm like, you know, what a great idea for somebody that like they know that their iPhone is a powerful tool.

And I mean, anybody knows you press the button, but they'd like to know just a little bit more.

You just sign up for a free class.

And again, there's so many of these things.

Some of the cities, I mean, I've been to in in New York.

At one point, they had like the big, you know, almost like a movie theater that you could get sit in the comfortable.

Oh, that was the Soho store.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

But yeah, whether it's that one or just the small one that would be in your neighborhood, it would be such an inviting, such a great idea of like, we just want to help you be more creative and, and, you know, be more empowered with what you can do, which is what a great idea. So kudos.

I'm sorry, that just quickly reminded me too. I used to, when the kids were younger, I would take them out on Saturday morning for breakfast and across the street from the place we had the breakfast, there was a Barnes and Noble. And in that same strip mall, there was the Apple store.

And Jeff, some days we would go to Barnes and Noble and other days I would take them to the Apple store. Why? Because I would sit there sometimes and get worked at or just play with the devices. But Apple, the store had a beautiful little like kid-sized table with these little balls that they sat on. You remember? You had the balls. The kids loved it.

And they would sit there, they had iPads and they would play games, you know, that either I wouldn't let them have, or that they just wanted to experiment. I mean, even just that, it became, it literally became a destination in that aspect. I mean, and it just kept my kids busy from that.

Wow. I didn't think that we were going to talk that much about the memories, but that's really great.

24 years ago. Pretty amazing.

Well, you know, I keep emphasizing this idea of being able to go and touch the devices and how, you know, just that alone, I think, helps probably sell more devices.

And I just love this little story that you did in here today about Emory University.

This was your undergrad, right?

So I'm going to assume this is a little bit before Apple had their retail stores.

But I just like the fact that you talked about when you were a freshman at Emory University, that was one of the first times that you had your hands on with a Mac.

And probably similar to me because I remember playing around with an Apple IIe in my high school computer lab.

And because of those experiences, Jeff, I'm just going to guess, like me, that probably influenced you to continue to be a Mac user even to this day.

Absolutely.

I mean, it's an interesting segue to what we're just talking about, about how you try these things out.

Like you, we had an Apple II computers in my computer lab in high school.

But I remember when I was high school, the first time I touched a Mac was, you know, back in the day, Sears would sell electronics.

You know, they had computers.

They had like the Atari 2600s and stuff like that.

And I remember there was a Mac and a Sears that I would sort of play with.

But that was just playing with things.

The first time I seriously sat down and used one was when I was in college and we had computer labs that would have the array of Macs and Mac Pluses and the laser writer printers.

And at the time, so many people were printing things out on dot matrix printers and stuff that the quality – it looked – it was what it was.

The laser writers.

But it failed in comparison to what a laser printer could do.

So having access to this and being able to make my reports look so good was really nice.

At the time, I was using a Commodore 64 computer.

But anyway, it was transitional.

And so I totally remember the day when I had my summer job after my freshman year.

I made some money, and I walked in, and I bought at our computer store at the college because they would be in there still to this day.

You can get discounts when you buy Apple products and, I'm sure, other things at a college bookstore.

And I purchased that Mac Plus.

I purchased my external 20 megabyte hard drive, megabyte, which at the time seemed so huge.

And it was fun being on a campus that had really great support for Apple technology because I just at the time thought that the Apple products were so much.

I mean, at the time we were living in a DOS world and a Windows 3.1 world.

So it was so much nicer to have, you know, the wonderful experience of the Apple computers.

And then so it was fun for me to see that that Emory is continuing through its medical systems to embrace the Apple technology.

And it's interesting because, you know, most hospitals are, that I see at least, are all running on PCs.

And so to have an entire hospital system that's running on Macs is interesting.

And they point out that part of the reason they could do it is because the Epic software that so many hospitals use is apparently now works on Apple products.

But it's not just Macs.

They're talking about how they, you know, physicians have iPhones that they can use to scan people in for things.

And there are iPads that they may make available even to patients so that they can see things.

And so it's really, really interesting.

One of the things I'll mention about Emory real quick is I remember one of my years of college, I forget which year it was, in our student center, sometimes they would set up things in the student center.

A company would come through or clubs would meet and other things.

And I remember one day walking through and they had some computers set up there.

And one of the computers I saw, Brett, was this really interesting black cube box.

It was the next computer, which was the company that Steve Jobs started after he left Apple or was kicked out of Apple by John Scully.

And I remember going to play with this and it was like, wow, look at this thing.

And they were super expensive.

I want to say they were like $10,000 at the time.

It was way beyond my price range.

But you could just tell like this was such an interesting system.

Little did I know that, you know, years later, Apple would purchase Next and that the operating system that was at the basis of the Next computer would be the operating system that not only would become the basis of the Mac, but it's also the basis of the iPhone, the iPad, everything.

I mean, you know, so that, of course, it's changed substantially.

But the essential, the Darwin kernel, which was based on Unix, continues to be at the core of Apple products today.

So it's just interesting that on the one hand, it was very, very long ago in the 1980s.

And on the other hand, you know, we're still using it today.

Right, right.

Grace, I have another quick story just to share because I went this week to see a skin doctor just for a couple of splotches on my skin that turned out to be debris, nothing.

But to your point, this is part of the Cleveland Clinic, you know, humongous facility up here.

And they're all PC based.

I see that when they logged in.

However, this doctor just, I saw this picture too, and it reminded me.

First of all, he had his iPhone out and he told me that he has a transcriptionist on the call.

And so while he's talking, instead of him typing notes and everything, he actually had a transcriptionist that I think was probably in Yugoslavia or somewhere.

I don't even know, but he explained it to me quickly.

And so he was using his iPhone for that.

And then secondly, he needed to take some pictures of these little spots on my skin, Jeff.

And he used his iPhone to take the pictures and immediately upload it into, I know that they use the Epic system.

That's one of the big ones, you know, for medical records and everything.

So I just, when you were listening to you talk about this and seeing this picture right here where they're using an iPhone to take a picture or scan, looks like the badge of a patient here.

It's like, even though the Cleveland Clinic is all PC based, they are still utilizing even Apple devices in that aspect.

And I don't know, it just was kind of neat how all of that worked together.

And I thought that that was pretty neat.

But thanks for sharing that.

And just like you, I remember like in high school using those Macs.

And again, that just got me so fascinated with computers so much early on.

And anyway, just thought that was a nice kind of a tie-in to the store as well.

You usually handle our segues from one topic to another.

But just when you talk about being in a hospital, I noticed one of the last times that I was having just my annual checkup that my doctor was using.

I believe it was like a transcription service, AI-based, like you were describing.

where when our conversation was, I think, being recorded and the AI was summarizing it so that my medical records included a summary that I suspect that my doctor went back and edited somewhat, perhaps lightly.

But it was based on the AI recording our conversation and making that a part of our medical record, which I thought was really interesting.

And it just shows how AI is becoming such a more and more part of our society.

And I know what topic you're moving on to now.

So that's sort of a segue.

Well, the topic we're moving on to, we're still not done with the walk down memory lane because Johnny Ive is back.

Welcome back, Johnny, but not to Apple.

Oh, my goodness.

This story broke this past week.

And, of course, we all, I mean, I'm just, I don't want to speak for you, but I'm going to guess like me.

We have a fond spot in our hearts for Johnny Ive because he was basically Steve Jobs' partner, as I like to think about it, for so many years in developing all of these devices that we still use today from the iPhone, starting with the iPod and, of course, the MacBooks.

I mean, he had such a big influence on the design of hardware specifically coming out of Apple, but I'm sure it also influenced the software too.

And he left several years ago, and he's kind of been doing his own thing.

I mean, continuing to – I mean, I don't think he really has to work probably at this point, But he's been continuing to design because he's got a passion for that.

And this story broke this week that Johnny Ive teamed up with OpenAI.

So he, and there's this company by a very slick video that I got to tell you, I couldn't even watch the whole thing because I just felt like it was so over the top.

But Johnny Ive and Sam Altman, who is CEO of OpenAI, got together and they're explaining what they're doing.

Although we don't really have all the details.

We just know that they're together.

And even just that alone was very exciting.

Johnny Ive was a master of design when he was at Apple. And there's a lot of reasons that Apple products were so successful, but it's undeniable that design was part of it. And design is not just the way it looks, although that's a part of it.

And sometimes he would be criticized because Johnny Ive and his team would want things, you know, some were worried, of course, that he would want things to look too perfect. But at the same time, you know, design is not just how it looks, design is how it works. It's something I think Steve Jobs said. And, you know, they would make sure that as part of the design, that the system, you know, that you could actually use it and that it made sense to use. And so what he and his team did at Apple is phenomenal. And, you know, and years after Steve Jobs passed away, I mean, it was so well known that Johnny Ive, a key reason that he stayed at Apple so long is because of his deep personal relationship with Steve Jobs. And, you know, they would have lunch together every day and talk about things. And I really think that although their personalities were incredibly different. I think that they both, it was a yin and a yang.

They meshed together well as different people as they were. Steve Jobs being very brash and just short, but incredibly smart. And Johnny Ive being much more subdued and calm, but at the same time, so intelligent. And so Johnny Ive leaves Apple years ago. He starts his own company called Love From. They do design things. And you would see them pop up a couple of different times, things that he would design here and there. And then he started this company, which now has, Johnny Ive apparently understands how important AI will be to the future, as we were just discussing, and had been working with OpenAI. And now they have this company that's called IO, both of those letters in lowercase. And I think this is incredibly, incredibly exciting because they certainly are not ready to announce what they're talking about, although it's clear that they have something in development right now. They're saying that it'll be out in 2026. So, I mean, we're probably at least a year and a half away before we see something from them.

The video that you described that I linked to today, I mean, I can understand why you couldn't make it through the entire video because it's very over the top. Having said that, much like those conversations that occurred daily between Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive were so important for Apple, they are trying to give the same sense of now it's Johnny Ive talking with Sam Altman, who has his own history. He was with OpenAI that the board tried to kick him out. And then he came back to the company and stuff like that.

He's back there. ChatGPT, you can say so much good, bad, and otherwise about everything about it, but you cannot deny that what ChatGPT has given us is phenomenal. I mean, it's such an incredible technology. And of course, some of the other companies are now copying them and doing their own version of the same thing. But they are doing some, they have done and are doing some really revolutionary things. So the idea of having the chat GPT smart folks combined with, it's not just Johnny Ive. I mean, he basically has hired away just about everybody in his design team at Apple. And perhaps others are too, but most of them have come from Apple, according to a report that came from Bloomberg this week that actually named names of all these people that left either with Johnny Ive or in the years afterwards to go work with him. So he has got this incredible team of Apple designers that are now going to be working with OpenAI and they're going to come out with, well, we don't know exactly what it is. I mean, the speculation, clearly it's going to have this, a huge AI component to it. And it was not that many months ago that you and I, Brett, were sort of laughing in a way about a product that was called the humane AI pin, which was also developed by some former Apple people. And that was, it attached to your shirt and the ideas that you would talk to it. And it had some interesting aspects to it, but it also had so many flaws that it was clear that it was not going to succeed. And of course it did not. And now it went away and was, the company was purchased by HP and it's, and it's long gone now. But that idea of having something small that you might have with you in addition to your iPhone. I think this is what they're doing. I mean, I'm holding my AirPods case in my hand here, Brett. And my guess is something like this, you know, the perfect, you know, this is of course, I'm sure a Johnny Ive designed product with the perfect white and it's got the curves on it. It feels so good in your hand to hold your AirPods case. I have to imagine, you know, not unlike a finely polished stone that you might hold like as a comfort stone in your hand. I have this image that they're working on something like this, that'll be small, probably not even have a screen.

I presume that you'll just talk to it and it will talk to you somehow, but that will somehow add AI to your environment in a way that can enhance what you're doing.

And I cannot wait to see what they have to announce.

And will it be amazing or will it be another dud?

I don't know, but these two companies have got a heck of a track record.

They really do between what Johnny's done and what OpenAI has done with ChatGPT.

And ChatGPT, as revolutionary as it is, the idea that it iterates and gets so much better so quickly, I think it's really exciting.

So back to the video that you couldn't even stomach.

Here is my point.

I understand your point.

Brett, if you and I tried to record a video like this, people would deservedly roll their eyes at us and say, come on, give me a break.

And yet, and yet these two guys are such at the top of their game.

And the idea that they have this video where they're not in this sterile white lab, but they're in this, you know, they're at a bar or a coffee shop, excuse me, they're in San Francisco, they're part of the environment around them.

You know, the, the vibe that this gives out and believe me, this was all intentional is that they are just regular guys in the world doing their day.

and they're going to be somehow using the AI technology and products as a part of that.

This is a good sell.

I mean, it might be ridiculous.

It might go nowhere.

But I think there's a lot of potential here.

And I have to think that in an alternate universe where Steve Jobs was still alive today, and thus because Johnny and Steve were such good friends, Johnny Ives stays at Apple.

This is my hypothetical alternate universe where his guys want to do something interesting.

and guys and girls want to do something interesting.

And in my alternative universe, since I'm making it up, Apple is at the forefront of AI instead of right now where they seem to be catching up a little bit.

We'll see.

But I can see a universe in which this is an Apple product, not an IO product in the year 2026.

And that would be interesting.

So everything about this story fascinates me.

You totally flipped my perspective on the video as soon as you said Johnny Ive and Steve Jobs sitting down together, because there are several pictures of them you know, sitting together, even at coffee shops, right outside of the cafe max, or even on the apple campus. And you're absolutely right. That's that is the vibe. Now that I see that I want to go back and watch the video. Maybe I'll just turn the sound down or something.

It's still over the top, but it is.

And you know, two things quickly on this. First of all, I find myself now increasingly utilizing chat GPT. Not just for like a one off kind of a thing, Jeff, like I might say, hey, what's the climate like in Madagascar? And it'll give me that basic answer, right? That's typically what I would do. But then I would say, okay, well, does it change from these months to these months? Is it hotter in the northern part versus that? In other words, I almost have a continuing conversation. Does that make sense? And to me, to your point, to piggyback on what you were saying, if I have a small device like that, that I can use to have that conversation, instead of going into the app and, you know, going back and forth and tapping the microphone again and doing all of that, that's what I am hoping. I'm just piggybacking on your dream that if I could have a little device that would allow me to just ask that kind of thing as during the day. And of course you and I have talked about one day that'll be embedded in glasses as well. And then the last comment I want to make is this almost makes me sad because that's what I wish would already be happening with Siri on my iPhone. I already have a device in my hand that I carry with me everywhere.

I just want to be able to interact with it in that same way, but I want it to work like ChatGPT. And I know Siri can go to ChatGPT if I ask it, you know, specifically at some point. But the fact that it's Johnny Ive going to open AI, could it come back around again? I mean, maybe we'll know something maybe in June. But anyway, those are just my thoughts on there. It's like, I do think that it's great to have another device, but I already have a device, a device I love. I just want to be able to interact with it in that way that might be a little bit better.

Great stuff.

We were joking a few minutes ago about how the Microsoft stores tried to sort of copy the Apple stores.

And, you know, it's sort of a ha ha because Microsoft infamously has copied Apple's technology for years and years or copied the design, certainly. And yet we want to live in a world where there are multiple players that are pushing, you know, pushing the envelope forward.

And so I'm thrilled to see this.

And, you know, believe me, I love Apple products and it always makes me happy when Apple comes out with a great product.

But if it's this IO company that comes out with a great product and maybe that pushes Apple to come up with something that's competitive or alternatively, maybe, you know, maybe they're so successful that their product is fantastic.

And what Apple wants to do is work with it and, you know, have it integrated with the Apple stuff.

I mean, who knows where this is going to come out?

but it's just such an exciting time.

This is why I said earlier in the podcast, we're talking about the past, but we're talking about the future.

We are clearly seeing amazing things with AI today.

And yet we are at the baby stages.

Sam Altman made the statement that AI today, it's not unlike, again, going back to our earlier conversation, it's not unlike the computers of the 1980s that were like Apple II plus and DOS computers that were terminal based.

And we had not yet gotten to the world where we had GUI interfaces everywhere.

It would be the Mac that would introduce us to that.

But we sort of could see in the 80s that that was coming.

We are the same place with AI today.

What we're seeing today is amazing, but because it's getting so much better and so much more useful so quickly, it's just exciting to think of what is this going to become?

And so companies like this and smart people like this that are coming up with fantastic ways that are beyond my imagination to push the technology forward, it's incredibly exciting.

And I can't wait to see what's out there five years from now.

Yeah, great stuff.

Exciting.

Well, how about the rest of the news?

I feel like those are fun stories already.

But a few other things I wanted to throw in.

Last week, we talked about the introduction from Apple of CarPlay Ultra, which I wasn't quite sold on, to be honest with you, last week.

First of all, because I don't have an Aston Martin that can run CarPlay Ultra.

So I was just a little bitter about that.

but um i i didn't know how it was going to be this was an interesting article in six colors from joe rosenstiel that you linked to to improve carplay ultra apple needs to fix carplay normal and i completely agree with some of the things he's talking about even specifically of like the notifications that pop up on my apple carplay they go away so quickly and if i don't look over there quickly enough while i'm trying to pay attention to the road just like joe talks about in here then I could miss it but then I don't know that it's there anyway just some great points that he made in this article today everything that he identifies here between the settings that you between the notifications you talked about the setting screens being so unimpressive the the the relative difficulty in in in configuring the screen and the way that you do it in the in the app on the iPhone and yet you can't actually see in your iPhone what it looks like so you you rearrange apps and just hope it's going to look good in the screen it's it's so cumbersome and And as much as I love, I have a true love-hate relationship with CarPlay.

I love it because I use it every time I'm in my car.

All the time.

I sometimes have problems in my car where it doesn't work and it drives me crazy.

And is it my car's fault?

Is it my iPhone's fault?

I don't know.

No one will tell me.

Who knows?

It can be so frustrating.

And as much as I love CarPlay, it's been out for a long time now, Brett.

And it has advanced, but it has not advanced as much as I would have hoped that would have.

And so I completely agree with Joe's premise that CarPlay Ultra looks fantastic.

And when I one day, who knows, you know, one year, 20 years, but one day I will have a car that has more screens in it.

And I would love to have the beautiful CarPlay interface on all of those screens.

So, I mean, I like the idea of CarPlay Ultra, but I really do hope that Apple has some of its engineers paying attention.

I mean, gosh, Apple, you have all these people that were, you know, supposedly working on an Apple car and that project has gone away.

So can you just take a couple of those people and just say, hey, can y'all just like work on really making regular CarPlay better so that those I mean, that's the that's part of the advantage of CarPlay is that you don't need to buy a new car to have a better interface.

CarPlay can just improve in the next version of the iOS and then suddenly CarPlay is better.

Let's just do that.

And, you know, we're not that far away from WWDC in a couple of weeks.

And we always hope that this will be the one where they'll have great car play improvements.

Maybe so.

Right.

In which case I'll be like, yay.

But if not, then guys, let's get on this for the next year.

You know, we got to fix the basic car play.

So one thought I had reading through this quickly was, you know, one of the things that Apple has always done differently is they control both the hardware and the software of their devices.

That's one of the reasons that Macs are so amazing and iPhones as opposed to Windows where Microsoft makes the software, but they don't make the hardware.

I mean, they used to not, right?

But now they do just a limited basis.

But the point is it has to work with so many different manufacturers.

And in the same way, I think to some extent, to some extent, I'm not forgiving Apple here.

To some extent, I know that CarPlay has to have some difficulties in that because it's one software that they can't control the hardware on which it's viewed, right?

And that can mostly be a screen size kind of a thing.

But that said, Joe's points, just like what you underlined here, I think could be improved regardless of the car.

I mean, we're talking about really the interface here, and that doesn't matter if it's on a two inch screen or a 20 inch screen.

I think some of the improvements that Joe is talking about here could absolutely be made.

And here's my favorite line down here.

I can't say the same thing.

CarPlay Ultra feels like applying an iOS-styled Winamp skin to the speedometer.

If you remember Winamp, those are the days when we were playing MP3 files on our computers.

Anyway, that was a fun story there.

Speaking of days that you remember, there used to be printers that were not AirPlay compatible.

I just was thinking, we're looking at this story here, you link to a review of an Epson projector that comes with AirPlay in it.

And it got me thinking, I take AirPlay for granted today.

But there was a time, Jeff, when I would specifically search to purchase a printer that specifically had that AirPrint or that AirPlay capability, right?

There are televisions today that have AirPlay.

But I feel like it's built into so much of what we do today that it would be crazy if a device of a printer did not support AirPrint, for example, or a television didn't support AirPlay to some extent.

And I just love the fact that now we have a projector that supports AirPlay because in the past, you would either have to use a little Apple TV device connected to the projector in order to accomplish this, right?

Or you would have to hardwire your computer, your Mac or your iPad into a projector like an HDMI cable in order to do this.

But now, can I AirPlay directly to a projector?

That's fantastic.

I love this.

Yeah, I've been in so many circumstances.

I'm sure you have too, where I am at a relative's house or a friend's house, or maybe we're even on vacation at the beach and, you know, we're staying in a condo somewhere and, you know, that screen is there. Um, and you just want to share some pictures or some videos or something that you've taken. And it's so nice to be able to just airplay to it. And it's so wonderful that more and more you'll find televisions that even if they don't have an Apple TV connected to it, they have built an airplay into it in a, in a hotel or something else. And so it just makes it so easy to share things. I will admit, I do not keep up with the technology of projectors. I mean, I certainly encounter them and use them from time to time when I'm in a conference room for some law thing.

But so I have no idea if putting AirPlay in a projector is revolutionary and Epson is the first, or if this is something that other companies have been doing for a while now and now Epson's doing it.

But it makes perfect sense because for the same reason that you want to make it easy and seamless to connect to a screen, you know, a flat screen television, it should be the same for a projector and you don't have to worry about hooking up an Apple TV to it.

You know, as we wait for those days though, that everything has AirPlay support in them, I still, I mean, when we go on those beach vacations and I'm going to be getting together with family and friends that are meeting us there, I do have an old Apple TV.

It's not the one that I use now because my Apple TV 4K is connected to my TV, but my older one, the HD version, I just keep it in a box. And when we travel, I take it in the luggage because that way, you know, if the TV has AirPlay built in, fantastic.

But I know I can just plug this into an HDMI port.

And then if we want to share videos or photos or somebody wants to show off, you know, the the school play and how their five year old, you know, had had a speech in the school play and did so great.

We can all look at it and show it for it and stuff. It's so wonderful to do that.

So good, you know, kudos to Epson for issuing a projector update that has AirPlay and HomeKit support, too, which I suppose is useful, but not as exciting as AirPlay.

Well, if you're going to fly on Southwest Airlines to that beach vacation and you need to charge your iPhone, Jeff, you're going to have to hold that battery pack in your lap or somewhere to where apparently the flight attendants can actually see the battery pack.

What a weird and awkward story here.

Southwest Airlines will require passengers to keep chargers visible during the flight.

And I get kind of why they're doing this due to, quote, fire risk of lithium batteries.

But, boy, this is going to be a little awkward to have to – like I usually put it maybe in my bag when I'm charging it on the plane or maybe in the seat back pocket or something like that.

But now you've got to have – make sure it's in plane sight.

Yeah, this is crazy.

My wife saw this story first on the news, and she's the one that told me about it.

And in fact, my wife actually travels more than I do.

You travel more than anyone known to man, Brett.

You travel all the time.

You know, this is – I mean, I understand where Southwest is coming from.

I know that there is a slight risk of lithium ion batteries exploding.

And you do hear stories every once in the blue moon of it happening on a plane.

But come on.

This is not, you know, a widespread thing.

And, you know, I have, you know, in my hand right here this anchor battery I've talked about that I purchased recently that I love.

when we finished recording today, I'm going to a deposition. And so I'm just taking this with me to make sure that I've got power for my iPad, regardless of where I'm sitting and regardless of whether it's plugged near me, but like this thing it's, it's, it's great. Cause it's got so much power in it, but it's a little hefty. And if I'm on a plane, I totally want to have this, you know, in my bag at my feet, or maybe in the back of the seat in front of me, I don't want to have to write this on my, my, my tray on the airline or on my lap or something like that.

I mean, that this is so I look, I mean, safety is safety.

I don't want to, you know, poo poo it and have a plane explode.

Right.

For goodness sakes, especially in this day and age with everything going on with all the cuts.

But I do wonder if this is going a little too far.

It'll be interesting to see whether or not other airlines follow suit, because this really is a good idea.

That was my question.

Or is this going to be I mean, Southwest has always had quirky policies.

And so for better or for worse.

And so will this just be a Southwest?

I'm going to be very interested to watch and see whether we see others adopt the same policy.

Using portable charging devices while stored in a bag or overhead bin will no longer be permitted, is the statement from Southwest.

And I get it.

You know, you mentioned the idea like there could be a fire risk.

We do hear those stories from time to time about a lithium ion battery.

You know, typically it just kind of smokes a little bit.

But what we don't hear about is the millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of flights that happen with lithium-ion batteries where nothing happens at all.

So I'm just pointing that out.

Like I know there's a risk there, and I see what Southwest is doing.

I just don't know if this is the best option there.

But, yeah, so far I haven't seen any other airlines announce this.

And by golly, I hope they don't.

Anyway, we'll see how that goes.

Maybe instead you can fly your phone with a drone instead.

Maybe you're having delivered via a drone.

What a fun story.

This was Amazon now can deliver your next iPhone with a drone.

This is only going to be in very specific locations.

Where was this?

Phoenix, Arizona and College Station, Texas.

Right now, apparently are the two locations.

Is that right?

Where you can order an iPhone or I guess some kind of similar electronic from Amazon.

And the drone will deliver it to you.

This is like, this is the future.

I love this.

It feels like some bizarre sci-fi movie.

And yet I know that Amazon has been doing drone deliveries of certain products for a while now.

And I mean, I guess if it can get the product to you quickly and if it's more efficient and everything else, you know, it just seems like there's so many issues with this.

I mean, are there people trying to like use a slingshot to knock down the drone?

But I guess I guess I guess it has cameras on it.

So it records you if you're trying to do that.

You know, when the story came out and they were announcing that they got the FAA approval for it, it was interesting that they used this example of you could designate a spot, for example, in your backyard and have the drone delivered there.

And I'm like, well, that's interesting because I have had, you know, porch pirate is a thing.

You know, we hear about it all the time and sometimes people capture them on their doorbell cameras and stuff like that.

But I have absolutely had things stolen from my porch before that's delivered.

And it's a pain because then you got to reorder it and you hope it's not a one of a kind thing.

You certainly hope it's not something terribly important like medications or something like that.

But if you could designate a spot in your backyard that somebody is not going to see from the street or anything else, but that the drone could just very easily.

I have these images of how sometimes you'll have a helipad on the top of a hospital or something like that.

I'm going to have my designated drone helipad on my backyard so that Amazon can deliver all of my packages there, perhaps.

But what a world we live in.

It's so great.

On the one hand, it's only in two cities for now.

And you do wonder, like, is this honestly going to spread elsewhere?

But then at the same time, Amazon's no dummy.

They're not going to do this unless they think there's a future to it.

And there's probably a certain degree of let's throw a bunch of things to the wall and see which sticks.

So just because they're trying it out doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work.

But the fact that it's trying it out and you know they're spending significant resources in putting this together, it means that Amazon thinks that there's something here and that it's going to be something that people want to use in the future.

So very, very interesting.

Like you said, this isn't the first time that Amazon and others have used drones for delivery.

So it's not like it's brand new.

But first of all, I found this amazing that they had to receive approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to actually utilize this.

within phoenix and college station and lastly i'm very proud to point out of these two locations so far my mother actually lives in college station texas jeff so i feel like in the interest of of you know providing for our audience i will order my mother some air tags or she'll have no idea what to do with them but i'll order them i gotta i'll designate her little backyard where the drone can go and drop this and i'll report back to show how well that this works or doesn't work i feel I feel like there's some trees around too.

So I'd hate for it to get stuck in the tree.

You know, if she's trying to climb up there, that's not good for my mom, my 83 year old mother to do on there.

In the show, let's talk about a couple of things coming up.

We've talked about this Murderbot series, which I know you started.

I haven't started yet.

I'm excited.

I'm looking forward to it.

But this, I didn't get to read all of this from Ars Technica, but it's about the making of TV's Murderbot series.

Yeah.

And it's a great description of the show.

There's no spoilers in it, or at least there's very light spoilers.

Perhaps watch those first two episodes that Apple dropped last week before you read the story.

But otherwise, I thought it was interesting to read the story.

And it's an interview with the two developers of the show.

Gosh, what's their names?

It's slipping my mind right now.

But it's, I think that their brother, Chris and Paul Weitz.

Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz, yep.

Yeah, they've done a number of things over the years.

They did that show that was on Amazon that got all the acclaim called Mozart in the Jungle.

They were involved with the American Pie movies way back when.

I see this.

They've done a number of things over the years.

So certainly accomplished.

and so they have a good pedigree but and apparently the books that these are based on are you know widely acclaimed i had not read of them or heard of them beforehand but i think there's seven books in the series and season one of murder bot is based upon the first book and apple has announced if there'll be future seasons but i liked the first two episodes i mean i'm not saying it's as good as some other apple tv plus shows like you know certainly not severance or stuff like that but i enjoyed it i i apple tv's always had great sci-fi stuff and this is sort of It crosses the line between sci-fi and fantasy.

And I don't think it spoils too much, if you haven't watched it yet, to say that there's not only is there a show, but there's a show within a show element to it.

I see that.

So they've done some very clever things.

And the actor that they have playing the protagonist in the show, Skarsgård, what's his first name?

Alexander Skarsgård.

He is just such an incredible actor.

And he does such an amazing job with this role that I could actually see this being really, really good.

So it's an interesting article.

One thing that they mention in here is that although season one follows book one, if they're lucky enough to, and they said they don't want to jinx anything, but if they're lucky enough for Apple to pick it up for future seasons, You know, there was a suggestion that instead of like season two being booked to what they instead might do.

And again, I don't know the series, but they might take elements from books, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

So, you know, mix and match to sort of put together different stories that would make sense for for a TV show.

So so they clearly are thinking about what season two, season three, season four might be.

So I'm excited about it. I mean, I'm enjoying the show.

I'm looking forward to watching episode. I guess it'll be episode three tonight.

And so I'm always happy to have some new good stuff on Apple TV Plus.

From Murderbot to Snoopy.

Apparently Snoopy the Musical is coming to Apple TV Plus as well.

This is what, from 1988?

Oh, my goodness.

This is an old one.

No, but the story is they have a brand new musical coming out next month called Snoopy Presents a Summer Musical.

And it's a brand new story.

And it's about the Snoopy, the Peanuts characters doing a musical at summer camp or something like that.

But what is interesting, first of all, is that Snoopy and the Peanuts characters are 75 years old this year.

I did not know that.

Thank you, Charles.

Whoa.

And that it has been – we think of all of the iconic Peanuts holiday specials, the Christmas special, the holiday – Thanksgiving.

The Great Pumpkin, all those sorts of things.

Halloween, right.

We love those things.

But it apparently has been 35 years since they had a musical.

And although Apple doesn't – Apple says it's been 35 years.

They don't tell you what the last musical version was, but I did some poking around on the internet last night and I think I found it.

And it's the one that you were just showing.

Here you are in 1988.

And even that was sort of unique because it was not originally developed to be a TV show like some of the others were that we all watched when we were kids.

It was a musical that was off Broadway in the 1970s.

And then it was the second Peanuts musical.

There was the first one, too, that was called something like You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown or something like that.

But apparently Charles Schultz had taken the original Broadway or off-Broadway musical and turned it into a show in the 80s.

And then since that was successful, they then took this other one called Stupid the Musical.

And I found it hard.

Other than this Wikipedia article, I didn't find a lot about it.

But then just before I went to bed last night, I noticed, you know, someone's going to upload something to YouTube.

And so I linked to it today.

We'll see if it gets taken down.

Look at you. You found.

But somebody has taken – apparently there was never a DVD of this sold in the United States, but there was a PAL version, which is like the European version, which has a different frame rate.

And somebody went through the trouble of converting it and turning it into something we could watch.

And so I watched like tiny little snippets of this.

I will admit, Brett, that the few songs that I watched a few minutes of didn't do terribly much for me.

So maybe this wasn't the most successful of all of the Peanuts shows.

But anyway, it's whatever. It's been 35 years since you have seen the Peanuts characters singing and dancing.

It's time.

So now in July, they're going to have this new one. And this is just a personal thing for me.

But one of the I love the piano. I love to play piano. I love to listen to piano players.

And Ben Folds is one of my favorite artists. I really love him.

And so he wrote some songs for it. And so that's what I love.

You know, back in the day, the original Peanuts theme was composed by, do I have this name right?

Vince Garibaldi, I believe.

You know, that iconic.

Garrett Galdi, yes.

I'm saying it wrong.

But anyway, we all know that song.

We could all hum along.

And so to get someone as talented as Ben Folds to come up with some original songs that I would imagine.

Oh, that's exciting.

You know, maybe Charlie Brown or Lucy or Linus or somebody is going to be singing those songs.

I don't know.

We'll find out.

So, again, this is going to be for kids, of course.

But I do hope that it's also a little bit for adults.

And I have to admit, I will probably.

That's fine.

You know, it'll be fun.

So I'm glad to see.

And it's great that Apple has this relationship.

I mean, they own the rights to distribute all the Charles Schultz peanut stuff.

And so we have this new life because we haven't seen a ton of original peanuts content come out for decades.

And then they team up with Apple.

And now we're getting, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that they've done.

They had the Snoop and Space series and a bunch of other stuff.

So it's great to see new life.

I love that the kids today are getting to enjoy fresh new Peanuts content.

So thank you, Apple, for keeping Peanuts alive.

Not to mention the Apple Watch face.

And you know what I did after last week's show?

I turned on the Apple TV screensaver, the Snoopy screensaver.

And that's been fun.

It's been so fun.

But that's original content too in a way, right?

Just like a different aspect, which I thought that was really neat.

Let's end our session today, our episode, with a where you at segment.

Where you at?

And what a great one this is today.

So apparently this is the author sitting on his porch.

A stray dog comes up.

He notices that this dog has a collar on with an air tag, but the battery in the air tag is dead.

He puts a new one in, and sure enough, the owner was able to track this dog down.

Did I get that story right?

I helped a lost dog's air tag ping its owner, an ode to replaceable batteries.

I love this.

Yeah, he was smart.

I mean, I know how AirTags work, but he was smarter than me because what he did was he figured out that the collar had an AirTag in it, which you hear people about doing for dogs.

Right.

And I think it makes good sense in case your dog gets lost.

And then he held up his iPhone to the AirTag because he knew that AirTags will communicate with devices around them, even, you know, not for their owners.

And that's how he found out, because you can always hold up any AirTag type device to your iPhone and get some information about it.

And he had hoped that the owner had put it into lost mode, which they did not.

But because he could not get lots of information, he was able to figure out that the battery was dead.

You can totally imagine this.

The owner put this on the dog years ago, didn't even realize the battery died.

And so fortunately, the author of this article, Ken Burdy, had some CR, what is it, CR-232 batteries in his garage.

That's right.

So he was able to dig one out, replace it.

Always keep extra.

And he's like, now when the owners try to find it, they'll be able to do so.

And of course they did.

And they showed up at the house and they said, you know, here's our dog.

So it's always nice to hear a story of, you know, the dog gets to go back home.

But, you know, kudos to Kevin Purdy for understanding the tech involved to know that there was the air tag, realize that you needed a battery and put it in there.

Because this would not have been a happy ending to the story, you know, but for his tech savvy.

So bravo.

I feel like we've got to get on some kind of a schedule in today's society.

You know, every six months we change the batteries in our smoke detectors.

We also need to have some kind of a cycle where we check the batteries in our air tag, all the air tags that we have.

But I got to tell you, they're great.

I mean, my daughter just recently went on a quick trip and I had forgotten I put an air tag in that suitcase because when we had all traveled together.

And so I kept getting pings from that suitcase saying it's not with you anymore.

And sure enough, I knew that it was with my daughter.

But, you know, it was just cool to be able to have that and to be able to know that it's there.

But anytime I go like on a big trip like that, I do make sure that I get those batteries updated.

And I always say, you know, when you buy an AirTag, buy like a six and eight pack of those extra batteries because it's good just to have around for when you do need them for a nice, cute story like this, which is good.

Great. I'll share a quick find my story with you.

Yeah, please.

My daughter is taking driving lessons, learning how to drive right now.

I have her in like parking lots and stuff like that.

And she's done a pretty good job.

But this week was the first time that she was with the driving instructor on the streets of New Orleans.

You know, fair warning to any New Orleanians who are listening to this podcast is be careful on Uptown New Orleans.

And so I was sitting there at work yesterday, Brett, and I just I had my iPad next to me and I fired up to find my app because like I could see where she is.

Right. Because we all right. Of course. Yeah.

And I'm looking at her face on the map sort of go throughout Uptown New Orleans.

And I'm sort of like having like, oh, I'm getting nervous.

just like, you know, oh, you're on Magazine Street.

That's a busier street.

Please be careful.

Please be careful.

So it was a funny use of my mind.

You were able to track her though.

That's great.

That's great.

In the know, I have a tip that I'm going to give full credit to my wife.

So she has been doing a lot of walking recently and she's been very much enjoying it.

And of course, anytime that we know people walk with an Apple Watch, what is the thing that you're going to be doing towards the end of the day?

you want to see how many steps that you got in the day right and she's got her different goals i mean everybody knows the 10 000 steps a day but i think she's even up to maybe 13 000 or something like that so she likes to check it throughout the day and see and she came to me the other day a couple of weeks ago and said i want to be able to see my step count directly on my apple watch face now yeah some people might be hearing this and like well wait a minute like you see the rings. You just tap the rings on your Apple Watch and you can get the step count. I have to flip up a couple of screens there. But she didn't want that, Jeff. She wanted to be able just to glance down at her Apple Watch and see her step count. And I was not the greatest husband because I'm like, okay, I'll try to figure that out for you. Well, I didn't do it quick enough.

And so she found out on her own and she did a good job. This is not something that you can do natively with the Apple Watch as it stands right now.

So she found this great story.

Now, this one I'm linking to is from iPhone Life from last October.

You need to have a third-party app.

The good news is the third-party app is free.

The third-party app is called Pedometer Plus Plus.

So it's a free one.

There's in-app purchases.

You know, it is.

I've used this before, but it's been a long time.

And now I'm going to obviously re-download it.

But now you can use that app.

That's another great way to track your steps and track a lot of other things that it does with Pedometer Plus Plus.

But one of the things that if you install that on your iPhone, that means you can have that app installed on your Apple Watch, right?

So once you do, then you can go into your Apple Watch face.

And whatever watch face that you want to use, there are several of them, that will allow you to add a complication.

That's what Apple calls them.

I think it's a silly name.

but these little tiny dots, you can add these little complications around these different watch faces.

And this is where you would say, do you wanna add the calendar?

Do you wanna add the weather app?

All that kind of, there's little tiny buttons.

You'll see what I'm talking about when you jump into there.

But now you can add, once you install Pedometer++, now you can add a complication from Pedometer++.

So some apps will allow you to add those little complications.

And when you do, one of them can be these options.

there's several different ones that you can do.

There can be a little one, you can be a bigger one here.

But one of the complications will be from Pedometer Plus Plus and that will give you the ability to actually glance down at your Apple Watch face and see your step count as you go through the day.

And I just thought that that was a brilliant tip from my wife.

I give full credit to her on being able to find this on her own because I did not go out and try to find this myself.

So you can either customize your Apple Watch face from your Apple Watch itself You can tap and hold on it to where it goes into like that customize mode, that edit mode, or this article that I'm going to link to will tell you how you can customize the watch face from the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

So you can do it either way.

Just you got to download that free Pedometer Plus Plus app, and then you can add the complication from that app into your Apple Watch face that allows you to add complications.

And you'll have your step count right on your Apple Watch face now.

That's my tip for the day.

It's a great tip and kudos to your wife for sharing it with you.

Yes.

I previously had Pedometer++ on my iPhone.

And last fall, I did like a complete reset of my iPhone and reinstalled all apps from scratch.

I had forgotten to reinstall it.

So while you were talking, I just re-downloaded the app, Pedometer++.

There is a paid version which offers lots of features in it, but you don't need to use it.

And so I'm happy to report, what did you say, 13,000 steps a day?

I'm up to 1,000 today.

So I'm basically there.

I'm already at 1,000.

Well, the day is still early, Jeff.

I don't mean to show off, but I may even hit 1,500.

So as I'm looking, the app is nice because you can allow it to import all of your step data from the health app.

And as I'm going through, I can see that I have not made 10,000 steps very often.

But the last time that I did was when I was at Jazz Fest, which makes perfect sense because when I'm at the festival, I'm fully walking around a ton.

And so I'm seeing all of that.

And it's nice to look back over my history here when it's a wonderful interface.

It makes it very easy.

You have like the green bars when you're above 10,000 or whatever limit you put for yourself.

Yeah.

And, you know, orange.

I have a lot of red in here.

I need to do more steps.

But so that's a great app.

But I really like the idea of the tip of showing on your watch face, because although I don't watch steps, I can totally understand that if you're a person that does, this is exactly why the Apple Watch can be so useful, because those complications allow you to have exactly what you want.

Oh, look at that picture you're showing.

That picture shows it all.

I know.

It's fantastic.

It's right there.

So you have it right there.

So it even has the green bar on there.

And like I said, you know, she doesn't need a whole lot of information.

She just wanted to be able to glance down quickly and be able to see that step count number as she goes through the day.

And I just thought that's a really neat way.

And again, as much as we were talking about this last week, I think, or a couple of weeks ago with the Apple Watch faces and customizing them, you can do a lot with some of these watch faces now.

But in some cases, when it's something that you can't quite do or Apple hasn't quite allowed you to do, you know, that should be, I think, embedded within like the fitness app, maybe within the Apple Watch.

But it's not there.

And so kudos to Cross Forward Consulting is who actually develops the Pedometer Plus Plus.

And I've seen this app talked about many, many times.

I just don't.

I haven't used it very much myself.

But it is a great app.

And now you can use it for free to put the step count on your watch face.

That's my tip for the day, Jeff.

Yeah, very, very cool stuff.

My tip today is I've talked in the – by the way, the developer of that app is David Smith, who has done a ton of other fantastic apps.

Oh, good.

Okay.

He sometimes calls himself underscore David Smith.

I think I have this right that he also does – Oh, he's Widget Smith.

He's from Widget Smith.

Exactly.

Oh, great.

This is a big deal developer who has done some of the best apps on the iPhone.

And so you should feel comfortable that Pedometer++ is coming from a developer that really knows their stuff, and he's very tied into Apple.

So anyway, going on to my tip, we have talked in the past about the standby feature, which came out a few years ago, and it allows you to take your iPhone, put it on a MagSafe charger and just set it up there and turn your iPhone into this wonderful display.

I use it all day long in my office, but I'm not using my iPhone.

I'm literally looking at it right now and it's showing me the time and it's showing me the day.

I have it set up that I have the time and big, big numbers, like it's a clock.

And it has also the date and, you know, the temperature and other things like that.

And it's also nice because if I'm sitting here in my office and a notification comes in, like say a text message, it will show up there and I can just glance down and I can see it.

It's a wonderful feature.

But I don't just use standby in my office.

I also have on my nightstand next to my bed another stand.

Many, many people do this.

And, you know, for decades of my life, I used to have a clock.

You know, maybe it was a clock radio or maybe just a clock just to have like that LED display so that you could see the time, even if it's, you know, you wake up late at night and you could see the time.

So you can take your iPhone and when you put it on a MagSafe right next to your bed, it will show the time by default in standby mode.

By default, by default, it is in this mode where it doesn't show you that the time will display when you put it on there, but then it will dim and go away.

And that's because there's a setting that I did not know about until recently.

If you go into your settings app and then you go to standby, it's one of the first options there.

It's the first or second screen.

Once you're in the standby settings, you'll see an option called display.

And the default setting is called automatically, which means that during the day, standby will stay on forever.

But at nighttime, in other words, when your iPhone can sense from its light meter that it's in a dark room, the display will turn off after a period of time.

And so what that means is when I'm going to bed, I can see what time it is on my iPhone.

But like if I happen to wake up in the middle of the night for some reason and I glance at my iPhone, it's completely black.

Now, it's set up.

There's a feature that you can turn on and off that if you wave your hand in front of it, the display will come on.

I have that.

Motion to wake is what that's called.

Yeah, I have that.

What I did not know, however, is that on this screen, you can change the display mode from automatically to the second choice is after 20 seconds.

So it just stays on for a short period of time.

But the final choice, and this is the one that I have enabled, it's the one that I'm recommending people consider, is called never, which means it stays on all the time.

And believe me, like I said, for decades, I have had a red LED clock next to me, and it's never been obnoxious or anything like that.

And likewise, the time displayed in standby mode on my iPhone, I have it sort of like this light orange color.

It's not obnoxious or anything.

It's nice big numbers, but it's not obnoxious or anything.

And so it's totally not going to keep you up at night.

It certainly doesn't for me.

But I like the idea that if I happen to hear a sound in the middle of the night or just happen to wake up and I sort of glance over there, I can totally see the time and I don't need to wave my hands first or something else like that.

And I don't mind.

I mean, first of all, iPhones use very little power when they are displaying something like this.

But again, you don't have to worry about how much power it's using because it's on a MagSafe charger anyway.

So it's got tons of battery.

So I personally feel that default should have been the never mode, not the automatic node.

But, you know, whatever.

That's the decision they made.

So if you do use your iPhone as your bedtime clock because of this wonderful standby feature, consider going to settings, going to display under standby, and switching it from automatically to never.

And that way, it's just always there when you glance at it, which is great.

And although that is my tip today, I want to say the same, but go ahead, Brett.

Well, I want to, okay, so I have a question on this because of what I love about it.

I have it on automatically.

I never changed it from the default and I want to do never.

But one of the things that I do like about it, Jeff, is that at first when it goes into standby mode, it's bright.

It's almost like it's white, but then it goes into a red.

It's called night mode here, right?

Standby displays with a red tint and low ambient lighting.

If I tap never, does it still go into that night mode red tint or does it stay in a bright yellow or white color there?

I have wondered the same thing.

I don't think it does.

But for me, I don't think it matters because at least the one that I have set up, like the color that I have for my color it is.

I have it sort of this light orangey ready sort of color anyway.

So although it does not switch to the mode that you're talking about, which by the way, is a mode that I think that your Apple Watch Ultra can do too, right?

If you're in the night mode.

So although you're losing the ability to switch to that mode, in my mind, you get something just as good.

But again, that mode, although it sounds good, doesn't stay on very long.

It goes away too.

So you're in that red mode, it's going to go off.

So for me, it's much better to have a mode that's on all the time and I can control what color I want and how bright I want it to be and all that sort of stuff.

So I didn't know this is great because I've had motion to wake.

And so I'll be half asleep and I glance over there because I want to see the time.

But I have to like get my hand out and like tap it or something.

I don't want to do that.

So I'm trying this.

I'm trying never.

I'll let you know if that red tint stays on because I like it when it's bright at first.

But then when I'm sleeping, that red is great because it's not glaring or anything like that.

but, oh, this is great.

I'm going to turn this on.

Thank you for that tip.

So while you're in there in those settings, I'm just going to mention two more things that are there that you should know about.

One of them is you have an option to show notifications.

You can have that on or off.

I see that.

And it's on by default.

And so that means that I was just describing this earlier that like if I'm sitting here working at my desk in my office and my wife sends me a text message, you know, my Apple Watch will tap.

And if I look at my Apple Watch, I can see what it is, but I don't even have to do that because I can just glance down at that iPhone It's showing a display and the text will actually show up there for a few seconds.

Right.

But there's some way, first of all, if you don't want things like text messages to show up there, you can turn that off.

Maybe you're in like a public environment.

Like maybe you're, I don't know, other people can see and you don't necessarily want them to be seeing your text messages.

You can choose to turn that off.

And then another thing that you can do, which is similar, is there's an option called show preview on tap only.

I see that too.

You can turn that on or off.

It's off by default, but if you want it, like when that text message comes up, it will display, but it will only display for a few seconds and then it goes away.

And so I may have had my head turned to the left and I may not be seeing it.

And then I turn over here and now it's gone.

So what you could do if you want is turn that on.

And that way you can, you know, it won't show it until you tap and then you'll be ready to see it.

So those are settings that until I had, I mean, again, it's right there in the settings app.

I just had never really noticed it was there.

And then once I found it, I'm like, oh, I already love the standby feature.

And now it's even more useful because of these settings.

Yeah.

Can I just tell you, this is great for traveling too, because I carry one of those stands with me and this is what I use for my bedside table.

And, you know, thinking about almost similar to like kind of the car that we were talking about, because I just want to have that same experience.

You know, every hotel you go to, I never rely on that clock radio by the bed because people turn it off and they turn it on and they change it.

And I don't know if the alarm is on or off.

I do try to make sure it's not on or off.

But just knowing that I can look at something and trust what I'm looking at with my iPhone.

Anyway, I'm glad.

I turned that off.

I'm going to try that never.

And I actually turned off the notifications too because I don't even need to know that.

I just like to know it's being charged overnight and I can look at it and glance at it and see that information.

Great tips on there.

Good stuff.

Lots of stuff as always.

I love it.

This is great.

We'll be very excited.

And what we're going to see from Johnny Ive.

That's just such a weird, awkward story, I feel like, but it's exciting at the same time.

So we'll keep talking about that.

And we'll talk with you next week, Jeff.

Thanks, Brett.

Bye-bye, everybody.