Welcome to In the News for May 8th, 2026. I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

And this is Jeff Hutchinson from iPhoneJD. Hey, Brett.

Good morning, Jeff. Seems like a little bit of a slower week. I don't know that we had any kind

of news that was, you know, exploding after all the craziness that we've had, I feel like, in the

last month or so. But you always managed to find some really interesting stories. And why don't we

start with something that's what incredibly interesting apple watch bands i think fight

they're interesting i think they're pretty cool you had a story today about apple i think they've

doing this maybe you look this up like how many years has apple introduced the year or the annual

pride band they come out with a unique band and it has a watch face right that matches the band

which has just always been really cool in fact i think you mentioned to it that you have uh you've

reviewed them before like in the past i mean you know there's all kinds of different flavorings of

what these look like but they're always cool yeah it was actually 10 years ago i just looked at it

up it was 2016 so here we are in 2026 so okay 10 years of pride bands uh which is good and apple

for for continuing to to introduce these and you know just have especially in this day and age with

the you know whether we're a lot of political stuff but um but i'm glad that they continue to

do this. I like the pride bands. I mean, obviously it's good because it shows that you support

diversity and you support individual rights and everything else, but they're also, you know,

good looking bands. I liked the original ones that came out 10 years ago were some of my favorite

because that was the one you have the picture of now because they had, not only was it pride,

but it was also, it was very reminiscent of the Apple traditional six colors from the original

Apple logo, which again is no accident because when the original Apple logo was designed,

you know, back in gosh, whenever that was the late seventies by, was it Paul Rand? I forget who

designed that Apple logo. But that was part of the reason for him including the rainbow colors

was just sort of diversity and all those individuality and those sorts of things.

So it's no accident. So it makes sense that they have a pride band. And I love the fact that they

come out with a new model every year. In fact, getting into the Apple Watch in general, I really

love the idea that when Apple came out with the Apple Watch, they had this idea that they were

going to have the the hardware itself which has changed over the years but you know to even an

apple watch of today is not that dissimilar from the very first apple watch right the screen's a

little bit bigger and it's smaller but like you can look at the first apple watch and today's apple

watch and there's you can definitely see the line from one to the other but the thing that has allowed

them this yeah this picture here just looks so square like when i saw this i mean just look how

squared off that Apple Watch face looks. It looks so old in my mind to that. But yeah,

to the point, you know, the vast majority of the size and everything hasn't changed.

Yes. And so, but the bands is a way that Apple can refresh the line and they do it,

you know, seasonally, right? They've always had, you know, different colors and different styles

and things like that. So that's one of the things I like about the Apple Watch Band is you can truly

individualize it and you can swap it up. I mean, I know that some people have a single watch band

and that they never change it, but some people change it throughout the day. I usually change

at least once or twice a day.

So I thought that this would be a good opportunity

since it's been a while since we talked about it,

just to sort of talk about Apple Watch bands.

I am embarrassed to admit how many of them I have

because I have over 17.

And the reason I say over is because I saw from my count

that I've got 17 different ones,

but I've actually, some of them I've actually purchased twice

because I've had one or two break over the years

and I've had one or two that I've purchased a new size,

the same one.

So I was just going to go through,

if this interests you,

talk about the different bands that I've tried but go ahead before I do that so real quick though

because I just found this story because you know we were talking about how long that Apple has been

doing these pride collections I found this story and I just thought that this was cool here's the

first one that we just talked about here is 2018 I thought that that was cool because again I always

just am so interested in how they incorporate the band and the in the accompanying watch and the face

right yeah they always put a watch face with it so here's 2019 I thought that was pretty cool that's

good one yeah yeah i like that here is 2020 now that one is really cool and if you notice this is

where the the band is a little wider at the point that it it connects to the watch i think the reason

i said that about because they're different styles like that's right they have different types of

bands some of them are more the the floral elastomer some of them are the um the nylon yeah i like the

2020 and then i remember this they had sort of the nike version of this right with the holes in it

And then I do remember this one.

This was the loop, not the solo loop.

Maybe it is a solo loop there, but there's no buckle on that one.

That was cool.

And let's go to 2022.

Oh, yeah.

Kind of going back a little bit to some of the.

That one's a light color.

You know, one of the things that they've done more recently, including in the current year

too, is, you know, they've incorporated a lot of white with the color.

I realize as I'm saying this out loud, that's ironic.

We're talking about something for diversity.

you know white versus color but i actually i understand why you want to do that from apple's

perspective because it does make it sort of brighter and stuff like that but i actually prefer the ones

that are more focused on colors although the one that you're showing right now what year is right

is that right there the 2023 one that one's crazy it's because it's sort of like a confetti colors

it looks like good and plenty it looks like the mike and ike it does like something like that

with little bitty pills on it so it definitely is distinctive it's way too busy for me to ever

you know right wanted to wear that but you know hey every year you got to do something different

So why not keep it interesting?

So that post that you're looking at right now ends in, what, 2023?

It does.

And obviously they've had three years since then.

But that's an interesting post because as you scroll through it and see the changes over the years,

obviously if you're going to do different variations in the theme, different ways to do it,

and we'll see what they do next year.

So I can't say that the current one for 2026 is my favorite, but it's not a bad one.

And I like the fact that they have different ones every year, so you can update as often as you want.

You know, some people collect watches, but Jeff Richardson collects watch bands, Apple watch bands.

So let's go back to your list because I saw that you put some of your lists here in our notes.

And I was just like, I think I have one, maybe.

I know, though, that we've talked about this.

You like to switch out your bands, whether you're going to work or whether you're going to play or you're going out for dinner or something like that.

And you switch them out.

And it is easy to switch them out.

I used to do that every once in a while.

And it's just so great that it is a way to, you know, change it up quickly without really having to like swap out a whole different watch.

It's just you're getting the band instead.

Yeah. I mean, I love the one I'm having right now.

Typically when I'm in my office, I'm wearing the Millennium Loop.

And the Millennium Loop that I wear, I actually don't think that Apple sells anymore.

But it was the original.

It was one of the very first Apple Watch bands that came out in.

What was the first Apple Watch?

Was it 2015?

And what I like about the Millennium Loop, the one that I have, is that it's sort of – it's completely magnetic.

And so it's infinitely adjustable.

So you can make it tighter or just by sort of squeezing it, which I really like because

that, you know, sometimes your wrist changes a little bit during the day or whatever, and

you can sort of make it as tight or as loose as you want.

Plus, I think it looks sort of stylish, almost like a fancier watch that you might wear.

So for me, if I'm wearing a suit or even in most days, I don't wear a suit.

I've always loved the Milanese Loop.

Currently, if you go buy a Milanese Loop, I believe that all the current Milanese Loop

models are a little different.

It's got like a clasp.

First of all, it's not silver like the one that I have right now.

It's natural, which is a very similar color.

but what it means is natural titanium.

It actually matches the titanium watch case

just a tiny bit better than what mine does,

but they're very similar.

So, but the Milanese Loop,

I've always thought was a nice one.

I like that it's adjustable for different sizes.

Another one that I purchased

in the very beginning in 2015

was called the Classic Buckle,

which was just a leather band with a little clasp.

And I assumed when I purchased it,

that it would be the number one watch band I would wear

because when I used to wear a regular non-smart watch,

I always had like a leather, like a black leather buckle.

So I just assumed that that's what I would wear all the time.

And I tell you what, it actually wasn't one of my favorite watch bands.

I never ended up wearing it that often.

I don't know why.

It just didn't, didn't do that for me.

And I don't even think that Apple sells a buckle anymore.

And then there's the sports band, which is what, you know, that came out from the original one.

That was one of the really iconic designs that Johnny Ive came up with, with his buddy,

was his name Mark Newsome, I forget his name is.

But it's just that incredible design that, you know, no other watch had used this before that you could, you know, stick the one side with the little, you know, thing that pokes up and on all the different little circles to adjust the sizes and stuff.

And it's just a great design that has stood the test of time.

And I think it's still the default one, right?

It truly has stood the test of time, Jeff, because that's the thing.

Like I used to use some of these and I would swap it out.

And it just amazed me, first of all, how flat it would be, because I hate big buckles and that hits you when I'm working on a computer or something like that.

And it works.

And, you know, a lot of times watch band, like the holes are too far apart or they're too close together and you can't really find the right one.

But every single time I use this original sport band, it seemed to just work great.

And then you can fold it into this little hole over there, like the end of the band so it's not flopping around or anything.

It is just amazing that even now, what, 11 years later, that that design still will work as well as it does.

And I think to your point, you know, for most of the basic, you know, the bare minimum watches, this is the one that comes with.

Like this is the one you're going to get still today.

Even all these years later, this is the band that comes with the watch.

And it's nice because it comes in so many different colors.

And this is true for some of the other bands as well.

So you can, and in fact, you can even have like a different color on one side and the other.

if you wanted to have like your, you know, two different school colors and, you know,

you know, blue and yellow, I went to Emory, you know, whatever, whatever your, your colors are

green and white, you can, you can, you know, buy two and then mix and match if you want to do it.

And they're nice and they're bright. It really is an iconic band. And I, I don't, I know why some

people love them so much and continue to wear them. And I do wear them sometimes, but not as

often as I used to, but it's also the one with the most sizes too. It'll go all the way up. I reviewed

a couple of years ago, like an extra large, if you have a larger wrist, it's, it's, you know,

if you have a larger wrist, I think the largest size that you can get is, is the, is the large

version there or the extra large version of one of those. So that one's a really nice one. Um,

the next one that I was going to talk about was the woven nylon one and the woven nylon when it

came out in 2016, uh, was, or at least I got one in 2016, I forget what year it came out,

but those are really nice because it's softer. And I, I learned from the woven nylon band,

the original version had, uh, like a, like a traditional little metal clasp at the end.

So it worked like a traditional watch, but it was nice and it was soft and it was flexible.

And when it came out at the time, it was actually one of my favorite Apple watch bands at the time, because I just found it very comfortable in the hand to nothing against the floor elastomer.

That's nice. But it's it just really felt soft and comfortable in the hand.

And so I was a big fan of the woven nylon.

The next one I want to talk about, and I think this was a major jump and you mentioned it before, was the sport loop.

The sport loop was, you know, a nice version of the band because it was also soft, but much like that Milanese loop that I described, you could adjust it because of the – they don't call it Velcro because that's the brand name.

But it's basically what you and I would call Velcro, which means it's infinitely adjustable just like the Milanese loop.

And so it, in my mind, is a big step above the nylon band that I just talked about because you get all the comfort of that sort of soft band, but you can adjust it to whatever sizes.

And they will often come in sort of interesting color combinations and stuff like that.

So that's what I liked about the woven nylon band.

The next one, and I had one of those, the Navy Tahoe one.

The next one on the list is the Sport Loop.

And the Sport Loop, let me see if you can get my titles right here.

No, you're on the Solo Loop now, I think.

I'm sorry, the Solo Loop.

That's the one that I wanted to say.

The Solo Loop, yeah.

I always get confused with these bands, Jeff.

I've always been confused.

There's like the Solo Loop, the Sport Loop here.

I pulled up the Apple site here.

you can see they have the sport band, sport loop, alpine loop, trail loop.

And then there's the solo loop, the fine woven loop, the braided solo loop.

I mean, it is just insane keeping track of the names.

The names get tricky.

The thing that's distinctive.

First world problem, but crazy.

Right, right.

The solo loop is nice because it is a single band.

Yeah.

So it's very similar to the floral elastomer of that traditional one that we talked about

from the year one, but it stretches.

And so what I like about it is it's slip on, slip off.

You know, if you like having a pair of loafers, you just stick your foot in, you don't have to tie the laces or anything like that.

It's the same idea.

And yet, because it's sort of this rubbery sort of thing, it can get wet.

It's not going to stain, you know, anything like that.

I really like it for working out because it's a little bit – it can be a little bit tighter on your wrist.

So it's not going to move around while you're moving your arms, stuff like that.

And it also comes in so many of the different colors, like some of the other ones that are the floral elastomer, that you can just get a million colors.

years ago we've talked about in the past how that website woot will sometimes have these deep deep

sales where they sell apple watches that's right an incredible discount of like you know 10 or 20

of the original price and so i've done some of those sales over the time just to get some colors

and it's fun because sometimes you might want to wear like an orange or a red or yellow or something

that's you know different colors and they have so many different colors of the uh of the solo loop

which i really really like um and then i guess the last one this is this is like the minimalist

like if you don't want any band you don't want any adjustments you don't want anything on

the solo loop here and it was just amazing when it came out now the only thing i will say here is

that because there is no way to adjust anything you need to follow the instructions on getting

it sized right and in fact i remember if maybe i think you've linked to john gruber's instructions

here apple even released this little printable uh sizer and you had to cut it out and you would

like wrap it around your wrist and you would see where it came together and it would be a number

like six, seven, eight, you know, 10. I mean, there was kind of a wide range, but you wouldn't need to

know that before you could actually place the order because you wanted to make sure you got the right

size. And typically I think they would tell you to kind of size down a little bit or if, you know,

in between six and seven, you should go six. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but it was brilliant the way that

it did it. I mean, I know there was others out there, but this was to me was just the beautiful

minimal thing and i still have a couple of these that i will sometimes put on uh but i'll get to my

my loop here in the minute that i've kind of settled on my one thing that i've had the only

problem i've had with the solo loops because i love that you can slip them on slip them off they're

tight on your wrist and they have fun bold colors um is that i guess it's because they're sort of

rubbery and stuff like that i have had two of them break over the years and never in a way i've had

one too yes and it often would break for me right at the sort of the part where it connects to the

watch i guess just the pressure over time and and so i've had to replace them it's also one that i've

gotten different sizes over the years just because i found i like the one a little bit tighter a

little bit better but um and so that is a danger is that they will break and obviously you don't

want it to happen in a way for me it's never been like it broke and suddenly my watch popped off

well what happens is when it breaks it's it's consistent you'll start to see like a tear on it

yeah once you see the tear you're like oh well okay it's not gonna you know it's you know i know i

I don't want to be using something with a tear.

It's inevitable.

So that's when I would stop using it.

So that is the only downside.

But I think that they retail for $50.

But, you know, if you get them on like that $15 or $20 sale, I'm like, I'm totally, you know, I'll wear it for a couple of years for $20 and get my value out of it.

Right, right.

And then the last one I was going to mention is the braided solo loop, which is the same idea of just having a single loop.

So there's no buckle.

It's a slip on, slip off.

But it's soft.

And so for me, as I mentioned before, with some of the earlier models that are softer, I just find those really comfortable.

this is just personal preference, but I like the comfort of something that's really soft and

something that's stretchy so I can slip it on and off and soft is for me right now, my current

favorite comfort. So for me, what I will typically wear the Milanese loop during the day at work,

or if I'm, you know, going out or something, want to be a little bit fancier. And then when I just

throw on some, a shirt and a, you know, a t-shirt and shorts at home at the end of the day, I will

often switch out to the braided solo loop just because it's comfortable. My, my complaint about

solo loop, you know, much like I have a complaint about the solo loop because they do break over

time. My complaint about the braided solo loop is because they're stretchy and soft. Um, they do

stretch out over time. Like I have found that if I wear one every single day after about a year,

it is, it is, you know, it's, it's bigger. So it's not quite as tight as it used to be. Um,

and so there, there are ones that I've purchased in the past that I either don't wear them or I

replaced them over time. And again, that's why it's nice if you can get them on a discount and

stuff like that. But it is one of the most comfortable ones for me personally. So for me,

it's worth the trade-off because at least you get a good solid year or so out of wearing them before

they start to stretch out a little bit. But that's a whole lot of them. I will say I have never,

with one exception, I've never used a non-Apple watch band. But I know that some people love them

and you can buy a bajillion of them on Amazon. But I do love that there's just so much variety

out there. And then I guess I've also tried, I should have mentioned that when you have the

the Apple Watch Ultra, which has some specific bands for that.

I have tried some of those when I tried an Ultra for a while,

and they have some unique and special ones.

Although the nice thing is that the Apple Watch Ultra can use its special bands,

or you can actually use the regular bands with the Apple Watch Ultra.

You can use any bands.

You have lots of flexibility with it.

Yeah.

I remember using my first Apple Watch Ultra, and I had that solo loop.

And the first Apple Watch Ultra was a little bit heavier than the regular.

Apple watches and so that solo loop did a good job but it didn't last very long in fact that's

oh because the brain yeah that I can see that yeah it's just a little heavier like you know

you need a little bit more stability on on some of that I think I've tried most all of these and

quickly to your point I would say um if at all possible stay with the Apple branded watch bands

now my son I remember we just got him a pack of like he he wanted to do all kinds of funny things

watch he wanted you know um it was just a pack that we got members of a gillard what's the regular

the sport ends right but he wanted to do like one side green and the other side red or something

like that right which is fun to mix him up as a kid he's having a fun time about that um i have

tried a milanese loop knockoff from amazon i remember when you had that yeah in fact i remember

that you know i thought it was so cool it looked really good but it wasn't the same quality and it

started uh i remember there was one part i forget it was like on a corner that one of the metal

chain links started coming out and i remember just ripping my shirt to shreds one one time because

it just came out so if you're going you know i know people like to look at other things like that

because that middle of these loop i mean what was it was at least 100 maybe 150 dollars right i mean

The Milanese Loop has always been a little more.

Let me see if I can pull it up here just because I want to know.

They do the stainless steel, right, for that.

Is that the Milanese Loop?

Oh, so it's $99 now.

So they have the natural color, which I think is the titanium gold,

and then they have the slate, which I guess is more on the black side.

Anyway, I would just say stay with the Apple brand.

When I got my Apple Watch Ultra 3, I was able to select, to your point,

a couple of there was two or three selections you could have for your band.

And I had never tried the trail loop.

So we have another loop right now.

And I've tried that before.

The you know, and I got this and I absolutely love it.

So it's similar to your sport loop.

Right.

Other than the fact that instead of it being like the little bar at the end

of one end, it's like this little loop, this little cloth loop.

It's kind of hard to see on this picture here, but I love it.

Plus just the material that it's made out of, right?

The idea is, is that you're going to sweat in this a little bit more theoretically.

And so if you want a material that's going to either wick that sweat away or just not keep it, you know, or not feel, you know, some of that sport loop sometimes because it's that, I call it a rubbery feel.

It just a little, I don't know, clanny feeling when you are hiking and you're starting to sweat.

This trail loop for me has been absolutely fantastic.

And it's pretty much all that I wear.

They call it a trail loop because the two edges have a little reflective component on it.

But again, it's the point that we're talking about with the Melanie's loop and your sport loop is that it's I call it Velcro.

I know they don't call it Velcro, but it's basically I can adjust it so that in some cases I don't want it as tight.

But if I go running, for example, I do tighten it up a little bit because I just don't want it to be, you know, I don't want it to be moving on my arm.

Plus, I also want the step count and my blood monitoring to be accurate.

So I don't want it to be moving around.

I want it to be situated as much as possible on my arm.

So this is my daily driver now.

And I don't really swap out.

I mean, I still have a couple of others, but I just find that this one all around is great.

It looks nice enough to go out.

Plus it's, it's, um, burly enough to use, you know, during the day for any activities

that I'm going to do.

Yeah.

Two comments I have on things that you raised.

First of all, I've heard people say that of the three loops that are dedicated and exclusive

to the ultra that you have, um, the trail loop is the one that people tend to love the best.

So I'm not surprised that you love it.

And I enjoyed it when I, when I tried it, an Apple watch, um, ultra for a couple, well,

you know, it was nice.

The, um, the other thing I mentioned is you mentioned the, the, the, you know, off bands,

you know, buying bands from companies that are not Apple.

A lot of people that I respect have said strongly both sides of the debate.

I've heard a lot of people who, like you, have had bad experience with getting third-party bands and have said never again, never again.

And it's because of that that I've always purchased the Apple bands because even though they're a little bit more expensive, there's so much variety.

And I trust that they're going to work really well.

So I've been happy just buying the Apple bands.

It's not like I feel limited.

But I will mention that there are people that I trust out there that say, oh, I had great experience.

You know, maybe not with something more sophisticated like a Milanese loop because of all the components and you want quality.

But for just something, a real simple, something that's sort of an imitation of the traditional or, you know, a flora mast or a last rubber band.

Those I've heard, you know, are a solo loop knockoff.

I've heard some people say that they've had luck with them.

But again, you know, you roll the dice when you get from a no-name company on Amazon.

So, you know, again, I love the fact that you have that choice.

So truly, even though Apple has dozens of variety and all sorts of different colors, if there's nothing that you like, you know, you could go elsewhere.

I've never tried to know that Apple also has like the really expensive Hermes bands.

Exactly.

I was just going to ask my friend.

Come on.

But if you want those, yeah, I have not yet tried the Hermes bands.

What was the one that there was?

There was one that like wrapped around your arm like three or four times.

I don't even know.

It was like the loop or something like that.

Or it was some sort of some French double word.

And it was like $800 or something crazy.

I mean, this one here is $450 for the Hermes.

I think you need to add these to your collection, Jeff.

Like you're missing out.

You know, maybe birthday, Christmas, something like that.

I mean, it just seems like that this is important for science.

There you go.

Very good.

All right.

Well, thanks everyone for listening to us.

Go down sort of our Apple Watch band rabbit hole.

If anyone listening to this has a favorite Apple Watch band we haven't mentioned,

And reach out and let us know because I'd love to know that.

Because maybe I'm always looking to try another one.

So let me know what I'm missing out on.

I know I was giving you a hard time, but it is fun.

I mean, it really has become its own marketplace, not just within Apple, but also, I mean, it's just a third-party marketplace, which is just insane.

And it's not like, again, to your point earlier, I would never – I'm not going to say I would never buy a third-party.

I have.

I've gone out in third parties, but I like, I think, how you stated it.

Maybe if it's for something like a Milanese loop or something a little bit more on the higher end, yeah, I would probably stay with Apple.

But, you know, you can get it.

I mean, I think for this packet that we just got from my son, I think we paid $10 for it.

He just loves it because he always likes swapping them out with the different colors and everything.

And there's something to be said for that to have a little fun, you know, as long as it's not going to rip off your arm or something, I guess.

All right, moving on.

But, yes, we do want to hear about your Apple Watch Band Adventures.

I should say nice story you link to from John Gruber,

Daring Fireball,

which linked to another story from David Gelfman,

who apparently is,

was an Apple employee,

maybe still is.

And just a cool story.

I'll let you.

Yeah.

And actually this one,

I think we should mention it and not talk about it because this is one of

these,

you know,

sometimes there's a story that you,

you want to read it yourself.

And so let's just say,

it's a very sweet story about Steve jobs.

And, you know, as we're celebrating Apple's 50th anniversary, it's a time to look back.

So it's a good time to look back.

But this is just a very, you know, heartwarming, cute story.

And I'm going to leave it at that.

And, you know, if you haven't clicked on it yet, take a look at it.

It's real short.

It's just a couple of paragraphs.

It's worth reading.

I think the only thing I would say is the two letters from Steve.

I'm going to spoil it just a little bit is the two letters are OK.

But I guess when I first read that, Jeff, the only thing I would think of is, isn't that one letter too many for Steve?

Wouldn't he just say, okay?

That's what my wife gets upset at me when I'm replying to whatever text messages.

Like, I just say, okay.

Like, I can't be bothered to put the O in front.

Okay, anyway, read the story.

It's great.

I'm glad you linked to it.

It made me smile.

And it did warm my heart a little bit.

Late-breaking story.

I don't even think you even added this in your list today, Jeff.

Apple now requires verification for the education store, which I'm going to let you understand, but I think I know where this is going.

And wow, this could probably change some shopping habits for several folks that I know about that have taken advantage of the Apple education discounts over the years.

Yes, this is a new story that Chance Miller just posted early, early this morning.

So it was not in my in the news post that I wrote last night before I went to bed.

I have never taken advantage of the Apple education discount before, but I've heard people say that it has for years now.

It's worked on basically an honor system.

If you say that your child is in school or that you yourself are in school, and if you go to the right website and stuff like that and you enter some information, they'll just sort of trust you and give you that discount.

And the discount can actually be substantial in some cases.

But apparently there was one time in the past that Apple tried to change that and require authentication that you're actually a student.

And the system that they implemented, they changed it two weeks later.

But apparently this morning or yesterday, they've now teamed up with a company called Unidays that basically you have to have a Unidays account to take.

This is the United States, by the way, and a number of other countries too, but maybe a dozen countries.

You have to go to the Unidays website and prove that you're actually a student.

And the way that you do that is by logging into your school and then having that school coordinate with Unidays.

or if your school doesn't have a website that'll work with them,

you can take a picture of a photo ID and send it in.

But there has to be a little more verification

to take advantage of the vacation discount.

So it's sort of a good warning

that if this is something that you've taken advantage of in the past

and sort of an honor system,

and there's all sorts of little implications too.

Like if you do homeschooling,

there's a way that you can do it

because then you're not going to have an official school ID

and all sorts of other things.

But they have like,

Chance Miller does a good job of running down

all of this sort of thing.

So just keep in mind,

if you were planning on, you know,

this month, this summer,

taking advantage of a discount once again for you or for your child, you now have to jump through a

few more hoops. I will mention that since we were just talking about the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch

had historically not been a part of the education discount. Right, that's right. Which in some ways

makes sense because at least from a grade school standpoint in high schools, so many schools don't

even let you wear an Apple Watch because they're afraid the students are going to use it for

cheating. But of course, you certainly can wear an Apple Watch when you're in college.

But Chance also reported this morning that the Apple Watch has now been added.

And so you can get a little bit more of a discount.

I forget if he says in here what the discount is if you get an Apple Watch through the education discount.

But it's not.

Here we go.

$2.99 for these.

$2.99 instead of, yeah.

Oh, actually, what he's saying is like for an Apple Watch Series 11.

So the top of the line Apple Watch is currently $3.99.

And you can get it for MSRP.

And you can get it for $3.59.

So you're saving $40.

And then as Chance is pointing out on Amazon, you can sometimes get even better than that.

And I've actually noticed that before, too.

Apple's education discounts are a real discount over MSRP.

But sometimes Amazon and some other retailers like Best Buy, sometimes they will have a limited discount, which is actually just as good as the education discount or maybe even better.

So, you know, shop around is the point.

But anyway, it's late breaking news that it's interesting.

I haven't always used the education discount, but there are times that we have just because it did make sense.

Like, in other words, the there wasn't the better pricing anywhere else.

And you can usually count about a 10 percent discount.

So it's a little bit more so.

But typically the education discount has always been around 10 percent on that.

And I think even for my daughter, when she went into college that we used it for something, I want to say maybe an iPad or a Mac, you know,

around the beginning, you know, August or September, usually Apple runs some kind of an education

promo to where you could get like a gift card or something in addition to using the Apple watch.

You know, I'll just share with everyone. We actually did homeschool our children. And so

this was a, one of the ways that we were able to get an iPad or a laptop or some other,

it's pretty much what you do. They don't have iPhones there. If I'm not mistaken,

I don't think we've ever done an iPhone there, but it's usually as a computer or an iPad, something that's more education focused on that.

Right. And and when we have taken advantage of it again, it's not a humongous discount, but it's enough to be able to say.

And it hasn't taken a whole lot to even go through, even from a homeschool perspective.

We just were able to say that we homeschooled and, you know, we my wife is the teacher. Right.

And so we're able to go through with any of that. But I see now to your point, Chance Miller puts in here that homeschool teachers will need to provide some kind of

identity document like a driver's license or a letter of intent because anybody that is out there

homeschooling you typically have to file a letter of intent with the local school district in which

you live at least in separate you know depending on the state in which you're in and so being able

to supply that could be something so i you know again i have always appreciated the fact that apple

supports that i mean again education in general of course but even more specifically from a

homeschool like just don't leave you know some of those folks out like that and i appreciate that

they've always done that the last thing quickly i'll say is it's not just for hardware too right

the other way that sometimes we've taken advantage of it is on the software side i have found the

software discounts from an education store sometimes can be uh really amazing if you need it

even even from like final cut pro or some of those uh professional standards i have seen that you're

right you're right if you're doing something along those lines you know we've signed up our kids to

do some kind of video editing classes or you know even programming classes that kind of a thing

Some of that software is really great discount, you know, no matter what you're running it on, whether or not you have a Mac that you got from the education store or not, you can you can do that.

But I'm assuming they'll probably require that same verification now in some of that.

But I'm just I'm just glad that Apple continues to support this.

Obviously, Apple has always been a huge in the education market, but even from the side, you know, not just supplying iPads for everybody in the school, but as individuals, especially a lot of college kids take advantage of these education.

discounts. And, and you know, it's not too bad,

not too much for them to have a student ID or something that they could use to

do the verification.

No, I mean, back in the day when I was in college in the 1980s, you know,

I remember taking the money that I earned from my summer job working as a,

at a debate workshop at a college. And I, and I had like, you know,

a couple thousand dollars, I think it was like $2,500, whatever it was.

And I bought my first Mac, a Mac plus from,

with the discount from, from the universe. Cause there was a discount when you,

I went to college at Emory and there was a discount in the,

in the college bookstore to get a Mac because you could buy it through there.

And I mean, that, I mean, believe me,

I needed that discount to be able to afford that computer and stuff.

So it was important to me.

And, you know, and here we are this many years later,

and I'm still using Apple products.

So I think it's smart from a marketing standpoint, you know,

get the students to use it because then hopefully there'll be lifelong customers.

I remember, you know, we are of the vintage, Jeff,

that I do remember even in college or even going to other college campuses

and typically in that campus bookstore, right?

The way that they did it.

Everybody had to go to the same place to buy all your books and all your supplies.

and they would sometimes have that little corner over there where they would have Apple.

And, you know, they just did a fantastic job from a marketing perspective, like you said,

in focusing on that.

So let's go from the education market to the enterprise market.

We don't spend a lot of time on this, but I saw that you mentioned it.

Jason Snell every year on Six Colors Now does a report card,

an annual report card of Apple and the enterprise.

And I know that you mentioned it because I believe you've been responding to this as a survey wise for several years now.

I don't know that I saw that you were quoted in here anywhere, but I know that you were part of the survey responses.

Yeah, he reaches out to people that work at big companies that use Apple products.

And I work for a law firm that's got, you know, 350 or so attorneys and a lot more staff.

So and although we use PCs in our law firm, we extensively use iPads and iPhones and stuff like that.

And it's a BYOD for us.

So people pay for their own iPhone and pay for their own iPad.

But of course, we provide support for it and make sure that our software works with it

and everything else.

And so Apple products are a huge part.

I mean, in my organization, we let people use whatever smartphone that they want.

But we are almost all iPhone.

I forget the latest numbers.

85%, 90% iPhone at my law firm is what people just choose to use.

And of course, anyone that uses a tablet is going to, of course, use an iPad.

So we do use Apple stuff extensively.

So it's an interesting survey because, you know, first of all, it's always interesting

over time what people are thinking and then year to year.

The things that jumped out at me this year is, first of all, Apple, the area of Apple

that people in enterprise are most happy with is hardware.

And that number has always been high.

And this year it's higher than ever.

And that's important because, I mean, whether you're going to be, you know, buying a thousand,

you know, iPhones to deploy to your workers, or whether you're going to be supporting the people

that own them, you don't want the hardware to crap out. You just can't have that when you're

trying to get work done. And so I love the fact that iPads, iPhones, et cetera. I mean, AirPods,

which I use for all my video conferences are just so rock solid and work just so well.

And so that's always been the highest of the overall scores. And then the place where the

scores are lowest, and that's not that they're low, they're just not nearly as high, is on some

of the software reliability and stuff like that, because that is an area where people have issues.

And I think this is true whether you're in an enterprise or elsewhere.

So that was one thing.

And then the other thing that jumped out at me this year, and I don't remember if he asked

about this last year, but he had a number of questions about AI and how people are using

it and stuff.

And it was just interesting to see, you know, a surprisingly large, in my mind, percentage

of people are allowing people to basically use whatever AI they want.

Yeah, that's the chart you're showing right now.

You know, at our firm, we only allow our lawyers.

I mean, I think this makes sense because, you know, security issues and confidentiality

issues.

We only allow people at my law firm to use AI products that are approved by our firm and

that are truly vetted for security and everything else.

But I was interested on this report card, which is not, of course, law firms.

It's all sorts of businesses.

But 24, you know, basically a quarter of them are open to use a request, which I guess makes

sense that people can request stuff.

And 13% of them say that they're fully permissive, basically use whatever you want.

And that's interesting because, you know, we always hear stories, you know, I'll just give you one example in the legal sphere.

It made the news not too long ago that there was a court up in New York that reached a result that I think was the right result where a person who needed legal services, the first thing that they did is they went to ChatGPT and they asked legal questions and got some answers.

And then after that, they went to go hire a real attorney and the communications that they had had with ChatGPT were ruled to be non-privileged, which made perfect sense because ChatGPT is not an attorney.

I mean, that's just like, you know, talking to someone down the street of, you know, hey, what do you think if I do such and such? That's not a privileged communication. But, you know, it's interesting because in this day and age, I have had clients that want to draft a contract. And the first thing that they do is they use, you know, something like ChatGPT or Claude to come up with a contract. And then when they come to me, they say, well, here's what I came up with. Can you just, you know, make sure this is truly legal?

And on the one hand, that's good because I understand what they want.

But on the other hand, if confidentiality ever were to be an issue, and you know, it

often is, we're not going to be, you're often not going to have an opponent on the other

side that's trying to breach that.

But just keep in mind that, you know, anything that you're typing into an open chat chat is

confidential.

So then you bring that to the enterprise side.

If someone at my law firm, another law firm started to use just something on the internet,

just typing in random stuff, that would not be in my mind smart because it's not confidential

and protected and data security and stuff.

So anyway, so it was interesting,

there weren't any mind-blowing conclusions

from this year's Enterprise Report card,

but it's always interesting to read about it.

And I always enjoy participating in it.

I wonder if Jason Snell asked about HomePods

in the Enterprise.

Probably not,

but I liked an article you linked to today

from Wesley Hilliard,

which we really enjoy following,

how he continues to use HomePods.

And I almost read this and thinking, really?

Like, that's what you, I think he replaced all of his Sonos devices and he went all HomePods.

And all I could think of is, you know, these are kind of a few years old at this point now, HomePods.

And I know that you still like them and I know that they're still good, but it's almost like we haven't really seen Apple supporting them all that much.

We keep hearing rumors, but I got to, you know, CNN is believing on this.

But it's still a great story from Wesley, regardless.

So that's so funny, Brett, that that was your first reaction.

Because when I first saw this headline, that was my first reaction too, is, oh, wait, we're

going to talk about HomePods?

Because we haven't really seen much new in the world of HomePods.

But two things to say.

Well, first of all, I will just say that the hot rumor is that Apple has been working.

And in fact, that they've had something ready to go.

They're just waiting for the AI to catch up with it.

With a new version of a HomePod, they would have a video screen.

All these rumors of John Ternus is going to take over as Apple's new CEO this fall.

will the first new product released under his control of Apple be a new version of a HomePod

or maybe something in the home market?

You know, that's a rumor.

And I hope it's true because I'd love to see Apple do more.

But having said that, even though Apple has not innovated in the HomePod and the HomePod

mini area very much, this was actually a fun article to read because Wes uses them for

so many different things that when I looked at his article, I'm like, oh, it's a good

reminder of how versatile these things are.

I mean, yes, they're just smart speakers, but you know, he talks about, first of all,

that you can have music throughout your house, which again is nothing new.

We've been doing it for years, but it's so nice that you can walk from room to room and

have different sound and different, you know, and you can put them together in stereo pairs,

which is nice.

So he talks about that.

He also talks about using them as the speakers for his television.

I've never done that before, but I've heard people say that, especially if you get the

full size version of the HomePod, not the HomePod mini.

And if you do a HomePod pair, that the sound is pretty good.

He said the only place that it's a little lacking on is bass because you need to have a dedicated bass to really get that thump that you can feel in your chair.

But otherwise, he says they sound really good.

And I've heard many other people say the same thing, especially if you use an Apple TV, that they pair great with the Apple TV hardware.

So that was an interesting thing he talked about.

Another thing that I liked about his article is he talks about stands.

And some of them are just dumb stands.

Like he has a silly picture of one of them that it looks like a snail or something like that, that it's sitting in.

It's just a wooden stand.

If I could find that stand, maybe I would do a HomePod mini.

I think that is the cutest looking snail there.

And I'm like, that's great.

Did you make that?

Where can I get one of those?

But anyway, I see your point.

Yeah.

And we have one at my house that we've talked about in the podcast many years ago.

But I have one in my living room that it's just like a little four little legs, like a little wooden thing that just holds.

And I actually bought it for practical reasons because I wanted my HomePod mini to be elevated a little bit in my living room.

because it's behind a couch, but it actually also looks very nice too. So, I mean, if a stand for a

HomePod can be an aesthetic thing, it can be a useful thing. And the next one I'll talk about is

I've tried these out before too. There are these portable batteries that are made to hold a HomePod.

And what's nice about it is our HomePod mini specifically is that if you want to go outside

in the backyard, you may not want to keep something in your backyard 24 seven because they're not

weatherproof, right? It could rain. But if you just want to take something out with you so that

if you're in the backyard, you're barbecuing, you're having a party, you could just have that

HomePod. And I've totally done this in the past. I have brought a HomePod outside either with a

dedicated charger or you could just, you know, use a battery pack, you know, get a USB-C battery pack

and plug your HomePod into it and just wrap the board up. And it's nice. It's nice to have it that

you have music inside in your living room. You step outside to the backyard. You've got the music in

the backyard too. So that's a nice thing too. And then the last part of his article that jumped out

at me is a reminder that HomePods and HomePod minis, if they hear a fire alarm, they, through

the Home app, will send you an alert.

And I've seen this before, and perhaps you have too, that if a fire alarm goes off.

And so it's a nice notice.

And this is something that's actually very near and dear to my heart right now, because

and I won't go on a huge tangent on this, but many years ago, I guess it was about 10

years ago, I first purchased a Nest smoke detector.

Okay.

And I liked it.

This was back when Nest was an independent product and there were very nice smart detectors.

And what was nice about them is they had all sorts of advanced features.

They had voice, they would talk, they would say the alarm is about to go off.

They were self-testing automatically.

And if you have Nests in multiple rooms, it will, you know, if there's a fire alarm in

the kitchen, it will make the Nest that's in the upstairs bedroom sound off as well so

that you'd know about it.

It would even tell you what room it detected smoke in.

So I was a big fan of Nest.

And then Nest was purchased by, was it Amel or it was Google.

They were purchased by Google.

And then Google gave up on it.

And so now you can't even, so like I have a Nest, I have a number of them in my house.

They're all over the place.

But the oldest one I have is 10 years.

And as you may know, smoke detectors last 10 years, right?

And so I have one that's expiring literally this month.

And it warns me that it's about to stop working and stuff like that.

And I have been looking to replace it.

And the current market on smart home detectors, they all have compromises and downsides that I don't like.

And I really miss the old days.

I wish that Nest was still around.

I wish that Apple had purchased Nest way back when.

So that way we could Apple can have it.

But like there's not a great one out there.

And I could talk forever about the problems with the current brands.

But one of the things that I'm thinking of getting is just a non-smart smoke detector, just a regular old smoke detector.

And there are some nice ones, too, that actually have some interconnections and stuff like that, but they don't work with apps.

And part of the reason that I might be comfortable with putting just regular smoke detectors in my house, although some nicer ones, is that since I have HomePods throughout my house, I know that if I'm away from home or something like that, I will still get an alert.

So I don't need to have the Nest app to get an alert.

So I haven't made a final decision on what I'm going to do yet, but I need to make it soon.

So anyway, that's a nice little advantage.

So, I mean, as you could say, for something that has not been updated in years, there's actually quite a bit to say about the HomePod and the HomePod mini.

And so I appreciate this article.

I would just love to see Apple at least make some kind of announcement or some kind of an indication that, yes, we're going to continue to support or, you know, do more iterations on the product.

But we'll see.

And I think they could make a killing if they sold a little wooden snail base for it as well.

That's great.

Well, we talked about buying watch bands, Apple watch bands from Woot,

but you had another link today to buying Apple USB-C charge cables from Woot.

You said you can get them as low as $11.

That's still true.

You can get a three-pack for $11 each, but you can only get a pink color at this point.

You know, I have to say, I'm glad that you linked to this because it does bring up, I think now that iPhones come with a woven cable versus the old days, Jeff, which was where it was just that.

I mean, I probably have several lying around here like most people do.

Plasticity rubbery sort of.

You know, which almost inevitably, inevitably would start to break right at the tip.

Right.

And not only was that frustrating that it broke, but it could be almost like a fire hazard.

It could, you know, just the fact that you just don't need something like that happening.

I'm glad that we've gone to Woven.

I almost anytime today that I buy a charging cable of any kind, whether it's Apple like this, which I think this is a good deal, or today I'll go on Amazon and get an anchor.

I think they call them braided cables, right?

I always now pay just a little bit more to make sure that I'm getting a little bit more of a hardy cable as opposed to the old cheapo these days.

Same.

Every single time that I buy a cable nowadays, I'm going to buy a woven one, whether it's the anchor braided, which I really like, or the Apple ones.

And the Apple ones traditionally are going to be more expensive.

But because, you know, the way that Apple is a company owned by Amazon, but they will often buy like a bunch of surplus things.

And this current sale is when Apple originally came up with the newer versions of the iMacs.

They had braided USB-C cables that were color matched to the iMac.

So like a pink iMac could have a pink cable.

A green iMac could have a green cable.

And so they've gotten a number of these.

And again, there's even fewer of them available today than when I linked to it last night.

So they're going to go quickly.

They may be gone by the end of this weekend.

But they are nice cables.

And if you buy a three-pack, $11, and these are the shorter cables.

It's like the three-foot cable, but sometimes you want a shorter cable.

and so you know 11 bucks each or even if you buy just a single one i think they're 15 bucks so it's

a pretty good price and a nice discount now as you're showing you can also get an anchor one for

probably you know about the same price if not cheaper but um but the apple ones are nice and

they're fun colors so like if you like the idea of like a yellow cable or a green or a purplish or a

pink they're fun colors they're good quality they're from apple so you can trust them and it's a good

discount if you take advantage of it before they are all gone from Woot. So I honestly almost bought

one last night and then I realized I don't really need one, but I'm like, well, it might be fun

to have sort of a call, like maybe a green, I don't have a green USB cable. Maybe that would

make it stand out more and I'll use the green cable, but I decided not to buy one. Maybe I'll

change my mind for the weekend, but it's a good deal. Get on Woot and protect your iPhone from

being stolen. What an interesting story that you linked to today. Afghan masterminded pickpocket gang

who shipped 180 million pounds worth of iPhones abroad.

This is a story out of London here,

which iPhone theft is nothing new, unfortunately.

The scale of this enterprise was pretty crazy.

But my favorite part, well,

my favorite part of the sense of how do they do this

is how much aluminum foil that they would end up buying

to try to wrap the phone so that the signals couldn't get in and out.

I mean, this was just a crazy story,

at least, again, from the scale of what was happening here.

This is mostly from London in the UK.

Yeah, this is in London, but I mean, the guy,

I mean, it's not just one person.

He had a whole criminal organization working with him,

but he was apparently the mastermind of it,

according to the police in London.

And they say that he stole 62,000 iPhones.

And as I understand it,

it's not like he walked in a store and stole a thousand of them.

I think that these were mostly from like pickpockets and people.

So, I mean, a lot of, as the police say in London, a lot of what they thought were just

one-off opportunistic, oh, somebody saw an iPhone and they picked it up and they stole

it.

But no, no, no, this was all coordinated.

They had special people who would, you know, this would be their quote unquote job.

And, you know, the police were saying that these are the same criminal organizations that,

you know, often would be, you know, trafficking drugs, but they just found that it was safer

and nicer just to steal iPhones.

And these reports always surprise me because the iPhone has so many modern iPhones with modern versions of iOS have so much security built into them that they're really hard to break into it.

Right. You can do you can buy these, you know, sophisticated equipment that police officers will use to, you know, but it's hard to crack into.

And yet, obviously, these bad guys have figured out how to do it because I think the system says that they would steal thousands and thousands and thousands of iPhones from people in London.

They would ship them to somewhere, I think in the Middle East or something like that.

South Korea or China, somewhere around.

There would be a place that would know how to return them to factory settings and even though they were logged in and somehow deactivate them.

And then apparently they were incredibly popular in China.

And you're like, why are they so popular?

Well, of course, they're stolen, but they will actually sell them for more money than you would purchase a regular iPhone in China.

And the reason for it is because they were free of the controls that China would require to have on iPhones sold in China.

So if you wanted to have an iPhone in China and access the Internet, and apparently I guess you use VPNs.

I don't know how you do this, but, you know, to bypass the authoritarian Chinese rules on what apps you can install and what you can use that you might want to have an iPhone like this.

So, you know, part of me feels bad for the person whose iPhone was stolen because that sucks to be a victim.

Part of me is a little happy for the person in China that's able to reach the outside world because they have this iPhone.

But it was just a huge enterprise.

The final statistic is, and I mentioned this in my article, the police say that this guy's organization may have been responsible for up to 40% of all mobile phones stolen in London.

I'm like, wow, he had cornered the market on this.

So anyway, it's an interesting story.

Protect thy iPhone.

Speaking of London, another quick little story from Dan Morin at Six Colors, which I always enjoy.

How are you using technology when you are traveling abroad?

You know, one of the things that you, well, folks like us need to take is the ability to keep devices charged and have power because you go international.

A lot of times there are different plugs in the walls and everything.

And there's a company, I may have it over here somewhere.

It's like Ipecoc or Ipecoc, which is a very bulky, basically, adapter for power adapter.

And it works.

The reason it's one of the reasons it's bulky is because it has like all the different kind of plugs, no matter where you go in the world.

Right.

Well, I love that Dan Morin talked about this Anker device.

In fact, I might have to get this, this Anker Nano, which I think is really, really amazing.

It's much thinner and slimmer than what a normal, you know, international plug adapter would be.

And then he also goes and talks about staying connected, which he uses IRLO, A-I-R-A-L-O.

There's a lot of these like GigSky and Siley and some of these others that you can use when you travel.

Those are eSIM companies, is that what they are?

eSIM companies, you got it, exactly.

So that only is most of the time, it's just for the data, which is mostly what you need all the time.

It's not like you can't receive cellular phone calls.

You can theoretically make phone calls like FaceTime to FaceTime if it's over Wi-Fi, that kind of a thing.

But anyway, just some good tips.

I'm glad that you linked to it.

He even goes into how to use your phone on different public transport facilities.

In fact, when we went to Paris, we did exactly this.

This little screenshot is showing here.

It's so nice that it's built into the Apple wallet.

You can just purchase trip tickets for the Paris Metro right there.

Now, he says it should be, you know, some other places are all embedded.

You don't have to go and purchase tickets.

But in the Paris Metro, at least you do.

But I found that it was really easy to do.

it's just all built into the Apple wallet and it's a, it's really, really neat.

So just some great little travel tips from Dan more.

And so I appreciate you linking to that article today.

Good tips.

Let's talk about an interesting story you found on Bloomberg.

Everybody knows today how the online gambling industry is just going,

you know, in blowing up, if you will, whether it's sports gambling area,

You've seen, you know, was it DraftKings, CashKings, whatever it is, all this kind of stuff.

But I like this angle here that, you know, there's a lot of games on the App Store that aren't putting themselves forth as being gambling.

But really what it is is that you can almost call it a casino style.

I mean, just a really interesting angle here from this story, Jeff.

Yeah, I mean, some of these are apps that truly imitate gambling in that it's like you're playing poker, you're playing craps or whatever it is.

And yet they are not giving you money.

I mean, they're games.

And so all that you get is your tokens.

And so they're not technically or gems, whatever.

So it's not technically a casino that's regulated as casinos are regulated because you can't make real money off of it.

But a lot of the mentality and, you know, that a lot of the same, you know, sort of addictive nature of it and everything else that people have, you know, you just pay a little bit more and get a little more.

They they do the same thing.

And again, this is nothing new.

I mean, this is like it's the candy.

They don't have to be poker.

It's the Candy Crushes of the world and all of the king games and things that come afterwards.

And they're very popular.

And I have certainly played some of them over time.

You know, all of these games will let you play for free a certain amount.

But then to go further, you need to buy the gem pack or the boost up pack or whatever it is.

Right.

And that's it.

People spend a ton of money on it.

Now, the Businessweek article, the Bloomberg Businessweek article was a little negative because it's basically saying, like, are they taking advantage of people?

And I know that there are people that that is true for that get sucked up into it.

And this is huge.

I mean, what's the amount of money they have?

It's billions and billions of dollars that people spend.

And let's be clear, Apple gets 30% or 15%, depending upon the –

Apple gets a big percentage of this.

And so Apple itself is literally making billions of dollars off of these apps.

At the same time, I very much do believe in individual rights.

And so if somebody wants to spend money on playing, you know, you know, farming games or these games or casino games, and that's how they want to spend their money.

I mean, I'm fine with that.

Just like if you want to spend your money on, you know, back in the day when I was in college, people had their huge CD collection, which is now useless because everything is streaming music online.

Or if you want to buy DVDs back in the day, you know, whatever you want to spend your money on live music.

I mean, if you want to go out, you know, drinking at bars, I mean, I say spend your money the way you want to spend it and do what you want to do.

So to a certain degree, I'm certainly OK with this.

But it's just very interesting because there is a seedy aspect of it.

You can't deny that.

And so it was a good article that made me think.

I thought it was well written.

S-E-E-D-Y, not CD as in compact.

Oh, yeah.

There's a seedy aspect to it.

Yeah, I just thought it was interesting.

I didn't read the whole entire story there.

But I do see it, even from my mom, right?

I mean, that's, I think, one of the things that they're talking about it.

You know, I don't even know what the game is.

in this game they profile here it's called high five casino i mean the name alone should maybe

cue you off but you know even something similar to something like candy crush you can play and play

and play and play and then to your point you get to a point where you can't go further in this game

and you're so frustrated with it that you might as well shell out 4.99 or whatever it is just to get

the extra little boost or something like that and then it becomes theoretically it could become

addictive or not but i think it is all about kind of how you uh look at it anyway just just an

interesting component there and to um the point that you also made apple is benefiting from that

whether it's good or bad i mean they are definitely uh i guess um funding it and to some extent just

because that's from the app store there let's do an in the show session real quick apple tv you'll

link to an article which is always great from nine to five mac about what is coming up on apple tv

Plus, I think you had a trailer for Cape Fear, a movie.

You had that trailer posted at the end of your post today.

This is great.

Lots of interesting things.

I am most excited about Silo Season 3 coming out.

I've already put it on my calendar to download the episodes.

I can't wait.

Yeah, let's go through what's coming out with Summer because there's lots of stuff coming out.

The first one is Cape Fear.

Now, you just said movie, and I know why you said that because Cape Fear was a movie.

In fact, it was originally a movie in like the 1960s or 70s.

It was not a movie now.

And then it was a remake in the early 90s by, in fact, it's an interesting story on Cape Fear.

Cape Fear, the movie in like the early 90s was going to be made by Steven Spielberg.

He decided that he didn't want to do it.

And so he, Martin Scorsese decided to do it instead.

And Spielberg gave Scorsese the right to do Cape Fear.

And in exchange, Scorsese gave Spielberg the right to do Schindler's List, which was a huge movie.

So there's a little interesting history there.

But anyway, the Cape Fear movie is coming back as a TV show, as a thriller, and it stars Amy Adams and a bunch of other people.

I put the trailer at the end of this week's thing.

It looks like it's going to be a good show.

It's going to be scary.

I mean, you watch this trailer, I'm like, oh.

So I don't know.

I mean, I'm not a big horror person.

Thriller, I'm okay with.

Horror, I'm not.

And sometimes that's a thin line between them.

So we'll have to see.

But it looks like it's going to be good.

And that comes out in just a few weeks.

What is it?

June 6th or June 5th.

So that's Cape Fear. Sugar. Did you watch the first season of Sugar? I did not. Okay. Let me just say it is a stylized show. I watched it. My wife watched it too. And we both finished it and we weren't sure if we enjoyed it, even though I watched the whole way through. And part of the reason is I can't tell you the reason that the show gave me a little bit of a negative edge because there's this very, it's all spoiler. And so all I'm going to say is, I don't know. But like when I, when the show ended, I'm like, really?

and I'm not going to say any more than that because it's a spoiler if you want to watch it

and I never thought

in the million years that there would even be a season 2

after season 1 and yet here it is

it starts in 2019

parts of it are good because it's like a crime noir

so that style is sort of fun

and who's the lead in it

what's his name? Colin Farrell

so there are aspects of it that are good

there are aspects of it that are weird

I may have to watch it season 2

so that's that one

next on the list you mentioned Silo

I love Silo. Season three is coming out. In fact, I saw an interview with Steve Zahn.

Is that his name? He's in the show. And apparently he said not only is season three done, but they're actually filming season four like right now.

And so season three is coming out. Season four is going to come out. I love Silo. Great sci fi show.

You like it, too. I mean, that's a really good one. I do. And can I just say real quick?

I don't know if you have been I started watching the Fallout series, which is on Amazon Prime.

I've thought about that.

They're good, huh?

I've heard they're good.

It is.

I mean, okay.

First of all, it's so fun.

If you've ever played any of the Fallout video game series,

that's where it came from.

But, Jeff, I think you should at least start it

because the parallels to me between Silo and Fallout,

I just can't get them out of my mind.

Anyway, I just had to say that.

I haven't finished all the Fallout sessions,

but I think they're fantastic.

Goggins, Walter Goggins, he is fantastic, I think, in the show.

It's fun and kitschy.

I would put it, I put that word on it.

And so I think you would enjoy it.

I've never seen Fallout.

I've heard people say the same thing.

I never played the video game.

The closest I ever came to playing the video game is, if I remember correctly, Fallout,

I think was done by Valve and I played the Portal games, which might sort of be in that universe.

But I don't really know anything about the video game.

I've heard people say that you don't have to watch the video game to enjoy the show.

No, no, no.

You'll enjoy the show.

Yeah.

The main reason I'm not watching anything on Amazon Prime right now,

because they change their system that like you get ads unless you pay tons.

I hate ads and streaming services.

one of these days i will pay for amazon prime for a month and then i'll binge do that all the things

and that's one of them that i'm going to watch um because i have i have seen good things on amazon

prime sorry for the a quick little detour but we pay for amazon right we've been paying for a long

time and now even though we pay it there are some shows that still have ads in it this is what i'm

talking about yeah and you need to pay even more to get rid of that right now this one thankfully

fallout i don't have the ads but if it did i would just be throwing stuff okay so that's so anyway so

That's Silo.

The next one is Trying.

Trying is the cutest show.

I have loved every season of it.

You know, about a couple in London that are adopting.

And of course, you know, spoiler alert, they eventually do adopt.

And so now we're up in season five.

And that's just a great, it's a heartwarming show.

It's a funny show.

The actors are great.

I love the first four seasons.

Can't wait for season five.

Next show we got on the list is Lucky.

This is, is this actually a movie or no, this is a TV show.

And it stars Anya Taylor-Joy, who was in that, I first knew her when she was in that great movie, which may have been on Amazon too.

What was, it was the chess movie.

What was it called?

Oh, yeah.

The Queen's Gambit.

The Queen's Gambit.

Fantastic.

Fantastic movie.

She was so good in that.

She was so good in it.

And so this is based on a bestselling novel.

You know, well, I don't know much about it.

What is it?

It's a crime drama show.

So that will be interesting to see.

What's next on our list here?

The Dink.

So this one's about pickleball, right?

This is a movie.

And yeah, it's a movie.

It's got Mary Steenburgen in it.

And it's got, what's that guy's name?

I know him.

I recognize him from something, the star.

Andy, wait, Andy, no, wait.

I don't know.

Ed Harris?

Jake Johnson.

Jake Johnson, it looks like.

Whoever's in it.

It's got some stars in it.

We'll see if it's any good.

I mean, I guess we've had other sports things.

So why not have one that has to do pickleball too?

Next, we got Ted Lasso.

We mentioned that last week.

Can't wait for Ted Lasso to come back.

That's going to be great.

That's at the end of the summer.

Women in Blue.

I watched the first episode of season one of this.

I think it's a Spanish show.

So it was subtitled.

And it's gotten some buzz.

But after watching the first episode, I just never really got back to it.

Have you seen this one at all?

No, not at all.

And so the season two of it, I'm sure people that watch it.

And then Dark Matter.

Oh, my goodness.

I mean, Apple TV is one of the best when it comes to sci-fi, you know, things like Silo and stuff like that.

And I will tell you, Dark Matters season one, which you're saying you haven't watched, Brett.

Oh, my God.

It's a good show.

I think I started it, but I got to get back to it.

Yeah.

So, so good.

Really, really good.

Can't wait to have season two coming out.

What's the release date on that?

Or August 28th.

August 28th.

You got to wait a while.

So that's something to look forward to at the end of the summer.

Yeah.

So, heck, I mean, that's a great lineup, right?

What a lot.

Wow.

That's some good stuff.

They may not all be winners, but there's going to be some good ones in there.

Wow.

Okay, in the know, I got a quick one for you.

I don't know if you remember a few weeks ago, or maybe this was for Tech Show.

I had a battery pack for your iPhone that could also double as sort of a knockoff Game Boy.

Well, here, my friend, I provide to you two things from your past from the nostalgia side,

Lego and the Game Boy.

You can now go to Amazon and for, well, it retails for $60 worth every dollar.

Haven't got it yet.

Lego Super Mario Game Boy.

You can build your Game Boy out of Lego.

And it looks like there's a screen on here, but it turns out what you do, you can actually

make the little cartridges as well.

Let me see if they can show a picture.

Here it is.

So they come with little screens that you can slip into the front of it here.

So it looks like it's actually playing a game.

It doesn't play the game.

So just put that out there.

I think it would be much more expensive if I could actually play a game.

But you can build your own Lego Game Boy.

What an amazing little gift.

You know, it's so crazy.

You and I probably remember Lego in a much different way than what it is today.

in fact somebody just gave my wife a birthday present uh from a couple of months ago that was

one of these lego botanical it's like oh yeah i've seen those yeah and it's beautiful and it's like

it sits on our dining room table now it's like the centerpiece because it's just so cool like i didn't

have legos like that when i was a kid and now you can build your own game boy out of lego the buttons

actually work i mean you can push the buttons down and the switches and everything just really cool i

saw this the other day and I've like, I gotta, I gotta put that as my tip for one of our shows.

And there you go. That's very fun. You know, Legos, my kids were, when they were at the age,

were so into Legos for so many years. I can't think of them out the amount of money that we've

spent over the years, especially my son, just the, just the star Wars Legos alone, you know,

so many of them, that, that millennium Falcon that was so expensive and stuff. And, uh, you know,

who knows where all those Legos are now. I will tell you, I, aside from sitting down with my kids

and doing them when they were young.

I haven't really used Legos,

but I hear lots of adults that enjoy doing Legos.

And I have to admit, I can totally understand it

because it's fun to put it together.

You follow the directions.

I'm sure it's sort of calming

and you make something that's sort of fun.

And especially if it's something that means something to you,

maybe you were nostalgic for the Game Boy or whatever else.

Even though I've never got one

and I've got too much going on in my life,

but if I had the free time,

maybe when I retire one day,

I will get myself a fun Lego set and sit down and do it.

It says adults welcome, Jeff.

They welcome adults now to the world of Lego.

Okay, that was my fun in the no tip for the week.

My tip of the week is a repeat, but it's been a repeat for a while.

I mean, today is episode number 243 of our podcast.

And if you go back in time to episode number 66 back in 2022,

so almost four years ago, I mentioned this app called Bandbrite.

It's a website, but it's also an app.

And the app has every single Apple Watch band that has ever come out.

And so if you wanted to look at it, even historically, they're in there.

Plus, they have it that you can go in and you can put your bands.

And so at the top of today's show, the reason I was able to talk about the bands I have over time is that over time, as I've purchased bands, I have put my collection in Bandbrite.

And it's very easy to do because they have them all in there.

So you can find the band that you purchased, the color you purchased, and put it in there.

And then it's got all the data about it, like the color and the year that it came out and everything else.

And so if you're ever trying to remember, what do I have or what are my choices?

It serves as like a database just that I can see all the bands that I own.

Plus, it's also sort of fun historically.

Like if we just talked about the pride bands at the front, if you wanted to see all the different pride bands over the years and what years they came out and what colors they were in or all of the different Hermes bands or whatever else, they've got all of that in the app.

So it's a great database.

It's got the official, they look like they're the official Apple Pictures.

I'm not sure if that's legal to do.

But this site has been around for a very long time and the app is free.

And so if you have an Apple Watch collection or even an Apple Watch band collection,

or even if you're just Apple Watch band curious, I would recommend that you download the Bandbrite app.

It's so fun.

Big thumbs up.

This is my favorite.

They have a button here, show a random band.

I'm just popping into all these random bands.

Yep, there's one of the pride bands again.

Here is the Obsidian Mist slash Black Nike Sport Band.

There you go.

I mean, it's just fun to kind of go around.

I remember you talking about this app,

and I don't think I downloaded it back then,

but I'm going to have to now because this is a little fun.

Something to do for a few minutes.

Well, I'll mention the band right is B-A-N-D,

and then it's B-R-E-I-T-E,

which I believe is a German word.

I think that this is the site is done by somebody in Germany.

I forget what the B-R-E-I-T-E means in German, but anyway, Bandbrite.

Yeah, or use the link from our show notes to click on it.

I will make sure that the proper link will be in this because it's actually.watch.

It's brandbrite.watch.

The website is, yeah, which is a pretty good website for a watch band app.

I know.

It's fantastic.

All right.

I like how we started and ended with watch bands.

Wow.

It's that kind of a day today, folks.

Thanks for listening as always.

And let us know about your favorite watch bands.

Like you said at the beginning, Jeff, I think it's fun to hear from from listeners and always enjoy that.

Thanks for your time today, Jeff, as well. And we'll talk with you next week.

Thanks, Brett. Bye bye, everybody.