
In the News
In the News
202: Jeff’s Pro Persona 🥽 SOS in Canada 🍁 and Contemplating the Apple Afterlife
Watch the video!
In the News blog post for June 26, 2025:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2025/06/in-the-news784.html
00:00 Jeff’s Pro Persona!
28:23 3D on iPad
31:55 20 Years of Podcasts
36:01 The Apple Afterlife
41:08 Where Y’at? Segment - SOS in Canada
44:02 In the Show! Foundational Smoke
46:49 Apple Inspiration
48:57 Brett’s App Tip: Borrow books in Libby app but read in Kindle app
57:41 Jeff’s App Tip: Bookmarks in the Audible app
Harry McCracken | Fast Company: VisionOS 26 proves Apple isn’t treating the Vision Pro like a hobby
Amber Neely | Apple Insider: Apple Vision Pro will help get to the bottom of colonoscopy cancer detection
Matt | iPad Productivity: iPadOS 26 – Under The Microscope
Glenn Fleishman | Six Colors: The afterlife of Apple Accounts (and others)
Glenn Hendry | Insauga News: Mom, seriously injured teen safe after dramatic joint-services rescue in Ontario park
Ryan Christoffel | 9to5Mac: Here’s everything new Apple TV+ has coming in July
William Gallahger | Apple Insider: This real estate sale is literally betting the farm on Steve Jobs's fame
Brett’s App Tip: Borrow books in Libby app but read in Kindle app
https://www.libbylife.com/blog/2022-11-07-how-to-read-with-kindle-from-the-libby-app-including-forgotten-lore-
Jeff’s App Tip: Audible app - Bookmarks
https://help.audible.com/s/article/manage-clips-bookmarks?language=en_US
Bonus Book Pick from Jeff: Apple in China
Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com
Welcome to In the News for June 27th, 2025.
I am Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.com.
And this is virtual Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.
I'm laughing because I hope everyone listening could come and watch the video, Jeff,
because you are here, but it's like the AI version of Jeff.
But it looks so good.
This is the new persona that we are displaying live for people like in real time from your Vision Pro.
It's actually pretty amazing, Jeff.
I have to say, you look great.
It's
really fun.
So I'm in my office.
Can't you tell from behind me?
But I actually
am in my office.
Sort of.
I normally record.
You're traveling today, but I'm in my normal location.
I am.
But I'm wearing my Apple Vision Pro right now.
And I installed earlier this week the beta version of Vision OS 26.
And on
Wednesday, I actually they upgraded to the beta 2.
And so I did it.
In fact, before we talk about the persona, I just want to correct.
If I might correct something from our prior podcast.
When you
and I recorded,
I think it was two weeks ago when you were in New Orleans and we recorded our 200 episode in person.
I said that I
was going to probably install the beta once they came out with the public beta of Vision OS 26.
as opposed
to developer
beta.
I realized afterwards, I said that,
that that's actually wrong.
Although the iPhone does it that way
and the iPad as well.
For the Vision Pro last year
and then this year, once again,
there is no public versus developer beta.
It's just a developer beta.
And on the other hand,
I also noticed that I don't have to sign up
to be a developer with Apple.
I just went into my settings app on my Vision Pro.
And
you know how you
go in settings to update,
to check for updates?
And I just clicked the switch to say developer,
you know, beta updates. And then it said, Hey, developer beta one is right there. So I just
downloaded it and installed it took, you know, 20 minutes, whatever. And then, uh, now I'm,
I'm looking at the version, new version of vision OS 26. It's there's a little bit that I see
glitches here and there every once in a while, but for the most part, it works great. And so I've
just started to kick the tires on it this week and it's fun. It's fun to start to see the future.
Um, and so, you know, one of the biggest new features is this new persona feature,
which we're doing now. And in fact, Brett, it would be great if you could, I should have mentioned
this to you before we started recording, if there'd be a way that you could like pull up a picture or
something like that.
I was just thinking about that. I'm going to try. I don't know if I
can,
because I want to compare what it was when we've done this before with it today. I can tell it's so
much better now, but yeah, I'll try to find that picture.
It is you and I, when I first got my
vision pro with the day that it was released, you and I recorded the podcast and that was the very,
very first version of Persona. And
then they came out with Vision
OS 2, which made it much better.
But it was better if you looked straight on. But in Vision OS 2, when you turned your head,
it was a little weird. And so now this newest version, first of all, the face itself,
I think is pretty darn realistic. I mean, it really is.
So great.
And then if I look around, you know, the side of my head, I think, I mean, you're looking,
I can't see the screen as I'm turning, but from the demos I've seen, it looks much more realistic.
And it still captures me.
Like, I mean, I, you know, if I open my eyes wide or if I close my eyes or if I pick bizarre fixes, stick my tongue out.
The tongue always amuses me because when I did the capture, like you hold your Vision Pro in your hand and it takes a picture of your face.
I did not take a picture of my tongue, but I can stick my tongue out.
And
it comes.
Wow.
Using artificial intelligence, it makes a tongue that looks pretty darn realistic.
And then my hands, too.
If I put my hands in frame, you can see them, which is interesting.
You don't see my arms.
So they just sort of like they're ghost hands, you know, but you can.
Yeah, your hands have been floating around because I know you.
You talk with your hands a lot.
I talk
with my hands a lot.
But but
they're kind of floating, but they're better.
OK, here I can do this real quick.
I've got a screenshot from the video that we did.
You want me to bring that up
here?
Yeah, why not?
We'll see if we have a little bit of a comparison on this.
And so –
Because – wow.
Okay, here it is.
This is the
video of our podcast.
Episode 133.
When was
this?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Let me see.
This was from February 2024.
Big difference.
Look at that on there.
Now, first of all, you don't have your glasses on.
Now, you're not wearing glasses when you have the Vision Pro on,
but it puts the glasses on there for you, right?
Which it did not do in February, 2024.
Yeah.
So it tells you to take your glasses off,
to take a picture of your face,
and then you can choose from like, you know,
25 different glasses.
And then you choose like,
so I chose a glass shape that looks pretty similar
to my regular glasses.
And then it says, are they made of metal?
Are they made of plastic?
So I chose metal.
And then you have four different colors of metal.
And I chose the one that was more like gold
I sort of have
gold-ridden glasses.
And so it's a rough approximation of my glasses.
And then when you set it up, the other thing you can do is you can change your background.
So right now, you can see behind me, it looks like my office.
I mean, this is my office.
And the
reason I
did that is because when you choose the background, you have – in fact, I'm going to go right now.
So I'm in my settings app in my Vision Pro, which you can't see on the screen.
And I have three choices.
One choice is called color.
I haven't tried this.
Let's try this.
So I chose a
color.
Okay.
That's just sort of like a gradient color in the sky.
Yeah.
They're different colors. I can make it, uh, I can make it sort of pink,
you know, whatever color I want.
I don't like that one though,
because you can really see the edges around my head.
And then another choice
is a photo. And so I, I took a picture.
I literally walked across my desk and took a picture five minutes ago.
That's how you did that. I took
that picture of my chair.
And so now you're seeing that, right?
And so that's just my face superimposed on a picture of my chair,
which is a trick, by the way, you know, attorneys will sometimes
or anyone
will sometimes use this.
You take a picture of your office and then if you participate in a Zoom call, like let's say you have a court hearing,
you could be home, you could be on the beach, you could be
anywhere.
And just on regular Zoom, it will pretend like it's your it's your office background.
But I'm doing the same thing here. And then the final one, this one's sort of interesting, is called environment.
And so if I choose an environment behind me, most of them are, you know how when you put on my Apple Vision Pro to test it,
Like you can either be augmented reality that you can see the outside world, which is what I'm doing right now.
Or you can be like in a virtual reality where you pretend you're somewhere else and all around you, you're somewhere else.
Right.
So I'm going to do like one that I think you tried when you play with mine is the beach.
So I've just changed.
So this is a still frame from the beach environment.
You can see this on your side, right?
Yes.
I got you.
The palm trees swaying.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's the beach.
Is it actually moving or is it just a still?
No, no, no, no.
Okay.
Yeah, it's a still picture.
Because in the virtual
reality
world, actually, you know, in your Vision Pro, so most of them are the ones that are like, and here's one that's the clouds,
and here's one
that is sort of the swamps.
But there's some of them that are actually not Vision Pro environments.
So, for example, this one right here is called Apple Park Greenery.
So,
this is like outside
of the spaceship building at Apple Park.
They're there
at the spaceship,
yeah.
And then there's another one, which is this one is called Apple Park Hallway.
So now
I'm in the hallway at Apple Park.
I feel like I'm in severance
or something like that.
What's this one called?
This
one's called the Apple Park Fitness Center.
You know, on the
treadmill,
getting hip and fit in the fitness center.
There is, what's this one?
I'm going to show you two more.
This one is called, I can't see what this one is called.
Oh, Apple Park.
It's like Twilight or something.
Yeah, I can't see the
title of it.
That's a beta bug.
You can't see the title of it.
But then this one is the one that we saw.
I think we saw iJustine last week.
We did this video.
Yeah.
So this is
the rainbow in the middle
of
the
Apple Park spaceship building.
Harry McCracken
has that right
here too, right?
Yeah.
There you go.
So
he's doing the
same.
This is a story that
you link to.
Yeah, he's got the same one.
That's the one that we've seen everybody kind of show off a little bit so far in
this.
Okay.
So I'm going to pick one background for the rest of the podcast.
What would you like to see, Brett?
What's your personal preference there?
Oh, I like your office.
I mean, because honestly,
the way –
Back to my office.
Again, like to
your point, people have done this on Zoom.
It's like in Zoom you can pick your background picture.
But the way that this is working is it's a real picture of your office, but it's a floating Jeff.
But it looks good.
I mean, so when you stand up or move around, I can kind
of tell.
Yeah, in fact, if I move around.
There you go.
You floated off the screen.
Zoom is trying to catch up with me.
You can't
catch me.
Now I'm over
here.
Now I'm over here.
So sit back down.
But the way that you've got it set up, it looks good because I can, you know, it looks like you're in, even though I know it's a persona, an AI-generated version of you.
Yeah.
It looks like you're in the office, you know, good enough.
If I can't have the real Jeff, I'll take this one with the floating Jeff in your office.
one thing that i'm i'm just still amazed at how good it looks especially you know when we compare
it you know to even just a year and a half ago
i mean it's just it's so much
more realistic and
even from the side when you've turned your head it's it feels like you know it seems like in this
other one here just real quick when you've turned your head that your
face looks a little squished
right on
there i mean but that was amazing a year and a half ago and here we can see this is 10 times
better already. It just, I've just been watching you. It just amazed at how good it looks and you
know what, what we've been able to accomplish in a year and a half. Anyway, you, you go ahead.
Cause this is just so fun to keep watching you.
One thing that I'm trying to figure out is when
I am using a video camera in my office to communicate, well, either with you on the
podcast or, you know, with a court or in a, in a Microsoft teams meeting at my firm. One of the
things that I am pretty religious about is I try to stare right in my camera
as opposed to looking
at the video because I
want other people to have the illusion that I'm actually looking at them.
And that's actually good advice for anyone that's trying to get better
zoom out of good lighting,
look straight at the camera. But it's a little weird because since I'm in my Vision Pro,
there is no camera. It's just all pretend. And so I'm having a little like, I don't know,
So like right now
I'm staring right in the middle of the screen.
And right now I'm staring at the bottom where they have the little zoom, you know, pretty bunch windows.
I can see you.
So I don't 100%.
I guess I just stare in the middle of the screen.
I don't really know where to stare to look at the camera.
But the reason all of this is
so cool for me.
Thank you.
Is that, you know, the Vision Pro, we always say this, it's such a beta device.
What's going to happen is eventually these things will be much cheaper and they're going to be
much smaller.
But when we get to the point where we have a world where the Vision Pro device is like the pair of glasses, sort of like Meta has right now with
the
Meta Ray-Ban glasses, when it's something that size but the power of the Vision Pro, they're going to want to have this persona feature nailed down.
And so I love
that they are doing all of these improvements without improving the hardware, by the way.
It's the exact same processor and everything else.
They're just being more efficient with it and doing better jobs.
So, you know, it's going to it looks really great now. It's going to continue to look even better. And, you know, we will get to the point where it is virtually indistinguishable without having that uncanny valley effect. And that's going to be really, really cool. So I'm looking forward to that day.
You
know, this this story that you link to that I mentioned from Harry McCracken over here at Fast Company, he's kind of underscoring everything you said.
I mean, he was there a couple of weeks ago on the campus.
Right.
Was
they going to talk to some of the folks, the executives at Apple?
And I mean, he even says it here.
He's like Apple is not treating the Vision Pro like a hobby.
And what was what was the comment from Steve Jobs?
What was his comment?
What did he say was a hobby?
like the Apple TV or something else like that.
And it's like we've had this phrase that we've applied to it.
But I just loved reading through Harry's story here that it's really something serious.
I mean, to your point, they are really focusing on this and putting a lot of resources in it.
And I know we keep talking about this.
We keep talking about the Vision Pro, and I'm sure that some listeners have been like,
well, you know, why this isn't something I'm going to go out and buy.
But I just think that so much of the technology is going to come out of this.
that's going to apply and influence so much more.
We've already seen that with iOS 26.
Some of that design capabilities are coming out
of what they've been able to integrate within the Vision Pro.
And that's why we keep talking about this,
or one of the reasons we keep talking about it,
other than it's just so cool to see a floating Jeff
every once in
a while.
But it's like, because this is gonna
influence
so much more than just this, the goggle aspect,
and the computers are just gonna continue
to get embedded into glasses like you're saying.
But this was a good article from
McCracken as well.
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
In fact, the liquid glass interface that's coming to the iPhone, the iPad, is, of course, influenced by the Vision Pro.
And I will tell you that even though I'm running Vision OS 26, which I guess would, in theory, also incorporate liquid glass,
I haven't – I mean, there's a few things around the edges that look different, but more or less, the interface, it's not that different.
Because they pretty much already had something that was liquid glass.
It just wasn't called that at the time.
One
more thing I'm just going to say about the, before we move on to the next topic is that I just think it's sort of funny that although it looks like my face, if I open my mouth real wide, you know, that's me and stuff.
It's just my face
and it's just my
hands.
So, for example, I have in front of me like a water bottle.
And if I hold the water bottle, like you see my hand as if I'm holding something, but there's nothing there.
And likewise, if I go to have a drink,
you see my lips sort
of parse.
But it's just sort of funny that
you don't see the
objects, even though I see them here.
It's just funny how that works.
So that's one of the big features of Vision OS 26 is the new persona.
But another one I wanted to talk about, and Harry McCracken talks about it in this article, and this is probably the biggest change, is widgets.
And so they took
widgets much
like we have had on the iPhone and the iPad.
In fact, they're literally the same widgets.
And it's really useful.
As you know, you can take a widget and put it on your iPhone home screen, or it's even better on the iPad.
where you have so much more space and you can take a widget and you can put it in the vision pro
wherever you want, which is useful because I have had in the past, like there was an app I have,
I think it's called like launch bar that it's basically an app
that I would put
in my virtual
world to the side of me and would have like the time and other information, my battery power,
but I really don't need that app, or at least that app is going to have to change because now I can
take a widget and I can have a widget of like my battery power and I can just put it on the wall
and then it stays there on the wall in that spot.
It's virtual, but it's a physical wall,
but it's a virtual widget in a way.
I'm just
trying to wrap my head around that.
If you scroll up and down in the article here,
you'll see he has a picture of a clock on the wall in here.
There you are
right there.
There it is.
That's actually the calendar,
but it's the same idea.
And I sent you a picture.
Do you have that
queued up?
You
did.
So just two minutes before we started recording,
I took
a widget of a clock
and I put it on my wall right between,
next to my diplomas. Okay. And what's really weird is like, and you're going to scrutinize it more
because it's, it's a still frame right now. So it's not perfect, but like in real life, when I
look to my side over here, I mean, that clock looks like it's actually on my wall. It's really,
I mean, and the second hand is moving. And can you tell like, this is sort of like an old school
analog clock.
If you get really close to it,
the, the, the hour hand is at below the minute hand is
above it. The second hand is above it. And it's sort of, you know, there's a little bit of a 3D
effect on a real clock in the real world.
This clock
is the same way. And as you get really
close to it, you can see the shadow from the second hand on the wall as it's going around.
It's amazingly realistic. It looks really cool in my office because my office with my overhead,
what do you call this, fluorescent lights, whatever, is very well lit. Plus I've got big
windows next to me. So in my really well lit office, that clock looks just about as well lit
as my diplomas. Now my diplomas, as I see in the picture you're showing, you can sort of
see the
reflection
of
the overhead lights, whereas you don't see
that as much. You do see some reflections
of light, but not obviously the real world. So that's one tell. And another tell is when I did
this at home, I was like in my living room, just sitting on my couch. You know, it's the end of the
day, the lights were dimmed and stuff like that. Whereas the widgets, they were very bright. I mean,
they were just as well lit in my home environment as they are
what you see
here. And so it made them
very clear to see, but when it comes to like causing you to think that it actually is on the
wall, you can sort of tell because it's so well lit. In fact, a perfect example of it, one other
widget that I sent you a picture of, if you bring that up, they have a really
cool widget for the
music app
amazing and
so the way it works is you whatever song you're currently playing in your
music app on the vision pro what like or you don't have to be playing keep you pause that's fine
you create a widget and it takes like the that's that album that song and so this is you know how
um in fact there is a really good vision pro app called um uh what is it called how am i it's called
prima p-r-i-m-a and i talked about
this in the past and
um in fact i may have showed you this
the other day and they have a uh a recording of a band called aj lee and blue summit they're a blue
grass band and so i was listening to that song which i had never heard of the band before that
app came for the vision pro so i was listening to it and so when i created the widget which looks
like a poster like you would hang on your
wall it does it's like a framed poster
it's like a framed
poster and i'm now looking as i see it you see how it's framed in white um
but i'm
now realizing that
because my diploma next to it is sort of a brown uh what i could i could change that frame so i can
make the frame thicker
or thinner. And so what I will actually
do in real life is I might go and
change the frame to be the same color as my diploma frames, which will make it look even
more realistic.
I can do that.
And so, and, um, and I did this at home, like at home, I have a room in my house
where we have our big screen TV. At least I used to think it was a big screen TV until I got the
vision pro. Cause that thing is huge. And I have movie posters on the wall that my wife and I bought,
you know, a long time ago for like old com old style movies. Like one of them is the old singing
in the rain movie from the
1960s
and and another one is albert albert hitchcock movie rear window
but like i took a music poster and i put it on the wall next to my real real movie posters and
it it looked like it looks very realistic it's really weird um i i saw a post on the internet
that we this week if somebody was saying that he he says i work at home and i wear my vision pro all
the time and i put all these widgets around and it seemed weird to me when i took my vision pro off
And he goes, and I look at my wall to see what time it is.
And I'm like, oh, that's just the Vision Pro.
Put your Vision Pro back on.
Yeah.
Now, I see in the picture that you're showing on the screen right now that the clock actually looks a little off kilter.
But
I just want to say that
is an artifact of me taking a screenshot.
In real life, the clock looks perfect.
The thing looks perfect.
That's just because Apple Vision Pro is trying to be too clever, and they're sort of blurring
it.
Right.
But in real life, it looks like, and it's so rock solid that I can walk around and I can like move quickly.
I can jump and that thing stays
in place as
if it's attached to the wall.
And then of course, if I want to move it, I certainly can.
But again, in this future world where, you know, five, 10 years from now, Apple is just selling a regular pair of glasses that you walk around with.
You know, it's going to be freaky because this widget technology is going to be even better.
you'll be able to walk around your home and have a clock, have a music, have, you know, whatever the weather, you know,
you're going to have these widgets that are on your wall, just as if it's a poster.
And I think it's going to be a little weird that you're going to get so used to it that you'll take off your glasses and they'll be missing.
And you're like, oh, wait. So it's really interesting. Really interesting.
I love that story of the person that was like they took their vision pro off, but they kept I mean, it's like muscle memory.
They kept looking at the spot on the wall where they had
put a widget and
you have to go back into the virtual world in order to continue living.
You know, if you had not sent these pictures to me and told me, I would have glanced at this picture of the clock and thought, well, that's a clock.
He
hung the clock,
a physical clock on his wall.
It's just the way that it looks so realistic.
I mean, again, if I start to scrutinize it, I can see differences with the glare
and
the things like that.
But still, and this music poster just looks, that looks amazing.
That looks like somebody took, you know, the time to get like the LP cover, the record cover,
and
put it together with a poster and put it in there.
That's just amazing.
That's great.
In fact, I should mention that the poster, in addition, it's not just a poster.
If I tap on it, it will start playing the song.
So it's like, it's youthful.
So I'm suddenly sitting here and I'm like, I'd like to listen to that song in my AirPods right now.
I can tap it and it will play that song.
And then when that song's over, it will play the next song on the album, you know, just like it would in music player.
But it's it's really, really, really, really cool.
You know, just the
last thing quickly.
We were talking about how the Vision Pro, I think, has is going is is already and will have so much influence on technology the way it goes, but also entertainment.
I got to ask because I was I was I've heard about people talking about this.
Have you gone around a race car track with Brad Pitt yet in your vision, bro?
I did.
That was really cool.
Have you watched that?
Is it?
Okay, you have done it.
Okay.
It's very cool.
Yeah, because you're sitting there right in the F1 car, and it's immersive.
It's only about two or three minutes.
He goes around the entire track somewhere in Dubai, I think it is.
Yeah.
And there's
no other cars in the track.
It's just him racing.
But it's cool because you're looking in front of you, and you totally feel like you are in
this race car going around these tracks.
Oh,
wow.
But then what's
really cool is I turn to my left, and I'm like, oh, hey, Brad Pitt.
How you doing?
Nice to see you.
Because
it's him.
You know, he's You
can talk to him?
You know, I talked to him.
I like
to
think that he was talking back to me.
Yeah.
That he hurt you.
Yeah.
Well, he's focused on the track.
He's got to drive,
you
know, so.
Yeah.
You know, one more thing, Brett, you're talking about how
the Vision Pro
stuff spills over into other apps.
A good example of that is the spatial pictures function.
Because in iOS
26,
you're going to be able to take.
In fact, let me go back in time.
In the
old version
of the Vision OS,
if I took a regular
2D picture, I can hit one button and it turns it into a 3D picture so that as I'm looking at the picture, it sort of like adds that depth to it.
And I sort of feel like it's 3D and it's a nice, it adds a little, just a little bit of warmth and realism to a photo.
Every once
in a blue
moon, it won't look good, but 99 times out of 100, it'll look really good.
So that's the old technology.
What Apple has done for iOS 26, Vision Pro 26, all the other ones, they have a slightly different version of this technology that – and I'm forgetting the name of it.
If I look at my Photos app, I can see what it's called.
It is – let's see.
Yeah, I just call it Spatial Photos, right?
But I
know there's a more formal
name.
Spatial Scene.
And so if I take a picture and I click a button and I say make it a spatial scene, it's the same idea that it will take the picture and make it more 3D.
But it's a more sophisticated version of it because it will take things in the background and put that on one plane, take things on
the foreground
and put that on another plane so that as you move around, it actually seems much more realistic.
Having said that, this has not completely replaced the old feature because they also have – if you go to the dot, dot, the three dots in a circle in the Vision Pro, I have another
option
to create a spatial photo.
So I can still do it the old way with the spatial photo or the new way with the spatial scene.
But I mentioned all of
this because this
is going to come to the iPhone 2 and iOS 26 and the iPad.
So I can make a spatial scene on my
iPhone.
And then if I'm holding my iPhone in my hand, which you can't see, but I have one in my hand, as I turn my iPhone left and right, it will make it look 3D.
So it's just – it's another example of something that started in the Vision Pro but is
coming to –
this fall, it will come into the iPhone and the iPad.
It's just an optional way to just add a little more realism to a photo.
For some photos, it's going to look awesome.
And for other photos, it won't look quite as good.
But it's just fun to have that option to just play around photos.
It's neat.
The Vision Pro will influence technology, entertainment, photos, and apparently also colonoscopies.
Although we've talked about this from the idea like how doctors, especially in surgery, are using the Vision Pro to be able to see.
Like we've at least covered two or three stories, I think, on this.
But this one specifically is about cancer detection in, you know, from colon cancer.
And, you know, obviously because we know what it was involved in that procedure.
But if they can have the ability to see more, I remember specifically one of the stories we covered was the fact that with the Vision Pro, similar to what you're talking about, even with like not really widgets, but they can see multiple screens without having to like turn to the side or stop what they're doing or pause and look at a different monitor or something else.
they can have all that information right in front of them.
And that just becomes so much more helpful to what they're doing.
And so this is this to me, this is just another great area where the Vision Pro and the subsequent versions of the Vision Pro are going to be helpful, too, is in the health care system.
I remember the last time
that I got a colonoscopy.
In fact, it was this year.
It was in January.
I remember like, you know, you go into the operating room and like I'm sitting on the table and like the doctor was in there.
And they actually had like four different computer monitors
set
up because I know what the colonoscopy, they're going multiple monitors.
And it's
always weird because like you're sitting there, you're talking to them and then they put the medicine to make you fall asleep.
And like a split second later, I'm in the recovery room. I'm like, where'd everybody go? What's
what's going on?
It's always sort
of a weird time thing. But I could totally understand.
Like my doctor was that did the colonoscopy. He had a computer screen.
It was a little bit bigger than the 27 inch monitor I have in my office.
So maybe it's like a 32
or 33,
but it's still only so big.
And so I can totally understand how if I'm doing this, I mean, not that I know anything
about surgery, but if I was a doctor, it would be nice to have the monitor, like not off on
the side, but like right in front of me as
big as I want.
Yes.
So, and again,
the vision pro is a little awkward with its current size, but I guess you get
used to it.
I mean, I sometimes walk around my house, the vision pro one, you know, I get right now,
this is just testing things out, but it makes total sense to me that this would be a huge thing
for medicine in the future, especially
surgery. Not to
mention, you know, the, the virtual surgery
too, where like a doctor is in one part of the world and, you know, and somehow
he's
instructing
people or working with people in the other part of the world. So all sorts of cool applications.
Okay. Well, we're going to have to move on from the vision pro. Cause there's a few other things,
but I'm just going to tell you, I just thought about this. It's, it's almost like I, I, I have
forgotten that you're on the vision pro i mean i know we're talking about this but your persona
it's so good and you sound good in it because i think you're using your air pods right now
right
with the vision pro
and so i can't see them in your ear the persona
right here but right here
but i'm just saying to me that's probably the biggest compliment is the fact that i'm not even
aware so much that i'm talking to jeff jeff's persona i feel like i'm talking to you in the
a sense in a physical you like we've done like if
you were physically
on the the zoom recording
anyway i just think that that's uh again that speaks so much more about how good this is that
we're going to talk about everything else not vision pro and you're going to stay in in your
persona and
that's
just going to feel normal now yeah yeah okay to that end let's go to the ipad
quickly i thought this was an excellent story just kind of highlighting some of the things we talked
a lot about the iPad and iPadOS 26, but this is Matt from iPadProductivity.com, and I just
really enjoyed the fact that it's like some practical hands-on experience now with the
developer beta of iPadOS 26, which is answering some of the questions that I think we've had about
the windows. Can you have multiple background tasks? The answer is yes, and just the way that
some of this is working. I want to see more of this, and I think that we will over the next couple
of months.
One thing he notes, for example, is when you're using the new version of the iPad OS 26,
you can have multiple windows
just
like you can't be able to do in a computer for, you know,
decades. But he says the number of windows that you have is limited by your device. And what I
understand is it has to do with how much memory your
device has. Memory is
something that like,
if you go to buy an iPad, Apple advertises all the things that's unique about the iPad.
But one of the things they don't tell you, hey, it looks like my face froze, but hopefully it'll pick up in a second.
One of the things that they don't
tell you is how much memory it has, how much RAM you have.
And maybe in the future, Apple will start to reveal that because things that have more RAM, they can run more Windows at once.
Now, on my iPad,
I haven't tried
it out yet.
When I was trying with somebody else's iPad the other day, I mean, there were so many Windows that I lost count.
But there is a hard limit there.
And so
it's interesting
that you can get into it.
He also points out things that like even the settings app is you can change the size of any window, including the settings window, which is interesting.
Including the settings app.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also cool stuff.
Hey, I don't know why I'm so frozen.
This is
obviously.
I know.
We got to go back.
We just I was given so many compliments and gushing about the iVision Pro and now you frozen up.
But nothing has been happening since now.
Yeah.
But I think it's the fact that this is beta.
You know, this is total beta software and it's just going to mess up.
Okay.
Okay. Well, if you want
to stop and reconnect or something like that, let me know because I don't want to talk to a frozen Jeff persona.
I can hear you fine. So you're doing fine there. But if you want to reboot or something, go right ahead.
Yeah, I'll tell you what. Let me do that. I'm going to leave and come
back.
Okay. Okay.
Let's
see.
Okay, and we're back. And through the magic of audio editing, everybody will know. Actually, that was a quick reboot, by the way. I mean, you were just maybe off for maybe a minute at the very most, and now you're back and you're
moving again.
I didn't actually reboot. All I did was just end the Zoom call and join it again.
And then just rejoin.
And now, you know,
so we'll see if this happens again. But hey, it's a beta. This is what happens.
Well, we were going so well. Like you said, it's a beta. There's always things like this that can happen.
Okay, so quickly, let me just wrap up.
One of the things I wanted to mention from this iPad OS 26 article was 3D wallpaper effect, which we have had on the iPhone for a while.
I got to tell you, sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't on my lock screen just because I don't like things getting in the way of my widgets and things that I put on there.
But I never thought about having that 3D wallpaper effect on my iPad.
And this picture right here just looks so good, you know, kind of a small, silly thing.
But I just like the fact that that's coming to the iPad on there.
So lots of good things.
And again, we'll be talking about the iPad iOS 26, I think, a lot more as we get closer.
We're celebrating a birthday this week.
Happy birthday to podcasts.
All the
podcasts.
The idea of a podcast.
I saw this.
Several people were talking about this.
The Apple is celebrating 20 years of the podcast.
the podcasts at Apple are turning 20. Now, I'm not really sure what date that that Apple is using for
this, because, you know, going back from the history, I mean, there were people that were
recording what we call podcasts today. I think even before the iPod came out, it's just so funny that
podcasts really people have tried to say netcast or like short radio shows, short recordings,
but they become known as podcasts because people listen to all of these recordings on an iPod.
And they became a podcast, which is so ironic to me that, you know, it's almost like Kleenex.
Like we call Kleenex even if it's not from Kleenex, right?
Everything is a podcast even though they may not necessarily be listening to it on an iPod.
However, Apple is calculating these 20 years.
It is amazing.
We have had podcasts for over 20 years now.
Yeah.
I mean podcasts themselves started in the early 2000s.
I mean we had the iPod that came out.
And then someone came up with, I think it was Dave Wiener first came out with the idea of taking an RSS feed like you would have for a blog and
putting audio with it.
And because the podcasts were, you know, because the iPod was popular, they decided to call it podcasts.
And so, you know, there were podcasts and I was listening to, you know, a couple of them, but not very many in like 2003.
But then I think it was 2005.
And this is what Apple's counting the anniversary from.
Back then, everybody was using iTunes to put your music onto an iPod, and they gave you the ability to download podcasts on your computer, and then you would sync those over to your iPod, and then you would walk around, and instead of listening to music, you would listen to podcasts on your iPod, and that was 2005, I guess, this week.
And so that's what's been for 20 years now. And I mean, it's definitely true that like, although the idea existed before Apple put it in the iTunes store, it
was really,
I mean, Apple's the one that really put podcasts on the map. And, and,
and, and
they also came up with their podcast directory of all the podcasts because otherwise it was hard to find them. And they have
continued to update that through the years.
Nowadays, people use other things like I use Overcast and stuff like that, but people still consider the Apple podcast directory, sort of the, the, the gold standard.
I mean, that is
exactly if you're
not if you're not listed in the Apple podcast directory, you don't exist for most purposes.
So it's pretty cool that it's been 20 years. And I think it's funny now that I mean, I listen to podcasts all the time.
I mean, when I'm driving back and forth to work, when I'm doing stuff around the house, I mean, I love seeing information
through
podcasts.
I love recording podcasts. And so, you know, thank you to Dave Weiner and thanks to all the people.
And thank you to Apple for popularizing this way back when it's really cool. 20 years. Goodness.
They have these 20 podcasts we love, which are great.
I mean, I think today most people have heard about some of the major podcasts out there.
This American Life or The Daily or what is it called?
Who's your daddy or she's your daddy?
Whatever that
one is.
I've never
listened to that one.
Oh, call her daddy.
That's the big one.
So sorry.
I'm
sure
lots of people are yelling at us right now.
It's like, how can you not know that?
And then there's others on here just quickly.
It's, you know, when we do this on a weekly podcast, just real quick, it's just been amazing to me how people have used this medium to do almost like historical fiction or just even fiction podcast, right?
Where, you know, I don't know, just it's just an amazing way to see how this is how this medium has progressed on there.
And it's going to be amazing to see where it goes from there on
there.
Yeah, I mean, one of them that Apple lists is the serial podcast.
And I remember the serial podcast.
Yeah, that was so interesting.
I mean, it was so engaging.
It was a way to sort of really get into true crime and reinvestigating it.
It was, I mean, and there's so many copycat podcasts now, but a lot of them that they have listed here were just truly, truly revolutionary podcasts.
Now for something a little more serious, but I'm so glad you linked to this today.
This is from Glenn Fleischman at Six Colors, the afterlife of Apple accounts.
You know, this is something everybody has to think about.
What's going to happen to all of your stuff when you eventually pass away?
Now, for the most part, that's meant physical things, right?
And what happens when somebody passes away?
You deal with the physical things.
But what about all of your digital stuff that you have?
You know, I know you and I have talked about this at least tangentially for a while using
1Password.
I make sure that I have my wife has access to my 1Password so that she can get into any
accounts if somehow I'm not there or available
or eventually,
you know, something happens.
But I thought Glenn did a really good job here of doing a little bit more of a comprehensive
thing to think about, not just the Apple accounts, but, you know, your bank accounts and so much
today that is on a digital medium.
So I'll make sure we put this post in the show notes, but I'm just glad that you linked
to it today as well, Jeff.
The question that he answered was an interesting one.
And somebody saying, you know, why do I need to use, for example, Apple has this legacy
feature, legacy contact, so that you
can get someone else, someone
else has permission to
access your account. And he's like, well, why do I need to set that up? Because can't I just give,
for example, my spouse, my password. And then even after I die, you know, he or she could continue
to just use my password to
get into my account.
And they say, well, I mean, technically that might
work. But the problem is that some of these services, if for some reason they find out that
you have passed away, then they will say, I'm shutting down the account. Whereas
if you have
official permission to use it through a legacy account feature, Apple has this, many other
services have it too, then you know that you have permission and you're not going to have to deal
with that nonsense. And again, it's not just if you pass away. I mean, if your loved ones pass
away, if your
parents pass
away and you want to get access to their account, I know that after my
mom passed away, it was still important for me to have access to her email account because
somebody
might email her six months from now and you want to be able to respond and say, I'm so sorry to tell
that she passed. Or maybe it's even things like, you know, utilities at the house that I want to
keep them running for my dad because he still
lives there.
And yet the electric company is
sending the invoices to my mom's email address. You know, so there's things like that that you
need
to be able to access.
And the key is, you know, I am not an estate attorney, but I, as an
appellate attorney, one of the things I love about appellate law is cases will come into me and it's
something that I've never done before. And then suddenly you get really deep on it and you learn
about it. And I have actually right now and in the past, I have handled many estate related appeals
where somebody dies
and it's a will contest. And then there's all these questions about
what was the intent of the testator? Or, you know, is this an is this a real will or was the will not
done appropriately? And it's all of these trying to understand
what someone's
intent was, because
I think that's that's ultimately what the law is trying to do is, you know, respect the intent to
as long as it doesn't, you know, go against public policy, respect the intent of the person who's
passed away. But there's all these questions about what was their intent. And so that's why it's so
important, whether you're talking about the digital things like Glenn is talking about or anything
else, to have these conversations
while
people are still, you know, of sound mind and body so that
you can have it recorded, you can have everything
set up
because it just makes things easier.
And, you know, some people say, well, you know, if I'm dead, why do I care? Because I'm gone.
I guess you could be that way.
But I
like
knowing that my loved ones are not going to be troubled.
They're not going to have difficulties getting access to accounts or whatever it is.
They'll be able to get
access.
For example,
I have all the photos in our life are on my computer for me.
But if my kids wanted to get access to that, I just want to make sure that they're not going to be lost in the iCloud somewhere, that they can get access to them.
And so just thinking about things beforehand.
And then, of course, that's if you pass away.
You want to make sure the people around you, any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow.
So it's not the happiest topic, but it's just part of being responsible is to think about these things.
The good news is that I know at our law firm, we have attorneys that specialize in estate planning, and they are all over the stuff.
I mean, this is just –
if you're an estate
planning attorney, I think that it would be malpractice if you don't understand all these things
because you need to advise your clients.
It's not just what is the content of my will.
It's also what plans have you made to put appropriate things in lockboxes where you can get them and other people know where they access to that.
But also, also, how have I planned for my digital, you know, things?
So anyway, it's a great article by Glenn.
He says, I'm not an attorney, but he does a really good job of talking about the options.
He even cites the American Bar Association website.
They have some,
you know, FAQ advice.
So good things to think about here.
We should all think about this today while, you know, everything's happy.
And then should something happen, you'll be prepared.
It's one of those things that no one wants to talk about or take the time to talk about.
But it's one of those things that everyone should talk about
now while
you can just to make sure that you have it all planned out.
Great,
great article here.
And we'll link to that.
Let's do a quick where you at segment.
Where you at?
What a scary one.
But so thankful that this mother had the foresight to have an iPhone that could call SOS.
Here comes the article.
Apparently a mother and her teenage son were camping in the Algonquin Park.
Very remote place in Canada, it sounds like.
A tree sounds like it fell on their tent.
They were injured.
They couldn't get out.
But she, we don't know exactly.
You said you got some information on this, Jeff, that it was either from her iPhone or her Apple Watch that she was able to trigger the SOS signal.
And boy, if you read the story in here, it took them a while to get to there.
And like they had to clear branches and trees out of the way before they could bring in an airplane to be able to rescue them.
Pretty scary. But man, so amazing that she had this ability to call SOS when she did.
Yeah. In fact, let me begin by saying that if anyone listening to this podcast sees a story that you think we should talk about on the podcast or in my in the nose post
emails.
People do that all the time. I've never asked for it. But I guess I should say thank you.
I mean, everybody sees these
stories.
And so in this case, it's an attorney in Ontario who said that he was actually in the woods and he saw this huge thunderstorm.
And he noticed that through all of it, like his cell connection went on his iPhone.
But suddenly his
iPhone was showing
that he could communicate via satellite, which was interesting.
And so he was pretty close to where these folks were. So that's how he knew about the
story.
OK, OK.
To me, I got you.
This
is just one of the stories. But he said that from some of the other articles that he had seen,
they were
saying that I think it was an iPhone that she had.
and there was a the storm the huge huge storm caused a tree to fall on her and her son they're
in the middle of nowhere they need help thank goodness she was able to use the satellite feature
it sounds like to contact so you know authorities
and you
know get someone out there and the story
even says that like because the horrible weather in the remote location they had to wait for the
weather to die down to get a helicopter out there to get to them and so it's uh you know the good
thing is they were saved. And so now they live to tell the tale and you can talk about how great it
is.
But, you know,
in the early, you know, in the pre iPhone, pre satellite SOS emergency services,
you know, not to be morbid about it, but what
would you have on our prior topics,
sometimes
people die in these situations
and you're like, oh, well,
what a shame, you know, we just didn't
know where they were. So it's, it's wonderful to hear stories like this. And, you know, it just
reminds you, if you're going to go off-roading, I mean, Brett, you, you do hiking and stuff all
the time and i'm sure you're
off the grid you
know make sure you have you know either your iphone or
a garmin or something with you
because if
something really
bad ever happens you want to be able to call
for help your apple watch ultra something like that
that's right that's right good stuff and i'm
glad there was a happy ending to that story let's do an in the show segment uh apparently tis the
season a lot of new episodes new episodes new seasons are starting to come out and a new show
as well called Smoke.
I don't know that I've seen this one yet
or seen it advertised
too much, but it sounds interesting.
Have you seen
the Apple TV Plus limited
series
called Blackbird?
I don't think I have,
no.
It's really good. It's like 10 episodes
or something like that, and
it's a story
of somebody who is in prison.
In fact, there's two people, and they're trying to
figure out the story of some serial
killer, and they end up talking to another
serial killer because he sort of has insight on it, but it's
really well
done. I mean, it's,
the acting is superb.
I think it
won Emmys and stuff like that, or at least nominated for some,
it is truly excellent. So some of the people that made not only that, but also Tetris of all things,
which was sort of a silly movie, but it was fun. They have come up with this new series called
Smoke that came out today. It has to do with like a serial arsonist. So it's a drama,
as I understand it.
And the lead actor in it, what is his name?
Is the actor's name Taron?
I totally recognize his face, but yeah, it stars Taron
Egerton.
Taron Egerton.
I apologize
that like I don't know.
Maybe he was in Blackbird.
Actually, now that I'm thinking about what it is,
I think the director does it too.
But regardless, these are people that I've seen before
and it starts today.
So like if I have time tonight,
I might watch,
although I have so many shows I'm watching right now.
But if I find the time, I will start to watch this one
because, I mean, it looks like it could be pretty good.
Did I say this right?
It's inspired by a narrative podcast called Firebug.
I saw that, yeah.
How interesting now, 20 years.
I mean, we were just talking about the medium of podcasts.
And now apparently this pod, I never heard of Firebug as the podcast.
But if that podcast came out, that was the inspiration for this television series?
Wow, what kind of a full circle.
That's interesting.
An Apple TV Plus on there.
That's great.
So that's a new show that starts tonight.
But every week, Apple has something new on Apple TV+.
They're doing that all through 2025
and
maybe forever.
But next July starts in just a couple of days, which is hard to believe.
We're going to be in the second half of the calendar year, goodness gracious.
But we have all sorts of things coming that were linked in this article from Ryan Christofel at 9to5Mac,
such as Season 3 of Foundation,
which I'm really looking forward to.
It's a great sci-fi
show.
Season 4 of Acapulco.
My wife has watched that show.
I have not, but I've heard it's really
good.
It's one of those shows
that if I had infinite time, I would go back and watch.
It's a comedy.
And then, of course, some of the other shows that started recently like Stick and The Buccaneers are going to continue to have new episodes.
So there will be lots of stuff to watch on Apple
TV+.
Okay.
Lots of good stuff.
Very good.
All right.
Last but not least, if you are a person, an entrepreneur in search of some inspiration,
Maybe you might want to go and purchase the apple farm that apparently Steve Jobs worked at at some point in his life.
And the story goes, this is what inspired him to name this company Apple.
The story is coming up here, but this is an apple orchard in Oregon.
Is that right?
So I guess if you want to go and get some inspiration, this could be something to invest in.
As I understand the story, and I've read it many times over the years in different tellings, there was this farm up in Oregon that in the 1970s, somebody created a commune on it.
And, you know, Steve Jobs in the 1970s, I mean, living in a commune, that was totally
his
thing.
And so he was on the commune. And in fact, I actually think that his daughter, Lisa, who the Lisa computer was named after, I think his daughter, Lisa, was actually born on this farm.
But
anyway,
he he was on this farm and he was picking apples and other things.
And so when he was trying to come up with the name of Apple.
Now, there's two versions of the story, though, because I've heard Steve Jobs used to say that he called Apple Apple because of the apples he picked.
But I've also heard other people say that the actual real reason that he picked the name was that he is a huge he was a huge fan of the Beatles.
And the Beatles record album was
called Apple
Records.
And so
he thought, I
love Apple Records so much.
I'll call this Apple Computer.
And then, of course, the Beatles were not happy about that.
And it resulted in a
huge
number of lawsuits.
We've told these
stories over the years.
There were like three different
lawsuits in the 1980s by Apple that eventually all settled.
And now Apple Computer, which is now just called Apple, has settled all those rights between Apple records.
But anyway, one of the reasons, whether it's the true one or not, that Apple is called Apple was because of this particular farm.
And you could now buy it for just five million ducks.
I'll have to look in my Apple Wallet app and see how much Apple cash I have in there.
I don't think I'm up to five million yet.
But
we'll see.
Getting close.
That's great.
Getting
close.
In the know.
In the know.
I saw actually, you actually put a tip in before I did today, Jeff, and that inspired me.
But I'm going to go this route.
Let's talk about checking out digital books on your iPhone or your iPad.
Okay.
If you have heard about this before, then you have certainly heard about the Libby app.
L-I-B-B-Y.
Libby,
I think, has been great. I've seen it kind of go through several iterations of
this. So you can go into Libby, you can put in your library card number. So if you go
get
a card
from your local library, you can put that in. And it has been amazing, at least to me, like I remember
when I started this, it was a local county library that was closer to us, Jeff. But since then,
And this library will collaborate with bigger libraries and even not just on a state level, but at a national level as well.
And it's just been amazing to me how I've been able to access things that I wouldn't have been able to do from a physical standpoint just several years ago.
Anyway, the Libby app is fantastic.
I believe it's free.
You can still download it.
Everyone should have it.
If you have a library account or a library card, you should have Libby because you can go and you can check out books through the Libby app.
And it's amazing how it works.
Now, once you check that digital book out, you can actually read it in the Libby app.
And the Libby app is perfectly fine if people are familiar with that and that's all that they need.
But since I started reading digital books in the Kindle app a long time ago, Jeff, I'm just a little bit more familiar with the Kindle app interface, right?
And so I don't know when Libby and Kindle teamed up on how to do this, but the only way that I do it now is I will go to Libby, I will rent a book, borrow a book from my local library, a digital book.
But instead of reading it in the Libby app, I will say, I want to open this digital rented borrowed book in my Kindle app.
And it immediately jumps into the Kindle app.
And somehow they've got it to where Amazon will track your borrowing so you don't have to let go and check it back in or anything else like that.
It'll expire after a while.
But I just like it because in my Kindle app, I've got my digital bookshelf of all the books that I've read so I can jump back and forth.
But they're all available in that one location.
I feel like it's more of a personal preference other than the fact that you can access even your Kindle purchase digital books along with my borrowed library books.
in the Kindle app. But again, it's personal preference because I just like the way that I
can highlight and track several things and do some searches. And I just like the interface a little
bit better in Kindle, probably because I'm just more familiar with it. But I do find that there
are a few additional options in the Kindle app that you don't have in the Libby app. And I just
really appreciate the fact that Libby and Amazon slash Kindle allow you to do this. And again,
like I said, I don't even have to worry about it once the borrow time is over. It just, it's,
It notifies me in the Kindle app, so I don't have to go and check it in or go back to the Libby app.
Anyway, just a great way.
It's very easy to do.
So once you rent your book or borrow your book in the Libby app, you can just go into the book, and then you can say, I want to tap read with, and then you say the Kindle app, and it just automatically opens the Kindle app.
And you can do this again both on your iPhone or your iPad as well.
That's my tip today.
Brett, when you enjoy books, do you typically read like on a Kindle or do you listen like an audiobook?
What's your preference?
I, you know, it all depends.
I mean, I love audiobooks, but sometimes I just really appreciate being able to, you know, sit there and read it in my hand.
So I don't know.
To me, it sort of depends.
Sometimes there's books that I do enjoy a little bit more on the audio side.
But most of the time I find I am going to read the actual text on a screen and I'll go to the Kindle app.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I used to love to read.
I was just such an avid reader when I was younger.
Nowadays, like read with my eyes.
Nowadays, I can't – it's been a very long time.
Well, I guess I read some short stories.
You know, I recently finished a series of books that were by Dan Morin who we've talked about before because he writes for
Six Colors.
And he has a great sci-fi series.
He's got like seven books in his Galactic Cold War series.
But then there's also these short stories.
And the short stories are only available like is a digital book that you would read with your eyes.
And so I did download those as I was going through over the last year and a half.
I was reading his stuff.
But with that exception, most of the time that I listen to books nowadays, it's audio books.
I started doing this years ago.
And I just part of it's because I'm so busy.
Like if I'm going to have I rarely have downtime to sit and read a book.
But I often have time to listen, much like I listen to podcasts all the time.
So I
find that I tend to do
audio books more than books.
But anyway, to get back to the library and stuff, the Libby app is fantastic because the Libby
app, you can download
printed books that you would read in an app.
Like you just said,
I
didn't know you could do Kindle.
I'm glad that you told me that.
Either Kindle or the Libby app.
Or you can also get audio books.
And I've done that before,
too.
And, you know, the only downside when you get a book from your library, like I know that I'm – so I opened up the Libby app while you were talking about it.
And it tells me in the top right corner that I'm a member of the New Orleans Public Library.
And I just love that you can get free books. It's fantastic. When I was listening to those
Dan Morn books, I
got some of them for free, but I got the audiobook versions of them and it was
great. Now, the only problem with audiobooks or any book that you get from a library is you have
a limited amount of time. And I don't know if it varies from library to library. For the New Orleans
Public Library, I think you get like two or three weeks and you can renew it only if nobody else is
waiting in line. And
so right now,
for example, there's a book that I started reading about a
week ago, and it leads to my pick of the week. I almost exclusively listen to audiobooks that are
fiction stories because I just love hearing a good story, especially when you have a good audiobook
narrator that they sort of change their voice
for different characters. Oh, it really makes it come
alive. It's fantastic. But for the first time in a long while, I'm actually listening to a
nonfiction book. It's called, I don't know if you've heard of it because it's getting some
press in the Apple News right now. It's called Apple in China by Patrick McGee.
Oh, yes. I have
it. Yes.
Oh my goodness. It is. This should
also be my favorite book. It's so fantastic.
I'm only
about a third through the book right now, but you know, his premise is he talks about how Apple has
come to rely upon China to do so much of its production of the iPhone and everything else.
And how on the one hand, that's been so important because, because of the efficiencies that are only
available in China, it's the reason that Apple can, can charge what it charges for an iPhone.
because otherwise they'd be much more expensive.
So, but the
problem is,
and as I know I'm going to get to near the end of the book,
you know, when you rely upon one country that much,
it means that you're sort of, you know,
subject to their whims.
And so I'm still in the part of the book.
So it sort of retells the history of Apple
starting, you know, really in the 80s and 90s,
but then it has a lot more in the 2000s.
It is so well researched.
It has so many
fantastic
stories.
Oh, great.
Including stories that I had never heard of before.
And I read Apple stuff
I've been paying attention to Apple for decades.
So it's just, it's these fascinating, you know, for example, right now I'm reading about how he's talking about when Apple first created the store in Shanghai, China, and how there was so much demand for iPhones in China because it was sort of like a prestige
device that you even have
an iPhone.
That like almost all of their sales were not to like a regular person coming in to buy an iPhone.
They were mostly like these, I mean, they were really like mobsters that would get people and say, you know, that were unemployed or weren't making much money.
They'd say, go get in line.
Here's some cash.
Buy two phones, which is the limit per person.
Give it to me.
And then I'm going to resell it in some other part of the country for much more money.
And they
make a little bit of money.
And like these people, it's all in there causing problems.
At one point, there was like a mob because people wanted to get their books and they broke the glass in the front.
Oh, it's all these great stories.
So anyway, it's a really good book and I'm totally enjoying it.
I noticed that in the Libby app, you're showing it in the Libby app.
You're still on Shimon Shuster.
But at least from
my New Orleans Public
Library, it is here in Libby.
So I could have checked it out from the library
except for the fact that,
number one, it's only the print version, not the audio version, in my New Orleans
library.
And number two, I see that the New Orleans library owns two digital copies, and both of them are rented right now.
And there are six people that have holds.
So that means five people.
Actually, I didn't put one on yet.
So six
people in front of me.
So I would have to wait in line to get the book.
And then when I get it, I have to read it quickly because it would be gone in a couple of weeks.
So anyway, I did purchase the book through Audible and I was listening to it, you know, last week when we did our podcast, I was in Florida and a meeting and I was listening to it in the plane on the way there and back.
And one of the problems is on my flight home, Brett, it was Sunday morning.
I think my plane left at like seven in the morning, which meant that I was up super early to get to the airport.
Right. Oh, yeah.
So you can imagine
what happens.
I'm on the plane from Florida to Atlanta and then Atlanta to New Orleans.
And I'm sitting there in my chair.
I'm listening to audio book.
And of course I start to doze off, you know, because that's just inevitable.
And so then I wake up and I'm like, oh, wait, I want to hear this story.
Like
I'm listening
to this.
So like how
far do I have
to go?
And I'm like, you know, hitting back and back.
And I'm like, where was I?
It was like, oh, it was frustrating to lose my place because I didn't want to miss the book because I was really enjoying it.
Sure.
Although this is not a knock on the book.
Patrick McGee did not put me to sleep.
That was just me being tired early
on the plane.
So
I was
telling my wife
about this when I got home, and she said, oh, no, there's an easy solution to that, which I totally did not know.
So if you're in – and this is my real tip of the week.
It's not the book.
Oh, okay.
Okay, good.
My
tip of the week is that when you're using the Audible app, which I am opening up right now.
So if you're listening to a podcast in the Audible app, there is a link.
It's very obvious.
I just never looked at it before.
Right in the bottom.
The bottom right, it says plus sign, and then it's got the word clip, C-L-I-P.
And if you tap that, it will do two things. First of all, it will make a clip, which by default is 30 seconds long, but you can adjust that to be up to 44 seconds or down to five seconds. And so like if there is like a little, like if there is a 10 second audio clip of the book that you really, really like, and you might want to just go back and listen to that in
the future, you can
create a clip and you can save it. And so you can listen to the future. That's, I guess that's useful.
That's interesting.
But what I really like is at the same time that it creates the clip, it also creates a bookmark.
And you can even, when you create the bookmark in the clip, there's a note field.
So I can type something if I want.
And so my wife said,
and this is a great suggestion,
you're on the plane, you're getting ready.
So like I'm listening to my book and I'm sitting down before, like as the plane's taken off,
if I think that I might possibly fall asleep by mistake, I can just create a bookmark and call it like, you know, take off or whatever.
And
then if I do find that I fell asleep and the book just kept playing or something like that, I can just so
easily go back
to the bookmark and go right from that point and maybe fast forward, you know, a couple minutes to the point.
And again, there's nothing revolutionary about a bookmark feature.
I mean, physical bookmarks have been around for years.
It just never even
occurred to me
that this was in the Audible app until my wife told me.
And so, like, I'm so thrilled to know about it.
So now the next time I listen to a book, if I think that I might fall asleep or if I think I might get distracted, sometimes it happens that like I'll get totally distracted with something else.
And then five minutes have passed.
If you think that might happen, you can make a bookmark.
So anyway, it was a great tip that I give my wife credit to.
Thank you for telling me.
And I'm now sharing it with you.
Create bookmarks in the Audible app.
Great feature.
Well, since you asked me earlier if I listen to audio books, and I don't as much, but you know this would be so amazing to have for podcasts, bringing that around.
Because I do the same thing.
I listen to podcasts a lot of times if I'm in the air flying, but inevitably I will doze off for a little bit.
And I'm like, oh, no.
And I woke up and they've already gone for 10 or 20 minutes.
And I'm like, I want to go back.
And I have to scrub back and forth.
I wonder, is there something like that in Overcast?
I don't know.
They should.
I have to look and see.
I was just looking that up right now.
But I will tell you this.
You're showing on the
screen the help screen for Audible.
And the Audible app, you can actually listen to podcasts in the Audible app.
And
they tell you in
this little help screen that if you want to do a podcast, you can't do the clips feature in Audible for a podcast.
Okay.
But you can
do the
bookmark feature.
Bookmark.
So if you're using Audible, which has never even occurred to me to use the Audible app to listen to podcasts.
I mean, I'm opening up Overcast right now, and I am not seeing a bookmarked feature.
Yeah, I don't know that he's seeing a bookmarked feature.
Yeah.
Now, he has something similar that came not
too long ago in an update to the Overcast app.
Every once in a while, you might listen to a podcast, and by mistake, you might change your playpoint to move forward or backwards.
And you're like, oh, I
didn't mean to jump
three minutes ahead.
He has something.
Marco Arman created this feature that it just pops up on the screen for
like 30 seconds and
says,
Do you want to jump back to where you were before?
Jump
back,
right.
And I've totally used that feature many times.
And so
that's very useful.
Same, same.
But that's not going to help me
if I'm listening to a podcast
and I fall
asleep on the plane.
And the next thing I know, it's 45 minutes later.
So
I don't know if he has a
podcast feature.
I'll have to look about that.
That's something to research.
Well, okay.
Anyway, that's just something interesting.
But what a great tip, even for Audible.
I haven't used the Audible app very much.
I know a lot of people are very, very passionate about it, which is great.
But that's a great tip to have the managed clips and bookmarks on there.
okay well thank you jeff persona for being here today and floating around on the screen i mean
honestly you could probably just start doing it this way every time jeff if it's very natural
did what i mean truly and honestly it looks it's looked good enough that it's like i don't really
tell that much of a difference unless i scrutinize it but just because i think the audio was so good
and the persona is way good enough,
it's like it feels natural on this.
Anyway, you can pick and choose which one next time.
Now
I've just got to get my own Vision Pro
so I can do this.
I know that my audio, because I'm using my AirPods,
it's not quite the same quality as when I'm connected to my computer
using my really nice microphone.
But,
I mean, it's
close enough.
And certainly for an audio recording,
if you're listening to this podcast, I
apologize.
The audio quality is not as pristine as it might normally be.
But for just a normal conversation using Zoom,
FaceTime,
Microsoft Teams. It's great. And
I love the fact that as I'm talking to you, Brett, if I was talking
to him on the computer, you know, I have a 27 inch monitor and that's fine. But like right now I have
this huge screen. So like I have this big, beautiful view of the, of your, you're sharing your screen
and I can see you. I mean, everything's big and I've got
other windows next to
me. I've got our,
my messages app right over here. My clock's on the wall. Everything is around me. It's really
enjoyable. And I know that when we first started, like if I first started talking to somebody,
they're going to be like, oh, you look weird because it's a persona.
But you totally get used to it.
When I've talked to other
people in the same way,
when they're using vision pros,
like after a few minutes,
you just forget about it.
And then you're just talking to the person.
And that just says something about the technology,
that it's good enough that, and it's just going
to get better over time.
But even right now, it's good enough to just be fine.
It's just fine, which is great.
Well, we'll talk with either the real Jeff or the persona Jeff next week.
Always fun talking with you, Jeff.
We'll talk with you next week.
Thanks, Brett. Bye-bye, everybody.