Welcome to In the News for December 19, 2025.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Happy holidays, Brett.

Hope you're enjoying the season.

Happy holidays.

I know.

It's coming up quick.

So we're recording this on the 19th.

Next Friday will be the 26th.

We're going to take off for fairly obvious reasons.

But we will be back on the second, which is 2026, for crying out loud.

Oh, my goodness. Wow. Not only the holidays, but it's like it's coming up with a new year.

But wow. But Apple wanted to make sure they got in an update before the end of the year.

You reported on several stories that 26 iOS 26.2 was came out and is released.

I just looked at my phone. I'm not quite updated yet.

So I'll probably do that after the show today. Not huge, but some significant updates that happened this week.

Yeah. So I was a little surprised. We knew that 26.2 was coming out at some point because it's a beta. In fact, as we're speaking right now, there is a very early beta of 26.3. So I mean, Apple's always working on the next thing. So we knew there was going to be one. What surprised me is that Apple tends to release updates like this on Monday, Tuesday, sort of in the early part of the week. I don't know why. That's just what they typically do.

And right after we recorded last week, last Friday, they released 26.2.

And I'm like, that's a little interesting to release it on a Friday.

And I think the reason for that is because the second story we're going to talk to in security updates.

But let's talk about the new features first.

You know, it's just a point, you know, one update.

So obviously nothing major.

But there's a lot of stuff that packed up in here.

And you really get the sense that there's a lot of features that maybe Apple was thinking about over the summer,

but they knew we're not going to be ready, you know, at the get go with 26 or 26.1.

And so now they're starting to get around to it.

And then there's also things that are just like, you know, improving around the edges,

fixing little things, you know, everything from like little liquid gas updates that you

can control things about how liquid it is.

If you're having some visibility issues, I mentioned that Julie Clover of Mac Rumors

talks about the, um, the reminders app has an option to have an alarm go off.

So when you get in a reminder, it's not just an alert, it's actually sort of an alarm type

thing to give you a little bit more of a note. Interesting. And so that's sort of it, you know,

it's there's there's a bunch of little bitty features in here that are sort of nice. One of

them that I thought was interesting was actually for the iPad. So anything on iPhone, I know you

haven't installed it yet, but anything on the iPhone that jumped out at you before I switched

to the iPad? I think the main thing I saw people talking about really was, like you said, the liquid

glass on the lock screen. Now the time, which has always been the time at the top is what I'm

talking about on your lock screen it's always been sort of the solid color and you had i don't know

maybe four or five different fonts that you could you know select from you could make the time you

know the thicker or smaller but now you have the solid option is still there but now you have a glass

option so uh here this is a good picture here that julie put in like you can tell the difference now

um i've been experimenting with it just a little bit because even when you select the glass option

you can still make the time thicker or you know smaller and so you kind of have to play it around

sure you know for me i like the time to be very prevalent on the lock screen because if i'm looking

down at the phone i want to see it so anyway you got to play around with that i know that was such

a simple silly thing but it's something that you stare at you know i'm constantly looking at my

iphone screen right not just opening it up just the lock screen for the time and so that was small

but that was something that i know i saw a lot of people talk about on there too and i just like it

to me that you know a tiny little thing like that does make me happy because i like to experiment

it with the different looks and feel of it. Yeah. The notable change for me was, and maybe this is

just because I've been doing multitasking on my iPad even more. So let's talk about the iPad.

You know, the iPad completely changed all the multitasking when 26 came out a few months ago,

right? And one of the things over the summer was that because they have a new system, which really

is much better, it's much more like multitasking on a computer, you know, Windows can be any size

and all that sort of stuff. But one of the things that they originally were going to do was get rid

of slide over. Slide over, remember, was that mode that came out a long time ago. And it was as Apple

was trying to figure out different ways to multitask on the iPad. But the original version of slide

over is you could take an app on an iPad and push it all the way off to the right of the, so out of

the right side of the screen. So like it was out of right, but there was like a little, it was just,

it was at the edge and you could swipe in to bring it in, swipe out to bring it out, in, out, in, out.

And it was a nice way to have an app that was, you know, at the ready whenever you needed it,

but then out of the way when you weren't using it.

So it wasn't ideal for an app that you were using intensely,

but something that you just needed a little quickly

and then put it away, it worked great.

And for me, like the perfect example of this

is a password manager app.

For me, one password.

You know, all sorts of different times you're on the iPad

and suddenly you need to jump into one password.

You got to, you know, find a credit card

or get a password or a note.

You know, you just slide it in, get what you need,

slide it out of the way.

It was a perfect use of it.

In the old system, you could actually have multiple apps in slide over mode and they sort of like would, you know, circle spin between them.

It was like the old cover flow from way, way, way back when.

But when Apple completely did multitasking and iPadOS 26, they did include slide over mode, which is good because a lot of people liked it, but it was just one app.

So it's still just one app, but what Apple has now made it is easier to change what that app is.

And so this is a new change in 26.2 if you updated last Friday.

And let me just as a reminder, in our current operating system for the iPad, how do you slide over in the first place?

Well, if you're in the multitasking mode, you know there's the different modes of the iPad.

But if you're in the mode where you can have the multiple windows, like I'm looking at my iPad right now and I'm looking at an app,

And you know how they have like the stoplight at the top left, the red, yellow and green buttons.

OK, so if I go and I tap the green button on it onto an app or actually I guess I have to hold down in the green button in an app, a little pop up menu comes up when you hold down the green button and it says move and resize.

Do I want it on the left side or one of the right side?

I want a full screen.

But the very last option, the very last option says enter slide over.

And when you do that, your app moves over.

That becomes your slide over app.

So you can slide in, slide out, slide in, slide out.

So that's what we've had for a while now.

Here's the change.

The change is, let's say that I have, you know, you know, one password, which I have

right now on my iPad.

One password is my slide over app.

But I decide, you know what?

I'm actually keeping up with the news on like my Mastodon client, which is ivory.

So maybe I want ivory there right now.

All I do is I go to my little of the dock at the bottom of my screen.

And I take that whatever icon I want.

I'm going to take my ivory icon and I'm just going to swipe it up and I'm going to drop

it on top of the one password app and slide over it.

And now it's my new slide over app.

So now I can slide in and I can slide out and I can, I keep going before, you know,

between my master on client.

And then if I change my mind, I'm like, you know what?

I'm done with that.

Now I want to go back to one password.

I take one password from my doc.

I'm going to swipe it on top of there.

And now one password is my slide over app.

So it's an, and that works from the doc, but you can also do it from the app, the app view,

and you can also do it.

There's a third way too.

I put it in my post today.

I forget what it is, but there's three ways.

The way that I typically do it is from the app.

What's the other way you can do it?

You can also from the, from the app library, the doc or spotlight.

So if you do spotlight, those, those three ways of getting at, but, but you know, from

my most used apps live in my doc.

And so it's easy for me just to drag it from the dock there.

And again, I don't use slide over a ton, but it's one of those things that like it's nice

to have and it's a nice feature to remember that you have, even though most of the time

when I'm doing multitasking in my iPad, I just have windows everywhere, just like a

computer and that's totally fine.

But there are some types of apps that it really makes sense.

I don't want to look at them most of the time, but just bring it in when I need it.

I'm going to use it for a second, put it back out.

And now there's an easier way to swap out what that app is.

So that was a nice little improvement.

And I mean, as a bigger picture, I just want to say what Apple has done with multitasking

on the iPad in iPadOS 26 and now 26.1 and 26.2.

I mean, I just have to say clap my hands to Apple because they have tried so many multitasking

approaches over the years and some have been better and some have been worse.

But this newest one, I really do think is the best one yet.

This is the one that is just incredibly powerful for me.

And let me be clear, Brett, I don't even use multitasking mode all the time.

Most of the time when I use my iPad, I'm in the one app at a time mode because that actually works pretty well for me.

But then whenever I know I'm doing something that I'm going to be going back and forth, I just switch over to that multitasking mode.

And it is so powerful.

I love it so much.

I love that I can make Windows whatever size I want.

And now slide over is becoming more useful, too.

It's just, I mean, this is not a toy.

I mean, this is a real productivity tool when you want to get work done.

But then when you're done with that, you just go back to single window mode, and that's fine too.

I'm just really impressed.

So it's a minor tweak in the operating system, but it just really impresses me.

It's very useful.

The danger with all of these options, Jeff, at least for me, because listening to you, it's like, you're right.

I don't use SlideOver because I kind of forget that all of these, some of these multitasking options are available.

And I could be taking so much more advantage of them because I'm just so used to just going into that one screen mode and having the app because I like to have, you know, just that focus on there.

But I think the beauty of it is that you can use it that way.

And the vast majority of people probably do that just have an iPad that are not as, quote, you know, using it from a professional level, probably like you are all the time.

But they do still provide the option.

Apple provides the option that you can take advantage of some of these things.

And I think I remember just going away from slide over, you know, whenever they went to that because it was a split screen and they had slide over.

Right. That was one one tick in the history of multitasking on the iPad.

And that was huge. I remember when they came out.

And then now, I mean, it's so fluid in the way that you can do it and you have so many options on there.

But I do remember when I was using slide over your password manager example is great, but I would use it for like the notes.

In fact, while you were talking, Jason Snell's article here, this is actually, this was when he was using the 26.2 beta.

But these are some good videos and showing exactly what you were describing that he was able to pull it up just from the doc and pull that in.

But like there would be a note that I would reference for some reason or I wanted to copy paste things in all the time.

And I just liked having that notes app to be so available there on the side.

But yeah, I should have mentioned that.

I'm going to start using that again.

notes is a really really good one because sometimes i'll be like i'll using safari and like finding

things on the internet and i'm like oh like this is a sentence i want to copy this and just stick

it in a note because that's some information i'm going to want and then like i'll go somewhere else

so yeah notes is what i would use too i have one complaint about slide over right now oh good on

you apple you're doing great with it here's my one complaint i mentioned that most of the time i

actually am in the single just you know the regular the old the old school mode of just

the app pulls the entire screen. I wish that slide over was available in that mode because

it's like, there are lots of times where I really only need one app on the screen. I don't need to

have my multi tap, my multi windows. And yet it would be nice to just slide in and get my password

manager slide in and get the notes app. So I wish that they would bring that and maybe they'll do it.

I understand the Apple philosophy of like, you're either in multitasking or you're not. And if you're

not, they're like, well, you're not going to have multiple windows. You're not going to have

slide over. You're not going to have everything. I do understand the simplicity and I will go one

step further for a lot of people that are not power users. You just keep the iPad in the regular

mode and you never have to worry about the confusion of multiple windows. And I can potentially see,

I'm sure this happened in the old system. There are probably people that got confused by slide

over because they didn't know that if they swiped from the right side of the screen,

something else would come in. So I do understand it. And yet it's a simple, I mean, I know you

could say it's a simple setting this the more settings you have the more complicated things get

but like right for me i would prefer to have some little setting in the settings app of let me use

slide over right when i'm in the single app mode that would make me happy yeah and maybe apple will

do it one day they've done so much that i never thought they would do to make it more powerful so

anyway i know from the slide over go ahead go ahead i know well i can't look at it because i'm

using my ipad right now but remind me because i'm trying to think you know for for we talked about

these different modes right you in your ipad you go into the control center right and then that's

where you can talk that's how i usually change them okay okay control center yeah that's what

and so you now can do full screen or they call it one screen what do they call it there if you have

your ipad in front of you i know but yeah i'm even trying to think like i just don't even recognize

i think yeah because you know what i think i'm i'm mostly in in multitasking mode if i think about

it jeff because i can't look at it now but then i probably just drag my screen into the full

window at that point, even though I'm still in multitasking mode. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.

So if I pulled up, if I go to my control center, which is pulling down from the top, right.

I, and you, and you can decide what little widgets are in your control center, but the one that I have

is the multitasking widget. It's, it's, it's one I use all the time. And if you hold down on it,

I have two choices. I have stage manager, which I never use anymore. Some people do, you know,

probably to you. And then there's windowed apps. And if you turn it on, there's a check mark next

to it and that's in windowed apps. And now I'm going to turn it off. That checkmark is gone.

And now my apps are just in, you know, regular old full screen and stuff like that. So you can decide

what you do with the different things with either having it on or having it off. And, um, and that's

how you do it. So that is very good. Uh, that's a little trick for that. Now, the last thing I want

to mention about 26.2, and I alluded to this earlier, I think this is why Apple released it

last Friday instead of maybe waiting until this past week on Monday or Tuesday. And that is there

There are some security updates in this app.

Yes, right.

And there's actually quite a few of them.

In fact, some of them are what you call zero day, you know, things, which is a fancy way

of saying that you have to wait zero days before somebody exploits this because it's already

being exploited right now.

Right.

And so, and some of them are pretty nasty in Safari.

And so I think that Apple was preparing 26.2.

And then once they realized, oh, wow, there's a security issue and like some people out there

are in trouble.

We need to go ahead and get this fixed now.

And so this is just me speculating.

I don't know.

But my speculation is that, like, let's go ahead and push it on last Friday.

Let's not wait a few more days.

And in fact, one of the ways that you know that it's an important update is, I mean, I'm running the current 26, you know, now 26.2.

But for people who have not yet updated to the 26 world, which came out last fall, if you're still on, like, the prior operating systems, I'm pretty sure that Apple even released a security update for those operating systems.

So whenever Apple goes back in time and updates the old operating system with a security fix, you know that Apple is like, yeah, this is sort of a more important one.

And so, you know, sometimes Apple updates security things just because somebody finds a hole that in theory could be exploited.

But when they fix one, that's actually somebody in the wild has actually taken advantage of it.

That's a big one.

And the post that you're showing from Jason Snell at Six Colors, he even recognizes some of the, they're called like white hat hackers, people that hack into the operating system, but they do it for good.

And this one guy, I don't know, guy or girl, I don't know his name, Rosnia Keller.

And the name of the company is Totally Not Malicious Software, which is a funny name for a company who like, we're totally not malicious.

We're hacking things, but we're the good guys.

We're going to let Apple know.

And of course, Apple pays a bounty for people that tell them about these flaws.

I'm sure that what Apple pays you is not nearly as lucrative as what the bad guys would love to pay you, the nation states that want to break an iPhone.

But you can feel good that you're doing the right thing.

You get some recognition too.

So anyway, so that's the security update.

So for people like you, Brett, who have not updated yet.

I know.

I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, you're going to be targeted this afternoon.

But this probably is an update you should go ahead and do, you know, just to be safe, especially if you're going to be traveling around the holidays and using your iPhone and your iPad and public Wi-Fi and everything.

let's go ahead and let's get this update installed.

And then I'll make sure that this article from Julie Clover

is included in the show notes as well,

because I mean, the list is much longer

than I kind of thought that it was.

I mean, I feel like there's a lot of eye candy in here,

but in addition to the security updates,

there's a lot of really nice tweaks in here.

And I like Julie's list here on there.

So I'll make sure that that's included as well.

Make sure you update your iPhone

from the security standpoint on the technology side

But oh, my goodness, what a crazy story. You started off your post today.

Just warning people about I almost think of this as more of social engineering, although that's not entirely accurate.

But this is a story about a gentleman that bought an Apple gift card, went to try to use it.

I think he was going to use it on his iCloud account in his story here.

And it said that it wasn't. What was the message you got?

cannot redeem the code. And it turns out after he did some research on this, that the code had

already been compromised by somebody before he purchased it or at the store. I don't know if we

can find out exactly where this happened, but oh my goodness, what a crazy story. But man,

good warning, I think. Well, I mean, you know, some people who are saying really go into some

extreme, like don't even use gift cards. I don't know if we need to go that far, but man, you just

got to be wary out there. Yeah. So the gentleman's name, it's Paris. And the last name is

Butfield-Addison, long last name. I don't know him, but I'm just going to call him Paris as if

we're on a first name basis. Paris is based, I think he's based in Tanzania or something like

that. But anyway, he's been around for a long time. He's written like books about Apple software. I

mean, he's a little bit more well-known. This is not just a Joe user, but one of the things that he

did not too long ago, and this rings true to me because I actually did the same thing. You know

how when you have like the apple one account that we pay for you get two terabytes of two terabytes

is that right of data for the um yes we had two terabytes of data for i-cubes you're right um i

you can share that with my family yep i i reached i reached the limit the other day i got to the two

terabytes oh my goodness most of it is my photos my photos album because my photos album is pretty

big especially with video and i try to move video out of it but like in fact even as i'm looking at

it right now. I'm at 1.9, but I had gotten to two. And you know what happens when you run out of

space, you know, you got a problem. And so I had to buy more, which is a pain because, you know,

I think Apple charges like 30 bucks a month to get the six terabyte plan. And I hated to do it

because that's a lot of money. But I was like, you know what? I need to do it. You know, every one of

my family is using more data and it's just going to get worse over time. So, okay. So he was in the

same situation, paying Apple 30 bucks a month, you know, times 12 months, that's a lot of money.

And so he went into a store. He didn't say the name of the store, but he said it's like a major

retailer. He said, think of like a Walmart in the United States or something like that. He went into

this major store and he bought a $500 Apple gift card. And you know, sometimes you can get those

on a discount. So like if you can pay $4.50, then at least you get like a little bit of a discount,

right? So I presume that's what he did. So he bought the disc, he bought the card and he went

to go redeem it. And when he put in the card, as you just said, he got the cannot redeem code error.

But the reason is because some bad guy had, you know, they probably went into the store.

They probably, you know, scratched off the code and took it and then sealed it up again, you know, as if it was code.

And so they used the code.

And then they probably used that $500 to do something nefarious because Apple had sort of flagged it.

So when he went to redeem it, not only did Apple say you don't get your $500, but one step beyond, they said, oh, and if you're the person that's using this $500, you know, we know that you're a bad guy.

And so we're going to go ahead and just completely disable your Apple account, what we used to call the Apple ID.

And he's been using Apple stuff for forever.

So like all of his iTunes, 25 years, movie purchases.

I mean, he's got all this stuff.

I mean, this totally messes up your life.

Plus, if you're a developer, this is tied to a developer account.

I mean, this is, you know, this is a huge problem.

And, you know, when I first saw this story, I'm like, oh, surely Apple is just going to fix this.

Right.

But he was posting these updates to his blog.

And he's like, I actually, you know, it's hard to find someone to talk to at Apple and things like this.

But he did.

Right.

And they said, I'm sorry, we can't do anything.

And he's like, well, that's not acceptable.

Like, can you escalate this to the next level?

And they're like, yes, we can escalate it.

But they also cannot help you.

He's like, what?

What are you talking about?

Well, it effectively bricked his devices is what he's saying in here, Jeff.

I mean, you know, when I start thinking about it, if your iCloud account is shut down, there are that's some serious limitations on like, I don't know that I could share, you know, things between my iPhone and my Mac at that point.

I mean, there's some serious shutdown issues there.

And he's been talking about that.

He's like, I can't even access this, this storage on iCloud right now.

Like you can't get access to that.

Your photos may or may be not be accessible at that point.

I mean, there's a lot of things that are tied up.

the Apple wallet may be out of service. And if he's relying on it, to your point that you said,

if he's relying on it from a work standpoint, I mean, he posts some of these messages that he's

back and forth with the Apple chat and he's pleading with them. He's begging them. He's like,

I have thousands of dollars of purchase. This is legitimately a disaster. And they're like,

I'm sorry for the inconvenience. I would love to help you, but I'm not able to do so.

Very, very frustrating. Now, because he is a little bit in the know of the Apple system,

something that I did not know. And I don't know if you knew it either, but there is a team at Apple,

you know, I have imagined like, you know, sometimes somebody sends an email to Tim,

to Tim Cook, Apple CEO, and I'm sure he just says, Hey, somebody have to go fix this type of thing.

Right. And so I just have this image in my head that there's a team of people that just get things

done when Tim Cook says to get it done, but I'm looking at the story, but what is true is that

there was a team at Apple called Apple executive relations. You got to like that team, huh? Apple

this and so he he asked the support people here it is can you escalate this to apple is that i would

have not ever even known to know to ask for that no and initially he was told no um but let me say

this story does have a happy ending because five days after this hall started yes finally someone

from apple executive relations reached out to him and you know as the time we're recording this just

a day or two ago he's like it looks like it's finally been fixed but again so good this is

great that they fixed it for him because you know that apple could fix this i mean it's and and the

that's frustrating is Apple never officially told him why. I mean, he knows that the only thing he

did was this gift card. So he put two and two together. But initially, Apple wasn't even telling

what the story was. It's like, there's no, I mean, I realize this is not the US government, but

there's no due process, right? You don't know, you know, we know as lawyers, the two aspects of due

process, you're learning about this in law school, it's notice and the opportunity to be heard,

right? You have to be notified what's going on. And you have to have the opportunity to do

something about it he wasn't notified as to what's going on and he had no opportunity to do anything

about it i mean eventually he did they shut him down they got somebody they just shut him down

so um anyway uh so i mean and again he was somebody that was sort of he got this pressed it was on

daring fireball it was reported all over the place so yeah obviously people but like if you're just

you know joe grandma who buys an apple gift card to give to someone at christmas at the walgreens

at the Walmart, at the Amazon, at the wherever you get it.

How in the world are you going to know that somebody has already stolen the code?

And then suddenly you think you're giving somebody a present or you think you're giving yourself something.

And the next thing you know, their account is messed up.

And I'm not saying that this happens all the time, but the fact that it can happen at all and be this hard to fix.

And he has to do this public plea that only because, you know, it got picked up by the press because the other ones are not going to be picked up by the press.

So it's an unfortunate situation.

And so that's what leads to, and you alluded to this at the end, you know, I linked to this article by Adam Angst, who's been writing about Apple stuff forever at Tidbits. And Adam says, you know what, I don't think I would buy an Apple gift card from anyone at all, or certainly not anyone besides an actual brick and mortar Apple store, because you just don't know. You don't know. And the last thing you want to do is get yourself into difficulties.

There was an article I linked to by John Gruber and Daring Fireball that says, like, if you go into a store with a gift card and if you sort of tear it open and make sure you know how those Apple gift cards have a scratch off thing on it and make sure.

But it's like nobody's going to go into a store.

No one's going to open it.

No, you're going to look like you're the bad guy if you're doing that.

Exactly.

That's not really a solution.

So this is an issue.

And even if only 0.001% of gift cards have a problem, I mean, this is just something to be wary of.

And I will tell you, Brett, I've done this before.

There have been times when I knew I was going to be purchasing some Apple stuff and I might have an opportunity to get like a $200 gift card for like 20% off.

And I buy it because it's basically giving yourself a discount, right?

But after this story, you know, I don't know.

I'm going to have to be worried about this.

I think what gets me upset is that it never should have – this story should never have gone to this level.

I mean they were even telling him at one point here he goes – one of the reps I spoke to said.

He has to physically go to Apple's Australian headquarters, like the physical business.

Like he goes, they even put me on hold for five minutes while they looked up the address.

I mean, are you kidding me?

I mean, I feel like I'm so happy for Paris here that there was a happy ending.

But I am so hopeful that somebody at Apple, maybe maybe your your Tim Cook dream team here is thinking, like, can we get something that like this has to be changed in here?

And like you said, it was only and he's Paris has been great here. He puts all of these updates here at the at the top.

But he said, you know, it wasn't even like somebody at Apple finally said, oh, well, maybe we should look at this.

He goes a lovely man from Singapore working at Apple executive relations.

I finally at least, you know, found out or pushed it up the ladder, as it were, to get something changed on this.

Otherwise, he would have just continued.

Like if it was somebody like me that I didn't know this and I don't have a blog that, you know, to maybe put all this out in the public.

I mean, I would just I would be dead in the water.

Like, I don't know if there is a resolution for this other than just continuing to call this, you know, the Apple chat and try to get them to do something.

I think I pretty much stay away from gift cards as well.

But this this almost seals the deal for me.

Like, I am not going to do gift cards.

And, you know, to your point earlier that he was even has this, you know, FAQ at the very beginning because he knows people are asking this.

He's like, this card was legitimately purchased, like you said, from a store.

It's not eBay.

It's not somebody.

And everything.

Exactly.

He had everything on here like this.

I'm just I'm so uncomfortable with this story, at least from the standpoint of Apple, like something has to be done because Apple pushes these gift cards all the time.

They want you to buy all of the gift cards.

So I didn't read through all of this from Adam Inks that, you know, like not buying gift cards.

I don't like that the resolution here is not to buy gift cards at all.

I'm like, that can't be the resolution.

Let's hope that now that this story has gotten a lot of press, that somebody at Apple says, I mean, yes, we do have to have, I mean, Apple, I mean, I will tell you, I've seen stories that Apple has a huge problem with gift card fraud.

And people, I mean, Apple is such a big company that people are looking to defraud things and sell things.

So, you know, they do have a problem and they need to find the appropriate balance between security and, you know, usability.

But hopefully this this the story, now that it's gotten the press, will cause Apple to, you know, rejigger things somehow to make things better in the future.

But for now, it's a it's a telltale.

Adam, Adam, just say gift cards purchased digitally with codes from Apple, he goes, are presumably safer than physical cards on retail shelves.

I guess I would go with that.

when I think about it, when I've gotten gift cards, it's typically, you know, when Apple has run a

promotion to where you buy a Mac, and they'll give you, you know, $150 gift card, but that's never a

physical card. Like, that's just always these digital numbers that they send directly from Apple.

And those have always worked out, you know, fine. And I guess maybe that's a little more trustworthy.

But I mean, come on, Apple, like you've got to this of all companies, like you need to figure

this out. And you're right, Apple gift cards are always a high target, because everybody wants to

be able to sell those and if you can get a discount you know it's like hey great i can get a discount

on an iphone or something it's like you've got to fix this yep yep another crazy story oh my goodness

uh the new york times tech support scammers stole 85 000 from apparently a lawyer i think he's in

new york or i'm not really sure exactly where he is but he had an ipad issue he apparently googled

the number for for apple support or maybe microsoft support i can't i can't really figure

out exactly what he was trying to do but the number that came up was a scammer like it wasn't the

actual phone number and oh my goodness what a terrible story on here i don't know if this even

has a happy ending yet because the bank apparently is not refunding his money to him yeah this one

doesn't have a happy ending you know i i'm sorry that we're talking about such scary stories i know

But at the same time, this is the time to talk about it because every single year I have noticed the number of scams increases so much.

I will tell you, even at my own law firm, we've been having all sorts of things, you know, potential scams that we're narrowly avoiding.

And whether we're talking about the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac, the PC, what the scammers want to do is they want to trick you into installing some sort of a software onto your device that they can take you over, right?

This is the vector for everything.

Now, sometimes they will send you an email that says, I am from tech support at Best Buy,

or I'm from Microsoft tech support, and I need you to call this number.

And most 99% of us, hopefully even more, just like, no, that's junk.

But every once in a while, they will trick somebody into saying, oh, maybe this is legitimate.

Maybe I should call and see what it is.

I got one just the other day, Brett.

It said that Delta was sending me $600 because I was such a loyal flyer.

I'm like, well, that's a lot of money.

And he's like, go ahead and click more to find out more.

I'm like, oh, this is not real.

And then I double checked on the internet.

It's like, no, it's absolutely not real.

But like if I had followed that, you know, I would have been talking to somebody saying, oh, yes, I'm from Delta.

Please do this.

Let me get in your computer.

So what happened here, like you said, is he was trying to find tech support.

He just went to Google to search for it.

And the number that bubbled up was somebody that wasn't a real person.

And this person ended up getting access to him, his I guess it was his iPad or whatever it was.

But the next thing you know, he got into the guy's accounts at his bank.

And then once somebody is in your accounts, he was doing transfers and transferring money out of his account and from his checking account at Citibank.

And I mean, you started off with the impact.

What was it?

65, 85?

I mean, it was $85,000.

$85,000.

And he contacted the bank immediately.

I mean, the guy, he's a retired attorney.

And I mean, I have to assume that, you know, this means that, you know, maybe a little smarter than the average bear.

You know, this is somebody he, you know, he maybe not a tech savvy person, but he can understand what's going on.

So he got in touch with his bank and he said, can we stop this?

But at a certain point when you've got like wire transfers and stuff, I know this because this is I've actually had lawsuits that I've worked on for clients with this issue.

Like when wire transfers happen improperly, sometimes you're lucky that you can stop them.

But oftentimes you can't.

And once that money is gone, it's gone.

And banks have become much like Apple has a fraud unit.

You know, every major bank has has very, very legitimate fraud units to take this very seriously.

But and I've talked with some of them before, you know, there are things that they can do and there are things that they cannot do.

And apparently this poor gentleman, you know, unless there's an update to the story, it sounds like that money is just gone.

And, you know, he has said, you know, it's it's I mean, how horrible is that?

Somebody took eighty five thousand dollars from him and he's like, I guess this is, you know, he'll have to just have to live with it.

And this is just the cost of doing business.

And so this just goes to show you, you have got to be careful and you've got to make sure that your loved ones are careful.

I mean, I had something years ago where my mother-in-law was defrauded and she thought she was talking on Microsoft and it wasn't.

You know, it always happens around the holiday.

It happens all 365, but it happens, I find, more around the holidays.

So, you know, make sure that your friends and family members are cautious.

It sucks that this is the world that we live in, but it is.

And you just have to be careful.

So hopefully stories like this, people hear about them.

It's all awareness.

I mean, I tell you, at my law firm, Brett, I am constantly, since I'm in the chair of our technology committee and, you know, a lot of this are tech.

I mean, they don't have to be tech frauds, but they're often tech frauds.

We are constantly sending people examples of bad stuff that's happening because I just want everybody at my firm to be aware of it because education is the number one thing as long as you think about it.

Because the reality is we're all busy and something comes in and you're maybe not giving it the full attention that you should.

And you think it's one thing, but it's like the hindsight is 20, 20.

But but education is so important.

It's so difficult, though.

Your firm, Jeff, has you as a resource and you've got folks that can help you.

Right. But this is a gentleman. He's retired.

He's 87 years old. He just wanted somebody to help him fix his iPad.

And I know this because similar to your mother-in-law, like my mother, like she's going to call a support number.

And unfortunately, he just got the wrong number.

But when the person answered the phone, I'm positive that they were just lovely with him.

You know, they said the smooth talking scammer who answered called himself Alex and built a rapport with Mr.

Wells, the retired lawyer, assuring him that he could resolve his tech headaches.

But as soon as, you know, if you just this is the social engineering part, right?

he's just building up that rapport with him and you know mr wells just wants it fixed so if the guy

alex here just says you know you need to install this i'm going to send you a code you're going

to download this you're going to install it here i mean it just it's getting it's breaking it wide

open and mr wells is going to do whatever alex tells him to do because he wants his ipad fixed

that's all anyway it's just it's so so sad that people feel like i mean you know the guy at the

end of the day, he's walked out with $85,000. And, you know, I think even when Mr. Wells and his

assistant, he finally told his assistant after being on for several hours, when they called the bank,

they said, well, it's already been moved, you know, to your point, you were said, Jeff, it's like the

amount was wired, and then it's already moved into a different account. And so it's just

unrecoverable, apparently, at that time. But anyway, just I'm, like you said, it's sad that we have to

talk about these sad things. But if there's somebody out there that you guys are listening,

that just to be wary about this, I hope that that can be helpful.

Here's a quick little tip that I didn't even think of.

I really continue to enjoy reading Glenn Fleischman at Six Colors here.

This is a great little tip when you're using she who shall not be named, or he,

that you can make sure that you are having the correct phonetic pronunciations.

I thought this was a great tip from Glenn.

Yeah, so I mean, you might say, hey, you know, Siri, you know who it is.

you know, call so-and-so, call Joe, call whatever. And if you're saying call Joe and Joe is spelt

J-O-E, then your iPhone is going to figure that out. But sometimes the phone can get confused

if you have a name that isn't necessarily pronounced the way that it looks like it's

spelled. And the example that he gave here, and this was a real world example, is that there was

someone who was Karen, but instead of spelling it K-A-R-E-N, it was spelled C-A-R-Y-N. Now,

most people are probably smart enough to figure out that even that spelling is pronounced Karen,

or at least guess it, but apparently S-I-R-I was not so smart. And so he has some really good

tricks that there are within the contact field for a contact. There are three different things

you can use called pronunciation for first name, phonetic first name and nickname. And he just has

like all these things. Like if you go through it and do it and you tell your iPhone phonetically

how a name is pronounced, even if it's a word that wouldn't, you know, maybe the iPhone wouldn't

figure out on its own. You could sort of walk your iPhone through understanding it. And then once,

once your iPhone understands how it's pronounced, well, then Siri will do the job and do it

correctly. So this is, I have not encountered this before. That's not true, Brad. I actually

have. Now that I think about it, I did have this happen a number of years ago. I forget what the

name was, but this is a great, you know, these fields, you know, there's all these fields in a

contact that you don't see at first. You have to go to the bottom, you press whatever the button,

show additional fields, whatever. And there's all sorts of things you can add, like nicknames and

titles and birthdays and all sorts of stuff. But one of them, you know, these three fields

about phonetic names, great tip. That's a great tip. And for my daughter, she has a longer,

you know, formal official name, but then we shorten it all the time. And I had to put that in because

when I asked my phone to call my daughter, I, I always just say her shortened name and I don't

think about it. And at first, the first two or three times, uh, Siri would, you know, the phone

would not call my daughter. It would like, do you want to call? So I'm like, no, I don't want to,

it was like a professional, you know, contact, but I had to go in and put in, I guess, I think

I did the nickname. I have to go and look on there as well. But just like you said, like,

There's a lot of great fields in the context there that you can check out.

But great tip from Glenn.

You had a fantastic review this week, Jeff.

So thank you for this.

You and I both very much enjoy Lit Software.

LitSoftware.com.

They have been a sponsor.

They're not formally a sponsor today or officially,

but we continue to talk about them because they have continued to make

fantastic legal specific apps for the iPad and frankly,

even the Mac today.

They haven't really pushed their apps to the iPhone because, frankly, I don't know that it made a lot of sense several years ago.

But now it does.

So officially, Lit Software this past week has released, or at least you've gotten access to it, Transcript Pad on the iPhone.

And I'm just, I'm really excited about this.

And it looks like Ian, the developer, has even posted to your review on here.

I don't know that it's officially available.

I actually downloaded it on my iPhone. So I guess it is officially available. I know there's a lot

more resources that they're going to be putting out on this, but transcript pad can work on the

iPad. It's been able to work on the Mac for a while. And now on the iPhone, this is terrific.

I first heard this app was coming out a while ago before it was announced publicly. And my initial

reaction was, what are you talking about? This is an iPad app. Why would you use an iPhone? I mean,

the word pad is in the name of the app. It's called transcript pad, not transcript phone.

And I'm like, why would I?

Because when you think about a transcript, it's like, you know, it's sort of full page.

Even if it's just the text, like it's bigger, right?

You want eight and a half by 11.

I'm like, why would I do this on an iPhone?

But I will tell you this app, this is really, really cool.

Because so, you know, I'm working with, let me just back up.

Transcriptpad is my favorite of the lit software apps because I use it all the time.

As a lawyer, I take depositions or somebody else takes a deposition and I'm reading it.

And you get the little file from the court reporter with the deposition transcript and

you get it in Transcriptpad.

But so once it's there, you have the transcript and you can read it, of course, but more importantly, you can annotate it.

And it's not just highlight something that's important.

You can actually put a code on it.

Like the reason that this question and answer or this series of question and answers is important is because it relates to the issue of, you know, was the light red or green or, you know, whatever the issue is in your case.

And so then at the end, when you have all your transcripts, you've already coded them.

So if I see like I just want to get the key testimony on whether the light was red or green, just in one tap, I can pull it all up and get a report.

So that's that's so useful.

And there's a million other things you can do with transcript pad to like, you know, videos, stuff like that.

But that that's an amazing feature.

And so now, you know, I save all of my transcripts to just my my regular iCloud account.

We're talking about iCloud before.

And so since they're in my iCloud account, they're on my iPad, but they're also on my Mac.

And they're also now on my iPhone.

And so I have like a little test one here called Smith versus Jones, but like all of my transcripts that are in my iPad are also right here.

And if I tap on it and the thing that I never realized, and I showed a screenshot, like how is it going to format?

Like, is it going to be so tiny?

It really isn't because what they've done is every, what would normally be a full line of text.

They have split into two lines, but then they have like a line number sort of centered between.

And you look at it, Brett, and it makes perfect sense.

It's like, I can totally read this.

I mean, I have a bigger iPhone because I've got the Max, but like I can totally, I can

read my transcript.

And so like maybe I'm on a train, I'm on a plane, I'm, you know, sitting in a doctor's

office, you know, wherever you are.

And I'm just thinking about a case and doing some work.

I can pull up any transcript like this.

I can review it.

I can say, oh yeah, this, this testimony is important because it has to do with, you know,

whether the light was red or green or whatever your issue is.

And I can tap it and I can annotate it and I can issue code it and I can highlight it

and I can do all of that stuff.

and that syncs back to my iPad,

it's really, really useful.

And like suddenly my transcripts

are even more accessible for me.

I mean, this is awesome

because many times you're doing serious work.

I've got my iPad or I've got my computer,

but sometimes all you have with you is your iPhone.

I was just in court yesterday,

and something came up

and I just happened to be able to pull it up on my device.

And I was like, thank goodness I could do this.

You know, things come up, right?

You want to be able to have access to it.

So all of that is cool,

but there's a fun feature too,

which is transcript pad has this feature that it can read a transcript to you and i'm like when am

i gonna when am i gonna want to have read transcript to me on my ipad i would not but on my iphone

this is an interesting feature because i mean the example i think of is i'm driving across the state

to take a follow-up deposition of the plaintiff um or maybe i already had the plaintiff's deposition

i'm going to go to one of the one of the witnesses and like on the way there you could now and i

haven't done this in real life because the app just came out two days ago. But if I wanted to

sort of review the transcript on the way there, if I'm driving, I can't do that because I can't

look at the transcript while I'm driving. But what I could do is I can just say, okay,

start from the beginning or start from the, you know, I'm going to skip the beginning part and

get to the really important part. And then you can just tap the little button to read it and it will

read the transcript out loud. It uses the built-in voices that Apple's had for years. You can have

different voices for the questioner and the answerer. So like I had like a female voice

for the question and you can even use Apple's high quality voices. I talked about that.

So I have a female voice for the question. I have a male voice for the answer and you could either

do it at 1x speed or 1.5 or 2x. But you have different voices for the question and answer.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Because if you're just listening that way, you know, is this a question

or is this an answer? Exactly. It's not going to obviously be the voice. So it makes it so easy.

Here's where you're talking about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just looking at the road.

Now, the one thing I did not realize.

So I had this thought when I was writing my review.

I'm like, so I'm in the car.

I'm listening to a transcript.

What if I hear something that's actually important?

I mean, I'm driving.

I'm not going to annotate it while I'm driving.

Okay.

Right.

Totally missed this.

And as you pointed out, Ian, the developer, wrote a comment to my post.

And he pointed out something I didn't know.

So like I copied and pasted it and I stuck it in there.

There's another new feature in this release called marked lines.

Look at that.

And the way it works is I'm not even looking at my phone, okay?

But if I'm listening to the transcript, I can just double tap on the screen, anywhere on the screen.

And when I double tap, it will start to mark the transcript.

And then if I double tap again, it will stop marking the transcript.

And then when I go back later, and you can see a little picture of it.

Now, you know, when I'm actually sitting down in my hotel room or at a meeting or whatever, I can actually go back and say, OK, what did I mark while I was driving?

Oh, it's like, oh, yeah, that's why this is so important.

And then I'll actually go add the issue code and all that sort of stuff, you know, whatever it is.

So what a smart thing.

And again, look, don't get me wrong.

I am not saying that I'm going to be using this particular feature of TranscriptPad every day.

But, you know, there's going to come a time six months from now when I want to use it and I'm going to be thrilled to have it.

And I'm going to be using the more client features.

You know, I think it's far more realistic for me to use the other features of having the app on the iPhone.

So but this is I mean, this is an essential app.

I mean, Transcript Pad is, you know, you pay for the subscription.

It's 50 bucks a month, $600 a year, which, you know, is for legal software is cheap.

It's certainly more than you pay for like a silly little app for like, you know, giving you the weather or something like that.

But it's this is a full featured app.

And now that I have access to this on my iPhone as well as my iPad, this is going to be really, really nice.

So I'm super excited about this.

And again, I begin by saying when I first heard about it, I'm like, what are you talking?

Why would I want transcript pad on the iPhone?

But now that I'm using it, I'm like, this is why, this is why I want to have this app.

So absolutely.

I'm very thrilled.

This is fantastic.

Good news.

I'm just going to emphasize this is included in the LitSuite subscription.

Like you were just talking about the pricing here, which is the $600 for a single license.

It could be a little bit less if you're doing enterprise or doing it.

But I'm just going to point out, like, TranscriptPad has been one of the apps that's been around.

I mean, TrialPad was first, and then TranscriptPad.

But Ian and his team have also put out the DocReviewPad.

They've put out the ExhibitsPad.

They put out last year the TimelinePad app.

And all of those could be used on both the iPad and the Mac.

So as part of your subscription, you're getting the ability to do that.

And then now this transcript pad for the iPhone, he's going to have to call it transcript phone, I think, at some point.

But the transcript pad app for the iPhone is included in the LitSuite subscription, right?

And it's just – I know people have always pushed back on some of the pricing on there.

But if you think about it, like this is an amazing deal that is just all inclusive on paying for that on there.

I just want to ask quickly, going back to like the reading aspect, because that's my first thought when I heard this.

Like, are you kidding me? Like, I don't know if I can see this, but you mentioned this here that you can see the text, but you can make it bigger as you want.

And can I also ask, I see the little, what to me looks like a font button up here. Can you change the font in there?

You can.

Some people like, like, you know, you might want Times Roman or Courier or you might want to, you know, sans serif font on there as well.

Okay. So you have that capability that you can go in and make some of that changes.

I haven't done that, but if I tap on font, there's like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, there's seven different fonts that you can use.

Oh my goodness. Okay.

So, you know, whatever, whatever looks good for you.

For me, the standard font is perfectly fine.

So you can change the font.

You can change the size.

And then there's an option you can toggle on and off, whether you want the questions in bold.

I've always I've always done that.

So anyway, I've always done.

Yeah, I love that.

And then the last thing quickly I just want to ask is reports.

I know on the transcript pad, you generating those reports are just amazing because you can customize exactly what you want to export out.

I think you initially said that you're not able to do that.

But then Ian, correct.

But I was wrong.

Yeah, I just at least some limited.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I didn't see it. So I thought that you couldn't do it, but it turns out it's

there. I was just looking in the wrong spot. The only limitation is that on the iPad,

you can create a report for your entire case. So let's say that we've deposed seven witnesses

and I want to know what, I want to have a single report that has what all seven witnesses say

about whether the light was green or whether the part was effective or whatever. I can do that on

the iPad. And if I understand correctly on the iPhone, you can create reports for a single witness,

but you cannot yet create a report across all the witnesses but whatever it's a limitation i mean

again 90 of the time that i do it i just do it on a witness by witness basis but sometimes i

actually do do it across the entire case so they're not you know they're not yet at full parity who

knows if that'll change in the future but um but again the core feature for me is reading annotating

yeah um yeah and then pulling up the key testimony very nice and and then sorry i because i keep it

and I need to test this as well, but because your, your case file is in iCloud.

So you make a change or you add something, a designation on your phone.

You can then later open it up on your iPad in transcript pad and it'll be there.

In other words, it's syncing.

And that's working.

It syncs.

That's great.

It syncs.

That's amazing.

You have to wait, like you wait just about, I don't know, after you finish your change,

you need to wait like 20, 30 seconds or something like that.

And then it syncs over.

Yeah.

And I tested it.

I made some revisions on my iPhone.

Excellent.

I went back to my iPad.

they were there. That's fantastic. I love that. Well done, Lit Software. And thanks for being

sponsored in the past. And man, just keep putting out some fantastic apps. And thanks for your review

as well, Jeff. Okay, let's wrap it up quickly. But I love your little videos at the end, as always,

you know, if you're out trying to outrun Godzilla, and you need to maybe buy some Twizzlers on the

way out of town, you can you can you could use Apple Pay. I just thought this was a cute little

commercial and you have to watch it to understand worth watching yeah worth it all right in the know

um because we were talking about the lock screen i just wanted to let people know this has been out

now for several months since ios 26 came out but on the lock screen i've always had my clock uh at

the very top and just in the regular way that it's always been available but with ios 26 they gave you

the ability to like, I call it stretching the time a little bit more. I think people have

experimented with this. I knew, I remember I experimented with it when it first came out,

and then I just went back to the normal way that I did it. But I like the fact now, if you tap and

hold on your lock screen, you can tap the customize button at the bottom, right? This is how you go and

you customize your lock screen. Now, there's a variety of different things that you can do. And

I keep experimenting with what widgets that I want, because I inevitably always want some widgets on

my loss. I've really gotten familiar with those. So one of the things with the widgets though,

that I don't like is that I can't have, um, what, what do they, what do they call it? The depth

effect. You know, like if you can see the screenshot here, like the clock can go behind

pieces of a picture if you have like a, for your wallpaper. And I like that, except that if you got

widgets, I think it pretty much turns that option off. I've always liked having the time at the top

And then my widget's right underneath the time.

But one of the other things that you can do is when you go into the customize option,

there is a little slider now that it's like a drag handle is what they officially call

it at the bottom right of the clock.

And you can just take that now and you can drag it as long or as short as you want the

clock to look on your lock screen.

My only complaint that I have about this though, Jeff, is as soon as you start dragging that

down, your widget bar immediately jumps to the bottom of the screen. Now, I think I can get used

to this. I just, I'm always used to having the widgets at the very top, you know, right immediately

under the clock. But I've just started experimenting with this now so that I have like my long clock

at the very top, which is nice because when the iPhone is just sitting next to me and, you know,

the screen goes off, the clock is a lot more visible to me, even though it looks stretchy

a little bit. But you can experiment with the different ways, you know, the different fonts

have. Plus you can experiment with whether you want it to be glassy now or, you know, frosted time

or just the regular solid time on there. But my, my tip is that's, that's available now. It's fun

to play with, and maybe you'll find, you know, a better way that you like the way your clock looks.

I'm going to try it now. I just don't like that the widgets are at the bottom, but again, I think

I've just got to get used to that, but that's my tip today on the lock screen. This is cool. Thank

right now is a picture of my kids. And it's actually sort of a fun picture because it's a

picture we took at the beach where there was like a fire pit. And you know, if you have a, what's it

called? Like a live, whatever, whatever that thing, you know, the live photo, like whenever it means

like the flames sort of flicker in front of it, it makes it sort of, sort of cool. But I personally

had not been using widgets on my lock screen. Now I use the, I use the two widgets at the bottom that

have been there forever. So I've got like a flashlight and the camera at the bottom, but I had not been

using widgets at the top. And so I just went in and I liked that, as you said, it's a slider. So

like you can control exactly how big you want it. So I didn't make it the full size because that

would cover my kids' heads. I just made it two thirds of the way and it looks cool. And what I

like about it is when my iPhone is in the mode where the screen is turned off, as you said,

now the time is bigger. So it's easier to see. I'm going to keep this. Thank you. I didn't know

play around with it is this this is new in ios 26 yeah i didn't even it wasn't 26 remember it yeah

that was i knew they had the stretching thing that was automatic but i did not what i did not know

is that you could control it the way that you've just taught me i know very cool and i don't know

that for sure that's why i brought this up today because i don't know for sure like i feel like

when it first came out you could either have the regular look or you could have the long look and

you couldn't customize like how big or small that you needed maybe it was out somebody can correct

this but now you have that little drag bar now and i just think that that's really neat that you can

as much as you want it i wish they would let you still put the widget bar underneath the clock

wherever you have it but you know for whatever design choice that they make maybe i i like the

widgets at the bottom i i'm gonna try that out and see right what widgets do you use just out of

curiosity in your widget bar if you don't right now so i keep experimenting with them right now

i've got i i do the four circle so i've got weather i got the shazam uh app so i can jump

and just a Shazam.

I've got flighty on there

because it tells me like my next flight and everything.

And then I've been putting the chat GPT voice

connector in there.

So in other words, I could just, you know,

pull that up quickly without opening the phone,

unlocking the phone, right.

And then, you know, have a conversation

or ask about something so that it can be,

I don't even subscribe to chat GPT still yet,

but you know, you can use a little bit every day,

you know, just based on the free version on that.

And frankly, a lot of the stuff that I'm doing,

It's just like, hey, you know, hey, you know, tell me I just passed, you know, this landmark.

Tell me a little bit about it, you know, if I'm driving or something like that.

And I've been enjoying that.

But then I still have the two little buttons at the bottom as well.

And right now that goes to CalcBot.

That's a calculator app that I enjoy because I use this all the time as a calculator.

And then the other one, I have Google Translate because when we traveled internationally, I was able to pull that up quickly on there.

But it's like, I love having this many widgets, you know, whether it's my iPhone or my Apple Watch.

I try to just squeeze as much as I can in there.

Okay, well, that's a great tip.

Thank you.

So my tip for the week is also related to the lock screen, and it is this.

Oh, good.

I use my iPhone camera all the time.

It's fantastic.

We've talked about it a million times.

I love the iPhone camera.

You know what I don't really use, or for that matter, don't really care much for, is my iPad camera.

In fact, if Tim Cook walked in my front door right now and said, Jeff, it just turns out that for the last six months we disabled your iPad camera, I would say, Mr. Cook, I have not noticed because I don't use it.

I mean, I never use it.

But the one time it does come up is sometimes when I pick up my iPad, okay, and I just happen to touch it on the right side.

You know, the lock screen's on, right?

It's off.

There's nothing on the screen.

And I just happen to swipe it from the right side.

You know what happens when you swipe from the right side?

It starts the camera.

and on my iphone i actually use that sometimes sometimes i do get to the camera by oh you do

although i also have the camera control button so i don't know but sometimes i do from habit

on my ipad the percentage of times that i actually want to open up the camera app is zero zero percent

of the time do i ever want to happen right and yet it will happen so i pick up my ipad from the and

i happen to touch at the right side and the next thing you know i'm looking at pictures or even

worse sometimes it's in the selfie mode and then i'm looking at myself i don't need to see my face

for goodness sakes like go away go away i have despised this feature on the ipad for so long

wow okay i'm gonna make a little high horse so what we just we talked about ios 26.2 which came

out last friday ios ipad os 26.1 which came out like the first week of november um it actually

finally added the feature to turn to to turn off launching the camera from your um from your lock

screen now on the iphone i haven't done anything about it and and i and i linked to an article on

from mac rumors that showed on iphone but on the iphone i kept that as this but what i have done is

on my ipad so if you bring up that picture that i just sent you before we started recording i mean

this is just a simple screenshot but you open up the settings app you go down to the word camera

on the left. And then there's all these options for camera. And one of the options is called

lock screen swipe to open camera. And I turned that puppy off. And I tell you what,

life is better because now I no longer have this camera automatically open up when I never wanted

to be there. And, you know, thank goodness. So our long national nightmare is over. I'm so happy

Apple fixed this. And it's a silly little thing, but like stupid little things that bug you makes

a big difference to you when you're finally solved it's like yay thank you so anyway that's my tip

so i mean again if you don't know what i'm talking about fine but if you do know what i'm talking

about then you absolutely know what i'm talking about that this is an annoyance it's annoying you

pick up your ipad you do not want the camera app to open and now you can make it that it will never

happen again and on those once in a blue moon time when i actually do want to use the camera on the

ipad like sometimes for iphone jd i want to take a picture of my iphone and i can't take a picture

of my iPhone when I'm, you know, my iPhone's in the picture. So I just have my iPad and I'll use

my iPad to take a picture of my iPhone, but it happens so rarely. If I want it to happen,

just launch the camera app or use the control center and launch the camera app from there.

But I do not want to do it from the swipe screen. So that's my tip of the week.

I am glad to hear that it finally came to the iPad. And I know that I've got to turn that off

because just like you, I would encounter that. But I remember when this came out for the iPhone

and I did the same thing.

I turned it off.

I don't like swiping.

In fact, it's the same thing.

I'm not quite as passionate about it as you,

but I don't like swiping across.

And now that since I got the 17 Pro with the camera button,

I'm like, not only did I want to turn that off on my iPhone,

but we were just talking about the buttons,

you know, the little widgets on your iPhone.

By default, it was a camera.

And I even changed that.

I was just going through my buttons there.

I don't need the camera widget on the bottom

because I've got this camera button,

which I have to say, you know,

because I had a 15 Pro, I skipped the 16 Pro.

So I didn't have the camera button

like you did with the 16 Pro.

But when I upgraded the 17 Pro,

that camera button is just absolutely fantastic.

I use it all the time.

And so I don't, I didn't turn on,

I don't have the camera widget on my lock screen

and I turned off the swipe on my iPhone

because I just, if I need the camera,

I've got the camera button

and having that button was a big deal.

But I'm thrilled to know

that it's also available for the iPad.

And I'm going to do that as soon as we stop recording, which we've come to the end of it today, which is great.

We won't talk next week.

We'll be off for December 26th.

But we will be back and plan to record the first episode of 2026 on January 2nd.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Jeff, as always, thanks.

And we'll talk with you in two weeks.

Thank you, Brett.

Merry Christmas.

Happy Hanukkah.

Happy holidays.

I hope everybody has some great time with friends and families.

Talk to you soon.

Bye-bye, everybody.