Welcome to In the News for February the 6th, 2026.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And I am Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett.

Hello, Jeff.

Apple is doing okay.

In fact, they're doing probably a little bit better than okay.

You had a great post this past week about Apple's 2026 fiscal first quarter.

And as you state in this post, you're always excited about these numbers at this time because it reflects, I think, mostly what happened during the holiday season.

And boy, Heidi, it was a pretty good holiday season for Apple.

Absolutely. And I'll begin by saying, just so that folks know, Brett is in a hotel room right now with hotel Internet connection.

So he's doing the best that he can from an audience.

A little crunchy.

You sound OK. I can understand you, obviously.

OK, good.

Yes, this was amazing for Apple.

They can buy all the hotels if they want to.

They, you know, we knew this was going to be, there you go.

We knew this was going to be a good financial quarter because number one, it's the holiday

quarter when they have all the holiday sales.

But number two, three months ago, Apple, you know, they always give a prediction of what

they expect for the upcoming quarter.

And they basically told the analysts, hey, we think this next one's going to be good.

So Apple had a sense of it.

And this is what makes it interesting to me.

Even though Apple knew it's always their biggest quarter, and even though Apple was optimistic enough to predict to analysts it's going to be a really good quarter, even then, they did not make enough iPhones.

You know, they said, you know, it exceeded, you know, Tim Cook said that it was staggering is what he said.

It was demand was simply staggering.

You know, if anyone should know how many iPhones they're going to sell, it's Apple.

And he said the reason, you know, there have been times in the past when Apple has said the reason they could not make enough was because of something they called the legacy nodes, which is a fancy way of saying like older equipment, like the Wi-Fi radios and like not the latest and greatest.

This time, however, he basically said it's our new chips.

It's the processors that Apple puts in, that Apple designs in Taiwan, a semiconductor TSMC makes.

You know, these are the things that are, you know, this is the heart of it, the brains of it, that they could not make enough.

Now, does it mean that, you know, the company in Taiwan, TSMC, could not produce enough?

Or does it mean that Apple said, I would like you to make blank number?

And they did.

And that number wasn't enough.

You know, we don't know.

But the reality is they have a ton of demand.

And, you know, anecdotally, I feel like I, you know, in my little corner of the world, I'm seeing a lot of people with new iPhones right now.

Part of it is because with the pros, you know, the pro that I got is the one that's sort of that dark blue or whatever.

but I know a lot of people got the orange one and the orange one stands out like you have in your

hand. Those you can see more obviously. And I don't, I don't personally see a lot of iPhone

errors, but those are more noticeable too. You know, there is a sense that a lot of people decided,

Hey, this is the time to upgrade. Um, and so for whatever reason, I mean, they, they have just sold

a lot of iPhones, a lot, a lot of upgrades, um, which means that Apple has just got a ridiculous

of some amount of money right now. Goodness. To your point, I think I've mentioned this on

a prior podcast there. I could probably count maybe four to five people that I've known sort

of in my circle of influence that they, they wanted an iPhone. Of course, everybody has to

have a phone, right? But they don't care about it nowhere near as much as you and I would Jeff.

And they may, I think they had maybe a 13 or a 14. And one day I remember I, they would come in and,

And I would say, wait a minute, you got an iPhone 17 Pro.

And, you know, I'm, you know, gushing over it.

And they're just kind of like, yeah, it's what they had.

It's what I upgraded to.

And I'm like, are you kidding me?

Like, that's amazing that you did that.

But it didn't really, it doesn't, it didn't hit them quite as much.

But to your point, just seeing that, like I'm seeing so many upgrades and whether they're

orange or blue or whatever the color may be, like, there's just a lot of upgrades that I

have noticed at least this, this cycle.

And, you know, I mean, as you said, Tim Cook, they said they have had their strongest iPhone lineup they've ever had and by far the most popular.

I mean, the numbers on this truly are a little bit staggering is what is what they've done.

I mean, we knew it was going to be good.

Like you said, we always know that this quarter is going to be good.

But iPhone revenue was eighty five point three billion dollars, making it by far the best iPhone quarter ever.

Just just amazing.

Just within my household, I mean, within the Richardson household, Jeff Richardson bought a new iPhone.

No surprise.

I buy one all the time.

But both my wife and my daughter, both of whom had an iPhone SE, and although my daughter would love to get a new iPhone every week if she could, my wife, she's the sort of person that does not upgrade unless she really needs to.

But she was starting to feel that her old phone was getting slow.

And I'm like, yeah, it really is.

She should have.

And so I suspect there's a lot of people like that, that like you say, Brett, they're not going to get it every year or even every other year.

But when they feel like, you know what, it's starting to feel slow, you know, the battery's not lasting as long.

And for whatever reason, this was one of those sales cycles.

Plus, of course, the new features of the phone, you know, the better cameras and all the other stuff.

So it all came together.

So I suspect there's a lot of people listening to this right now who have new phones as well.

Now, real quick.

Go ahead.

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, somebody just made a comment that in China, or maybe it was Tim Cook that kind of mentioned this or brought up,

that it was big because of the China market on some of this.

I don't know how much, you know, I just can't really gauge that, I guess, really all that much.

But that's pretty amazing.

And that's a huge market, obviously.

Yeah.

And there have been years in the past when Apple has said that, you know, the China sales are a little soft.

And yet this time they said an answer to the analyst questions that we had great sales in China.

The traditional reason that people always refer to is, you know,

a big portion of the Chinese market wants something that looks new, not to be superficial about it. I

mean, they want it to be a good product as well, I'm sure. But there's just something about having

something that looks like the new phone. And so historically, when you have a new phone that

might be better inside, but looks the same outside, many times they don't sell quite as well as China.

And then the years that it looks different, this year we've got the iPhone Air, which looks very

different. We've got the orange color and stuff like that. You know, who knows if that's the reason

why, but there was more sales. Now, the article that I linked to, that analyst actually has some

reasons she says that it has it has something to do with like there's the the chinese government

tries to stimulate economic growth from time to time and they recently did it after not doing it

for a few years that if you buy a piece of personal electronics that's under a certain

amount of money you get some some subsidies and the iphone 17 was that and she also pointed out

that the iphone 17 is i mean i love my 17 pro my pro max yes but don't get me wrong you know a lot

of the features that used to be in the higher end models have been pushed down to that iphone 17 so

this year the entry-level iphone 17 is arguably a better value than previous years the entry-level

models so you put all that together and i mean who knows i mean these are all just people speculating

but i think that that could be the reason why but you know great sales in america but really really

good sales in china and let's not forget the chinese you know here in america we have iphone

We have Android.

There's a lot of different Android models like Samsung and stuff.

But the Chinese market is a lot more competitive.

You've got a lot of companies, you know, Huawei and other ones that are unique to the Chinese

market.

They have features that iPhones don't even have.

Like, I don't even think that Apple Intelligence, not that Apple Intelligence is the bee's knees

or anything, but I don't even think that they have Apple Intelligence in China yet, whereas

some of the competitors that are local Chinese companies do.

So there are some reasons why if I live in China, I might want to buy from a Chinese

manufacturer or, you know, a pure Chinese company, although the iPhones are manufactured in China,

too. But and yet the iPhones are doing really well. So whatever the reason, you know, it's a good

problem for Apple to have, I suppose. Apple may have another market to sell to pretty quick.

Apparently, NASA now will allow the astronauts to take iPhones to the moon. I hope you can get a

signal there. I'm not really sure. I guess I didn't even think about do they need one? I mean, I feel

like they've had enough technology on the space shuttle and everything already but you know maybe

yeah you still want to have your iphone with you when you you know just just go by the moon or

something i know that that you know whenever nasa has these missions they're always incredibly

sensitive but the weight of everything because every little ounce you know is so much more in

payload and everything else like that um and yet as this ars technica article refers to it you know

there's a there's a good pr angle because if you allow astronauts to have their old iphones and i

presume that iPhones will work in space and stuff like that. If you allow them to have their own

iPhones, it opens up the possibility of them taking their own pictures, of taking their own video,

of getting public even more excited in it. And I think that's pretty cool. One of the most famous

pictures of all time was when, I forget my Apollo numbers, but it's the Apollo one that went,

it didn't land on the moon, but it went around the moon. And they took that picture just as,

it wasn't a scheduled picture. It was just so like to happen to say, oh, let's take this picture.

And it was the earth rising above the moon called Earth Rises.

And it's like one of the most famous pictures of all time.

And it was just taken because somebody happened to have a camera.

And of course, happened to have a camera back then was like, you know, a full SLR type of

camera.

It was slow.

It was film and everything with an iPhone.

I mean, just you take as many pictures as you want, you know, unlimited film.

And so we could get some some cool pictures, good PR.

I always love any space pictures.

I'm a big space nut.

So I'm glad that they're going to make it easier for the astronauts to preserve memories and

share with the rest of us.

That'll be cool.

Do we know what model that they're going to have?

Maybe the iPhone Air?

I think it's going to be up to the individual.

Yeah, that's true.

The Air will be lighter.

I suspect it'll be up to the...

Well, you know, Earth is so far away.

You really want to have that more powerful camera of the pro.

Yeah, you need to zoom.

I think an 8x zoom may be enough.

He says that here, that two iPhone 4s flew on board the final space shuttle mission in 2011.

But he goes, but it's not clear whether the crew ever touched them.

I mean, you know, they have a few other things they probably have to do when they're on the

there. But, you know, I also just quickly thought to really pull this all around. We talked about

the iPhone for Apple's first fiscal quarter, but you always do a good job, of course, of highlighting

the iPad sales, which I was encouraged to know it's up 6% from this time last year. Now, iPads

don't really have a ton of up and down. I mean, people hang on to them. I hung on to mine for

almost four years and just a few weeks ago, I got a, actually probably two weeks ago, I got a brand

new iPad so that I replaced mine. But I remember, I think it was one of the SpaceX missions. Jeff,

do you remember this? There was a story that they were using an iPad to basically command

everything instead of like having, you know, the controls and the switches and everything.

They were using an iPad as sort of like their controls into their dashboard. And I just thought

that that was really nice and kind of a nice, you know, kind of a tie in here because they're so

used to it. Everybody knows the, you know, the, the interface there. I just think that'll be fun

to see. I mean, I mean, like you said, what a marketing thing. Like we need to have some Apple

commercials with iPhones floating in a spaceship. I mean, that's going to be fantastic on that.

But, you know, if you try to call the astronauts, you may have to get the call screened. I actually

saw this story that you linked to today from the Wall Street Journal. Call screening is aggravating

the rich and powerful. And this is that feature. You could probably do a better job of explaining

to where if you call, you basically have to leave your name before the actual person picks up.

And I've had a good cop, bad cop kind of a relationship with this feature.

Sometimes I have it on and sometimes I don't have it on.

I've missed some calls.

But I just thought this was a funny article that you linked to today in the Wall Street Journal.

Yeah, the feature is new from iOS 26.

And it basically is like a built-in receptionist on your phone.

Like unless the person is in your address book, if they call a little, you know, you'll get an alert on your phone.

Your phone won't actually ring, but you'll get a little alert.

Hey, somebody is calling and we're talking to them.

Yeah, it shows on the screen.

Yeah.

And your phone and your Apple Watch says if you tap a button, you can see it and it will give you a live transcription.

And the voice basically says, you know, please, you know, say who you are and what you're calling about or whatever it says.

And the person will say it.

And I've seen it before.

There's been like a call that came in that I didn't recognize.

And then, you know, it's a telemarketer and they don't say anything or they say something

that's obviously I don't want.

And then I just ignore it because I can see what it is.

But then I also had it happen just this week where it was like somebody that was some contractor

that was coming to inspect something at my house.

And, you know, once he started to say who he was, I immediately saw, oh, I want to talk

to this person.

It wasn't somebody in my phone book, obviously.

I didn't know who he was.

And so I immediately picked up the phone and took it.

So I personally like it.

The funny thing about this article is that what was the title?

What did you just say?

It's like annoying the rich and powerful.

It's aggravating the rich and powerful, Jeff.

But what the article actually says is that a lot of the rich and powerful, the celebrities,

don't even answer their phones in the first place because they don't want random people

calling them.

And so it makes it sound like this is a better feature for them because it means the only

people that would actually be able to get through and make the phone ring are the people in

their personal address book.

So if I'm a Hollywood celebrity and I've got Leonardo DiCaprio in my address book,

He can call me, but some reporter could not.

I don't know.

It seems like it's a good feature to me.

I don't see how it would aggravate them, but whatever.

Maybe that's just clickbait.

But Leonardo would have to leave his name first, right?

In other words, he would have to talk to your assistant.

I'm assuming in this world that he's in my address book and my context.

Okay, good.

In this hypothetical world where I become a movie star next year.

But we shall see.

I got you.

Yeah, I guess the way that I've done it, maybe I just need to sit down and go through sort of the workflow.

But I see that there's a phone call coming in, but I don't have like, you know, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute to sit there and like wait for somebody to leave it and then pick it up.

I see the phone call and then I usually go to do something else.

And by the time that I go back to the phone, I see who it was.

And by that time, they've already hung up because I didn't pick up.

Does that make sense?

I need to make sure that I think I get the workflow going here a little bit better.

But for me, like I'm often it's often during the day I'm sitting here in my office.

I'm, you know, working on a brief on my computer.

and then my iPhone will give you this little tap on my wrist for my Apple watch and it'll say,

you know, there's this number calling and I don't recognize the number of course. And it'll say,

tap for more details. And if you just like tap on the screen of your phone, let's write that on my

lock screen. I can start to see the transcript or whatever, whatever it is. And, you know,

usually within seconds, they can say, oh, this is John Doe. I'm from such and such. And I'm here to

fix the air conditioning or whatever, whoever it is. So for me, I haven't had that issue with it.

And don't get me wrong, maybe it's annoying to them.

And I guess that's what the Wall Street Journal was getting at, is that if you're a rich and

famous person trying to call somebody, you might consider annoying.

But in my mind, you know, this is, we need to get used to it.

So right now it's something new and people are not, it's catching people by surprise that

there's a receptionist on a personal phone number.

But as we get more used to it, I think it's going to become just, you know, this is what

it is.

And anything you can do to help us with all of the spam callers and stuff like that.

I mean, I hate that.

I hate the text messages.

I hate the callers.

So I'm in favor of it for me personally.

You can see both ways.

In fact, here's a gentleman here in this little image, Alan Jackson, a go-to lawyer for Hollywood bigwigs, has become more difficult to reach since he started using iPhone's call screening feature.

Which he could turn off, by the way, if he doesn't like it.

I know.

That's my first thought too, Jeff.

It's like, okay, you don't have to use it.

But then somebody says, it's like, wow, you get spam all day.

So how do you blame them?

Like you do want to have something like that on so that it can filter that out a little bit.

But yeah, we just got to find the right balance.

But anyway, fun, fun, interesting story about that on there.

You reviewed an interesting device.

And in fact, I have here in my hotel because I now travel with the Ugreen 3-in-1 foldable

Magflow wireless charger.

I love this thing on here.

And since I carry this and now you keep linking to new products, Jeff, then I'm going to have to make an investment.

I saw somebody talk about this because it's another one from Anchor because I also have the little Anchor Cube, right?

But I know that you have as well.

That was one of the first ones that came out.

This Ugreen is excellent.

But Anchor now is going to release another one.

This is called the MagSafe Charger Fast Charging, but it has a little difference to it.

apparently it's got like a little fan or somehow it keeps the phone cool,

which I think is kind of neat.

Yeah. It's, you know, I've had that situation. I mean,

my phone is on one of those anchor chargers right now.

I guess it's not actively charging. Yeah. Cause I'm at a hundred percent.

So when I pick my, now my phone's not hot,

but if it had been actively charging, we know what that's like.

It's warm. It's charging. It's a little warm,

but I don't think it's a comfort thing. Although it has that as well.

I think what anchor is trying to do here is by keeping it cooler.

it makes it that it doesn't overheat because I think that MagSafe regulates, you know,

how much power provides if it overheats.

So, you know, in a nice, cool office environment, maybe doesn't matter.

But if it's a portable charger and you could be anywhere, you could be at a hot environment.

Heck, maybe you're by the beach or something like that.

Who knows where you are?

You know, maybe if you get into a situation where it's warmer and heat makes a difference,

I suppose it could be better to have the fan.

Again, even this article by, who is this?

Julie Clover, I forget who wrote this.

Julie Clover, yeah.

You know, even she says, you know, in our tests, we haven't seen that it makes a difference.

But, you know, I guess it's maybe there'll be a circumstance.

And I have to admit that it looks nice.

I mean, it looks nice in the hand.

If I was trying to decide today whether to buy the one that you and I both have or this one, I don't know.

This one's $10 more.

But Anchor, I've always been very happy with Anchor's quality.

Absolutely.

I will tell you, I've been using that Ugreen one since last year.

And I think I've mentioned in the past.

They even gave it as a Christmas present not too long ago.

I'm a fan of it.

So they're both good, but it's nice to have options.

I mean, the funny thing is Anchor makes so many of these devices.

I have to think they saw Ugreen's product and maybe some other ones.

And they said, oh, wow, this is a product category that we want to have a really good

product on.

And now they have what looks to be one.

So it's nice to have options.

Another thing that I mentioned is pricing.

Right now, you know, I think the retail prices for these are like $150 or something like that.

But like the Ugreen one, for example, if you scroll to the end of this post, Brett, when

reviewed it. See right now it's 139, but when I actually reviewed it, I think it was on sale for

$199. Yeah. So that's the thing. So if you're going to go buy one right now on Amazon,

you are going to spend 140, but you could have spent a hundred a few months ago and anchor as

well. Anchor products come on sale all the time. We sometimes talk about it here. So like, if you

don't have an urgent need for one of these, what I might do is let's just wait and see if there's a

sale. And if I could get the Ugreen one for a hundred bucks, or if I could get the anchor one

for like a hundred bucks, I might just go for that one. So that's something to consider too.

Speaking of the product category, let me just make sure everybody's clear on this. The reason we love

these so much, number one, it's, it's, they say three in one, because first of all, it can charge

three devices. And typically I have it charging my phone, my Apple watch, and then there's a little

tray there, at least in this Ugreen one, where you can charge your, uh, the case for your AirPods.

which works out great.

But the other reason that I love having that,

first of all, it's all compact.

So it's all in this one little thing.

So if you're watching the video,

you can see how this is all compact on here.

But I also, exactly.

But I also love it because it just supports

the standby mode for the iPhone so well, Jeff.

And I keep telling people about the standby mode

and it just surprises me how many people

like don't really understand that

because it's kind of hard to do

if you just plug in a cable to the bottom of your phone.

If you don't have a device like this

these product categories, you know, these three-in-one chargers, I don't know that you

encounter the standby mode very often. And it's such a great feature that I, like, I can't go to

bed at night, especially when I travel. Even at home, I have the anchor one at home. I travel with

the Ugreen now. And it's just, it's part of the nighttime routine just to have that on there.

Even if I don't use it for an alarm clock or anything, just having the temperature there and

the time to be able to see it, I know it's right all the time. And it's just really fantastic.

And then in the morning, that's when I usually charge my AirPods case and then my Apple watch as well.

So my daughter was asking for one of these just because she keeps seeing them and people are using them.

So it's a great product category for sure.

If anyone listening to this has not used standby mode, I mean, assuming that you work like at a desk.

I mean, obviously, if you're a doctor and you're going from patient to patient, maybe this is not quite as useful.

But if you have a job where you're at a desk, and of course, at nighttime too, as you said, on a nightstand, it's great.

During the day, I mean, right here under my monitor where I'm looking at you, I have my little anchor charger and my phone's on there.

And I usually just have it display the time.

It's so useful to have the time and the date and the temperature.

But sometimes I swipe over and I have a widget where my – I'm looking at it right now.

The time's on the left.

And on the right, I have my calendar.

And when I have busy days, like sometimes you have these days that like every 15 minutes you've got something right.

And I just find it so useful to sort of glance and say, oh, yeah, what's the next thing I'm seeing right now?

In fact, you know what I'm showing me right now?

It's showing me right now that today, or no, that's tomorrow.

It's showing me that tomorrow is David Sparks' birthday.

Happy birthday.

Oh, happy birthday, Max Sparky.

Oftentimes I will have whatever my next little event is.

And that's useful that I can glance down and see both, you know, right now, this is the time.

And I've got this in 15 minutes.

And just to have it on a glance without having to pull out my calendar, go to my Outlook, look at my Apple Watch.

It's just there.

It's so, so useful.

And of course, it also keeps my iPhone charged.

That's also nice.

Exactly.

Bonus.

It's the standby mode more than the charging that I really love about this category.

Yeah, yeah.

Good stuff.

Most people that are taking pictures on their iPhone are just taking pictures, and they

probably don't think about it very much.

And in fact, I usually fall into that category.

But there are different formats that you can tell the iPhone to take a picture in.

And I've known about RAW photos.

And of course, I think by default today, it's H-E-I-F, right?

Is that format that pictures are stored on the iPhone, sort of a proprietary format from Apple.

You know, most of us, if you know anything about it, you probably think of a JPEG, right?

Or, you know, maybe a PNG or something along those lines.

What a great article you'll link to today.

Again, Glenn Fleischman just hitting it out of the park every time on sixcolors.com.

But if you do run into this, and for some reason you don't really understand it, good article about removing the raw photo from the raw plus JPEG pair.

And I know that sounds a little, you know, like a mouthful there, but raw photos are much larger.

And so Glenn is basically answering the question here that somebody had about like, hey, I don't want the raw photo.

I don't need that for various reasons.

How do I get rid of that part and just keep the JPEG?

Yeah, you may not even have.

I'm just looking at my phone as you've been talking.

And if I'm in my photos app,

I actually wasn't even seeing an option to take a raw photo.

I have it turned off.

It's in the settings app.

If you go to settings, then camera, and then format.

So I actually had it turned off.

That shows you how infrequently I use it.

I just turned it on just to see.

And now I guess there'll be an option to turn it on.

So, oh, there it is at the very top left.

I see.

I was going to say, just exactly.

Just real quick.

When I go into my camera in the top left,

right now it says H-E-I-F.

And if you tap that, then you have the raw option if you wanted to switch to it there.

Yeah, raw or GIF.

And you also have the resolution, either 24 megapixel, 48 megapixels.

What this is all about is if you take a picture in raw format, if you use something like

a Pixelmator or Photoshop or one of those things, because it's got so much more data

in it, you can do processing of the different channels, the red, whatever they're, red,

blue, yellow, whatever they are. You just have a lot more control over how the picture works.

If you have raw turned off, the phone makes those decisions to try to give you the best possible

picture. And the iPhone does an excellent job giving you the best possible picture,

but it's going to compress it. And it's not going to, once it gets in all that data to give you the

best picture of the moon in the sky or the mountain in the distance, or just a portrait

that you're taking, it's going to discard that data after it comes up with its best picture.

When you take it in raw format, it saves all of that data.

So you could then take the time on your computer to edit things.

I will tell you, I have done it over the years.

I've said, this might be a really important picture.

Let me take it in raw format.

And so then instead of the picture being, you know, eight megabytes, the picture is going

to be 80, you know, it's going to be much, much, much bigger picture.

And then I work at it on my computer.

And I guess that's because I'm not very sophisticated with Photoshop and stuff like that.

I find, you know what?

I can't, I mean, maybe if you're doing a special effect, I can do something that's a little bit more interesting, making it look more orange or more blue.

But in my personal experience, just using the regular filters and the adjustments in the photos app.

It's fine.

Or it's really, it does big.

But again, but I realize I'm not a professional photographer and the proof is the pudding.

Professional photographers take all of their pictures in raw format.

I remember, you know, not that long ago, my wife had taken like a photography class over the weekend.

And she was asking me about it because she's like, my teacher, that's all he takes is raw photographs.

And he was telling us how to put that setting on, on our camera and stuff like that.

So if it makes a difference to you.

So, but again, the article was interesting.

Not big.

I suspect that the number of people that actually take raw and JPEG and then want to remove it.

I mean, that's very few people are going to have the problem that Glenn Fleischman's discussing,

but I enjoyed the article and that's why I linked to it just because it tells us about how it works.

I mean, when you do this, your iPhone takes basically two sets of pictures and puts them

into a single package.

It looks like one picture on your phone, but it's actually a little package file that has

both the raw photo and the JPEG, you know, H-E-I-F, you know, whatever that format that

it takes that's, you know, the smaller one.

And so when he goes and describes how you could actually open it up in a computer and

you could remove one or remove the other, that was interesting to me mainly just because

it shows how the whole process works to have all this.

So it's interesting.

At the end of the day, though, I may still take a raw from time to time, but I mean,

in all these years, it hasn't made a difference to me.

So first of all, it just is amazing to me how much is going on under the hood with Apple.

I mean, that we don't even realize.

Second of all, I think I lost track about step three or four here in these eight steps

that Glenn Fleischman put about it.

Because again, I don't think that I would ever come to think about it.

Like you, every once in a while, if it's something really important, I will take the raw just because I think, hey, I want to capture as much as I can possibly capture about this scene.

But anytime that I've looked at a raw picture, and if you're a normal person that's not a professional photographer, you're going to probably look at a raw file and be like, that looks terrible.

It looks horrible.

It looks worse at first.

It's only after you edit it.

Exactly.

Yeah, like Glenn says, the raw file is the digital equivalent of a film negative.

And I just thought that that was a perfect way to put it because you're right.

Like, you know, professional photographers, I remember I would, you know, I guess in high school, I took some dark room classes.

You can do amazing things with a negative, right?

You can do all kinds of things when you go through that process of creating that photo.

And in the same way, that's really what a raw is doing.

And it's like it has all of that information and so much more than probably what a normal person would need access to.

But you could do something beautiful with it if you need to.

But for the most of us that are pure non-professional photography mortals, I just leave it on HEIF.

And, you know, that's been more than enough for me on anything doing.

But if this is something you run into, this is a great article from Clint on that.

Happy birthday to the Apple Vision Pro.

We should do an end division now, just to say it's two years ago.

I guess I would have thought a year and a half.

I mean, certainly I would have said a year, but two years ago, Jeff, that's pretty amazing.

I guess just because I know how much we have talked about it.

But wow, I mean, it continues to improve.

We talked about so many of the software improvements that have happened to this, even the hardware

band improvements, and it just keeps getting better.

And like you think, I think you said from your first review, I guess two years ago, you have seen the future and it is Apple Vision Pro.

Yeah.

And I know that there are still so few people that have them.

I mean, you don't own one, Brett.

A lot of people, and you're a big Apple enthusiast, but you don't own it because it's expensive, right?

It would be tough to justify that expense.

And so many other people don't own it.

I know that there are people that do because I talk about them.

I talk to them from time to time, but it's still a very niche market.

But I love that Apple is still paying attention to it and, you know, really pushing it because, you know, the hardware itself can certainly get better in the future.

It's going to get harder, lighter, you know, cheaper and lighter and stuff like that.

But the software, Vision OS, it's really amazing what Apple has done.

I mean, the idea that I'm just sitting there and I look at something and I'm selecting it and everything else, it's really incredible.

So two years later, you know, I'm glad that Apple is still pushing it forward.

You know, a lot of the articles, as I mentioned today, are written by people, some of whom

don't even own a Vision Pro.

And they're like, oh, well, nobody's using it.

We don't know what the future is.

And I mean, maybe, who knows?

Maybe they'll be right.

Maybe Apple will give up.

But I hope that they're wrong.

I hope that Apple, who, by the way, has ridiculous amounts of money, as we talked about at the

beginning of the podcast today, I hope that they spend a small portion of that money continuing

to push this platform, because I really do think it has incredible, incredible potential.

Plus, it's really, really useful for me right now.

I mean, I use my Vision Pro all the time.

It's the best place.

It's the best way for me to watch any sort of TV show if I'm watching by myself.

And there's all sorts of interesting apps.

And the productivity stuff is not as good as I want it to be, you know, because I'm still waiting for Microsoft to have full compatibility and some other things like that.

But it is it's useful and I really enjoy it.

I've talked many times about when you have the virtual display that I'm hooked up to a computer or sometimes even my iPad.

And, you know, having this big screen, much bigger than any monitor I could ever afford to work with.

Just really, really cool stuff.

I've got the best idea.

If the astronauts take an iPhone into space, they should be able to take immersive pictures.

Am I right?

I agree.

They could.

And then you could view those immersive pictures on your Vision Pro, Jeff.

How amazing.

I'm going to write a letter to NASA right now.

Dear NASA, this is right.

I have a request.

And then when you're done with that, you can go back to plan Frogger on your Vision Pro.

I thought this was a great.

I remember you talked about this last week.

And now you've had a chance to try it out.

Okay.

This was too much fun.

Okay.

I totally, you know, for people of a certain age, you know, if you were alive in the 1980s

and you remember, you know, whether you went to the local mall or the local arcade and

you had games there from, you know, Nintendo and Atari, you know, I spent so much money

in quarters in these games and I loved them so much.

I mean, that was such a big part of my upbringing.

And so this new, no, to be fair, this app that's called Retrocade, it's also available for the iPhone and iPad.

So like if you want to play the Pac-Man, and it's fun to play these games because they are emulators of the original game.

So it's the original graphics.

It's the original sound.

You know, that's sort of fun.

But it's just the game.

For nostalgia.

But it's just the game.

But the real standout is when you do it in a Vision Pro because for two reasons.

First of all, they have this immersive environment in the game that you feel like you are standing in an arcade.

And I sent you something, Brett.

Pull up the picture I sent you.

What I did last night is after I played it.

Oh, here they are.

So I was using my Vision Pro and I had the screen mirrored to my TV, my Apple TV, so that

my son could actually see what I was seeing.

And then we did the reverse.

He was using my Vision Pro.

And there's an app on the iPhone that when someone else is using it, it's the guest user

mode.

And so I could see on my iPhone everything he was looking at.

And so I took some screenshots.

You can tell it's guest user mode because you see at the bottom of these, it says end

guest user.

I see that.

Well, he was in this mode, like he's in this arcade and he looks one direction and he sees,

you know, Frogger and, you know, Pac-Man and these others.

And then like, go to the next picture.

So then he looks the other direction and he's seeing like some other games, Galaga and Space

Invaders.

Oh, track and field.

I remember that one.

And then go to the next one.

So the next one is this environment, you're looking around and they even have like a snack

bar with popcorn.

I'm in an arcade.

Yeah.

You feel like, you know, it's very clever.

So you have this feeling everywhere you look.

And again, these are 2D pictures, but imagine if it's immersive everywhere you look up, down,

left, right, you're in this arcade.

But then more importantly, you go to play the game.

And if you go back to the first picture, you know, when you're doing it, it's not just

that you're playing Frogger, but like if I step back and if I look around to the left

or right, it's the actual arcade box.

I mean, and it's so nicely done.

it's even like on the little place where the buttons are you can even if you look close you

can even see like the um like imprints where somebody has touched it like fingerprints on it

it is such an incredible graphic job that i'm like oh my goodness now the way that you control it

is unfortunately uh maybe you don't have a joystick you don't use your fingers so you have to use an

external device and so my son has an xbox controller we don't we don't even own an xbox in our house

but he uses it for something called Steam to play his games.

I think it is.

Oh yeah, of course.

So he has one of those Xbox controllers

that he bought to use with my Mac to play games.

And so I just hooked that up to my Vision Pro,

you know, just like a Bluetooth way.

And so then I'm just using the little buttons in front of me.

And like when I hit left,

I actually see the joystick on the arcade machine

going to the left and then right.

And then I'm playing Frogger.

And I mean, it's a hundred percent the exact game.

It's the same graphics, it's the same everything.

And because I'm not just looking on a 2D window, because I actually feel like I'm standing in front of an arcade game.

And if I look left or right, what can I say?

I mean, it's like I was going back in time.

It really took me back.

And, you know, as I sort of joke, I'm telling my son I can play Frogger.

And his first reaction is, what's Frogger?

Oh, my God, you do not know what Frogger is.

And so then I'm describing it to him and showing it.

And he's like, oh, Dad, this reminds me of Crossy Road.

I'm like, no, Crossy Road is the takeoff of Frogger.

Frogger King, Crossy Road, it's the other way around.

But, you know, these kids these days, Brett, they don't know the classics.

I have failed in my upbringing.

He did recognize Galaga and Pac-Man and some of the other ones.

Well, that's, yeah.

Well, yeah.

So it's fun.

So I love what they've done.

This is one of the most creative ideas for a game.

And, you know, the article that I linked to on Polygon, the idea says, you know, Polygon

is a website that talks about games, right?

Games, right.

says that it he he says it was almost bad because he's like because i really wanted to be able to

touch the machine and i really wanted to be able to touch the buttons and i'm like well come on i

mean yes and when i watch the vision pro special with all the dogs it would be nice if i could you

want to pet a dog right that's not i mean what am i going to say that's my complaint is that apple

did not make it that i can actually pet the dog so i mean i i think that's a little you know

exaggeration but clean it's there's so much nostalgia and by the way as you can see from

this picture you can place the arcade game machine in the fake arcade or you could just put it in

your living room in your own home wherever you want it's right there and you could look around

and the light reflects off of it the the graphic artist so great that created this i just have to

say bravo because they spent their time doing this right and it looks looks really nice now the game

that's wrong right there with centipede i do have one critique you know centipede okay all know is a

trackball game right you need trackball right that's how yeah that's of course the little the

little xbox controller that's got the left right buttons and stuff like that i don't think that's

going to be the same because i haven't i don't have a trackball but okay i you know i guess i

need is there a bluetooth trackball i don't know i need to find out if there's a bluetooth i'm sure

i'm sure we could find one for you because now i know i want to know you got to repeat you got

to report back uh next uh this is this is i just i want to like explore the arcade like i love this

picture here like you've got the door here you could like walk around the arcade you got the

popcorn in the back you know all the root beer and lemon lime that is too cool i mean come on we talk

about the vision pro so much more from an entertainment perspective i mean this is

entertainment of course obviously but you know just putting yourself in that immersive environment

that that's a lot of fun that's a lot of fun yeah and this is entertainment but i mean to be serious

and in fact i have a session where i'm going to talk about this at the aba tech show um uh next

But like, you know, I do think that this is the future for things like law, because, you know, we've all had, you know, we understand the idea of a court case that you want to put the jury back, you know, back into, you know, as if they were there and what happened at the scene of the crime.

And I do think that, you know, we started to share some examples of this, but, you know, in the future where this technology is more plentiful, being able to put the jury in an immersive environment as if they were there.

And of course, that's going to get into admissibility issues because the question is going to be, it's so realistic.

Unless it's 100% realistic, the person that creates the environment may not be 100% like it was.

So there's going to be issues there.

But those are all issues to be discussed.

I mean, we went through all of this when people had like videos.

That's right.

It's all interesting.

But anyway, from an entertainment standpoint, this is fun.

I haven't actually played the Pac-Man game yet.

I'll have to try that one this weekend.

The only one I played last night was Frogger, and it was cute.

I actually did play space invaders for a second too, but frogger was frogger was more fun.

Let's do a where you at segment, but Jeff is at the arcade right now. I feel like I just want to

go and like hang out there all day, just like I used to. So we're going to start this where you

at segment on a sad and tragic note. Um, but I just thought it was important. I, I, you know,

I had seen this story about Savannah Guthrie's mother, apparently has been abducted, I think, in the Tucson area.

I think all of us have seen this story because it is just horrible and terrible.

And we obviously wish the best for all of the family and Ms. Guthrie's safe return.

But I had not seen this angle here that they used Nancy Guthrie's watch to see when it disconnected from her pacemaker.

Is that correct?

And so they could find out like that was the time.

That was just another factor that they could calculate in to discover that, you know, when she left the house or something along those lines, which I just thought was fascinating from that.

And I'm just glad that some of that information may turn out to be helpful.

Yeah.

In fact, I mean, as you're talking, I'm just typing in, you know, CNN.com with the very

latest in this story.

The authorities do think that they do think that she was abducted.

They're now saying that, you know, they found blood on the porch, but they also say that

her front door camera is missing.

I don't know what kind of camera it was.

Now, most of these cameras, you know, whether it's a ring camera or UFI or whatever it is,

they often, you know, record somewhere off site.

And so hopefully the authorities have been able to access that video and get information that way.

The reason, I mean, it's a horrible story and I feel for her.

And again, many people don't know this, but, you know, Savannah Guthrie, she is an attorney.

She went to law school.

And although she she practiced for a small period of time, I think I think it can gump.

I'm not sure. But then she became a reporter for like court TV or something.

So, I mean, she I feel like she's sort of she's sort of one of us.

Right. You know, she's yes, she's a famous person on the Today Show.

But she went to law and she understands the law and stuff.

And so she's, gosh, I can only imagine what she's gone through working with the authorities

on this.

But to put aside that, the technology angle is interesting because with the quantification

of self and personal devices and things that you wear, like an Apple Watch and things that

are with you most of the time, like an iPhone, we just have all these tools that authorities

can take advantage of, and I presume that they are here, to get all of this information when

the people want to be able to use it.

And it's really interesting.

I mean, I've heard of court cases where the issue is, did the Apple Watch detect that the

person's heart rate went up substantially at the same period of time where the guy was

allegedly doing crimes?

And is that an indication?

I mean, it doesn't prove guilt, but it's certainly indicative of it.

and all these other things.

It's just this whole, you know,

ways that technology is measuring things

that we just didn't measure before.

Even just GPS data.

I mean, knowing where you are,

if you can get access to that,

that's obviously, you know,

the typical Perry Mason question,

where were you on the night of such and such?

Nowadays, the iPhone can tell you

if you were, where were you on the night of such and such?

You know, it wasn't that long ago,

Brett, you and I were talking about this feature

in the Maps app.

If you have it turned on, it's optional,

but I do have it turned on

that you can actually see, you know,

what recent locations have you been to? And, you know, I can see, for example, I tap on here,

you know, 19th Judicial District Court, which is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You know, I was there

for a hearing and I can see right here, you know, here's when I was last there and the time that I

was there, you know, and I might find that useful. You know, what was that restaurant that we went to,

you know, when we were visiting Boston that one time? I could actually look on my Maps app now

and get that. But that could also be useful from a discovery standpoint in civil litigation and

and for an investigation standpoint in criminal cases.

This was fascinating here.

Investigators believe that Nancy Guthrie arrived home around 9.30 p.m. on February 1st,

and then the watch was removed sometime in the evening, presumably before bedtime.

And they say Apple Watch removal does not stop the pacemaker data sinking.

So they were able to see, I guess, from that Apple Watch there,

that the pacemaker in Nancy Guthrie

stopped communicating with her Apple device

around 2 a.m. on February the 2nd.

So that's gotta be when she left the house, right?

That's when the connection was lost.

Yeah, exactly.

And it just fascinating from that

because the Apple Watch,

first of all, being connected to a pacemaker

and just being able to track that,

obviously somebody from the family, I would assume,

allowed them to unlock the Apple Watch or something.

So they were able to get access to that information

or maybe they shared it with their health professional

or something like that, but just amazing.

And, you know, similar, I've heard other stories

that I've worked on, even from a criminal standpoint,

or maybe even, you know, a civil litigation

where somebody claimed that, you know, they're injured

and they can't do a lot of exercise,

but they were able to go into some of their, you know,

tracking from the Apple Watch and say,

well, wait a minute, you took 9,000 steps this last day

and you claim that you can't walk.

You know, some of that can backfire, some of that's good.

And it's just, you know, anyway, we just,

We hope the best for Ms. Guthrie and the rest of the family.

Let's go to a little bit of a better maybe angle on the Where You At segment.

Apple AirTag second generation.

I remember we talked about this last week.

You showed that you have already purchased a box of the second generation.

And this week you put out your review of them as well.

And it sounds like you're pretty happy with them.

It's everything that we liked about AirTags, just a little bit better.

Yeah. Everything that you and I talked about one week ago, just based upon the feature set,

is all remains true now that I've actually run it through some tests and stuff like that.

And, you know, the one the one insight that I have now that I didn't have last week

is how much of a difference it makes. And I will tell you, I mean, it does make a difference if I've

lost my keys because I left them somewhere I didn't know about it. You know, I will absolutely

find them faster if I have a second generation AirTag attached to them than with the first

generation. You will. Now, it doesn't mean I wouldn't find my keys, you know, because I would.

I would just have to walk around a little bit more.

And so is it, you know, you need to think about how often do you actually lose things?

Hopefully not very often at all.

And then when you do, how valuable is it to you to be able to find it even faster, knowing

that there's a good chance you'll find it eventually.

So that's one issue.

And then the other thing is because it's got better Bluetooth, if it's outside of your

house, if, you know, it was stolen from you or you left it in a restaurant or you left

it somewhere else, you know, how important it is to you to have a better Bluetooth radio

So there's more chance that that AirTag is within the vicinity of somebody else's iPhone

that then sends the information back to data and to Apple.

And it's impossible to quantify that because who knows when you will be in that one edge

case where the old AirTag wasn't quite powerful enough and the new one would have been, you

know, who knows?

But I mean, it can happen.

So, but I mean, maybe your luggage is in one part of the airport where it's too far away

to get a regular Bluetooth connection, but it can work this time.

So it might make a difference.

The big thing for me is, you know, I would not go out and replace all your AirTags at all.

But I do like the idea of, you know, buying one of them, you know, right now they're 30 bucks.

They often go on sale, you know, or if you buy a set of them like I did for a hundred bucks, you know, I've now got four new ones.

And I decided, you know, my keys are more important.

My briefcase is more important.

You replace that one.

I'm going to replace those ones.

And then I've got two more.

I'll probably put one on my luggage because, you know, you don't want to lose luggage when you travel.

And I don't know what to do.

But then I now have four other older AirTags and they're still useful.

And so I'm going to use them on other devices too.

So that's the way that I think of it.

If you want to spend either 30 bucks or a hundred bucks and maybe the things that matter

more to you, give them the least and greatest, but only do it if you really think that you

can still use those AirTags and something else.

But it's nice that Apple eventually, it's been what, five years.

So I mean, it's definitely been time.

Apple gave us a nice, good run with the first generation and now we have the second generation.

So, uh, and just you really to another review and I know I've seen other folks say pretty

much a lot of the same thing.

Everybody's very happy with the fact that it's, it's almost exactly.

And you had a great point.

It's like, it's the exact same size.

So all of your current, you know, holders or whatever that you're using is going to fit

in the exact same spot, all the same batteries that you bought.

You will be able to be useful in this as well.

Um, but it's just, it's better.

It's just, it's a little bit louder.

It's a little bit better.

You had a great side-by-side.

I thought on some of this too, about how you, you, you tried your old current air tag, and then you

tried the new one and you, it was able to find it a little bit easier. And to me, that just,

that shows, um, that's, that's well worth it there. Interesting story that you, uh, posted

today from six colors slings day passes. And when, as I read this, I thought to myself, wait a minute,

I have done exactly this in the past. I can't remember what game that it was, but we cut

a very long time ago. And so when I want to watch a sports event, which isn't very often,

it was some game that I just couldn't get access to because we don't have a live cable to be able

to access that. And I don't want to pay for NFL.com or NHL or anything like that. Well,

I remember I looked it up and I found like I could do like a one day or a trial for Sling.

And if you don't know much about Sling, it's been around for a long time and they do have some good

options here. And I just thought this was great from Philip Michaels at six colors.com slings day

passes are the answer to my streaming prayers. Yeah. I mean, for five bucks, you get 24 hours

of access to all their channels, which is going to be like, you know, local TV channels for sports

games and their cable channels, you know, quote unquote cable channels, you know? Um, and I think

there's also another one. He said that for like 10 bucks, you can get three days now. You're not

going to want to do it every single, I mean, if you did that every single day of the month, it

would be ridiculously expensive. But if there was literally only one time a month or one time a few

months that you wanted to have access to a particular channel or particular station,

I did not even know that this existed as an option. And I will tell you, Brett, the number of times

that I watch local television, I mean, it ain't very often. Sometimes I watch Saturday Night Live,

you know, which I have recorded and I watch it. You know, the funny thing is at our house,

We have DirecTV, which is a satellite, right?

I never, ever, ever use my satellite at all.

What I do is I use my DirecTV account to access the DirecTV website on my Apple TV.

And then I'm literally, it's just like sling, right?

I'm literally downloading a stream from the DirecTV website.

The fact that I have a satellite, if you just told me, oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you,

I actually stole that satellite from your house six months ago.

I would have no way to contest you on that because I don't even use it.

It's just that, and the only reason I still pay for DirecTV is because I've looked at what the cost of canceling it is and signing up with another service, and it actually ends up being about the same cost, so I just keep it.

But to tell you the truth, I mean, if I actually thought about how often I truly use DirecTV, it may not be more than once a month.

I don't know about other people in my family, but I could see a world in which it makes a sense to do it on demand.

So this is a great article, and this is a great option.

Anyone out there that's cut the cord, something to seriously think about.

Now that I read this here, it was probably something on ESPN.

So I don't have access to ESPN right now.

But he says in this scenario, if there's some event I want to watch on ESPN, I fire up the Sling app on my Apple TV, select the event from the schedule and follow the prompts to hand over my $5.

So he says he likes to watch the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day every day, but that's moved from free to air TV over to cable.

So he said, on this New Year's Day, I bought a Sling Day Pass for the $5 specifically to watch the Rose Bowl game, which is brilliant.

To me, this is what I would love to have, sort of this a la carte.

And you can pay what he said is like $69 or $39 for a full subscription every month if you wanted to get full access to Sling.

But I wouldn't need that.

And I would love to have – I love this option that I can just pick and choose something specific that I want to be able to watch just for the day.

You know what else I might do? I'm just thinking, sometimes when I travel on vacation, like we go to the beach, I will take my Apple TV with me. And sometimes I get issues because DirecTV will say like, you're outside of your market. And so we're not going to let you think stuff. I could totally, when I'm on vacation, pay five bucks for sling and then watch. Like, for example, this year, we were at the beach for New Year's and I was just looking to watch the ball drop. Right. I mean, a very simple thing.

And I was having trouble finding through my, you know, what could I watch?

Can I watch CNN?

Do I have to pay for that separately?

All this sort of stuff.

I would have totally paid five bucks just to not worry about it and then just watch whatever

I wanted and then just turn it off.

So I'm glad to know this is an option.

Now, tell me about this.

You linked Apple TV users get $2 a month Peacock, including Super Bowl and Olympics.

Now, my wife and I, we've been going through the office for, I don't know, a few months

now.

It's just one of those things that, you know, we have on if we wanted to sit and have something quick, you know, for 20, 30 minutes or so.

And so we watch it on Peacock.

And I think we must have some base level subscription because we have to sit through ads.

Now, I know there's multiple levels on some of this, but tell me about this, because if I could get if I could pay an extra two dollars a month for subscribing to Peacock, plus get the Super Bowl and watch the Olympics, that could be worthwhile.

OK, you can't, Brett.

And the reason that you can't is because I know what this deal is, is for people that pay for Apple TV as a standalone product every month, people that pay, what is it, $15 a month?

You can have Apple TV and you can add on to that subscription for another two bucks.

You can have Apple TV plus Peacock.

And it is the version of Peacock with ads.

Now, as this article points out, if you get, as you and I do, we're both Apple One subscribers, right?

So we get Apple TV.

That's right.

But it's the same reason I got to pay that retrograde.

I don't pay separately for Apple games.

It's just part of my Apple One subscription.

And it says here, there's still a discount, but it says that if you have Apple One, it's an additional add-on of $11, which is still less than being $17.

I mean, Peacock on its own is $17.

And so you do get a little bit of a discount.

It's $11.

But is it worth an additional $11 a month?

I don't know.

I mean, maybe for the month of the Olympics.

I was going to say, maybe for one or two months.

Right.

Right.

But would you want it all the time?

So it's not as good of a deal.

But I agree.

If it was $2, I'd be like, whatever.

In fact, there have been times in the past that we have signed up for like Paramount, for example.

We signed out for Paramount because it was like two bucks.

And I'm like, well, sure, I'll do two bucks a month for three months.

And we got to watch like all the Mission Impossible movies.

That was fun.

But so, you know, but again, these are deals.

And between this article and the one before it, you know, it's a shame that you got to be sort of like a mover and a shaker and looking for the best deal.

But like if you do the work and you know what to do, you can paint less in this new world of cutting the cable.

But it's a little bit of a pain because you got to know what deals.

You got to track it.

This deal for Peacock and this deal for Paramount.

And Sling over here.

Don't forget to cancel it because it's going to be worth it.

Right.

It's.

It can be a little.

And most people I would know would just be like, you know what?

I just pay my cable.

And it's like, it's fine.

That's all they want to do.

That's all they want to do.

Let's go to your little video at the end.

And, you know, all this talk about China at the beginning we were just talking about.

I just it made me wonder if that's maybe why Apple had this cute, cute little video here about the Chinese New Year.

I almost want to go back and watch this again.

I enjoyed it so much.

I'm glad that you watched it.

And, you know, I should have given him credit since it's a birthday tomorrow.

David Sparks actually linked to this on his website.

That's where I saw it.

Oh, thank you.

And I watched it.

But I love the idea that Apple pays filmmakers to create interesting short films.

And they do it a lot in China for like Chinese New Year and stuff like that.

They've done it many years, but there's other times they do it too, both in America and other countries.

And they just find these filmmakers and they say, we want you to use the iPhone as your camera, as your video camera.

But otherwise, do what you want, right?

Do what you want, right.

And this was a very cute video for folks that haven't watched it yet.

I'm certainly not going to spoil it, but I will say that it's mostly live action, but there's parts of it that are not live action.

And that's just as cute.

And it's a nice little story.

I mean, again, this is it's fun to watch.

It's 11 minutes long.

I started it and I'm like, am I going to actually sit here and watch this for the full 11 minutes?

It was sort of late last night because I was in court all day.

But I was like, you know what?

Once you start it, I had to watch the whole thing.

You had to watch the whole thing.

Same with me.

And in fact, at the very end, I don't know if you saw this, during the credits,

they have all these pictures of people with their animals and stuff like that.

Yeah.

It was cute.

Yeah.

I watched it too.

Bravo.

I love it.

And the whole thing's in Chinese, so I had to watch it in subtitles, but that was totally fine.

It didn't make a difference.

Oh, yeah.

It's still so enjoyable.

And I don't want to give anything away either, but I would just say, watch out for those stray animals, man.

They could be scamming you.

You just never know.

Okay.

We talked about MagSafe chargers and we talked about arcade games.

And so when I saw this, Jeff, I just had to bring this to your attention here.

Mine will be really quick.

For in the know, that's what we're doing right now.

In the know.

This was on Tom's Guide.

This is a MagSafe power bank that can double as a retro gaming handheld.

Look at this thing.

This is the Miro V99 multifunctional power bank.

You can get this from Newegg for $37.99, and you can charge your phone while at the same time, you get to play all of...

Look, there's Contra.

Remember Contra?

and there is squirrel wars i don't remember squirrel wars but anyway it's not that in fact

even tom's guy goes here to say it's like it's not the most powerful for charging but i just

looked at i mean look you even have like the little d-pad on there you got your little buttons

this almost makes me think of it as like a game boy um now he goes in and says i think right now

they just come with obscure names like animal machines baby carding but they're copies of

candy crush and mario kart and he's very good about saying he goes um i found some other games

that i put on the micro sd card but i don't want to say exactly what they are

but they mostly come from nintendo and sega exactly

so that's my the mag safe charger and a retro gaming tool enjoy my that's a cute idea and for

38 bucks i mean if you have like a kid that's in middle school or high school and you want to like

get them a birthday present, you know, 38 bucks, you know, it charges the iPhone.

They can play a game.

They can show it off to their friends.

That's actually a cute little idea.

So, so I like that.

Okay.

So my tip of the week has only the most tangential relation to the iPhone and stuff like that.

But I can't help but say that we are in Mardi Gras season.

Mardi Gras season here in New Orleans.

It starts soon after Christmas in January, but we are truly in it.

The two big weekends of Mardi Gras are right today.

You know, the parade start tonight.

But this weekend and next weekend, this weekend, there's going to be a number of parades.

Many of them pass very close to my house.

Next weekend is the huge weekend where the parades actually go during the week and on

the weekend all the way through Mardi Gras Day.

Literally, I was in court this morning, as you can tell, I'm wearing a tie.

And as I was walking back to my office to record this, I was walking past and they were,

do you know what King Cake is?

They were giving out King Cake.

Oh, yes.

So I don't know if I have the baby in here or not, but I'll have to-

I was going to say, you don't have the baby, hopefully.

Okay, be careful.

Well, see, if I do get the baby, then I'll be the king of the day.

But we are definitely in Mardi Gras time.

So this is my tip.

You know, anyone out there, if you haven't had a chance to experience Mardi Gras, it is a lot of fun.

And as I like to say, you know, of course, there is the debauchery of the French Quarter.

And hey, if you're in the mood for that, go for it.

But I love the family.

I love the family aspect of Mardi Gras, where you get together with family and friends.

We have family and friends coming in town this year to spend time with us.

And, you know, you're out there, you're watching the parades, you're catching the beads.

It's just a fun way to pass time, getting together with friends, wearing all of your purple, green, and gold colors.

There is an iPhone.

One of the things that's revolutionized parades is the parade's going to start way back when, but you never know when the parade is going to get to you in the old days.

But then years ago when iPhones came out, now we have these parade trackers.

And so, for example, our local NBC station, WDSU, has one of the parade tracker apps, and our local CBS station, WWL, has another one.

And these apps are great because what they do is they literally have a car in the beginning

of the parade that has just a GPS on it.

And so then with your app, you can see, oh, I know where the beginning of the parade is

because I can actually see, you know, from my app, it's telling me the beginning of the

parade's here and the end's here.

And so if you're like, if you're in your house, I haven't gone out to the parade route yet.

I can see, hey, you know, the parade's getting close.

I can see it's just a few blocks away.

Time to go down there and get it.

So that there's that little angle to it for the iPhone, but I will admit I'm stretching.

The real reason I mentioned this today is to tell folks to encourage people from around the world, whether it's this year or some other year, consider doing Mardi Gras.

It's a lot of fun.

It's a great time.

And I don't know.

Have you ever done Mardi Gras before, Brett?

You got to get there.

I have never done.

But as you know, my mother-in-law is from New Orleans.

So my wife has been to Mardi Gras a couple of times.

I've heard all the stories.

And it's a bucket list.

Yeah.

Well, I'll see you one year.

one of these years we'll be there sounds good we'll go enjoy your king cake now my friend

enjoy the parades this weekend and always good talking with you and we'll talk with you next

week yeah thanks brad bye-bye everybody