Welcome to In the News for February the 20th, 2026. I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD. Hey, Brett.

Jeff, not a lot happening maybe this past week, but boy, Heidi, there was a big announcement.

I mean, first of all, we'll acknowledge Mardi Gras is now over. It sounds like you had a fun.

We'll come back to that here in just a moment. But Apple almost, I mean, I want to say it's out of

nowhere, but maybe it's not. I mean, we could have predicted that Apple was probably going to have

some kind of an announcement or announce some kind of an event. And sure enough, they did March 4th.

I think, is that a Wednesday or a Tuesday? They are going to potentially rumoredly launch some

new products, but it's a little bit different on how they're going to do this live event,

which is just what I just said.

It's a live event, apparently, right?

Maybe recorded, maybe they'll release some videos after.

Going to be very interesting.

Yeah, I mean, we sort of half-joked earlier this year

that Apple had its first new product of Apple 2026,

which was the new AirTags,

which, you know, it was a legitimately new product,

not the most exciting one,

although it had some interesting features to it.

But like, this is a legitimate beginning of the Apple cycle.

And there have been all of these rumors of devices

that Apple is getting close to release.

And some of them are things that, you know,

historically Apple would release, for example, a low-end version of the iPhone that in the old

days used to be called the S version. Now it's the E version. And so the rumor is that they'll

have an entry-level iPhone 17e. But there's a whole bunch of these things that have been rumored,

and we don't know what Apple's going to announce, but it's going to be interesting. In fact,

before we even talk about the products, I will be curious to see how Apple does this, because

Apple has two ways that they sort of roll out often their spring announcements of products.

One way would be a, you know, they no longer really do live events like with people on stage

anymore. They record some sort of a video and they will sometimes, you know, release the video

and everybody can watch it live on the internet. But then at a place like maybe in Cupertino,

Apple would have a bunch of people come together and watch the video. And then immediately after

the video, those special press members will get a chance to try it. That's one approach. Another

approach that they've done is they've had these springs where they would have a whole series of

press releases. Like there was one year that there was a new one every week for a couple of weeks.

And there was a one where they had like every day of the week, they had new ones. And I've heard

some people speculate that maybe what they'll do for this Wednesday presentation is maybe they'll

have a press release on Monday with a bunch of products, a press release on Tuesday with a number

your products, a press release on Wednesday with another set of products, and then have this

experience, which is in three different parts of the world. It's in New York, and it's in London,

and it's in Shanghai. And there they would allow different people from the press around the world

to actually use some of the products. Who knows how they're going to do it? I think that there is

going to be some sort of a video component of it, not just a press release. And the reason I say that

Yeah. Is Apple likes to do stuff in their hometown of, you know, right around San Francisco,

Cupertino. And my guess is the reason that they shifted across the country to New York

instead of California is that for time zone purposes, it could be, you know, in the morning

in New York, in the afternoon in London, and then in the night at nighttime in China, if I have those

time zones correctly. So that's makes me think that there will be some sort of a live video portion

of it that hopefully those of us who are not, you know, invited can see. So anyway, so that's

just sort of the showmanship of how they're going to do it. The interesting thing is going to be

what they're going to announce because there's so many possibilities here. I just mentioned the

first one, which is the iPhone 17e. The iPhone 17s that were released in the fall are the ones that

really interest me, whether you get the high-end pro max model or just the entry-level ones.

As we've talked about, this year's crops of the iPhone 17s, they're really great across the line,

Lots of great features, but that doesn't mean that there isn't room for something that is less expensive for people who are more price conscious, whether that be someone in the United States where we are, or I know that there are many countries like China and India where they're much more price sensitive.

Those are places where Android is by far the leader because you can get some really inexpensive, you know, $200 Android phones.

And so for those markets, having a, you know, $500 or $600 iPhone might be expensive, but it's not literally expensive as $1,000 or $1,500 or $2,000.

And so it makes a big difference for Apple.

And so they know what they're doing.

So that's one of them that I thought was interesting.

One more that I mentioned, and I'll see what your thoughts are, is, you know, there's this

blending of the lines between the Mac and the iPad.

As you and I know, we both use an iPad Pro, which is a very powerful iPad that uses the

same processor that is in a Mac.

You know, I think I have an M4 and you have an even newer M5 iPad.

But one of the thoughts is that Apple could do the same thing from the other direction.

They can have a Mac, like a MacBook that uses an iPhone processor, which would be less powerful,

but it would be cheaper.

And it would allow them to get that price point of, you know, what if they had a Mac that

was only like, I don't know, 600 bucks or something like that.

And since it's cheaper, another rumor is that maybe it'll come in some fun colors or something

like that.

You know, for people that are getting, you know, and you want something that's modern,

but something that's useful for like a student or something like that, or someone that just wants to

do, you know, simple web browsing and stuff like that. They don't, they don't need to be,

they're not going to be making Final Cut Pro videos. They don't need to have the fastest

processors. They're not going to be running AI local, you know, to do things that they just want

to have like something nice. I think that that, that would be an interesting product. And so the

rumor is that it's going to have the A18 Pro chip, which again, isn't, you know, we think of as an

iPhone chip, but it could run a computer, just not as powerfully. So those are two of the thoughts

that have been rumored. All of these in this list here, this is at 9to5Mac, and I've seen

similar lists in other places. All of these items make sense to me, except an Apple Studio Display 2.

Maybe just because it's something that I'm just not interested in. There's so many other great

monitor options out there. I've never had an Apple studio display. Although to be fair, I've seen

people that have had the Apple studio display. In fact, I think you have one, right, Jeff?

Yeah. I'm going to push back. People love them. Yeah. I want you to push back because I'm just

like, do, first of all, do we need another one? I mean, we always need to maybe make some improvements

on there and it's going to, and it's going to improve. And, and I guess maybe, maybe I'm kind

of pushing back on my own self here because the second thing i think of is how many people talk

about the ipad pro the current one right now the ipad pro has the best display of about any apple

product right now even better than a macbook pro i don't know necessarily that they were thinking

about a studio display but it could be or certainly i would say some of the improvements in the map in

the ipad pro the current ipad pro displays maybe that could trickle down or trickle up

into a new studio display on there.

So you've just said it, you know,

I never posted a formal review of the Apple studio display

because it's something I use with my Mac,

not with my iPads,

although sometimes I use my iPad,

but I purchased one of these, you know,

I used to use for many, many, many years

going back to the 1990s,

my home computer was an iMac, right?

The traditional iMac that had the built-in display.

And then Apple has, you know,

they still sell a version of that with a smaller display,

but they don't have one with a bigger display,

which is about, I guess, 19 inch.

And so a number of years ago, I purchased a Mac mini, which I'm very happy with.

That's a great home computer.

And so for my display, I purchased the Apple Studio display.

The current version of it came out in 2022, spring of 2022, much like where we are now.

And so that's been a couple of years ago.

And it's a really nice display.

The knock on the Apple Studio display is that it's expensive compared to what you can get from other companies.

Isn't it $2,000 or start there?

It's something close to that.

It's up there.

Maybe I paid $1,500.

I forget.

But the advantage of it, it is a beautiful full feature, no compromises.

I mean, it is just – it is nice.

And if you don't mind paying a little bit more for just the best possible display, it's – I mean, I love it.

I love it.

Now, having said that, you just hit the nail on the head because as much as I love my display, and frankly, it is so good that I'm not going to be looking to upgrade or anything like that.

Don't get me wrong.

It doesn't have the incredible HDR support that my iPad does.

I mean, like you said, I often will use at my house.

I have my iPad right next to my computer.

And if I'm looking at photos and videos, they look better on my iPad screen.

They just do because it's much deeper displays.

It can get much brighter.

You can get spots of it that have an incredible number of nits.

And you've got that richer HDR.

It's got that ProMotion and stuff like that.

It's got all sorts of wonderful features that as good as my studio display is, it doesn't have.

And so it would make sense for Apple to come up with a new version.

I mean, not that it would be the sort of thing a lot of people would upgrade because like you said, they are expensive.

But for people that are starting to get one, you know, if you're the next person to get a Mac Mini or a Mac Studio and you want to display, yes, it's going to be a more expensive option, but it's going to be the best display.

And I mean, let's face it, the display, you stare at your display all the time.

Here at my office, I use just a boring Dell PC and I have just a boring Dell monitor.

And I'll tell you, you know, it's sort of sucky.

You know, it's it's again, I do.

I don't need beautiful HDR for me typing my appellate briefs, but it would be nice.

And, you know, I notice every single day that I look at this display, I look at it now.

Does it mean that I'm going to go out and spend two thousand dollars on Apple display to use here in my office?

Probably not.

But then again, if I can get my phone to buy for me, I'm just kidding.

But so I actually think it's probably time to update that studio display.

So why not come out with that?

And then connection with that, one of the rumors is that Apple might come out with a new version of the Mac Studio, which is sort of like, you know, they got the Mac Mini, which is still very powerful.

But then the really higher end version of it is the Mac Studio, which is still very small and very cute.

And, you know, if they have a new Mac Studio with the M5 processor, which is, you know, currently Apple's latest processor, although there is a rumor they're going to come out with an M6 later on this year.

You know, if you have a really nice brand new Mac Studio M5, why not pair it with the latest and greatest display?

I'll say one last thing about the display.

Apple also has its XDR display, which is their super, super, super expensive display.

That's the one that like is, you know, perfect color if you're working in like the magazine industry and you want things to look perfect.

And they haven't updated that one.

I forget when the XDR came out.

It's been a long time.

That was so expensive.

It's never even something I considered.

But, you know, one of the rumor mills is that Apple, according to the people that leak from like the supply side in China or wherever, they say that there's actually two new displays that are coming out at some point.

And so if one of them is a second generation Apple studio display, maybe the other one would be an update to their, to their very high level pro XDR, which again, doesn't change my life at all.

But, um, you know, for some people would be very nice to have.

All right.

To be fair, I looked up the price and Apple studio right now, the standard glass starts at 1600.

That's what I paid 1600.

Yeah.

But if you want to stand for it, then it starts going up.

You can just get a tilt adjustable stand, but if you want a tilt and height adjustable stand, you're paying that extra $400 to get it up to $2,000.

And I just got the tilt adjustable stand because I didn't need mine to go higher and lower or anything like that.

Tilt adjustable is more than enough for me.

You just got the tilt adjustable.

Okay, so it stays in one height.

But you can tilt it.

I have never felt deprived that it cannot go up or down or up or down.

I've never felt that that was.

But, you know, if I paid $400 more, I could have gotten that.

Okay, last question.

We've gone through this again.

Most everything on here, the iPhone 17e, a new base iPad, like you were talking about, an M4 iPad Air, a new MacBook, maybe a lower end MacBook, a new MacBook Air with an M5 processor and the MacBook Pro as well.

That Mac Studio you just mentioned, the Apple Studio display.

These to me are all like the basic upgrades that again, I didn't, wasn't surprised by anything.

I'm not really a surprise now about the Apple studio display.

You mean like incremental upgrades is what you mean?

Sort of like pretty much incremental upgrades.

Right.

I agree.

Yeah.

But what if this is what Ryan Christoffel talks about any wild card devices?

I mean, we've been talking about this home pod slash iPad touch device.

They're talking about a new Apple TV potentially coming out, a new HomePod Mini.

How long has the HomePod Mini been out that we don't have some improvements on there?

Any other wild cards maybe?

Like all of that, the other expected ones.

But, I mean, give us something else.

One more thing, Apple.

Come on.

Yeah.

And those are all products that Apple has been rumored to have in development for a very long time.

You know, a brand new.

You know, do we need a new Apple TV?

Because the one that we have now is pretty good.

Who knows?

But, I mean, if there's a new one, I'm sure we have some interesting features.

And that's a cheap enough product that, you know, it might be one that people would upgrade just to have the latest and greatest.

The HomePod, which is a name that, you know, we're inventing.

Apple hasn't announced that name.

But HomePod Touch, excuse me.

You know, some sort of a HomePod that would have a screen.

That has been rumored.

I mean, the rumor was that Apple actually had the hardware on that one finished back in 2024.

And then they wanted it to have this AI component that Apple wasn't ready with yet.

And, of course, Apple is still, you know, not quite out with their AI strategy.

That's another rumor is just going to come out.

We'll talk about that in a second.

But so those are all wild cards.

You know, another one I mentioned today was that John Gruber at Daring Fireball noted that this presentation on March 4th is just a few days before the beginning of the F1 season.

And Apple, I mean, they're all in on F1, right?

Even though they only have the streaming rights in the United States, you know, the writing's on the wall that Apple wants F1 to be its real big sport.

And I've noticed just in the last week or so, Brett, that as I've been watching shows on Apple TV, like I've been like I want this show called Tehran that I've been watching.

Like before every Apple TV show, they now have like a little five second teaser of, you know, F1 coming soon.

It is all over the place. And so given that Apple's all on F1, John Gruber's thought was, wouldn't it be nice to have an app for the Apple Vision Pro?

So, and you don't have to speculate much on this because there actually was a third-party

developer that had an F1 app for the Vision Pro.

I forget what it was called.

And what was nice about it is that, not that it was immersive, although that would be very

cool too, and I hope Apple does that, but that F1 is one of these sports that people

that are really into it.

You want to see this race and you want to see this and you have different camera angles

and different statistics and everything else.

And so if you're in an immersive environment, not immersive in the sense of, I feel like

I'm actually driving the car, but in sense of like, I can have a screen here, a screen here,

you know, imagine having what amounts to like 10 different monitors around you with all of the

information. It would be a way for people that are truly into it to really enjoy the experience.

So there was a third party developer that had an app similar to that. And then Apple made them

remove it from the app store. This was, this was before they announced their deal with the F1. But

sometimes when Apple tells a developer to remove an app, it's because Apple knows that something is

coming from the official person. And I'll give you an example of that is on the vision pro.

There was a lot of third parties that had apps that would work with YouTube because there was

no official YouTube app and Apple clamped down on those last year. And then we just talked last week

on the podcast, how just, you know, a week ago, Google announced the actual YouTube app for the

vision pro. So there's a lot of speculation for this. It would be interesting for people that own

a vision pro. If you own a vision pro, if you have an F1, I mean, I, one of the podcasters I listened

to a lot is Leo Laporte. I know that you do too. And, you know, he's remarked that he doesn't own

a Apple vision pro, but he's a big F1 fan. And he's like, if there was ever something that might

get me to actually spend the money on a vision pro, it would be having a very cool one experience

because that's the sort of thing. And, you know, we've said the same thing in the past when Apple

started to have their immersive basketball games, they've done two of them so far. The third one is

actually tonight. It's the, uh, the Lakers versus I forget who it is. So they're going to have the

the third of the six ones tonight, which means I can't watch it live because I'm not in the Los

Angeles market, but I could watch it in a couple of days. I've heard people say like for real

basketball fans, especially a bit Lakers fans, they're now saying, oh, of course I'll spend the

money in a vision pro to get it. So, you know, these are these things that if Apple comes up

with these amazing experiences. So again, it's a total wild card. John Gruber said he no, no

little birdies have told him this is coming, but it just from a calendar standpoint, it would make

sense. So I do hope that there are some surprises because like you say, even though we've announced

like 10 different products.

Wouldn't it be cool to have 10 products announced?

How interesting.

Every one of those is just an incremental upgrade,

which is great if you're in the market.

You know, hey, if anybody out there

is about to buy a Mac computer,

don't buy one today.

Wait until March

because something is going to probably come out

in a few weeks.

But those are interesting and will be appreciated.

But there's nothing, you know,

exciting in the sense of surprising us.

So I do hope that there are some surprises

tucked in there.

I feel like we'll have some more leaks and rumors and thoughts that we can talk about next week, because over this next week, there'll be a lot of people talking about this, right?

Because then the week after on Wednesday, March 4th, that's when they'll have the event.

And then you and I will talk about it on March 6th, right?

Or 7th.

Yeah, the 6th.

Friday will be the 6th.

Friday will be the 6th.

So we'll talk about it.

That will be interesting because from everything we've been talking about already and hearing about, it's all mostly going to be hardware focused.

And that's typically what happens sort of in the springtime.

But let's move on now to talk about maybe some of the software that could be coming out.

iOS 26.3, we just got.

We just updated.

I mean, I want to say within last week, right?

It was just a week ago.

And you and I already alluded to the fact that Apple has been working on iOS 26.4 because there's a couple of few things in here that I'm a little excited about.

And you had several links today. Number one, iOS 26.4 adds average bedtime and updates health vitals overview.

Now, we don't know when 26.4 is coming out, but the fact that it's in beta now that most people are using it gives us a good idea that it may be just a few weeks away.

Yeah, my guess is that it'll be March or maybe April. So, you know, we're four to six weeks away from iOS 26.4. You know, anytime you have one of these little 0.1, 0.2 updates, you know, Apple has their big release in the fall, this time 26. And then some of the features that weren't quite ready for day one come out in 26.1, 26.2. You know, sometimes I hear people say like the real one you should upgrade to is the 0.1 or the 0.2 because that's when they're really baked.

And then when they have these 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 releases, they tend to sort of be extra features that it's not worth holding for the next version of the operating system, which won't come out until the fall of 2026.

But still some nice things.

And for so many weeks, for so many months, really, the big rumor that you and I have talked about in the past is that 26.4 would have Apple's big improvement to AI, including Assyria AI.

And we just talked last week about how the Mark Gurman rumors that that might not come out.

But now at least we're seeing some other features, either things that Apple has officially acknowledged or as we'll come to in a second, one that they have not acknowledged yet.

So the first one is some health improvements.

And this is a minor thing, but right now you can get a sleep score if you wear your Apple Watch to go to sleep, which I do.

They said that they're going to – and I've always thought this.

I get my sleep score for a particular night, and I'm just like, okay, what do I do with that information?

but you know to try to do something with it now apple the apparently one of the features is that

it will look at your average sleep over the last i think it says two weeks and then it will you know

based upon that you can get a sense of you know here's here here's how this relates to my average

you can sort of you know benchmark against yourself um and some other sort of minor uh health

improvements but you know we know that apple has a big focus on health so it looks like we'll see

some health changes in a few weeks yeah when i saw i mean i am always always about like keep on

improving whatever you can in the health app. And I do the same thing. I wear my Apple watch to bed.

So I know that in the health app, when you go into the sleep area, you can see like, what is,

what was your sleep score for that day? And you can go to the day, you can go to a week view and

I think a month view, right. You can start to see some of those, but it's not, I mean, you have to

manually kind of go in and do that, but you're right from night to night. Like when I wake up,

I just like, Oh, you know, my sleep score was 86 or whatever it was. And I think yesterday,

it was down to 73. And, you know, two days ago, I can't even remember what it was, I could probably

go look it up. But just anything like that, that can help just sort of aggregate some of this

information, this is the health app just continues to get so powerful. And again, I'm like, I'm all

for it. I mean, to me, this is where we see so many stories about how the health app is helpful

to medical professionals. And I think, again, if you add some kind of an AI layer into a lot of

I know people get a little nervous about it, but to me, being able to have some of that insight just from a personal non-medical professional is amazing.

But I feel like from a medical standpoint, being able to have that and kind of dump that out to a medical professional so they can see a lot of history is, I mean, that starts blowing my mind and it's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, and to get to that, one thing that's, and this was mentioned in the article you were just showing too, is that apparently it also has some updates to the Vitals app.

the vitals app is i like the i like the idea of the vitals app because it's apple's attempt to say

you've got all of these desperate measurements of you know how much you slept and what your heart

rate is everything else let's sort of pull it together into an overview of your health and right

now the vitals app doesn't it doesn't give you a lot of overall information but it is at least a

first step towards here's the big picture for you and one of the things that's mentioned in here is

that they're going to bring into the Vitals app your blood oxygen data. Blood oxygen data is an

issue that's been very, very contentious over the years because Apple has this big dispute with

Massimo about whether they can measure it. Then Apple found a way to sort of have the blood oxygen

data get from your Apple Watch to get around the patent. And they've been doing that lately.

And so one of the, I don't know if it counts as a rumor or it's not really a rumor because people

can see it in the beta version is that it's going to bring blood oxygen data into it. And that's

good. I mean, I want the Vitals app to be better. But again, what I really want is that next step

that you alluded to, Brett, which is using a little element of AI or machine language or

whatever it is to give me more of a big picture. And we had the thing in the news recently where

ChatGPT says that you can connect your Apple health data to ChatGPT and it will tell you

how you're doing. And it's gotten so much criticism in the press because number one,

you're uploading your health data, which is sort of private to ChatGPT. Number two,

people have said it's ridiculous. Like you ask it a question and it'll say, oh, it looks like you

have an issue. And you say, are you sure about that? And it's like, oh, you're right. I was wrong.

You actually don't have an issue. It's like, come on. I mean, it's just, it's so bad.

No. So hopefully whenever Apple does implement this, it will be done in an appropriate way,

but that's what I want. I want to, I want to, I want to be able to have big picture stuff,

ask questions. In fact, one of the other features in 26.4 that's coming out is in the music app.

And the feature in the music app is that you can use AI to make a playlist by just describing

something. You can use words. Beats used to have a version of this years and years ago before Beats

bought. It wasn't AI, but it was a playlist based upon a mood, those sorts of things.

And so one way is if you're trying to come up with a playlist, you could just tell the music app,

I think this is how it worked. We'll see. But my understanding is I can say, can you put together

a music list that's like, I want it to be sort of upbeat with some pop stuff, but maybe like mostly

80s and I don't really want 90s and stuff, but you can throw some 60s in there. Just sort of like

Give it some words, give it a description.

And then using some AI, it will say, oh, okay, I understand what you're asking for.

Here is a playlist.

That actually could be a really useful feature.

And so I think of that, which we know is coming, we now know it's coming to music.

It's the same thing for health.

You know, you have all this health data on me from my iPhone, from my Apple Watch, my

everything else.

You know, I just want to be able to say, you know, what do you think?

You know, maybe you log what you eat.

You know, what do you think about that?

You know, all the different things.

It would be nice to have that interaction.

And I know it gets dangerously close to the iPhone being a medical professional and your iPhone can't give medical advice just like your iPhone can't give legal advice.

I understand that.

But there's ways you can get close to that border that would be interesting.

And there's no question that in mind this is coming.

So this is – things like improvements to the Vitals app are baby steps towards this future.

This Playlist Playground is –

Playlist Playground.

It's a great name.

people are calling it um i subscribed to spotify and sure enough within just maybe the last couple

of weeks or so they launched a similar option and i tried it just a couple of times uh but i have

such a curated playlist now like if i know what i want to go and listen to i sort of already have

something set up in there but i'm interested to see like you're saying you just described do you

want something upbeat do you want something that has words or not i mean you just describe it all

sort of in a natural language aspect here.

And you have somebody that could go out

and theoretically create and curate

an amazing playlist for you,

which I think is pretty amazing.

This article in 9to5Mac is talking about

new wallpaper gallery in 26.4,

some reminders, a new home screen widget,

the stolen device protection.

Apparently they're going to do some improvements on that.

Again, nothing huge.

uh but really neat one one last one quickly that i know you and i both perked up on was this idea of

the podcast videos right i think here it's at the bottom of this one that they're right here

they're talking about apple podcast now with advanced video podcast capabilities going to be

interesting to see because so many podcasts including ours both are audio and then we release

a video along with it.

And now typically we just release that video on YouTube, but if I could have that video

now accessible within the Apple podcast app and I could choose, you know, if I'm in the

car, you know, driving, I may be just the audio, although the next story here in just

a moment, maybe changes that for us.

But if I'm sitting somewhere, maybe I choose to watch it on the, on the video instead, just

because I want to see the people that are talking and to have that option is going to

be pretty neat.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a number of podcasts, not a number.

It's a small number.

There are some podcasts I listen to that I 99% of the time listen to the audio version.

And that's true for this podcast, too.

I know most people listening to this are doing it via audio.

But sometimes they will be describing something.

I mean, a perfect example is the MacBreak Weekly.

We're just talking about Leo Laporte.

I enjoy MacBreak Weekly as a podcast.

I listen to it via audio.

But every once in a while, they'll be talking about something.

And I know there's a video version of the podcast.

And I know that they're showing it on the screen.

and I want to take a look at it.

And it's a little bit of a pain

because what I need to do

is I need to look at the marker.

Okay, I am at the 37 moment timestamp.

Then I need to pull that up in the video.

And it's confusing

because I subscribe to MacBreak Weekly.

So I get the version without ads,

but the video version has the ads.

So the timestamp doesn't match

because it's ads.

So it's longer.

So like the 37 minute point

and the audio podcast

is maybe the 39 minute.

So it's a pain

to find that exact moment as this feature has i believe been described is that what you'll be able

to do is you're listening to the audio podcast in the apple podcast app and i can just look at my

iphone and press one button and it will immediately switch over from the audio version the video

version to that very second and if i want to skip back 30 seconds or whatever i can just to see what

they're showing i think this is an interesting idea i don't personally use the apple podcast app i

I currently use the Overcast app, but I know that if Apple releases this, it will be presumably

something that third parties can do too.

So I think it's a nice idea for podcasts.

And this one is true too.

Again, most people listen to us talk audio, but we do have some people that watch in video

and every once in a while, I'll hold something up to the camera and people might want to look

at that.

And it would be nice if you could just tap a button and see it and then go back to the

audio podcast.

So I think it's a good idea.

And this is not a simple thing.

Apple has to, they're working with the industry, with the podcast industry and with the companies that stream these things to support this because there's some things behind the scenes that you need to do to make this work.

I don't see it listed here.

Here it is.

It's something called Apple's HLS technology, which allows it to power automatic quality adjustments based on network.

And that's Apple's underlying technology that can go switch.

So there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that has to happen.

But I'm super glad that Apple is doing this.

So this will be really interesting to see in a couple of weeks.

You know, something else I just thought of,

sorry to keep going back to Spotify on this,

but one of the things that Spotify recently wrote out as well

is if you're listening to music,

they'll typically have an image up there,

just like Apple Music does, right?

Maybe it's the cover of the album,

or sometimes it just might be a picture of the artist.

But now if the artist has released a video for that song,

you know, like a music video,

maybe they put it on YouTube. Spotify now will allow you to switch. You can listen to just the

audio version of it. And which is going to be the same as probably the audio of the video,

but you can switch into the video and you can watch the video inside the Spotify app,

or you can switch back to just like the general audio. I haven't found that it's, you know,

any different in there. It's just, when I was thinking about this, I'm like, oh yeah, you know,

I have that capability because I know that I could go to YouTube and watch the video of the

artists and sometimes that's just fun to kind of see you know how they're interpreting the song or

the video that goes along with the song um i just to me that's interesting that perhaps if apple is

doing that with the podcast out maybe that could come to the music app as well at some point yeah

you know amazon has that too for uh audible books like there are some things i think they have it's

called whisper sync that if you own both the digital version like a kindle version and an

audiobook you could be like you know reading your kindle version and then when you want to continue

to enjoy the story in an audio format,

it saves your place

and you can listen to the Audible version

and then go back.

I haven't used that.

I do listen to Audible books all the time,

but I don't really read Kindle books.

But anyway, this idea of syncing

between two different ways,

it makes perfect sense.

I love it.

Yeah, bring it on.

And then of course,

now some of this video

you can watch in CarPlay.

Yeah.

So this is interesting.

Apple hasn't announced this, right?

The only thing that Apple announced

is that you would be able to stream

stream from an iPhone to a CarPlay screen. So you're sitting there, you're waiting to pick up

your kids at school, you know, you're stuck in the carpool line for 20 minutes and the school is not

yet. You could like stream something from your iPhone to your screen. Now you can't do this while

you're driving. But what I thought was interesting is that this developer and what is his name?

Cause I want to give him some credit. Scroll up a second. His name is Thomas Dye. Apparently he's

a software developer, but he actually sort of dug under the code and he saw that in the 26.4,

there is actually an Apple TV app in CarPlay, which is something that Apple has not announced yet. So

maybe this won't actually come out in 26.4, but at least beyond the surface, it is there because

he actually got it up and running using some sort of hacks to do it. And like, it's just what you

would expect it. You like you open it up and it shows all the shows you're watching, the TV shows,

the movies. And so, you know, if you want to catch a couple of minutes of, you know, Ted Lasso or

Severance, you know, while you're sitting there waiting in your car, charging your EV car to

station or whatever it is, it makes sense that Apple would have this feature. And I know that

Teslas have had and other cars have had similar features for a while now. So interesting.

It's just interesting that the screens get bigger and bigger because now this starts to make sense

unless it's an older car, right? In fact, I just had a rental car. It was a Hyundai Ioniq, I think.

It was an electric car. And sure enough, I was doing exactly that, Jeff. I was sitting there

waiting for a little bit of a charge and, you know, they're not very quick sometimes depending

on the charging, uh, you know, place that you go to, but I'm sitting there and what am I doing?

I'm watching things on my phone because that's what I have, but it would be nice because I had

a very big screen that was sitting right there on the car. And in fact, did I not see, I thought

a headline about Tesla, maybe possibly potentially looking to support car play like their face.

not supporting it right now no but they've announced that they're doing that it's coming soon

ionic oh it's coming soon okay like this hyundai and i think i've done a ford mustang maki or

something before in the past is all of that supports car play and i understand why tesla

has not supported it at least from a business perspective a little bit but i am like man bring

it on because when i jumped into that hyundai like i there was all there was a map that was

already built into the car there were media components that were built into the car but

do you think I did? The first thing I did was I connected my phone. Like, I don't want that. I

want the experience that I know with all of my saved map places that I can just, you know, jump in.

All of that searches, the past searches and everything, I want it to be personalized. And

to me right now, that's how I can personalize a car. We've talked about this many times, but

it was just interesting to see. But I welcome this. I mean, come on, that would be great to

be able to utilize the screen on there as well. I don't know that Rivian trucks actually support

CarPlay. I'm guessing that they do, but I thought this was really interesting because we've talked

about how CarPlay uses the iPhone, but we typically don't talk about how maybe electric cars support

Apple Watch apps. But Rivian now releases an Apple Watch app. These are these, I think my son

calls them dumpster trucks. If you've seen Rivian trucks drive on the street, I've never had one,

but they're very odd looking, right?

Very futuristic.

You know it when you see it kind of on there.

But I thought this was interesting.

It looks like that this Apple Watch app

will help you kind of lock and unlock the car

and access some other information in the car.

Yeah, Rivian electronic vehicles,

I actually think that they're nice.

When I went to go see the Eclipse in Dallas,

which I guess was at the beginning of last year,

my cousin's husband, cousin-in-law,

is that a word, cousin-in-law?

I'm inventing that word.

My cousin-in-law owned a Rivian

and we drove around in it.

And I thought it was really comfortable.

It was really nice.

It was a big car.

They have both with the trucks and the SUV versions of them, I think.

But they were really nice.

And it was a beautiful EV car that had all sorts of great compartments and stuff.

It did not support CarPlay, to answer your question.

But just because it doesn't support CarPlay because they want to have their own infotainment

type system, they do work with Apple products and now even more.

So for people that own Ecrivians, not only do they have an app, but they now have this

Apple Watch app that you can do simple things like remote control, things like opening your

car doors and your trunks and because there's a front and a back trunk and and, you know,

things like that.

So for Rivian owners, it's nice that they've got closer integration, even though it's not

CarPlay.

I was looking it up here.

I think if I go to Rivian dot com, look at that.

They are right there on the screen right there on their front screen there.

The Rivian app is now on Apple Watch Access Essential Features Anywhere.

Maybe I was not being fair.

I'm thinking, I can't remember that other futuristic electric car.

What is that car?

You're not talking about the Cybertruck, are you?

The Tesla Cybertruck.

The Cybertruck, yes.

Yeah, that's the one that looks bad.

That's the one everybody laughs at.

I want to be fair.

Sorry, Rivian.

I didn't mean to, because these actually look more like what most cars look like.

It's just that they are Rivian.

And where was that?

You know, the front grill to me is the telling part right there.

You can recognize folks that do that.

So anyway, just neat that they're supporting some additional options there possibly for Apple products.

Let's go back to the iPad quickly.

You and I actually did a big two-hour seminar that was this past week, which I really appreciate you working with me on.

It was basically iPad for lawyers, and we provided a lot of tips in that seminar.

You can reach out to us if you wanted to get some additional information about that.

But I like this little tip, swipe typing on an iPad.

I don't know that most people know that there are some ways that you can move the keyboard around both on your iPhone and on your iPad.

I don't know that many people do this because maybe you don't need it.

And a lot of times now you and I both have that external keyboard for the iPad.

So I don't know you need the on-screen keyboard.

But if you are in a place where you're using an on-screen keyboard, knowing that you can move that keyboard around a little bit is a really nifty tip.

Yeah. So sort of two tips in one here, you know, on the iPhone, they've had for a while now,

this swipe typing feature that instead of tapping each button to type on the keyboards,

you move your fingers around a swipe. And if you're good at it, or even if you're not that

good at it, you don't have to be very skilled. It can be a very, it can be a faster way to type.

I will tell you that even though I've tried it on and off for the years, I still go back to the

regular keyboard on the iPhone, but, but I do understand the advantage of it. And when people

say that they love swipe typing. I get it. What I did not know is that you can actually do swipe

typing on an iPad. And the reason that it works is, you know, when, when, when an onscreen keyboard

comes up on the iPad, it takes up half the screen and it's so big. In fact, that's one of the things

I don't like about it is it obscures so much of the screen and it's nice because it's full size,

I suppose, but it's just so big. So sometimes just to not obscure as much as the screen,

I will do that little thing where you sort of go out with your hands on the keyboard and it makes

it into like a small iPhone sized version of the keyboard, which you can then position where you

want on the screen so it doesn't cover things up. But what I didn't really think about is that once

you're in that small version of it, yeah, there you go, he's showing it. Once you're in that small

version of it, you can then use swipe typing if you want to sort of, you know, very quickly type

stuff in. So that's an interesting tip. As Riley Hill says in this post, it doesn't work 100% as

well on the iPad as the iPhone just because of things about where the position of it is. He goes

into the reasons of it. But, but if you, if you, if you are very comfortable with swipe typing on

the iPhone, this is a great tip to know that you can also do it on the iPad. I mentioned the iPhone

just because again, most people don't know. I think if, if you're in a place where you have

the on-screen keyboard in on the iPhone, for example, let me just go in and make sure that I

can say this. If you tap and hold, they'll see, is it on the world button in the bottom left corner?

You can actually scrunch, I call it scrunching your keyboard to the left or to the right.

And in some cases, if you do that, that actually allows you to more easily just use one hand to type on there because it kind of scrunches it over to the side.

And I think if I'm not mistaken, they used to allow you to kind of float the keyboard a little bit.

I don't know if they do that anymore on the iPhone, but on the iPad, like what they're showing here is that once you use that pinch method

and you have a smaller keyboard, you can actually, like you said, move that little small keyboard

around somewhere on the iPad. And I guess you could even use a one finger to either tap the

letters or like you were describing so well, you could use that swipe method. Every once in a while,

I'll do that swipe method. I sometimes have to almost think about it a little harder

before it's like, okay, I knew I'm going to, I want to swipe this word, but okay, it starts with an S

and then I want to go over here and make sure my finger's over here. Like you said, you don't have

to be that accurate. It's not as hard as I'm making it out to be, but I'm just, I'm not,

I'm just not as good at it. I guess I'm just so used to sort of the regular typing that

I don't, it almost makes me take a little bit longer to do swipe typing sometimes than the

regular typing, but it's a good little tip to understand about typing on your iPad.

We talked about the Apple health app and tracking some things. I thought this was a really neat

little review you link to from Adam Angst at Tidbits, a little app called High Water.

Hi, High Water. He is tracking his water intake. I guess you can track other liquids as well.

But this was just good. Adam always does such a great job of giving you the background and the

history of why he's using it and then talks really about how he's using it and whether it's working

for him. Yeah. I always, I often hear health professionals talk about how drinking water is a

good thing. And, you know, somebody do, I've got my little water container here I've been drinking

with, you know, drinking water is nice. I don't, I don't quantify the water that I drink, at least

not in an app format. You know, I do, I do sort of keep track of how much I'm drinking, but I know

that some people are really into, you know, count watching what they drink, watching what they eat,

you know, keeping track of the food that you consume. And if you're into that, I'm totally,

that's fine. I mean, it's nice that these electronic devices let you do it. I've actually heard about

this high water app before. I've heard good things about it. So when I saw that Adam reviewed it this

week and Adam always does a nice job with his reviews, he's been doing this, you know, for

longer than anybody. He's been writing reviews since the late eighties. It's it looks like a

nice app. So, I mean, if, if, if you're the sort of person that tries to track your water or other

fluid intake it's got a beautiful interface. It's it looks like a really nice app. So check out this

review. He does have water and you, I guess you can customize this tea slash coffee, low fat,

soy milk, diet drinks, caloric drinks.

You know, sometimes I feel like these things,

people look at them and think,

oh, this is great.

This is what I'm going to do from this point forward.

And sometimes even just doing this,

whether it's tracking your food or something,

just doing it maybe for a few weeks

just gives you a good idea

that of something maybe you didn't know about.

And at least that's how I've used some of these in the past,

which has been nice.

Good point.

How about a little valet for your charging needs?

12 South is a company we are very fond of.

We've talked about them many times.

They're not inexpensive items, but for good reason, because they are built so well.

In fact, I think I still use one or two 12 South items that I've probably had for over 10 years or something, Jeff.

I mean, they've been around for a long time.

But here is a nice little bespoke catch-all MagSafe charger that is, it could be faster.

That was the only kind of downside that Andrew O'Hare talked about here.

But boy, this looks so cool.

Yeah.

So you and I, I think we mentioned this briefly during CES.

And I don't remember if it was CES this year or last year.

Because this is something that 12 South had showed up.

12 South is a company that they're well known for making cool little gadgets that are in the iPhone universe.

And they first came to my radar when they came out with the AirFly, which is the thing that like if you're on a plane, it allows you to connect a Bluetooth, you know, your AirPods, your Bluetooth headphones to the audio system on a plane.

or any audio system for that matter,

but people often use them in planes.

But so when they came out with this device,

like this looks sort of cool.

And so, like you say, 12South products tend to be,

you know, they're not cheap, but they're nicely made.

And so the idea here is if, you know,

you want to just have a place to throw your keys,

to throw your wallet, to throw your stuff,

maybe like an entryway in your house

or in your kitchen counter or something like that.

And so if you're going to just put your stuff in a place,

which makes sense, because then you know where they are.

In my house, we've got like a little,

near our front door, we have a bowl

that people put keys in so that, you know,

where are the keys?

we know where the keys are because they're in the key ball, right?

In the ball.

So I understand the idea of having a central location.

And what they've done is they've added like a little Qi charging pad in here.

And as you just alluded to, it's the 15-watt charging, not the brand new 25-watt charging.

So it's not quite as fast.

But the way that it sort of elevates your iPhone above it, it looks very pretty.

And what I did not realize when I first heard about this is there are the pad itself can

be coming in different colors.

And then the rim around the pad is magnetic.

So it comes on and off.

And so you can pick what color you like, what color combination you want when you buy it.

And then you can purchase additional rims for $25 if you want to change the color.

And it's not cheap.

I mean, I think it's what, 180 bucks or something like that on the website.

But, you know, but it's got all sorts of nice things.

The cord that comes out the back of it, you can adjust that.

So it comes out of, you know, left, right, up, down, depending upon the configuration in your house.

You know, they put a lot of thought into it.

And so if you just want something nice in your house, I don't have a need for this myself.

But I do think that there is, for some people, I think that this is a nice little product.

So it's something to think about.

Really cool.

12 South.

We're big fans.

Let's do a where you at segment.

And I thought we'd start this off because you did a lovely post this past week after Mardi Gras with some pictures that you took with your iPhone 17 Pro.

max um hopefully you took some um immersive pictures as well because i remember looking

at some of those from last year on your vision pro and that was fun because i could look up and

down st charles avenue for example just by twisting my head but anyway thank you for sharing some of

these very fun and interesting pictures from mardi gras including uh uh doctor from the pit uh no

while apparently he was on i don't know what float this was but hey that was fun he was throwing

beads up there too yeah and the fun thing about the noah wiley one is you know he was one of the uh

i don't know if he was the grand marshal or the king or whatever orpheus which is a monday night

parade orpheus by the way is a parade that was started 20 something years ago by harry connick

jr if you're familiar with him so it sort of had like a music bent to it so but um but anyway many

of the mardi gras parades will have a celebrity rider in it just to sort of get people excited

um but the point of all of this is that and i'm watching the pit by the way right now the second

season. So good. I love this show. My wife and I are about four episodes in the middle of the first.

Oh, it is so amazing. But, you know, for that parade, we sometimes for the parades, we get there

early. We set up all of our chairs and our ladders and everything else. But for Orpheus on Monday

night, we didn't set anything up. We just casually walked over there with my brother who's in town

and we watched it. So we were sort of standing in the back and I wasn't terribly close. But because

the the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max have that great 4x camera, which can be an 8x camera.

You know, if you look at this video, it's like I'm standing there right next to Noah Wiley, even though I was like way.

I thought you were on the side of that.

That's amazing.

It looks like it looks like I'm right next to him.

But like this was way in the back and it's nighttime to nighttime video was always more complicated.

So, OK, I'm not I'm not saying that this is the best thing ever, but it just shows you that this is a silly thing.

Did I need to have that close up view of Noah Wiley?

Who knows?

But it was nice.

It was nice that the iPhone that was already in my pocket could do it.

So anyway, that was it.

Otherwise, I was just sharing some funny pictures from Mardi Gras Day.

The iPhone just takes such beautiful pictures.

The color was fantastic.

Just a lot of fun.

We'll go from happy times to some tragic times.

People have probably heard about the skiers around Lake Tahoe that were tragically caught in an avalanche.

And there have been several deaths reported.

However, apparently there have been several rescues reported on this.

And this is a great story from the New York Times where at least a few of the survivors were able to use the emergency SOS feature on the iPhone to connect with emergency responders via satellite.

Apple always says that if you're in trouble, the first thing you should try to do is call 911, of course, or whatever the number is.

And if you live outside the United States, whatever the number is for your local emergency services.

But if you don't have a cellular connection strong enough to get that 911 signal and that

you're outside, the next best thing is to point at the satellites.

And, you know, all modern iPhones can do this.

They've been able to do this for a number of years and you can communicate via satellites.

And I know that you've tried this out once.

In fact, you even texted me once while you were hiking in the middle of nowhere.

And I was like, this is interesting.

You're totally off the grid and I'm getting a text message from you.

You know, it's this world we live in.

And for these people, they were able to do it.

So like they were able to communicate over a four hour period with emergency services,

not only to let them know where they were located and send their location and stuff,

but also to basically give reports to say, look, you know, we're seeing some dead bodies here,

where, you know, all sorts of information that they were able to provide until the rescuers were able to get to them.

So, I mean, my goodness, if you are caught in the middle of nowhere and an avalanche is a perfect example of this,

Boy, I mean, just I can only imagine the sense of just security that you have, knowing that

you can communicate with the outside world, as opposed to if you don't know if anybody

is looking for you, if you don't know if people know that you're alive.

I mean, that would make all the difference in the world just from your mental health,

not alone your personal safety.

So, you know, these stories are always great.

And I love that now it's been this feature has been available long enough that it's no

longer that somebody needs to have the foresight of, oh, I'm going to go out and I'm going

this Garmin device that can use a satellite phone. It's just your regular iPhone. It's just what you

have in your pocket. And then suddenly you have this need that you never thought that you would

have because you're off the grid and it can save the day. iPhone models, 14, 15, 16, 17. You have

to be running at least iOS 16.1. And, you know, just real quick, this is interesting. I remember

this when this feature came out, Apple said it's going to be free. The emergency SOS is free for

two years after an iPhone is activated. And I remember when they first announced this,

we all just assumed, well, they're just trying this out. It'll be free for now. It's great that

they're doing this, but at some point, at some point they might start charging for it. And you

and I have both contemplated, how would you charge for this? Because inevitably there's going to be

a story that somebody could have used the emergency SOS feature. They didn't pay for the feature and

they, you know, there was a tragedy because of that. In other words, they could have been saved.

Like, I can't see in a world where Apple would start charging for this and not allow it to be

available. I mean, you know, I'm not in the business side, so I'm just saying, but from an

observant standpoint, that would be, that would be a little ridiculous. Like just say it's going

to be available. Just give it up for free. Like, I feel like this is something that is so necessary,

at least the emergency SOS component, you know, maybe I can't text Jeff Richardson when I'm in

the middle of nowhere, you know, in the Smoky Mountains hiking that, that I guess would be okay,

but at least give me the emergency SOS option there. Yeah. That's what I expected them to do

at some point is charge for the, just the casual use of texting. Um, and as the technology improves

me, but even better, maybe it can even have some, you know, simple video or something like that.

But, um, but for the emergency stuff, I mean, heck, if you have an iPhone in which you don't

pay for cellular service, um, I don't know if this is by law or by custom, but the iPhone can still

call 9-1-1. I have some old phones in my house that we don't use anymore. And eventually I need

to recycle them and bring them back to Apple. But they don't have cellular service on them anymore,

but I could still, in a pinch, if I needed to, I could still call 9-1-1 with them and they're not

going to charge for them. In the show, we talked about F1, the races that Apple is starting to show,

But let's not forget Major League Soccer, MLS.

Apple has had now at least a couple of years, maybe a little bit longer, an agreement with MLS that they show, at least in the United States, all of the soccer football seasons.

And I thought this was really neat.

They're getting ready to kick this off.

And they had this little fun video at the bottom of this Cult of Mac story with Magic Johnson.

I remember, man, he's somehow involved with soccer.

He owns a team, I think.

He owns a team.

Okay, yeah.

But I thought this was a fun little video that they had there as well.

But, I mean, this is getting ready to kick off here, literally.

And I think it's fun that Apple's involved.

Yeah, it's not just the U.S., by the way.

This is worldwide.

So if anyone around the world wants to watch.

They have worldwide soccer.

Okay, okay.

They don't have F1 worldwide yet, although I'm sure they want to do that.

Now, again, this is MLS.

This is American soccer.

So this is not quite, you know, the big leagues of, you know,

the real stuff that Ted Lasso taught us all about.

But still, they do have some big players.

you know, here.

And, but Apple, you know, for many seasons,

I want to say two or something, two or three seasons,

it was an add-on subscription

that you could watch like the game of the week for free

on Apple TV, for free, quote unquote,

if you subscribe to Apple TV,

but then you could get like for the other ones you have to pay.

But for this season, there's no charge.

It's just part of your Apple TV subscription,

which makes sense because Apple TV subscriptions

have gone up in price over the years, as you know.

So this is a nice little value add.

And it looks like they have even more, you know, coverage

And they're going to have like a premier game on Saturday and Sunday.

That's got like extra angles.

Cause they're going to use iPhones around to get like even more angles and

stuff. So, I mean,

they're doing a nice job with,

with the people that want to watch the MLL soccer games. So that,

that starts, I think it starts tomorrow. I think the first game is.

Yeah. I was trying to see. Yep. Saturday. You're right. Tomorrow.

It starts off.

The little video at the bottom of your post today is for,

is this a movie or a series?

Oh, it's a series in French called the hunt.

I watched the little trailer. Very interesting. A little scary. Very interesting.

The story for me here is, I mean, hopefully it's a good show. It's a foreign language show. If you

speak English like I do, this one's in French, but that's fine. I watched Tehran. I was just

watching it last night and that one's in, it's in a bunch of different language, but most of it is in

other languages and I just watch it in subtitles and it's still a very good show.

The thing, the interest, I mean, hopefully the show is interesting. We'll see. The story for me

hear is there were two shows last fall that Apple had to pull back before they were ready to release.

In December, they were about to release this show. And suddenly this like French lawsuit or

something came up because somebody had written a book in the 1970s. And this TV show, you know,

if you if you I don't know, because I haven't read the book, but people say that it basically

rips the entire story. And it's it's basically, you know, plagiarizing the story. So that was a

scandal. But here we are in February. So it's taken about what, two or three months and they're

finally coming out with it. So I have to imagine that behind the scenes, Apple or the producer of

the show that's selling the show to Apple, they have presumably paid some money and gotten that

resolved. So that's one good thing. But what this makes me think, and I did not mention this in my

Friday post today, but this was supposed to come out last December. Now it's coming out in February.

The show that was supposed to come out last September was the show called The Savant,

which stars Jessica Chastain, which sounded like a really cool sort of like going undercover with

some of these extremist groups. And they pulled it in September because it was supposed to come out

right around the time of the Charlie Kirk assassination, which of course is horrible.

But because of all the political aspects of that, Apple, you know, it's one thing not to have it

released the same week, just as you know, I understand that. But it's now been how many

months since last September, and this show is still not out. And at first, Jessica Chastain

had sort of made a statement about it. But like everybody has been mum quiet about this, who's

related to the show, which must mean that they are in these tight negotiations with Apple and

everybody's under non-disclosure agreements and no one could talk about it. But like, come on. I mean,

I hope it's a good show, much like The Hunt, but whether it's good or not, you know, to the extent

that Apple is still holding back

on releasing this show

just because they're worried

about the MAGA conservative backlash.

I mean, I don't, we'll see.

And this is the world we live in.

I know people do all sorts of stuff

because of that,

but it would be unfortunate

if that's the reason here.

So I'm glad that The Hunt

is finally coming out.

I hope that this show

eventually comes out too,

because I feel bad for all the people.

You know, they first announced

that they were working on the show,

The Savant, like back in 2023.

A lot of people have poured

all of this time and attention into it.

It could be a good show.

It's ready to go.

You can actually look if you if you do a search on the Internet, you'll pull up like all the episode guides are there.

I mean, it was literally it was coming out and then they pulled it.

So anyway, hopefully one day this one will come out.

In the know.

And then we talked about the Apple Watch and I I saw this interesting little gadget.

I'm going to give due credit to a gentleman by the name of Randy Singer, who wrote a book about Mac using lawyers many, many, many years ago.

There has been a long-running email list called Macs in Law Offices, and Randy has always been very active on that.

So he posted a link to this, and I just took it and ran with it, and I have to try this out.

What about all those old Apple Watches that you have lying around?

Now when I say that out loud, I'm kind of like, you know, that might be a little ridiculous.

Who does have a lot of Apple Watches?

But I got to tell you, I probably have maybe two around, either because I've upgraded or, you know, I upgraded and then I gave my old one to maybe one of my kids.

And then they've upgraded since then.

So I do have a couple of older ones around, you know, and we have all these stories.

I remember about old iPads, what you can do to repurpose them or old Macs or so.

No one's ever really talked about repurposing an old Apple Watch until now.

This is the Repod.

This is the Repod C1.

It looks like a little original iPod Touch.

Or one of those, you know, there were so many iPod models that came out.

But this has a little scroll wheel.

You basically take that old Apple Watch, you pop it into the back of this little body.

And it's like the same size as an old iPod or an iPod, not a Touch, but an iPod with a scroll wheel on it.

Not the original iPods.

Anyway, you put it in here.

And it basically, you can functionally use the old Apple Watch, not on your wrist, but

now in this little case.

And I just thought that this was a little interesting gadget here.

I think they're running out of the models, maybe for the smaller watches.

Now you can only get one for a little bit of the bigger one.

Let's see.

This is the Repod C1 by Beaver Lab.

Turn your, transform your watch into a quote, modern classic.

I just thought that this was really interesting.

So interesting.

Apparently, this is for the regular Apple Watches that you might have lying around.

But if you happen to have an old Apple Watch Ultra lying around, the same company is now coming out with a repulled Ultra.

And this looks like it's like a mech suit for your old Apple Watch Ultra.

I mean, this thing looks just a little bonkers on here, but it's so cool.

Like, I think I would want this.

And you might think, well, what am I going to do with it?

You know, it can still give you map access.

It can still give you access to even some music apps, for example, or some other things, even little games that you can play on it.

And so I think there could be some use for it.

But I just thought it was so cute.

I had to say that as my in-the-know gadget for today.

Not that you've tried it yet, but, I mean, it's a cute idea.

I got to get one.

Yeah, I first saw this.

While you were talking, I was looking up on the line.

The original Repod came out in the past.

I forget when.

And it was just such a cute idea to take an original, you know, or not an original, different models of the Apple Watch and turn it into something that was handheld that would continue to work even if it wasn't attached to your wrist.

I just thought it was really cute.

The news this week is, as you say, they came out with the version for the Ultra.

And I think it's interesting because I know a lot of people, and you're one of them, right, Brett?

Because didn't you have the first generation Ultra Apple Watch?

I did.

And then you upgraded to the Apple Watch Ultra 3.

I did.

You still own your Ultra one?

My son now has my first one.

Your son has it.

Yeah, so my son – so that's what I'm saying.

Like I try to, you know, hand it down if I possibly can.

But at some point, he's going to want to get a new Apple Watch.

And I'm like, I have a backup plan now.

There you go.

So now you can get one of these and use it.

But it's a very cute looking device.

So I think it's I'm glad that you mentioned it because I think it's very clever.

And I don't know how it works for using it, but it certainly looks really adorable.

The Repod.

I like it.

There you go.

So for my tip of the week, I wanted to harp on something that I linked to.

Tim Hardwick at MacRumors has, you know, here's Apple Watch tips.

And when I see posts like this, like here's 10 things, here's 15 tips.

Sometimes I don't even link to them because I'm like, oh, these, I feel like a lot of people know about them.

But sometimes I'm like, well, there's some interesting ones in here.

And of these 15 tips that he posted for the Apple Watch, I will tell you there's a couple of them that either I did not know about or maybe I knew about them and I forgot about them.

And so if it's okay, I'd like to just highlight those three because I think that they're very useful.

I love my Apple Watch.

So one of them is, you know how on a computer or an iPad, if you have a keyboard, you know, the whole, if you're on Windows, it's control tab.

And if you're in a back, it's command tab, you know, switching between apps.

My fingers, and I'm sure many of us the same way, I can just do that.

That talk about muscle memory.

I just do it so many times a day.

And so if you want to do the same thing on an Apple Watch, switch from one of the apps that you're currently running to a different app, I had totally forgotten that the digital crown, you know, instead of spinning it.

Like if you tap once on the digital crown, you're going to see all of your apps.

But if you tap twice on it, it's going to bring up like this little thing of like, it's all your little apps there.

And you can just scroll up and down.

I can say all the things that I've been running.

And if there's one of them that for some reason I want to quit the app, I can just swipe it to the side and I can quit it.

But if I want to switch apps, it's a very quick way to bounce between two apps.

And it's a lot less cumbersome than going back to the, whether it's a grid or whether it's the honeycomb pattern of apps.

I was just so glad to see this tip because I had totally forgot or did not know that that was a

feature. So that's one double press on the digital crown. Like it. Another one that I did not know

about is you're using your Apple watch to track a workout. And one of the things it does is you

select your workout. You know, I'm doing an outside run or I'm doing an indoor walk and a treadmill

or whatever I'm doing. You'll have that three second countdown. Three, two, one start. It

I actually want to start it immediately.

And I'll give you some examples.

Oh, yeah.

If I'm on my treadmill at home, my treadmill will track things because it's got its own little digital stuff.

But then I'm tracking my Apple Watch, too.

And sometimes I hit start on my treadmill and then my Apple Watch starts.

And because of the countdown, it's three seconds behind, which I know is not a big deal.

But like I just prefer when my AirPods are talking to me.

If my AirPods say you're halfway through your workout, I want to see that on my treadmill screen, too.

And so the tip is when that countdown is coming, and I haven't tried this yet, I'm going to

try it next time I'm on a treadmill, is that if you tap the screen where the countdown

is, it makes the countdown go away and it jumps right into the workout.

Again, it sounds like a minor thing to only start two or three seconds earlier, but that's

going to allow me to sync up better.

Or another example is like maybe you're walking around outside and your Apple Watch says,

hey, it looks like you're doing an Apple Watch workout.

Do you want to track this?

And you might say, sure, I would like to track this.

And just go, like, I'm already walking.

You know, I started.

We don't have to wait three seconds for me to get started.

I'm walking as we say, and I'm walking right now.

So just tap that button and I'll instantly start tracking it.

So I did not know about the tip.

And again, it's not going to change my life.

But it's a nice little quality of life thing.

And then another one that I either did not know about or forgot about is sometimes you're in an app and you scroll to the bottom.

A perfect example of that is the one for the, what's the one that shows your circles?

Like I'm looking at my circles and I scroll down and now I'm, now I'm seeing my red circles.

Now I'm seeing my exercise green circles.

Now I'm seeing my stand blue circles.

And I like want to go back up to the top.

I thought that you just have to use the digital crown to spin, spin, spin, spin.

Just scroll back up.

You don't actually have to do that at the very top right of my screen where it has the time.

If I just tap on that, it jumps me right up to the top of the app.

And I'm like, oh, I did not know that.

It's like on your iPhone.

Yeah, on an iPhone, you can often tap at the top of the screen.

For many apps, it will bring you back up to the top again.

And I just did not know that that was even a thing on the Apple Watch.

That's cool.

So again, am I going to use this every day?

No, but I guarantee you that I'm going to use it sometimes.

And it's good to know.

So those are just three.

There's others under here.

Some of them are ones that I very much knew about.

But so take a look.

Maybe those three you don't know about, or maybe there's others on this list that you

didn't know about.

You know, one of them that's on your screen right now is pause activity rings.

I'm just going to mention that for many, many years.

I used to hate that I would I would track things like my stand hours and exercise hours.

And then suddenly I have a cold and I'm not going to get my exercise hours today, but I don't want to break my streak.

Right.

For many years, you know, you were sort of stuck.

Now, and I think this happened like two years ago, I forget.

But Apple gave you the ability to pause your streak for like 24 hours or something like that.

You could say, look, I'm taking a day off.

But like, don't mess up my streak because that gives me encouragement to continue to work out and stuff.

So that's one that's been around for a while, but it's a nice feature.

So again, there are things like that that you may not know about that are on this list.

It's a good list.

That's right.

I see.

So you just tap into on your Apple Watch, you go into your fitness rings, your activity, and you just simply tap on the center of those rings.

And it comes into this little screen that shows right here.

You can either change your goals from there or that's when you pause your rings.

mute coaching and goal tracking while maintaining your move strength.

That was like, it's specifically built for Jeff Richardson on there.

Like you can pause.

Actually, my wife loves this too,

but she's always complained about that because she'll work out.

But then like on Sunday, she doesn't usually work out, but she's like,

but it's telling me like, you can still do it.

You can still do it.

You can still close your ring.

And I'm like, I don't want to close my ring today.

I'm taking a day off.

Give me a break.

This is a way that you can pause it so that it doesn't keep coaching you to

finish it.

That's funny.

Yeah.

these are some great tips on here. This is from, uh, do you say Tim Hardwick? Yeah.

At macrumors.com. So I'll make sure that's in the show notes. This next week's going to be

pretty exciting, Jeff. I, just because I know so many more people will be talking about the March

4th event that Apple has announced and we'll see what people think is going to happen. Yeah. I

don't know if it'll be a whole lot of leaks, but I'm really going to be looking forward to whatever

that wildcard thing could be. So I know next week we'll talk with you. We'll have something else

to talk about then.

Looking forward to that.

And then the week after

will be even more exciting.

Thanks as always, Jeff.

And we'll talk with you next week.

Thanks, Brett.

Bye-bye, everybody.