Welcome to In the News for September 5, 2025.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett.

Jeff, we are just a few days away from a huge announcement on Tuesday, September 9th.

I can't wait until next Friday, to be honest with you,

even though I know you and I are going to talk probably several times between now and then

because of the Apple announcement happening on September 9th.

September 9th. But before we get to that, I just want to highlight a beautiful post that you did

today or this week. It was just a couple of days ago. That was something that I think we've

mentioned before on some of the podcasts every year. There is something that I've listened to

for many, many years now. So it's kind of special to me. This is the Relay Podcast Network, where

several other great technology podcasts are hosted. And every year you can maybe tell a little bit of

But they do a marathon or a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

And that in itself is amazing.

I've donated in the past.

I know that you do because you're very open about it.

It is a wonderful thing to donate.

But I was so I smiled so big this week because you put an extra additional incentive.

if people donated what?

I think it was, you put it at $100,

that they could get the one and only coveted

iPhone JD micro cleaning cloth,

which I'm holding up mine right now

because I still use it every day,

just like you said that you do.

I remember receiving this at an ABA tech show.

I mean, it had to be 12 years ago,

something like that, Jeff.

It was a long time ago.

Anyway, thanks for posting this

and raising a little bit of awareness

and even donating your last few remaining micro cleaning cloths.

And these were like cool before there was even micro cloths, Jeff.

Like this was the first one that I even knew about.

And I was so happy to see that you posted about it this week.

There you go.

Well, first of all, thank you for starting the podcast with this

because you always pick our lineup.

And this is a great one to start with.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

That's been true for a very long time.

And, you know, of all the things that you're going to want to, you know,

nobody likes cancer.

And I mean, the worst possible cancer is cancer in kids.

I mean, this is a no-brainer of a cause.

Everybody's in favor of it, especially because it's done so much good.

I mean, ever since St. Jude was founded by Danny Thomas, the famous actor, you know,

father of Marlo Thomas and stuff, that, you know, when he founded it, you know, they have

the statistics that childhood cancer was basically a complete death sentence.

And since then, with all the advancements that have been made through science, now, you know,

they can do so many kids do great afterwards, you know.

And so it's just a fundamental change.

And St. Jude is one of many organizations.

They treat kids that are there in Memphis, but they also do research and share it throughout

the world and help everybody.

So, I mean, gosh, not to be political, but especially this day and age when people are

attacking science at the highest level of U.S. government, why not be a part of helping

science to help people, to help kids?

I mean, it's just a no-brainer.

So Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, something we should all worry about.

And months ago, years ago, excuse me, the Relay Network of Podcasts, which we're not a part

of, but they started saying, well, you know, let's raise money for it. And for the first few years,

they did it themselves and they had great results. And then, um, years ago they said, well, you know,

we're going to branch it out. And so anyone can be a part of it. So I'm like, okay, I'll make

iPhone JD a part of it. And so the idea is like have everybody, you know, if you've got your little,

you know, website about football teams, you can raise money through your group. And for us,

the people that, that listen to this podcast or read iPhone JD. And when that's awesome is that

when people come together, I mean, if you want to give hundreds of dollars, that's great,

but you want to give 25 bucks, that's fine too. You know, if everybody gives a little of something,

it really adds up. And I know that that sounds trite because people say that all the time,

but I was amazed that this effort has now raised over like $4 million over the years,

just from a bunch of people that have an interest in technology, just everybody giving a little

something. I mean, we're talking about real research that this can fund real helping kids.

So it's a no brainer of a cause.

So to encourage people to give money, they have these incentives and St. Jude provides incentives too.

I mean, if you give a certain amount of money, they say you can go towards, you know, having a party for kids.

You know, that makes you feel good about that.

Or if through the relay network, you can say, well, you know, if I give a certain amount of money, I want to get like a free screensaver that's put together.

And those are always sort of fun and cute or stickers or something like that.

But they say, you know, come up with something of your own too.

And so what I did, I think, last year, and I'm doing it again, is way back when there used to be this company called Mobile Cloth, which is fantastic.

As you were just saying, I literally have one in front of my computer that I use just to clean my glasses, to clean my iPhone, and my iPad screen.

And so I had made a whole bunch of them because they had this program that you could brand them with your logo.

In fact, I have some with my old law firm logo on it too.

We now have a new logo.

But anyway, so I had some made with the iPhone JD logo.

You have a picture of it behind you.

And I had a bunch of them made.

I don't know how many I had, 200 or something like that.

And so I would give them out at conferences and stuff just to like, why not?

I don't have many of them left.

I wish I had more.

I really do.

I would love to make more.

I keep looking for, I mean, it's not like the technology of making a good micro cloth is not curing cancer, so to speak.

But I have yet to find another company that makes cloths that are so soft and so good.

And I get them all the time.

In fact, just the other day, I got a new pair of eyeglasses and I got like a little lens

cleaner still on my desk here.

It's not as good.

It's not as good.

It's not as good.

So these are good quality things.

It happens to have the iPhone JD logo on it.

There ain't many left of them.

I don't know how many I've got left.

Not many.

Not a lot left.

I found 10 of them.

So I said, I'm setting these 10 aside.

And so anyway, so if you decide to give 100 bucks, you can get one of those.

But don't do it for the lens cloth, although that's a good reason to do it.

Do it because you're helping kids and you're helping science and everything else.

So we just started this week.

And I put a goal of $1,000 in there.

Hopefully a bunch of people come together.

And I think last year-

Let's bust it.

People gave more than 1,000.

I ended up raising it even further.

But thank you for starting the podcast today.

I hope that everybody listens.

It's so easy.

Just like you click a button and you put in your credit card.

It takes like 15 seconds and you can give some money.

You can feel good.

Maybe get a lens cloth, all good.

Literally, this is one of the two cloths that I carry in my bag

just because it was so good.

But I fondly remember, however many years that was, we were at one of the Taster Tech Show dinners after the show, after one of the days of the show, Jeff.

And, I mean, I had known you maybe for a year or two, but I was always so impressed that I wanted to go and have dinner with you just because I know we could talk about iPhone stuff all the time.

And you had these, and I'm like, these are great.

And, again, today microcloths are just all over the place.

But as you point out, they're not as good in the quality, and this is why I kind of keep this one.

I've even put it in Washington a few times because I know that I've used it.

I've used it so much that it's like I know there's got to be some grime that's in there.

But this is one of the first ones that I remember having before all of the other microcloths.

Anyway, just a good thing.

And if that helps to give you a little bit more of an incentive to donate to a fantastic cause, I just wanted to make sure that we pointed that out today.

So thanks for posting about that, Jeff.

All right, so let's get back then to the Apple announcement, which is going to be happening in just a few days.

And I know we talked about this.

In fact, let me bring up the page here.

This is apple.com slash apple dash events.

So you can see the little glowing apple that I played with for like, what, 15 minutes last week where I was like moving my mouse around.

It's really fun that you can go in and you can play with that.

This is September 9th, that's next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, 1 p.m. Eastern Time.

And we were talking about this Apple logo because every year when Apple has these events, they come out with some kind of a cryptic looking but oh so very cool logo for that particular event.

And I'm so happy that you found this story from this week, a brief history of the iPhone event, every keynote invitation, and the secrets they revealed.

This was so fun to walk through.

I love it.

You know, people talk about criminology, you know, trying to read things from a picture and stuff.

And so Apple comes up with – it's a cute little logo.

Like, you know, now we have the glowing logo and a tagline.

And, of course, the tagline for next week is awe-dropping.

And so who knows what that means.

And so it was great to see, by the way, this post is fantastic, but it's not all of Apple's teasers because these are just teasers for the iPhone event.

You know, of course, they have iPad events and Mac events and stuff like that.

And so if you look historically, you know, over the years, many times the teaser slogan is just in retrospect, we can say, well, that was just something fun to say, you know.

But sometimes, sometimes, sometimes either the picture or the tagline is after the fact, you're like, oh, now I know what they were referring to.

It was sort of a tease.

It was sort of a preview.

And so in this post, there's tons of great ones in here.

But like I noticed, for example, well, first of all, this is not a tease, but the original iPhone introduction, which was not a special iPhone event.

It was when they still had the Mac World conferences.

It was the Mac World San Francisco in January of 2007.

A lot of people thought Apple was going to announce a smartphone.

We weren't sure. And then the tagline was the first 30 years were just the beginning. And,

you know, again, that doesn't necessarily tell you what's coming, but it just looks so forward

thinking because anyone who talks about the history of Apple nowadays, it really is, you know, yes,

the Mac was important and that's what put them on the Mac after the Apple II, but it's pre-iPhone

and post-iPhone, right? I mean, you could, in a bigger picture, you might say the same thing about

the iPod because that was part of it. And you can even give credit to the iMac in the late 90s when

Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy. But the iPhone increased Apple's profitability, their

presence in the world. It's the device that everybody used. I mean, right now it's still

50% of their sales. And so it really, it's true that the first 30 years of Apple in the big

picture was just setting the stage for the iPhone Apple. So I thought that was good.

Another interesting that jumped out at me was in the year 2013.

That's when the slogan was brighten everyone's day.

And you're like, I remember that with some color with those circles.

But that was the year that they came out with the iPhone 5C, which was interesting because it was a lower end iPhone.

Right. I mean, they would eventually come up with the SE.

And nowadays they have the what is it?

The E model. But, you know, the idea of it's an iPhone that doesn't have the latest, greatest features.

So it's going to be cheaper, but it's going to be a little bit more mass appeal.

And the thing about the 5C was that the back of it was sort of like this, you know, plasticky

sort of thing that could be like a bright color.

I remember that my grandmother got one that was like a bright red.

I mean, it was very stunning looking.

And so you had some really cool pictures.

And so, yes, it did brighten everybody's day.

So in retrospect, we know what they were referring to.

Yeah, look at your show right there, that cool blue one and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, a couple of the colors.

Great, great, great colors.

One more I'll mention that was a little bit of a preview was in 2020.

They had the one that was high comma speed, you know, high speed or high speed.

And that was the one where the iPhone had 5G modems for the first time.

And so the idea is now the irony is, you know, we all know that 5G can be really fast.

Now, there's actually sometimes that the 4G LTE can be just as fast.

It depends.

But still, that was one that, you know, in retrospect, you're like, oh, I see what they were winking at.

You know, that's what they're referring to.

Many of them don't have it.

And for the one for next week, awe dropping, I think it's just because it's a cute phrase.

But so anyway, it's always cute.

You know, we have to speculate about things.

We've heard all the rumors.

I feel like we've heard so many rumors about next week that it almost makes me concerned that there's not going to be anything surprising.

There won't be surprised.

I know.

We want to be surprised.

You know, when Apple announces the super thin iPhone as perhaps as like a one more thing at the end, we're going to all be like, yeah, we knew this was common because of all the leaks.

So hopefully they will surprise us and there will be some fun things.

I will say just this is a personal note between you and me, Brad.

If anybody else wants to listen, that's fine.

But you and I often will sort of text each other during the iPhone announcements and stuff like that.

Oh, yeah.

I have, you know, most of my practice is an appellate lawyer.

I have a big appellate oral argument that starts right at 1 p.m. central on next Tuesday.

So I'll be getting ready for it.

So like as I'm getting ready for oral argument, it'll be going on.

It's a three judge panel, you know, and so I will be catching up afterwards.

You know, I will have the oral argument.

Hopefully it will go well.

I'll be talking to my client afterwards.

And then I'm going to be opening up my browser like, so what happened today?

So anyway, I'm sure I'll be watching the announcement that night.

But don't be texting me during the presentation, Brett, because I'll be giving my argument to the court.

I'm like, excuse me, Your Honor.

I'm looking at my Apple Watch.

Brett wanted to say, look at that.

Please don't do that.

But anyway.

Your Honor, this is all dropping.

We have to stop.

Can we ask for a recess, please?

We have very important.

Okay.

You know, it was so fun to go through this, and I'm so glad.

This was from Macworld.

I had to scroll all the way back up to see who wrote this up, which was Alex Blake.

That was so great. You know, that 2007, the image at the very top is Steve Jobs in 2007 showing.

And I so remember this, Jeff, that before we he actually revealed the actual device, the iPhone.

He's like, we have an iPod. It's a phone and the Internet, the iPod, phone, Internet.

He like repeated it three or four times and just got everybody hyped up.

And then he presented it. These are not. Yeah, are you getting it? Exactly.

There's one device, and we are calling it iPhone.

The best keynote presentation of Apple's history was that 2007 keynote.

All right.

We're not going to speculate too much more on what's going to be happening because, frankly, we already have.

But I thought this was another good, quick article in 9to5Mac about the favorite security or privacy features.

This is from Aaron Waculous, and I just thought it was good.

I feel like we have addressed a few of these before.

But again, I feel like we can't mention them enough because I am very excited to see a couple of these.

I feel like, oh, yeah, this is a no-brainer.

I can't wait.

And another one or two, I'm like, I got to see how this is going to act in the real world first.

Yeah, no, there's some good ones in here.

No, this is iOS 26.

So even if you don't buy a new iPhone, you will be able to take advantage of most, if not all of these.

Some of them are things that have been very obvious marquee features for added privacy.

I'll tell you the biggest one for me, Brett, call screen.

You have it in the screen too.

You were thinking the same thing.

Because ever since WWDC in June of this year, when Apple previewed that this was coming out,

every single time I get like a spam text message, I think to myself, oh, I cannot wait for iOS 26.

Because then this is not going to interrupt me.

It's going to be put away.

I cannot wait.

So that's one that we all know about.

But this post also mentioned a few that some of which I did not know about, or maybe I did and I forgot about.

Like one of them was called advanced fingerprinting.

And no, that's your thumb.

What we're talking about is Apple tries to protect you as you're using your iPhone or

iPad so that if a website tries to figure out who you are, they can't do so.

But websites, developers are clever.

It's the people that are trying to collect your privacy, your private information.

And so they will look at things like, you know, what, what model are you using?

What screen size are you using?

What, you know, what, what, what fonts do you have installed?

What plugins do you have installed?

And by looking at all those things, they can say piecing together all these things.

Hey, I think this is Brett Bernie.

And so they're pretty smart at that.

And so the newest versions of Safari is going to hide more of that stuff to make it harder for websites to know who you are.

So that that way, I mean, if you want to log into a website, that's your choice.

But if you don't, you should be able to decide, hey, I'm not necessarily telling you who I am.

So I sort of like that.

That's a cool one that's behind the screens, behind the scenes, rather.

Another one that's interesting is called wired accessories permission.

And what this refers to is if your phone is turned off, right, your phone's locked and you plug a cord into it.

Does whatever's plugged into your device, can it talk to your device?

Like it might be something you want because maybe you're plugging it into your home computer to like transfer like a really big video file to your iPhone or iPad.

But you'll be able to have, I think it's an option, but that it will, you can have the option that it will ask you, are you sure you want to share data with this device? Because it might be like, maybe you're in an airport or something like that. And you think you're just plugging your iPhone into charge and unbeknownst to you, some, you know, bad guy out there, some ne'er-do-well has had some device that's going to try to read information off your iPhone.

you know, there's all these devices that, you know, these, these hacking devices that connects,

you know, police departments sometimes use them that connect to an iPhone and try to read something

off. And so this is just going to be a way that you'll be able to have one more barrier. It's not

going to prevent everything, but it's one more thing of, are you sure that you actually want to

share this? And I presume, I don't know from this post, is it authenticated? Like maybe you have to

use face ID or your thumbprint or something like, but somehow you need to authenticate, you know,

oh yeah, it's okay. Even though my iPhone is locked, you can let this cord get information

from my phone. And so that's something that's like, it's not, it's not as obvious as the messages

screening that we were talking about, but in some circumstances it could lead to privacy. So every

year Apple tries to improve its privacy. These are some noticeable improvements that are coming soon.

I don't know if this is the same thing, but I usually see some form of a message like this.

when I plug my phone into an automobile, like a rental car. A lot of times I can connect Bluetooth,

but especially if I'm in a rental car, I don't want to add my phone as a Bluetooth phone in the car

just because I don't like to leave that. So I'll usually just use a regular cord, a physical cord.

And when I do that, usually the phone is locked and it'll say, you know, do you want to give

permission for this quote accessory to use the iPhone? And I always say yes, because most of the

time I do trust it. But I'm just was thinking about that when I read this story, like it would

be something similar. But again, you know, some people look at this and say, well, that's another

thing I got to tap. Okay. But what's the other, the balance of that is the security, right? It's

like, it's more security, maybe a little bit less convenience, but I'm glad that Apple usually errs

on this, at least to give you the ability to, um, uh, to do that important stuff. You know, back in

the day, at least, I always remembered when I got a friend on their phone or even a family member,

and we would get them then on Instagram. And they'd be like, oh, this is great. I've got it on my phone.

I'm going to go download the Instagram app on my iPad. And for how long, Jeff, have I had to say,

well, actually, there's not an Instagram app for the iPad. And you leaked to a story from John

Gruber Daring Fireball this past week, Instagram finally launches an iPad app. What are we, 14 years

late on this? 15 years, yeah. Incredible. Took them a little while to get around to that. You know,

you've been able to use the iPhone Instagram app on your iPad and just sort of blow it up,

which is not as good. You know, I was an Instagram user. I used Instagram a lot when it first came

out and it was just people sharing cool pictures. You know, I was into it. I'm not as big of an

Instagram user nowadays, but I know a lot of people are. My wife, for example, that's like

the number one way that she sort of finds out about things going on because she has such a great

curated list of everything from local stores to news sources and stuff. So like that is a big way

that she finds out what's going on in the world. For me, it used to be Twitter way back when,

before, you know, Twitter. Nowadays it's Mastodon, but Mastodon is not the same because I don't have

as many good news sources. Mastodon is pretty good for tech stuff, but not for like regular news.

A lot of people have their thing that they really use, whether it's for social communications or just for learning about things.

But Instagram is a big one for a lot of people.

I know that.

And so thank goodness you'll be able to use an iPad app.

I say thank goodness.

There's an asterisk on that because Instagram did not just come out with a version of the app that fits the iPad screen.

I mean, it does fit the iPad screen and it's adjustable and stuff, which is good.

but when you turn it on like the the home page default in the iphone is as people know is you

see posts from people that you know and then if you scroll down enough you know there are some ads

in there of course there are some promoted things and then eventually once you go through your new

posts they'll give you stuff but at least in its core you're basically seeing posts from people you

know like facebook or something right but in the ipad app the the home screen what you get when you

start is not that. It's their thing called Reels, which is sort of like their version of TikTok

where you see videos. And it's not just Reels or stories. It's not just videos from the people you

follow. It's videos from people that the algorithm thinks you might want to watch. So when I first

started the iPad app, I'm scrolling through and I'm like, I don't know who any of these people are.

Like, what am I, this is not Instagram. What is this? And then I realized, oh, that's what's going

on here. Now you can go to the tabs and you can switch over to the thing, the people that you

follow or whatever. And so you can get to that screen. But as far as I can tell, I'm opening it

up right now. Yeah, I just opened up the app again. And the home screen, I mean, I got something about

some Trump talking. I don't want to see Trump talking to Mark Zuckerberg on my screen. And so

I need to, which one of these things? Okay. So I clicked the one with the little people on it,

which is called following. And now I am seeing the Instagram that I know. And I see, you know,

my nephew posted something and I see something from my daughter's school. And so this is what

I expect to see. But you have to do something else to get to that screen, which is annoying.

And I've heard some people say, gosh, I hope Instagram doesn't change the iPhone app to do

the same thing. I mean, are they so jealous of TikTok success that they're going to try to

imitate it and lose what makes Instagram Instagram? I don't know. So anyway, so, you know, two steps

forward, one step back. Thank goodness we have an iPad app. Unfortunately, it's not what you

necessarily we're hoping for, but hey, 15 years later, we got something. I usually call it like

a native iPad app, right? Because I think you've always been able to go to Instagram.com in a

browser on your iPad, right? And you could have gone into that and you could have gone and look

at your Instagram. In fact, I think that's how I typically would have, would have done it just

because I'm not Instagram as much, but now it's something that runs natively on the iPad and, uh,

That's made for the iPad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's helpful.

Let's talk about another app from a dear friend of ours, David Sparks at MaxSparky.com.

We've known David for a long time, mainly because he used to be a practicing lawyer.

He stopped doing that or retired from that several years ago and now has his own productivity lab.

I think you're a member of his.

And I just have always enjoyed following him.

He has always just been a wonderful thinker, especially on the productivity side.

And he just recently this week launched his own app called The Know List.

And you have to read his blog post to really understand where this is coming from.

But if you know David a little bit, then this to me just falls right in line with what he would offer.

Well, first of all, I know David enough that when I first saw him say he made an iPhone app, I'm like, you did what?

I mean, I know you're not a lawyer anymore, but at least not a practicing lawyer.

But like now you're an app developer.

And in fact, there's an interesting story about that because although he knows a little bit about programming, he says that, you know, the new thing they talk about, the new thing the kids talk about is vibe coding, where you use AI to sort of help you write your app.

And he's like, you know, believe me, I wrote my app myself.

But he says, I use the AI to sort of give as a sparring partner to sort of say, well, how could I do this?

And they would say, well, maybe I'll do it this way.

And then you would try something.

How would you improve that?

And that's a good way to use AI.

I mean, frankly, as a lawyer, I use some AI services in my practice.

You know, I will write my brief.

Sure.

And then I'll say, well, you know, what can we do here?

And what improvements could I make?

And it's a good way to have like a sparring partner.

It's funny how he made it was interesting.

But the idea of the app, this is just so on brand for David.

He is so into personal productivity and maximizing your time and making sure that your time really

counts, you know, whether he's talking about scheduling apps or to do apps or whatever.

So this is almost the opposite of a to do app.

It's the not going to do it app.

And the idea is that people ask David, especially because he has some notoriety in the text field,

you know, people will say, would you do this?

Do you want to do this?

And, you know, often he says no.

And he thought, wouldn't it be interesting to track when I have said no?

Not as a negative thing, but just because that way in the future, his idea was if you

start to track it, then maybe, you know, months from now, when somebody asks you, would you

like to do something?

You're like, well, that would be interesting.

But then you take a look at other things that you've said no to over the last six months

And you're like, well, you know, this is, this would not be as interesting as there's

other things I've said no to.

And I'm really glad that I didn't, you know, fill up my schedule, bog myself down by saying,

no, there's other things.

So maybe I should sit in this one.

Or maybe you look at the other stuff and say, oh, wow, this is such a good opportunity,

better than the things I've said no to.

So it's a fascinating idea for the app.

I downloaded it.

I don't know how often I will use it because, but believe me, there have been times where

I have said no to things for a million different reasons.

You know, sometimes a client even asked me to do something and I'm like, you know, that's

It's not a good fit for me.

Yes, thank you for thinking of me, but no thank you.

And opportunities too.

Sometimes people ask me to speak at something.

And we all have things in our life that you could do it.

And if you had infinite time, it would be interesting to do it,

but you don't have infinite time.

And so you want to be appropriate with what you put your efforts towards.

So I think it's a really fascinating idea for an app.

Good luck to him.

It's a free app.

I don't think that there's any in-app purchases or anything like that.

So I don't think he's going to become a millionaire on this.

but um so check it out if you think that this might have a place in your life i will tell you

that for an app developed by a lawyer not a you know somebody who was a trained in computer science

i actually think it has a very clean look to it it's a nice interface so when i looked at it i'm

like yeah this looks like a good iphone app so um yeah so thank you bravo to david congratulations

on your first step like you i've said no to several things but i typically say no and then i move on

And I just forget about him. And I think that's what enamored me with about this. I haven't downloaded the app yet, Jeff, but just the fact that if I go back two or three months and say, oh, yeah, you know what?

I did say no to that speaking engagement. And now there's something better. And I think that that's sort of the idea that he was going for.

He says, you know, here's one of the things that I've learned through all the years of helping people be more productive.

The enemy of the essential is the good but not great. Every yes to something good is a no to something potentially better.

So the problem is when that shiny new opportunity presents itself, we've forgotten all the other shiny things that we've already said no to.

Thank you, David.

I appreciate that.

The no list.

We'll put a link in the show notes.

In fact, there's a phrase from Steve Jobs.

Let me see.

It's something like I'm not going to – okay.

There was a quote by Steve Jobs.

I think I just found it on the internet.

It's, I'm as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done.

Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.

And famously, when Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in the 90s, Apple had so many different products

and he was like, we need to simplify things.

You know, he had that grid of four items.

And of course, over time, they made more items.

But, you know, the idea is to really come up with great ideas.

It's not just coming up with great ideas.

It's saying no to things that might be pretty good, but they're not great.

And so there's even like a very much of an Apple connection to you get greatness by saying

no to certain things.

So anyway, throw that out there.

somebody else that's been writing some great stuff is glenn fleischman at six colors i'm so happy

that he has teamed up with jason uh and dan over there this was an interesting article but i thought

it was good that we could at least mention it here don't despair de pair so it's a great story in here

from a friend another uh great um uh journalist at lex friedman that's been around for a while

he bought some used airpods max i think off of amazon right and apparently the former owner

did not do what apple goes through and tells you to do to remove the device from your iCloud account

i think i may be oversimplifying just a little bit no you got i know when you get rid of a phone or

a mac or so they tell you go and unlink it from your iCloud account and apparently it didn't so

So Lex Friedman is now using these new to him used AirPods Max.

And every time apparently that he connects, there's a message on his phone that says, this person is tracking you or the original owner can track you, something along to that effect.

And so Glenn goes through and explains what he detailed to Lex on how to get rid of that.

And it was a very simple fix.

And I'm just glad that Glenn wrote about it, too.

And I mean, Glenn Fleischman is a fantastic writer.

He's always incredibly detailed Jeopardy champion, by the way.

Super smart guy.

But when he attacks a problem, I have respect for him because this is the way that I tend

to look at things.

You know, it's don't just give the narrow answer, like look at the big picture, put it

in context.

The background.

Ever since he started writing monthly articles for Six Colors, every one of them has just

been great.

And that's when this one too.

So yes, read the article and you'll find out how this problem was solved.

But in the process, Glenn sort of goes through how Find My works, how the tracking systems

work, all that sort of stuff. And so it's a great primer, lots of details here that I didn't quite

know about how the system works. So it's really nicely done. And this is even timely if we want

to tie it back next week, because one of the rumors, one of the rumors for next week is that

either next week or some point before Christmas this year, Apple is going to come out with new

AirTags. One of the rumors being is that they'll have like an even like a stronger version of the

ultra wideband tracking or whatever it is, or Bluetooth tracking. So the idea is that you could

be even further away from your air tag and still see it. And, or, um, you'll get even more precise

information for tracking it down. Like it's in my house, but where is it? I can't find my such and

such. And so this is not a bad time for any of us to be sort of reminding ourselves on how the find

my network works because there's a good chance on Tuesday, Apple may enhance it. So fantastic article,

really good. Yeah, good stuff. And it just, and it was as simple as I think he had likes go into

the find my app remove the airpods that he had already paired and then repaired them i mean i

really think that's pretty much all that he did but at least it cut off that previous relationship

with the former owner apparently is what it did and so obviously lex was pretty happy about that

that it fixed it there yeah good stuff another quick article we can just address quickly i don't

know how many people would be interested in Apple's numbers software. So in our world, Jeff, we talk

a lot or work a lot with Microsoft Office, right? So we have Word, we have PowerPoint, and we have

Excel. But some folks may not know Apple has Pages, they have Keynote, and they have Numbers,

which kind of correspond a little bit to the Microsoft Office on there. And I always tell people,

I always use Microsoft Word.

I rarely ever use Pages.

I will flip back and forth between PowerPoint and Keynote, and then I almost always use Numbers and never Microsoft Excel.

Now, that's just my little personal world.

So I was thrilled to see this little article in Apple Insider from William Gallagher about where Apple's Numbers software excels a little bit to Microsoft Excel or where Microsoft Excel is a bit better.

Honestly, you can't get away from Excel.

You've got to have Excel, I think, for any time that you need to open it.

But for me, most of the time, if I get what's also known as a CSV file, a comma separated

value, that's a version that can open up in Excel, but it looks so much better in Microsoft

Numbers.

So this was just a good, if you ever work with Numbers versus Microsoft Excel, this is

a fantastic article that I'll include in the show notes that you can read through.

Yeah.

If you always to compare sort of the big, you know, the big Microsoft apps and the Apple versions, the one where Apple I think is clearly better is Keynote versus PowerPoint.

I just prefer everything about Keynote versus PowerPoint.

Oh, I do too.

You know, even when I have to make PowerPoint presentations because I'm required to use it, I will make a Keynote presentation at the very end, export to PowerPoint.

So it's clearly better.

On the bottom end, you have Pages and Word.

Word in my mind is way, way better.

There are some times that I will use Apple's Pages app, mainly if I want to do some specific

placing of images on a page that might be a little bit easier designing, right?

That sometimes I prefer pages, but it's really rare for me.

It does happen, but it's pretty rare for me to use Pages over Word.

And then in the middle, you have Mail versus Outlook and you have Numbers versus Excel.

Because when it comes to spreadsheets, I mean, Microsoft Excel, that is what everybody uses,

especially if you're a hardcore, if you're an accountant or something, of course you

use Excel. I'm not. As a lawyer, I do use spreadsheets sometimes, not a lot, but absolutely

do use them for server things, sometimes to calculate things like judicial interest in a

tort lawsuit, or sometimes just to sort of organize things the way that you can organize things in

tables and rows. And I will sometimes use Excel. Excel is more powerful than numbers, but to be

honest, Brett, the features that Excel supports that numbers doesn't are features that are way

above my head anyway, you know, um, for the stuff I'm going to use, like adding and multiplication,

they both have that, you know, but, um, exactly. And, and, and summing things. Um, but when it

comes to design, although I know that there are people that are, that are really powerful with

Excel and they can do some cool designs with it. I just find it so much easier to have a design

that looks good in numbers. And so I will tell you, it's, it depends on the task, but I probably

use numbers a little bit more than Excel. And again, spreadsheets aren't a big part of my life,

but just because the end result looks a little bit better. And also I think it's a little bit

more approachable, but again, it's not uniform. So that's close. I mean, just to wrap things up

between mail and outlook, that's an interesting one because like, I'm so happy to the way that

the Apple mail app works on the iPhone and the iPad. But when it comes to a computer outlook,

and for me, it's not really a choice because I mostly use outlook on my PC where, you know,

my office computer where the Apple's Mails app is not an option. But Outlook has just so much

plug-in support and other things that it supports. But it's nice that we have these two big companies

in our lives that have competing versions. And back to this story, I think that William does a nice

good job of saying, here's where Excel is better. And it really is better in a lot of ways. But there

are ways that numbers is better too. And so it's useful to do it. So if spreadsheets are a part of

your life. And if you don't currently, if you just currently use Excel, take, take a look at numbers.

It's pretty good. Or if you just use numbers, you know, Excel's got some good stuff too.

Something you just mentioned that I want to highlight quickly is Apple's apps can open

the files from Microsoft. And so a lot of times to your point that you just said,

I'll create a keynote presentation, knowing that the people I'm sharing the presentation with

don't have a Mac, they have PowerPoint, but I'll still use keynote to create it. And then I'll do

file, save as, or export as a PowerPoint. And Jeff, it looks good. Like I'm always nervous

just because of our history, right? I'm like, well, the formatting is going to be off. And

sometimes there's a few little kinks in there, but for the most part, it looks great. And the same

way I might use numbers to you to modify or edit an Excel spreadsheet because I like numbers better,

but I will save it as an Excel spreadsheet to share it. Or on the flip side, if somebody sends

me a PowerPoint, I will right click on that on the Mac and I will say open with keynote. So

you can't go the other way. Like Microsoft doesn't open keynote presentations. It doesn't open pages

files, but you can, Apple, I thought, oh, he's always done a really good job of at least doing

that. And I think that comes from this, you know, back in the day when we had to be compatible on

some of the file formats and William Gallagher goes into that a little bit here on the cross

platform problems as well. So that's good stuff there. You link to an interesting little router

from Eero, E-E-R-O. You've reviewed Eero, is it Eero, Eero? The Wi-Fi mesh. Yeah, Wi-Fi routers.

But this is interesting. I've never seen this and I just wanted to highlight it just quickly.

The new Eero signal promises to keep you connected even during internet outages. And this is a big

deal for me, and it sounds like from your post today, you've experienced this sometimes, that

the power might be on, we might be fine, but for some reason, the internet goes out. And honestly,

Jeff, when that has happened in my house, what do we do? We just switch over to using our phone

hotspots. This Eero signal apparently has a SIM card inside the router so that it just automatically

switches over for you when your internet goes down. And I don't know how good this works. I just think

is a great idea. Yeah. And it's such a clever idea because the way it works is when you have

the Eero devices, you know, the device is plugged into like a power support, right? A power source.

And ideally you'll have multiple Eeros in your house to create the mesh network. So if I

understand correctly, you simply take one of those Eero devices, whichever one is like, it's closest

to get the best cell phone signal. And you take the power cord at the back of the device, you

unplug it from the Eero, you plug it into this thing called the Eero signal, and then the cord

goes from there back into the device. So it just goes in your network, right? So it's just one more

part there. So you'll have two devices next to each other, like you're showing in the picture here.

And then the Eero signal detects when your wifi drops. And if it detects it, it just automatically

starts using the built-in SIM card. There's a 4G version and there's a 5G version. And then it just

continues to provide your internet just using wireless, which, you know, depending upon the

type of internet connection it might not be as fast but right it's pretty fast i mean i can still

get at my house i can certainly get lg for uh lte you know that's at least 100 you know megs a second

whatever whatever the thing is so it's pretty good it may not be the gigabyte that i have with

cable modem so it's enough to keep going and it solves you know sometimes it'll be like a friday

night and my wife and i are watching the tv and there's nothing wrong with like you're just getting

to the exciting point of the show and then the internet drops you're like oh come on like and

you never know, am I down for one minute? Am I down for 20 minutes? It's just, and there's nothing

you can do about it. You can call it, try to call the cable company, but it's going to come back

whenever it comes back is the bottom line. But so with this, and again, so I think it's a, I think

it's a really nice idea. Now there's a cost because the device itself costs either a hundred or 200

bucks, depending on if you get the 4G or 5G version, and then you have to pay for a service.

And so one service they offered is a hundred bucks a year, and it gives you 10 gigs of data a year.

You know, I haven't done the math.

Like when I typically have my power outages of hopefully, you know, more than five or 10 or 20 minutes, you know, once a month or something like that.

You know, does that add up to more than 10 gigs over a year?

I don't know.

And then if you want to pay 200 bucks a year, then you get a service that has 100 gigabytes, not a year, but a month.

So that's like a huge increase.

I mean, that's 10 times as much, whatever, more than that.

So depending upon what solution.

But I mean, if you want to throw money at this problem, you know, a hundred bucks at front and a hundred bucks a year, you know, if it's worth you to have 200 bucks, you're not going to have those outages.

You're just going to continue to use the internet.

You probably won't even notice that it went down.

And then when the Wi-Fi, when the regular, you know, cable modem comes back on or whatever source you have for your internet, it'll come back on.

So I think it's clever.

Maybe there's been another device out there in the past that does the same thing, but I haven't seen one before.

So when I saw that this was just announced, I'm like, wow, this is intriguing, really.

Eero, Eero, they are Amazon.

Is that right?

Amazon purchased them years ago.

In fact, there's a whole other story that Apple looked at buying Eero way back when, and I so wish Apple had done so, but regardless.

So wish.

Yeah.

Well, we are very excited that next week we might hear about a brand new iPhone, but I thought this was good in the name of well-being and wellness, Jeff.

this was a good article from the New York Times hopefully I can get it to come up here here it is

and I think that you provided us a gift link I did as always everybody can open it even if you don't

subscribe yeah how to break free from your phone and you know we've seen some of these it's like

put the phone down you know no blue light before sleeping all that kind of stuff we hear about that

almost to the point where it's almost we ignore it um and many of us I feel like I think can

justify the fact that we need to have the phone with us. Maybe I'm just trying to have a cop out.

But I thought several of these were a very nice little quick hits on what other people have done

to find a way to put down the phone. So thank you for sharing this. Yeah, some of them were simple,

like the one you just scrolled by. Don't use your phone on Saturdays and Sundays. I mean, yeah, I

guess. Whatever. Good luck with that. But one of them I thought was a little clever is we all know

that social media is both good and a total time suck that rots your brain, right? We all know that.

But one person's suggestion was don't cut off social media, but limit yourself that you only

use Instagram or TikTok, whatever it is, only use it on a computer so that if you're in front of

your computer, you can use social media, but don't have the app on your iPhone or your iPad.

And so that way you're still using it, but not as much.

And so that's not a better section.

Another one was to delete.

They called it, I think, sort of, you know, delete some of these apps that just that just loved us to.

Well, actually, that was that one.

But, you know, I think another suggestion was, you know, get rid of some of those apps that just encourage you to, you know, to buy one more set of pills or one more set of whatever, you know, these games that are just sort of, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, we know they're fun to play, but they do sort of they're addictive.

So try to, so, you know, again, I personally use my iPhone all the time.

And when I first saw this article, I'm like, I'm not looking to use my iPhone less, but

then I read it anyway.

And I'm like, yeah, there's actually some things to keep in mind here on there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I like how we're going to transition to this story about Apple arcade.

So maybe delete some of those, those games that are going, but you know, to be, to be

fair, when Apple arcade was introduced, apparently six years ago, and I love how Jason, you

linked to a story here or Dan here, Dan Moore was talking about how it's almost like kind of

forgotten. I mean, like he says, I get it as part of my Apple one subscription. I rarely ever open

some of these Apple apps, but I did like the idea and I still do like the idea because I know that

when I get an app from Apple arcade, it has, I guess what I would, I would call been vetted

so that Jeff, I know I'm not going to get ridiculous ads. I'm not going to get, you know,

the video pop-ups in the middle of the game or something like that to, you know, to tempt me to

tap away somewhere else. And they're very good games. And I just like how Dan talked about the

fact that I don't know that many people are taking better advantage of it, including me.

Yeah. And I agree with you. You've hit that there's two good things about Apple Arcade. Number one

is that the games tend to be pretty good, you know, and sometimes they're not new games. Sometimes

it'll be a game that's already out there that you could pay for. And then Apple will tell the

developer, you know, hey, if you make this part of Apple Arcade, you know, take out all of the

in-app purchase things and it'll just be a part of the service. So the fact that they put it in here

means it's a good app. And then as I just alluded to, once when an app is on Apple Arcade, they will

never ask you to buy more coins, to pay for upgrades, to add on, you know, custom avatars.

It's just all included. And so, yes, it is five bucks a month. In the very beginning, I used to say,

because I'm not a huge game person.

And so I'm like, I would never pay five bucks a month for it,

but I like that it's part of Apple One.

I've now gotten to the point that, I don't know,

if for some reason it was on its own,

I might still pay for it

because there's a lot of interesting casual games.

Like I was mentioning in my post today,

there was one that came out this week called Jeopardy Daily,

which, you know, I'm not like a religious watcher of Jeopardy,

but I've certainly seen it over the years.

And, you know, the idea of trivia games is cute.

And it's a nicely done, you know,

you feel like you're playing Jeopardy.

Like there's a version of it that has like the category of the day and it'll be, you know, potent potables, whatever it is going to be.

And then like, it'll have like the 100, 200, 300.

And you go through and you can either have the hard version where you type in your answer, like it would be on the show.

Or you can have the easy version, which is what I did, where it's like a multiple choice.

And it's just a fun little, again, each game takes maybe a minute to play, two minutes to play.

But it's fun and I'm not paying extra for it.

And I know there's not going to be any pop-up ads or come-ons to pay more money.

And, you know, I will play the game and I think it's good.

The ones, two of them in there that I really like, I think they both come from the same

developer.

Good Sudoku and Flip Flop are both games that I sometimes play.

So, you know, if I'm going to play like a casual little game, I'm going to probably play

an Apple arcade game.

So, you know, and Dan criticizes Apple because we all know that especially on the Mac, Apple

has just not had the big marquee games.

Sometimes they will convince a publisher, you know, pay the publisher.

I don't know how they do it.

And you'll have some specific titles, but we all know that if you really are a hardcore gamer, you need to have like, you know, one of the PlayStation devices or a PC or something like that.

You just need to.

But there are certainly pretty good games.

So, you know, people can talk about and, you know, is it Apple's fault or is Apple so small on the computer side that developers don't want to pay attention to Apple?

It's a chicken egg thing as to who's at fault for not having better games on the Mac.

For me, they're good enough games on the Mac because I don't do a lot of games on the Mac.

But I do like games on the iPhone sometimes, and Apple Arcade is a good place to go.

And as you started to say, Brett, it's been six years.

I would not have guessed it's been six years since Apple Arcade came out.

Has Apple actually developed a game at all?

Or do they mostly just work with other game publishers in there?

They work with publishers.

And that was part of their shtick in the beginning is we are not going to make our own games

and compete with you.

We're going to support developers, sometimes independent developers, sometimes big houses.

Right.

And so, which is good.

Yeah.

So there's no, I don't think that there's anyone who works for Apple and who makes games.

I put an asterisk in that.

There actually have been over the years, one or two Apple game developers that have become

Apple employees.

And I think they've brought the apps in house, but that's, that's not really what Apple Arcade

is about.

Apple Arcade is just about finding good apps or creating good apps from scratch.

But we're going to pay developers to make something good or to port something good, and then we're going to release it as part of the service.

And I get all of that, and I support all of that.

But once upon a time, Apple didn't make television shows or movies either.

And so when I looked at this story, that was one of the things that hit me, Jeff.

It's like, you know, is there – I mean I know that Apple has talked about this and they've just decided it's maybe not worthwhile for the majority of reasons you're talking about because it is a different form of entertainment.

But Apple TV Plus has really gone very well and it just makes me sit there and wonder like there could be a talent pool that Apple could either have right now or acquire that could make some pretty good simple games, right, that could do something.

Anyway, just my thought.

I feel like if that could be something, because Apple TV, if you go on Apple TV+, they still provide movies and series from other places.

But obviously, their own homegrown content is coming on strong.

Anyway, just kind of a thought that I had on that, which would be good.

Let's do a quick in the vision, because we haven't talked about it in a long time.

This was a great little article from the Wall Street Journal you linked to about the Apple Vision Pro being used in some other niche business niches.

I think they specifically talked about doctors and – no, I'm sorry.

This was pilots and home improvement stores.

Am I right on that?

It was just kind of cool because I know we've talked about some of these places, and we talked about doctors.

That's why it was top of mind before.

But just the fact that it could be used in pilot training, airline pilot training, that could be pretty cool too.

The idea of the article was interesting, that it's perhaps too expensive for many consumers.

But in businesses where you can justify higher expenses, it makes more sense.

So I like the title of the article.

I agree with you when you read the substance of it, which as a reminder, even if you don't subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you can open it up.

Talking about Apple One, you can open it up in the Apple News Service, which is how I'm looking at it right now.

But the actual examples they use, you know, there's not a ton of them.

Like you said, they talked about the one about, you know, Lowe's has it.

And they have this French industrial software company that uses it and stuff.

There's not a ton of it.

I thought there'd be more interesting examples here.

But it is an interesting idea that like it does make sense that, you know, for business

uses, you can justify the cost more easily.

I so look forward to the day when I can say lawyers should really be using a Vision Pro

or future generations of it.

I did a whole session on this at Tech Show last year, as you know.

Yes, you did.

And although it's not quite there yet, I do think that all of the building blocks are there.

Like in the future, hopefully the near future, we're going to have a future generation of the Vision Pro that's going to work better for the things that lawyers need it.

It's going to be cheaper.

And I do think – there's no doubt in my mind it's coming.

I just don't know if it's coming in one year or 10 years.

But it's absolutely coming.

And it might be, maybe this Wall Street Journal article is correct, that it may be that there are some business areas where it really starts to take off and then it trickles down more to consumers.

We'll see.

Any Vision Pro announcements expected next week, Jeff?

No, I don't think so.

Have we seen anything?

I don't think so either.

You know, the rumors that they're going to come out with like a second, like a next generation Vision Pro that has a better processor in it, which is probably not even as much to improve the speed as it is that Apple just, you know, it's just cheaper for them to use one of their processors.

And so just the next version they make, and that may come out this year.

I don't know.

And then the other rumor, though, is that Apple wants to come out with like the cheaper version of the Vision Pro, maybe just called the Vision instead of the Vision Pro.

But all of the rumors say that that's still at least another year or two away.

So we'll see.

I got a new segment for you.

In the car.

In the car.

Let's talk about CarPlay.

We talked about that.

Thank you.

Ooh, that's good.

We'll have a little soundbite in there.

We talked about CarPlay, but also CarPlay Ultra, which heretofore has only been available on a very specific model of an Aston Martin and a very expensive model.

Which you went out and bought right away.

Am I right?

You know, I've got two, actually, since we talked a lot.

Two, of course, yeah.

So this was a great article about Hyundai, so not quite the same level as Aston Martin, coming out with their electric IONIQ cars that is actually going to have CarPlay Ultra in there.

And I like this is from BBC Top Gear, not typically a blog that you follow, Jeff, but I'm just guessing you saw the mention of Apple CarPlay Ultra in here.

And I'm glad that they put it in as one line because that is pretty interesting and just makes me happy that more car manufacturers are adopting CarPlay Ultra.

Yeah.

We haven't had the official announcement from Hyundai yet, but this article seems pretty certain.

And I don't think that Hyundai closes – they don't hold their secrets to their vest quite as much as a company like Apple does.

But the reason for this is apparently on Tuesday, September 9th, the same day that we're talking about the Apple announcement, there's also going to be a big annual car show that's in Munich, Germany.

And so a bunch of manufacturers will show some of their future automotive technology.

And so this article says that for sure, Hyundai is going to announce their new EV car.

And then I also link to another article from Zach Hall, 9to5Mac.

I think his is more speculation that there could be others that do so as well.

CarPlay Ultra is interesting because it does take over your dashboard in a way that I think is good.

I would want my CarPlay display to take over my entire dashboard for so many reasons.

I prefer the CarPlay interface, and that way as CarPlay improves throughout the year, my car gets better.

As opposed to right now when you buy a car, nothing changes in the navigation system or anything else.

So there's no way that it can improve over time.

So I like the idea of CarPlay Ultra, but apparently many manufacturers are leery of giving Apple the ability to control interfaces.

They're like, oh, no, we want to control our interface.

So that's a give and take.

so the the support for carplay ultra has been slow obviously i mean it was just it was just

announced earlier this year but i think it's going to be slow but over time there will be more there

will be more and um so it'll it will certainly be nice when you at least have a choice that's not

the aston martin nothing against the aston martin i'm sure it's a beautiful car not not one i am

will ever own in my life on the other hand will i ever own a hyundai uh what is it called the i uh

Ionic.

Ionic.

Maybe.

Maybe.

I mean, I do think my next car is going to be an EV car.

And maybe.

I used to own a Hyundai a long time ago.

And I was in – back when Hyundai first came out with their cars, the Hyundai XL, which was like our super cheap car that I could afford when I was a law student and had no money.

That was my car.

It was a Hyundai XL.

So I have been a Hyundai owner in the past.

I just like the fact that the fact – whether or not it has CarPlay Ultra may be a deciding factor for you because I know that it would be for me.

Absolutely.

I would look at that a little more seriously, even if it had a few more flaws, just because it actually offered CarPlay Ultra.

Let's end with In the Show, which is a quick one because I cannot wait.

I even told my wife already because we are excited and waiting, not just for September 9th next week,

but September 24th is when the fifth season of Slow Horses comes out.

And, oh boy, the trailer looks so good.

I'm glad you linked to it.

There's even, I told my wife, there's a Ted Lasso cameo.

Now, it's not Ted, but it's the Wonder Kid.

It's actually, right?

He's in it now.

And I mean, that's just great.

I like to see those streams kind of, you know, in my head kind of weirdly cross each other.

I love the show Slow Horses so much that I almost did not include this video today.

And the reason for that is that when sometimes when I totally love a show and I know I'm going to watch it, I don't even watch the trailer because I'm like, I don't want.

I know. I know.

And yet I was so at the same time, I'm so excited about the show that I couldn't help myself.

And so I figured I would link to it and let people decide whether they watch it or not, because I will tell you that when you watch it, I mean, you just gave a tiny one away.

But like there are definitely things in this trailer that I'm like, oh, OK, so that that tells me a little bit.

But then again, I have such confidence in this show being good that even if I even if I'm excited by some teaser previews, I have no doubt that the show is going to be great.

I mean, just looking at Gary Oldman's face, you know, on that throne, he is so fantastic in this role that I cannot wait.

So I love Slow Horses.

And for those of you out there that have never watched the show before, boy, do you have a treat.

Because there are four fantastic seasons to watch.

Each one of them is not that long, you know, not that many episodes.

And they're all great.

And I'm so excited.

It's funny you say that because when I told my wife this morning that's coming out, she's like, okay, well, that'll be a good, fun weekend.

Because she's like, there's only like eight shows.

And of course, you can't stop not watching the next one.

And because there's only so few of them, it's like we finished them in one weekend.

And that's almost disappointing, too.

Because I'm like, come on.

We need a little bit more.

In the know.

In the know.

My tip can be pretty quick because it's a great tip, but I wouldn't recommend really anybody do it.

How's that for selling it on there?

There you go.

But, you know, I was looking in my phone today, and most people probably know when there is an update available for your iPhone.

And this is going to next week when we anticipate that Apple will fully release for the public consumption iOS 26.

But if you go into your iPhone, you go into your settings, you go into general, there is actually a software update option there, right?

And if you've got an update, typically you'll see like a little red one badge or something there that tells you that there is an update.

But I noticed when I looked at mine, there's two lines when I go into that.

One says automatic updates.

You can turn that off and on.

And underneath mine, it says beta updates.

And right now I have it turned off.

But I looked at like my son's iPhone this morning, and he only has the first one, the automatic updates.

And I just wanted to find out why.

Now, I don't recommend that anybody get the public beta of iOS 26 yet.

I mean, if you've waited this long, you can wait another one or two weeks right now because we anticipate it'll be available next week anyway.

And even then, you may want to hold off on there.

But if you have an extra iPhone or even an extra iPad and you want to do this, this is a good way that you can go in.

We've talked about the fact that there is a public beta now in addition to the developer beta.

Most people listening to this are probably not developers, so you wouldn't be interested in that.

But the public beta means that it's good enough.

At least there's still maybe some things to work out.

But you can go in.

Here's a picture of what I was talking about, the automatic updates versus the beta updates.

If you want to actually try the beta update, if you do want to do this, don't recommend it necessarily.

You first have to actually go to, I think it's beta.apple.com, right?

It's this website.

And you actually have to use your iCloud account to log in and tell Apple you want to be part of the beta software program.

So this is kind of a two-step process on there.

You go in, and basically it links your iPhone to the beta software.

And then when you do that, you can then go into your general settings, the software update, and then you will see this option right here that iDownloadBlog here has.

You'll see beta updates, and then you can go in and you can pick if you want the – I think right now there's four of them.

There's the iOS 26 developer beta, and then there's a public beta, and then two others in there.

Don't totally recommend it, but I'm just saying for those of the folks that if you're interested right now

and you want to try a developer beta or even a public beta right now, that is how you would turn that on.

So it's kind of that two-step process.

Go in, sign up for the beta program at Apple.

That's beta.apple.com.

And then once you log in with your iCloud account, it will then be linked with your phone, and then you can have the option to download those betas.

Don't do it, but that's a good option.

It's one option, just in case you were wondering.

And I'm glad you're mentioning it now because if you have done it, keep in mind that we're going to have the final versions of iOS 26 probably in a week or so, right?

But one thing to keep in mind is that if you're on the beta train, so to speak, you stay on that train even after the big release comes out.

And so because, you know, we're going to have iOS 26.0, but you know there's going to be a 0.0, 0.1 and a 0.1 and all those sorts of things.

And so just make the decision, even if you used the like the only beta that I've been on is for my Apple Vision Pro this summer.

But you need to remind yourself, turn off beta updates once the final version comes out.

I mean, if you want to, at least think about if you want to do this, because like, I'm going to want to stay on the final solid shipping version of Apple Vision Pro OS 26 for a long time throughout the year.

I'm not going to want the beta updates, you know, for the next eight and nine months, whatever.

Now, next year when WWDC comes out and there's the new version, iOS 27 or whatever, then maybe I'll get on it again.

So just keep that in mind that, you know, you've just described, Brett, how you want to turn it on.

But then if you want to keep it on, like if you want to get the beta versions of the point one, the point two, great.

but otherwise you should turn, you know, don't forget to turn it off and go back.

Great point.

Yeah, because I didn't mention that.

When you go into the beta updates at the very top, the very first option is off.

So if you ever have turned beta updates on to your point and you're on that beta train

because you're always on it, this is also how you would go and turn that off so that

you wouldn't get those automatic updates.

Thanks, Jeff.

I'm glad that you clarified that.

My tip today is just sort of a simple one and it has to do with, I want to say,

HomeKit, Apple doesn't really use the word HomeKit as much anymore. They now just talk about the Home

app because not only does it support the HomeKit protocol, but also the Matter protocol, which one

day may all be the same. But regardless, the issue is when you have accessories in your smart home,

a light, a fan or whatever it is, when you come up with a name for it, you may be tempted to come up

with a name that's obvious. I'll give you an example. My living room has a fan. It will not

surprise you that the name of my living room is living room when it comes to the home app.

And the name of that fan is you guessed it fan. And that works. Okay. Because I can tell,

you know, you know, who turn on the living room fan and that works just fine. Right. But I have

found that sometimes for some lights, especially it doesn't actually work very well, or at least

it's hard to do. I'll give you an example in our bedroom. We have two lamps, you know, on,

on bed stands. And like, what do you call it? Is, is one, the left lamp or the right lamp or

lamp one, lamp two, you know, all those sorts of things. And so what I have found that is sometimes

for an accessory in home slash home kit slash matter, whatever, it works best if you come up

with something totally unique for those names. And I've mentioned some of these in the past,

but just in case you don't remember, like one that's, that worked really well for me years and

years ago is I put in like a little device to plug in my Christmas tree during Christmas season years

ago. And so I called that the tree, you know, makes sense. But then I no longer after Christmas

season ended, I started using that for some lamps, but that was just such a unique word. There was

nothing else in my house called tree when it comes to the home. And so we, my wife and I just said,

you know, turn my kids, you know, just turn on the tree. There's no tree there. It just turns on

some lamps, but we know that. And then it became even more confusing last year because we actually

did get a Christmas tree and another part of the house. And we plugged that into a smart connector

and we called that one Christmas.

So turn on Christmas would turn on the tree,

but turn on tree would not turn on tree.

But the point was that you wouldn't have a unique name.

And likewise, the lampstand bedroom,

I just, I decided, I don't know,

I want to call one of them,

you know, I was thinking of the Flintstones.

I called one Fred, you can guess that's on my side

and Wilma, that's on my wife's side of the room.

And so it just, but I just say, turn on Fred

and instantly it knows what light,

what accessory I'm turning about.

And I get much more accurate results

than saying, turn on the bedroom,

because then what bedroom are you talking about?

The kid's bedroom, my bedroom,

which lamp are you talking about?

And so when you're adding accessories,

no matter what they are to your smart home,

think about coming up with a clever, unique name.

Because if you do, usually if it's a really unique name,

it's gonna be easier to remember anyway.

So that's like an advantage of it.

Plus I find that S-I-R-I works a lot better

when you're telling it to turn things on

if you have a name that's really unique.

So that's my advice is come up with a unique name

for naming your home accessories.

And you just go into the home app

and when you tap on that accessory,

I'm assuming there's like a rename function or-

That's exactly how it works.

You just rename.

And I find that once you, if you do have to,

like if you come up with a clever name

from the beginning, you're golden.

But if you try to, if you change the name of something,

which I've done before, like I would have a name

and I realized, gosh, this is not working.

I'm telling you know who to turn it on

and it's turning on a different one.

You know, I got to come up with a better, more unique name.

You go in and you change it.

And then I've noticed that after you change it, sometimes you need to wait a few minutes

for it to sort of populate throughout your system.

You know, certainly by the next day, it'll all be done, maybe even by the next hour.

But you just give it a little time for everybody to talk to, understand that new name.

And then eventually it gets there.

Man, this is a long show and we haven't even had an Apple announcement.

How crazy is it going to be next week?

But it's going to be fun.

I'm excited and I'm glad we are going to cover a lot of this stuff because I know next week we're pretty much going to be talking about the apple of him, even though you're going to have to miss some of it.

Those poor judges.

I wish they would just understand how important that this is going to be.

But good luck on your hearing.

Thank you.

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

Thanks as always.

Thanks, Brad.

Bye-bye, everybody.