Welcome to In The News for July 11th. It's a Saturday, so one day after we normally record,

but it's July 11th. I am Brett Burney from In The News, but I'm also appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD. It's a Saturday, you know, it's casual,

you know, I'm wearing a t-shirt, you're outside, you know, we're keeping it.

It's a good thing. I'm actually up in May. It's like we've role reversed. Like you've

been outside a couple of times and I got jealous, Jeff. So it's like I needed to be outside with

the pine trees in the back. This is good. The other reason I'm sort of stumbling a little bit

is because I'm just trying to wrap my head around a little bit of a bombshell that happened yesterday

afternoon in the technology world, Jeff. I mean, in fact, I think it was, I can't remember exactly

when I started seeing some of these headlines, but it was after you had posted your in the news

post for yesterday, Friday, July 10th. But then a little bit after that, midday or so,

Apple filed a complaint against OpenAI. Now, there's a whole lot in here that I

started immediately having questions over. I don't know that you had a chance to really cover it,

but you and I both have either both looked at some stories that have been happening.

You had a couple of links here from John Gruber at Daring Fireball, who actually linked to the

complaint. So there's even an opportunity to read through exactly what Apple is bringing here.

But why don't you just give us, why don't you paint the picture of what's happening here within

the last 24 hours, Jeff? Two years ago, when Apple first tried to do AI, they started to work with

ChatGPT slash, you know, OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT. And so right now I can tell my

phone, I can either ask Siri a question on my phone, or I can ask it to ask ChatGPT about something,

And I'll get that more detailed answer that you get from ChatGPT.

So they've had this relationship.

We all thought it was curious that when Apple, well, not curious, but like when Apple decided

that their in-house AI efforts weren't going to be good enough for what they're coming out

with this fall, there was rumors that they were going to partner with somebody else.

The obvious candidates would be either OpenAI or maybe Google and, or maybe Cloud.

Or Anthropic, yeah, exactly.

Anthropic, those were the three big candidates, right?

And they, and we, as we know, they partnered with Google using their Gemini technology,

and that's all coming out this fall.

But the iPhone and other Apple platforms

continues to work the ChatGPT.

So when WWDC happened,

that was just last month, right?

It was June, yeah, that's right.

About a month ago.

I was curious to see what Apple was going to say

about the relationship

because they clearly have this contractual relationship

with OpenAI.

Right.

And they really didn't say much at all.

And I'm like, wow,

OpenAI is sort of persona non grata.

What's going on?

Well, I think now we have a sense of this

And an article from John Gruber on Daring Fireball that came out yesterday afternoon called Ice Cold talks about the same thing, that Apple apparently has been very upset that open AI has been hiring a lot of people that used to work at Apple and basically getting into.

And let me begin by saying, first of all, I'm not a California attorney, neither are you, so I don't know California law.

My general understanding is that California is one of those states that has very restrictive views towards non-compete agreements.

So you can't say just because you work at Apple today, I can't get a new job working at OpenAI, unlike some other states where you can enforce those a little bit more.

But what Apple can do is say, you might be able to have our employees stop working for us and working for you to make more money, but they can't steal our secrets, right?

And, you know, there's always been OpenAI's efforts.

Of course, they have their chatbot stuff and everything else.

You and I discussed, what was it, about a year ago when OpenAI teamed up with Love From, the company that was started by Johnny Ive, you know, former design at Apple.

and they were going to come out with with io exactly you're right it was a side company io

and they were going to develop a product that they were very unclear about what was going to be it was

going to be some sort of like a little device i'm holding a pebble in my hand and you know maybe it

attached to your shirt who knows what it would be of course there was the also the device called the

pebble but it was going to be a hardware device that includes a i and we all thought that was

interesting because johnny they were meeting at a bar like sam offman and johnny i were like walking

in San Francisco and they were at a bar and having a beer together or a coffee. And they were like

talking about how this was going to be so great. And it was just, it was a little bit over and over

produced video, but that was so exciting. At least something was going to be going on.

But it was curious to me because it's like, you know, if Johnny Ive wanted to make

a hardware device that uses AI, like Apple, you know, stay at Apple and continue to do that stuff

there. And maybe you could argue that Apple was behind an AI, which they clearly were and open AI

was ahead. So that's why he wanted to go to them. But so, but so anyway, all of this is the

background, which leads to the bombshell lawsuit that was filed Friday afternoon. And the lawsuit

alleges that OpenAI has been like talking to Apple employees, getting, you know, hundreds of them

to come work at OpenAI, specifically telling them, bring your Apple secrets. Like Apple alleges that

they have been like, employees have been like downloading stuff from the Apple servers about

unannounced Apple hardware and software products and bringing it to open AI. I mean, this is the

stuff that you cannot do that you can get in trouble for. And I don't think Apple would file

a lawsuit lightly. You know, there are some people in our country who just file a lawsuit to be a

bully, right? I don't think that that's what Apple's doing. I think they feel like they have the goods.

I think they feel like there's something here and it got, you know, they know that they had

this contractual relationship with open AI, albeit now it's about Chile because of this perhaps.

But so I think that I don't think Apple would have brought this lawsuit unless they really feel that OpenAI has been stealing their secrets.

Now, that doesn't mean that OpenAI won't have a defense.

Maybe they will.

And some of this may be public knowledge.

But like my guess is Apple has server logs.

I mean, they have they have documents showing that something was taken.

And, you know, you can argue, is it OpenAI's fault?

Is it the employee that leaves Apple?

Is it are they doing it?

But of course, they allege in the complaint that the interviewers at OpenAI are specifically

telling them, bring your stuff.

And then, although the complaint does not mention people like Johnny Ive and some of

the other high up people, Gruber makes this point in his article.

It talks about the fact that there are people working with OpenAI now who previously held

high up positions at Apple.

We all know who that's talking about, right?

And those are the people who know where the bodies are buried, right?

these are the people that know. So like, it's all very salacious. So, you know, the story in terms

of the big picture here, we have a lawsuit and, you know, and I'm not going to comment on the

lawsuit, except to say that I suspect that Apple thinks it has merits that they wouldn't have filed

a frivolous lawsuit. That's all I'll say about the lawsuit. But the secondary issue here is sort of

the PR, the relationship, you know, now Apple is working closely with, we know how important AI is.

Apple is now, they have this relationship with Google Gemini.

That's step one.

And then step two is this lawsuit.

I mean, they are clearly upset with OpenAI.

And I will be curious to see.

And on top of all of this, OpenAI has a leader, right?

I mean, you can argue that Quad is better on some things.

Gemini is better on some things.

But we all, ChatGPT is the name brand, right?

That's the Kleenex.

That's what we all think about.

And yet the company itself, they have a lot of investment money.

but I don't think that they make a lot of money.

I think they probably lose money

because of all the expensive servers and everything else.

And so if you've got Apple,

which has such a huge portion of the mobile market

and the high-end computer market and everything else,

if they're going to war against a big player,

I mean, it's not like when Apple has gone to war

years and years and years ago with people like Microsoft

or even to a certain degree, Google,

these are big tech titans

that are now in opposite corners of the ring.

And I think it's going to have some big implications.

Okay, so let's break it down

just a little bit more specifically on this.

So this is a complaint for trade secret misappropriation.

That's sort of just the legalese, right,

of what we're talking about.

And then they also include breach of contract.

Now, we've been talking about open AI.

You mentioned, quote, high-level people from Apple, right,

that have left open AI.

Johnny Ives

Left Apple, yeah.

Left Apple, sorry, the Left Apple.

He is not named in this complaint by name, but in addition to OpenAI, there are at least two individuals here, right?

Apple brings this action against Chang Liu and Tang Yu Tan, which are individual defendants.

In addition, these were former Apple employees, right?

If I understand and I read this correctly, I've tried to go through here.

Yeah, they were senior system electrical engineers.

And if you get deeper into this, here it is, that one of these specific individuals celebrated his improper access, exclaiming in a message left on his colleague's Apple-issued work laptop, LOL, and that it was so funny how he still had access.

In other words, and this is fairly typical in a huge company.

I've been doing litigation a long time, just like you, Jeff, and we've seen this.

people leave and, you know, it's like the company just forgot maybe to wipe their iPhone or, you

know, the information, or they just were happened to have an extra laptop over the 10 years that

they were there and they had this laptop and it still had access to this. From what it sounds like

these individuals, they're bringing actually, like you said, Apple has some specific information

where they were able to say, no, these specific individuals have been misappropriately, you know,

mishandling some of this information or accessing information that they were no longer supposed to be able to have access to.

Now, whether that's the individual, you know, doing this improperly or should Apple have done a better job?

I mean, they even say in a footnote, I think here, yeah, upon discovery, Apple quickly fixed this bug.

So like they're admitting like, OK, we could have done a little bit better on some of this.

But I just wanted to point that out. It's not just on open AI.

Like this was a sort of a broad shot across the bow.

Although some may argue this just could be a publicity,

I'm not gonna say a stunt,

but it could be a publicity action, right?

On Apple's part to just bring this to light.

It's like, listen, we've been struggling with this

and there are people that are leaving

and it's a very, very competitive market right now.

But I think it's probably more leaning

towards what your expertise is telling you.

They've got some stuff here.

And I think as you just go some of the details in this actual complaint, it's not just OpenAI.

They've got specific individuals that they're naming in here as well.

Yeah.

It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out because, you know, most lawsuits don't go to trial.

You know, most lawsuits, most civil lawsuits settle.

And, you know, I'm sure that part of the analysis here for filing this lawsuit, and they're going to have pretrial discovery, and they're going to have, you know, maybe what they really are interested in is the pretrial discovery to get some more information from OpenAI about what happened.

Maybe there's going to be motion practice and stuff.

You know, is the end goal going to be to have some sort of a settlement agreement that governs things?

I mean, I don't know.

I mean, these are all, I think it was, Wild God Job was the law firm that filed this, which is obviously a very impressive, prestigious law firm working for Apple.

It will be very, you know, there's so much, there's the words of the complaint, as you mentioned, which are fascinating in themselves.

But then there's the big picture stuff, the big strategy.

And, you know, this is going to take, I'm sure, months and years to sort out, but it's going to be really interesting.

And considering that AI is so we're going to be talking about AI more today.

We're going to be talking about AI for years now.

AI is such a big part of the technology industry.

Heck, it's important to law firms now, too.

It's important to everybody, but it's especially important to what Apple is doing this fall.

You know, this is it. Right.

I mean, because the whole issue is other companies are better at AI than Apple is, but Apple is better at making hardware, making things easy to use, all that sort of stuff.

And the holy grail is to merge the two of them, which is what, back to that IO thing, which, by the way, I think they have to change the name of that because some other company owned IO, but they're going to have to.

Right, right. You're right.

But, you know, what Johnny Ive and his team that used to be Apple people mostly are doing with OpenAI and what Apple is planning for its future, it is just all related.

You know, for example, one of the many rumors is that and then the latest rumors of the Apple wasn't going to do this, but I'm sure, you know, the rumor is that Apple was exploring a future version of AirPods.

Yes.

able to see the room around you. And I'm going to, I have something to say about this later on in

today's episode too. But the idea is like your Apple technology can perceive the world. I mean,

we already know that your Apple watch can understand information about yourself, your heart rate,

you know, things like that. But as your Apple watch and your iPhone and maybe your AirPods and

maybe future vision pros can start to perceive the world around you and use AI in that. I mean,

this is the stuff that's coming in five years, 10 years, everybody's going there. And this lawsuit

goes to the heart of that, right? Because it goes to the idea of the AI and the hardware coming

together. It's really, really interesting. Okay. Last thing before we move off of this, I would

like to get your impressions on this as well, because when we talk about Apple suing AI or

bringing a complaint, right? We've talked about the specific things that they're bringing this

against. But just as you started out on this session, this little section, Jeff, there's an

agreement in place. Apple right now utilizes ChatGPT technology in some form or fashion with all the

guardrails and everything set up. Because like you said, right now I can ask a question in Siri. And

most of the time where people see this is they don't specifically tell Siri to go check on ChatGPT.

What I find most of the time is I ask a question of Siri, it can't find it on its own. So it says,

do you want me to use ChatGPT for that? And most people are going to say, yeah, because I want the

answer. So there's already an agreement set up, right? You mentioned that also, and Gruber was

talking about the fact that they didn't talk about this agreement a lot a month ago at WWDC.

But in this complaint, Apple acknowledges that, in fact, it's a footnote on page 13 here,

Gruber even pulls it out. And the footnote in this complaint says,

Apple and OpenAI have a commercial relationship involving the integration of OpenAI's chat GPT into Apple intelligence.

They have entered into a written agreement governing that integration.

That agreement is not at issue here.

OpenAI's acts of trade secret misappropriation alleged herein do not arise from.

Now, I love this next line here that Gruber puts in from an editorial component,

Because you and I both know there's that legal speak that's involved in a complaint like this.

But as Gruber says, in practical terms, it seems untenable for that Apple intelligence partnership to continue after this.

So, again, I just like that idea of, oh, this is the legal side.

And we know that there are requirements that we have to do when we're specifically bringing in a complaint to get something.

But from a practical side, from the publicity side, it's like, what does that mean for this relationship going forward here?

Because as you mentioned, Brett, right now you might ask it a question that involves something that you would find on the internet.

Siri will ask you, do you want me to ask ChatGPT about that?

Right.

But starting this fall, for the devices that support the new AI stuff, there's no reason for it to ask you, should I ask ChatGPT about it?

Because it's going to have access to Google Gemini.

It's going to have access to Apple's AI stuff for world knowledge.

And so I feel, even independent of this lawsuit, I have felt that starting this fall, the only

way that your iPhone would be using ChatGPT is if you explicitly ask for it.

And maybe that will continue just because of the terms of the contract, because of this

footnote 13 on page 15 that you've ever...

But it is certainly going to be the least favored nation's stat.

I mean, that is going to be the exception.

I have the sense that like the,

I don't know how much the use of ChatGPT is right now,

but I just have the sense that it's going to go to the floor.

I really do.

Yeah.

And so then, and this is just the conspiracy side of my brain,

is Apple doing something like this to get out of that agreement

because they knew that Google Gemini is going to be the main thing

and we want to separate that?

I don't think so.

And of course, I have no inside information on there.

And it seems like Apple would have just settled

and done something on the back end, right?

As opposed to making it public like this.

But if OpenAI wasn't gonna,

again, that's just the conspiracy side.

I completely acknowledge that.

But it's just, I always look for some of those

underlying issues here that maybe it's like,

why in the world would you bring this

other than maybe the fact

it could just be on the face of it?

It's like, okay, there are people

that are obviously taking information

that they should not be taking here.

And we just wanna put a stop to this and make it public.

But it's just like, as Gruber says, and I think what are most people that are non-legal, really, they would say, what does this mean?

It's like, are they not going to use ChatGPT? Can I use ChatGPT app on my iPhone?

I think that will obviously still be there.

But I'm just saying, for most people that you and I know that are not as integrated into this, those are going to be some of the questions they're asking on this.

Yeah, and you say it's a conspiracy theory, but why did they include this footnote?

Maybe they include this footnote.

Because they knew that OpenAI was going to say, oh, the only reason you brought this lawsuit was to get out of our contract.

Exactly.

No, no, no.

This is totally independent.

Now, maybe thou doth protest too much.

Like, maybe that actually is what the point is.

And the people are saying it's not, but it really, well, fascinating.

Okay, well, we're going to be talking about this one for a while.

You know, the discovery phase is going to start.

Some things may be public.

There's going to be depositions.

So I suspect that this is going to be a story for quite some time.

And it is public.

Like, I mean, to the point that like,

I've seen it covered all over the place.

In fact, Gruber even links to the tech meme roundup here.

I mean, there's lots of people

that are gonna be covering this.

So to your point.

Okay, well, let's move on,

but let's not move on from Gruber yet.

You had another story that you had just sent me

because I thought this was interesting as well.

And it looks like it sort of Apple's approach to ideas.

So on Thursday, July 9th, Gruber wrote a story.

John Ternus, the incoming CEO, right, should reverse Apple's slide down the advertising

slippery slope.

A lot of sliding and slips there.

But I just thought it was interesting that he started out talking about this privacy letter

from Tim Cook, which I remember September 2014.

And he was just kind of looking, reading me sort of between the lines, like how much of

this still applies and how much does not apply now, what, 12 years later in 2026?

Yeah. So, and I forgot to link to this in my Friday post, but I wanted to mention it today

because I thought it was an interesting article. You know, let's start with the fact that we have

a new sheriff in town. John Ternus is taking over a CEO. Pretty soon though. Yeah. I'm sure that many,

many, many things will be consistent between Tim Cook and John Ternus, much like many,

many things are consistent between Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. But every new CEO, every new leader of

any organization is going to bring some things that are specific to them. We know that Tim Cook was

more of a numbers guy. He was an operations guy and Apple did it amazingly with operations and

became incredibly profitable, far more profitable than ever before. The biggest company in the world

for many times. John Ternus is a hardware product guy. You know, he started Apple decades ago,

working as an engineer and he rose through the ranks. And so he's all about making good hardware.

Not that he doesn't understand software, not that he doesn't understand business,

Not that he doesn't have people under him for that.

But what Gruber points out is one of the changes that we've seen in Apple, going back to that letter that you referenced from 2014, 12 years today, is Apple has done things for monetization that some of us users consider to be a little distasteful.

One example of it is in the App Store.

You now see these ads.

Sometimes when you're looking for an app, you see ads for, you know, some of the less desirable, you know, casino apps and stupid stuff like that and things like that.

And then the other one that's been more recent is Apple has announced that they're going to be adding ads to Maps.

And again, Google has had ads and Maps for a while.

There's a way to do it that might be tasteful and appropriate, but there's also a way to do it that would drive you crazy.

Like you have pop-ups in your face, you know, buy this, buy this, buy this.

Can I just also say quickly on that?

Because I think Gruber even mentions it.

Where it gets me upset is I pay for Apple One,

which means I have a subscription to Apple News.

And I still see ads in Apple News.

Now, I've tried to be forgiven about it and give the benefit of it.

But I don't like them.

Like, I'm paying for this.

I should.

Okay, I just wanted to say, like, that's another area that really bugs me the most,

which is why I think we talked about this a few weeks ago.

I'm not happy about the maps happening because if I don't like the Apple news,

I certainly don't kind of like it in Apple maps, but we'll see,

we'll wait and see how that goes. Okay. Please continue.

I think, I think Gruber noted this,

but can I just underscore that when you're reading our, I love Apple news.

I mean, I like the fact that when I want to read a wall,

I can read the wall street journal article,

even though I don't subscribe to it or even some Bloomberg articles that can

read there too. But, but the ads, the ads in Apple news,

not only are they repetitive,

but they tend to have these graphics that are disgusting AI pictures.

of the blonde woman that's ordering the thing.

I'm like, come on.

They're the worst ads.

They're not even good ads.

Back in the day, I used to enjoy getting some magazines,

like computer magazines,

because they would have interesting ads in them.

I like an interesting ad.

I like creative ads.

Apple has some of the best ads in the world.

But we all hate

Yeah, here Gruber has some pictures.

I've seen these ads.

I hate these.

Yeah, this is it.

Exactly.

Okay, good.

Okay.

They're horrible.

I forgot to get a picture too.

Yeah, I know.

And how much money, Brett,

how much money is Apple actually making from those ads?

And is it worth?

Is it worth the hit on there?

You know, I was listening to a podcast as I was driving in today and Jason Snell from

Six Colors was talking about how he's like, you know, when you go to a hotel, you can

go to the cheap hotel or you can go to the more expensive hotel.

And when you go to the more expensive hotel, you expect to have a nicer pillow, nicer sheets,

less issues.

It's going to be more expensive.

And they may even charge you for things like parking, although it's nicer parking because

it's covered.

But Apple is like, it's that nicer car.

It's that nicer hotel.

You're paying a premium for Apple products, and sometimes you're paying an extra premium if you have Apple One and stuff like that.

But I would rather pay for the Apple stuff but not have the junk.

And it's not even the monetization.

Right.

Take it out.

It's the concern for me.

It's not just – some people are like, oh, Apple makes enough money.

They don't need this extra stuff.

Whatever.

I mean, they're a business.

They're going to make money where they can.

But everyone has to make a decision.

At some point – I mean, on my website, for example, I mean, this is just my little corner of the world.

I have had ads on iPhone JD throughout the year.

I am constantly, I don't have any ads right now.

I am constantly getting emails from companies who say, I would love to sponsor a link or

to write a post for you.

And I'm like, I don't care.

I do not want your $100, whatever you're going to pay me for that, because it's going to

jump up the website.

And I don't want that.

And it's not that people pay for iPhone JD, but you want it to look nice, right?

You want it to just be a nicer experience.

And Apple especially, if Apple had to give up, I'm just making up a number, $1 million

$10 million. Those are drops in the bucket for Apple to have a nicer experience. And so to go

back to circle to the beginning, John's point in the article is because Ternus is a product guy,

wouldn't it be nice if one of the things that he does at Apple over the next one year, five year,

10 years, who knows how long he'll be around, is to sort of dial back. I'm not saying they can't

have ads in maps, but at least not make it obnoxious. We haven't seen it yet, so I don't

want to prejudge that. What I will say is like you, if he decided to take all the ads out of Apple

News Plus, I would say, amen, raise the price. I don't even care. Charge me another dollar a month,

take away all these stupid ads. I would, that's totally worth it. And it's just inconsistent with

Apple's brand of being a more premium product. So I very much agree with John Gruber here. I hope

that, I hope that John Ternus reads the article and I hope he thinks, well, I'm sure he, I would

hope he's already thinking about it. You know, it's inconsistent with the letter that Tim Cook

wrote in 2014. Well, maybe it's arguably inconsistent, but it's just the idea. He says,

users of internet services begin to realize that when an online service is free, you are the

customer. But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience should not come at the expense of your

privacy. Now, obviously 2014 was a long time ago in the technology world, but that's what John

was talking about here is the idea like that was sort of the focus from Apple all the way back then.

And it seems like we've changed. In fact, he starts out by saying that letter is no longer

posted on Apple's website. Now, that's not that's not new. There's other letters that have been

written over the years that are just no longer available. And he can find it at the Wall Street

Journal or he says in the Internet Archive. But just the point is, it doesn't look so good,

right? That it's now has Apple changed? Are they doing this? And to your point, I think

And I would love to see if John Ternus could maybe wrestle in some of that or make it a little more consistent.

Okay, anyway, it was a good thought on the article, so I'm glad that you wanted to discuss that today.

Okay, now we can move on from John Gruber, Darren Fireball.

Let's go to another one of our good friends, David Sparks and Max Sparky, a golden age for fraudsters.

Now, I think David has been maybe playing with iOS 27, or he usually has one device that he's been maybe downloading and working with.

So he's always very good and quippy about some of the observations that he has.

This is a new framework in iOS 27 he's talking about here called Trust Insights.

I didn't know too much about this, but I'm glad to see David's even talking about it in others as well.

Yeah, and it's unclear how much this is just part of regular iOS, how much it's a framework that third-party developers can use.

But the idea is Apple knows that there's a lot of bad guys out there, you know, the hackers.

And they are always trying to trick people to get you to click on things, to try to, you know, scam you into providing personal information, credit card information, you know, clicking on links, malware.

And it's hard because it's this whack-a-mole game that when you close one thing, the bad guys come up with something that's even more devious and more clever to give them credit.

And so Apple is building this thing, like you said, calls trust insights into the operating system that's going to watch out for what they call the behavioral fingerprints of a scam that's in progress.

So the idea is like if your iPhone senses that you are being asked to provide, you know how like, you know, provide this six digit code to prove that you're you.

And like, you know, maybe somebody gets it and they're like, I don't know why this is coming up.

It's going to look out for things like that.

And if it thinks, you know what, this is the sort of thing that hackers might do, it actually blocks them.

And I will tell you, this idea is, I know it's good because we have at our firm, I won't mention the product name, but we have a product name at my law firm that monitors things in the background.

so that if one of the people at my law firm,

you know, lawyer, secretary, anybody,

if anybody was to like, for example,

click on a link and try to download malware

or something like that,

it looks out for things that it thinks

is the type of stuff that it's fingerprints

of the things that the hackers do.

And it will block it.

It will pop up alert.

It will tell our health tests.

And, you know, there have been times

over the last year at my own law firm

that our IT folks have been,

you know, they've called somebody and say,

hey, you know, something's going on your computer.

And, you know, it's never done intentionally, right?

They're just being tricked and we stop that trick as it's happening.

And so I love that Apple is thinking about it and working on it.

And, you know, this is stage one of this trust insights and hopefully we'll get better over

time because we know that the bad guys are getting smarter.

And so we need to have better defenses.

And you can't, I mean, even you and I can get tricked and we're more tech savvy.

You know, I think your grandmother using an iPhone, they don't know, you know, that they

need protection because they don't want to be scammed.

Well, and even David says here, large language models just using the AI tools today make fraud cheap and convincing. It's no longer like looking out for typos or grammar errors or broken English. It's like that's all gone. It's like that AI tools today can make it even more convincing that this is an email coming from your bank or so.

And to your point, it's just, I don't know how to counteract that.

I've always felt like all these years, the bad guys are always way ahead of the curve, right?

Because I don't know, it's just the idea of like getting ahead or being able to, you know, scam folks.

And like for whatever reason, that gets people excited and they focus on that, right?

And it's hard to counteract that.

They're the first ones to do it.

Then they can scam people out of a million dollars before the network gets closed.

Before the loop was closed.

And Apple, I think, has been doing some of the best job.

It's trying to stay up to speed.

They're never far ahead because it's just always sort of that game of whack-a-mole,

back and forth all the time.

But to your point, it's just great that at least I feel like Apple is doing something

that's a little more future-looking to say,

we know these are things that are coming down the pike.

And David links to this story here on 9to5Mac as well.

It just kind of helps show some of these models and how they're being utilized.

So anyway, I hope that it's going to work.

I know it's a lot to do and it's just never going to be enough.

There's always going to be more to fight on the good guy side

because the bad guys are always working, just like you said.

But hopefully it'll be something.

Let's do it into Vision.

You sent me some images, my friend, because you have...

Now, speaking of iOS 2, I think you downloaded Vision OS 27, right?

That's the only one that you've been downloading.

and it looks like you've been playing around a little bit with maybe some of the AI tools built

into Vision OS. Yeah. So I just wanted to talk about this. And again, this is not something I

talked about on my Friday post, but I thought it might be worth mentioning just quickly today.

I don't have the beta on my iPhone, on my iPad, on my watch. Right. But the one thing I've downloaded

on is my Vision Pro. And I was in line, I was on the waiting list to get the AI features and I got

them about two weeks ago. And so I've been playing around with that. Now, let me be clear. What I'm

most excited about on AI, on this upcoming AI, is that it will understand the data on my devices.

It will understand my emails and my messages and my contacts, stuff like that. I don't really have

that on my Vision Pro because the way that I use all that stuff is I use my law firm,

Microsoft Intune is sort of like my email and all of my stuff. And Microsoft, that doesn't work on

the Vision Pro yet. Hopefully it comes out soon. And so as a result, when I use my Vision Pro,

So for example, I can see my messages, but all I see is like a phone number.

I don't see the name of the person because it doesn't have access to my contacts yet.

And I can see some of my email accounts, but not all of them.

So suffice it to say, I have not yet been able to test the parts of the upcoming Siri

that are most interesting to me.

However, I have been able to test the new parts of it that work with Google Gemini for

more sophisticated responses to questions.

You know, the things that we were talking about, you know, 10 minutes ago that under the current system, it might say, hey, do you want me to use ChatGPT?

Now it just answers it.

And so that's one thing I've been playing around with.

Another thing I've been playing around with is because the Vision Pro can see things, you can actually ask it questions about the world around you.

And not that people are going to walk around necessarily using their Vision Pro because it's a little clunky.

but I'm always thinking about those theoretical future Apple products coming down the road,

you know, where in one day they'll just be the glasses. What could you do? And so this was just

last night I was playing around with it and I happened to just be walking around my house and

I'm looking at a bookshelf. You've been in my house before, Brett, like not my normal dining

room, but my, my, that little table that's right next to my kitchen, you know, like our informal

eating area. It's got a bunch of books there. My wife is an amazing cook and she has tons of

cookbooks. And so I just asked Siri, like, you know, what do you see here? And I just thought

it was funny because it says like, I can see a bunch of cookbooks. So it understood that they

were cookbooks. And then it even pulled out three of them. Like he says, I can see this book called

Brave Tart. I see that. Iconic American Desserts by Stella Parts. And it got that just by seeing

the, what do you call it? The spine. Yeah. The spine. Thank you. The spine of the book,

it can actually see it. And like, it knows what that, like, it knows that that book is about

cool dessert recipes. And it can see that this other one is Indian cooking by Madhur Joffrey.

And so I just thought that was interesting. And the perfect scoop. I like the perfect scoop.

That sounds fantastic. So then if you go to the next picture I sent you, I just said, you know,

so that Brave Tart, you know, what are some good recipes in that Brave Tart book? And by the way,

I said Brave Tart. I see that what it actually heard me say was brief. Brief Tart. But whatever,

the AI was smart enough to understand what I was really talking about. And then I thought it was

funny because, and again, I don't know because I'm not as familiar with this particular cookbook as

my wife is, but it says, oh, well, this book by Stella Parks, like some of the most favorite

recipes are the glossy fudge brownies and the chopped chocolate chip. And like, and if you're

looking for something a little different, you might want to look at her homemade loft house

style cookies and her, I just thought this was funny because it's obviously going into the

internet. It's getting some information about what people are talking about for this cookbook.

It's giving me information.

And it's not that it happened instantaneously.

I did have to wait a second or two, but it's pretty quick.

So I can see a future product where my little buddy, my little Apple AI is giving me information

about the world around me.

And then you should go to the next picture I sent you.

I thought this one was interesting that I'm now looking at.

I have this little bar at my house.

That's my little bar that my dad helped me build when we moved into our house.

And it's a very tiny little bar.

But I said, what do you see in here?

And it's saying, well, this is your bar.

I can see like it's a bar shaker.

I can see these other things.

But one of the things that I thought was cute is that I have years and years ago, my cousin

gave me a bottle of alcohol.

You see the one that's in the left?

Yeah.

I'm zooming in right now.

Look at that.

It has like a like, it makes it look like the bottle of alcohol is wearing a dress and

it's got like a red hat on it.

And it's just like the woman in red.

It's like the woman.

And I have never actually tasted that alcohol.

I just have it sitting on the bar because I think it looks sort of cute.

But I thought it was funny that the brand new Siri noticed it.

And what does it say?

There is a bottle dressed in a miniature red dress and hat, which adds a fun, unique touch.

I just thought that this was hilarious.

So it's just cute stuff.

And then the last one I'll tell you, and I'll be real quick, is there's a picture I have in our house that we got from this local artist.

It's a painting, but it sort of looks like it's a city of New Orleans.

But like what it's telling me is not only does it understand it's a piece of art, but it tells me it is a triptych painting.

I'd never heard that word before.

T-R-I-P-T-Y-C-H, which it actually is.

And which is where you have like three different panels that work together.

You know, people have been doing this for a long time.

And so not only is it telling me it figured out that it was New Orleans because it can see like the Mississippi River Bridge and stuff like that.

But it's telling me like that type of painting.

And I'm like, this is like, I didn't know that word.

I learned something new.

And so these are just tiny examples, but it's just like, I am looking forward to this new

world.

And although I'm doing it with vision, I could just as easily be using an iPhone, whether

it's a picture or whether I'm just talking to it and it's giving me information.

And I know if people have been using chat GPT or Claude a lot, these types of answers you're

familiar with, it's just, it's going to be wonderful for it to be built into all of the

Apple products.

And I'm starting to get a tiny preview of it now, just because I'm running the beta version

of my vision pro.

So I just wanted to say, I mean, we're in July, August.

So we're only about two to three months out from us having this.

And I'm excited.

I'm excited.

Okay.

So my question is, where is this information coming from?

Is this Google Gemini?

Or is it?

I mean, I can see it actually cites it here.

This last one is Wikipedia, right?

And this first one that you sent has Amazon.com because you were asking about the books on there.

But is this Google Gemini?

Is it using Google Gemini to bring back these results?

Jeff, or is it Apple intelligence?

And which is a bigger umbrella that could include, right?

Because I remember all of those models.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

As I understand it, Apple, I think the app, the word that Apple used was like a traffic

cop or something.

And they are sending some things to Google for Gemini, but then Apple has its own world

knowledge.

I see.

I see.

Okay.

Separate from Google because the Google Gemini has its own world knowledge that it gets from

the Google search engine, but Apple is building their own.

And so like their own search engine, I'm sure that they have a contractual relationship

with Wikipedia to use some of that information and stuff like that.

And so it's just, you know, we don't know the actual search, but I think you're raising

the right question because it's not pure Google Gemini.

Like if I was using the Google Gemini app on my iPhone and I took a picture of my bar

or that picture or those cookbooks, it would then be giving me a different, I mean, maybe

a similar answer, but it would be using different underlying technology.

That would be using like the Google website and Google Gemini's core stuff.

This is using, and again, one may argue, is Apple's version going to be better?

I don't know.

Is Google's versions?

Is OpenAI's versions?

Is Claude's version better?

I mean, that's going to be subject to debate, right?

But what's going to be nice about the Apple stuff is that because it's going to be built

in to the operating system, it's just going to be more approachable, right?

It's going to be more helpful because it's going to be more easily there.

And although I didn't take screenshots of it, I was actually trying to figure out how to

do some stuff in the new version of Vision OS last night.

And so I was just asking, in fact, you can almost see, you see at the very bottom of there, there's like that little circle orb.

It's grayed right now because it's not responding.

But when I look at it, it turns into like this sort of colorful moving thing.

I don't even have to say the magic words of, hey, S-I-R-I.

If I just look at it, it senses I'm looking at it and it activates it and it starts.

And so I can just look at it and say, can you tell me how to do such and such on my Vision Pro?

And through accessing, I guess, I guess Apple's own like help materials or whatever, it can give, it gave me an answer.

And it's like, oh, you got to go to settings.

You got to go like to this level, to this level.

And like, oh, wow, that's so helpful.

Thank you for telling me that.

Because I did not know where that was.

It was buried in my settings.

So it's all these things.

And again, we're going to have this on the iPhone.

We're going to have this on the iPad.

I'm really looking forward to it.

That's almost, I just was thinking, like we talked about raise your wrist on your Apple Watch to get access to Siri.

And here you're just looking at that little orb on there.

And just to quickly bring this to full circle,

you started off by saying this is built in

and you can just look around.

I cannot wait for something similar to this

because as I may have mentioned,

I was just on a hike in Denmark over the last week or so.

And as I was going through, Jeff,

I passed fields of like,

I thought it was wheat or barley or rye.

I didn't know.

And there was other things.

And so what did I do?

I pulled out my camera, my iPhone,

and I took a picture and I asked ChatGPT,

can you explain a little bit about what it is?

It was almost trip changing to have an AI tool

on this trip that I was taking, Jeff,

because I just had to point it at whatever it was

that it was looking at.

And it could basically tell from the picture,

it would say, well, this looks like this is wheat

because it's short stems and these little pods

and whatever else.

And then it would go on to give me a little more information about why this is important in Denmark and, you know, how long they've been farming this and where you can find some of this and how much.

And it just it was so much more of an enlightening trip just because I had access to AI.

So I know that that's on my iPhone.

but you've been saying this for many, many, many months now,

a couple of years actually,

is that once we have this technology

kind of all seamless together in glasses like this

that can bring something in,

and I can just look at that

instead of having to get my phone out and everything

and be able to have access to that information,

that is so powerful.

I mean, that's the Star Trek next generation

that I keep referencing and imagining.

It's just really cool.

I'm glad that you shared these images.

This is really neat.

And let me just say, before we move on,

Just to address the elephant in the room.

Look, I understand that there are privacy implications here.

You know, like some people don't like the idea that my glasses can see who they are and can understand things.

I know.

And then, you know, as lawyers, there are specific rules.

And some states have rules on like recording conversations.

And do you have to let them know?

And if your device is always looking at the world or always listening to words, I know there are complicated legal, ethical, moral,

politeness questions to be worked out. And so I'm not immune to it. And I know that it's not easy.

But I will also say that I believe that Apple is someone who I would trust a little bit more on

this stuff, whereas other companies not as much. So these are all issues to be worked out. We will

see how they worked out. But the promise is there. And if nothing else, it's very fascinating.

Let's stay at your home for a little bit more.

So we're looking around at your room and your bar,

which is always cool.

I remember seeing that.

You've done a good job of making your home pretty smart.

We've talked about the Eufy devices that you have

and you even have a couple of HomePods

and what is it, Lutron light switches.

You've got a variety of things that you put in your home.

And I have always enjoyed listening to you

talk about new products,

but I've never thought about the flip side of this, Jeff.

Although I don't think you're ever going to move away from New Orleans anytime soon and your house is amazing.

But if you did, if you ever did decide that you needed to change houses, what would be happening with all of those smart home products that you put in there?

Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac, it's an article that you linked to, was good about talking about, we really need a good way to hand over ownership of an Apple home.

Or I kind of think of it as a little bit bigger than as a smart home.

good pieces of thought here of like, what are you going to do when you move away and all these smart

devices that may still be associated with your own, you know, accounts and the devices. It's like,

you need to think through this today. Yeah. And as Ben points out, like if you use Apple Home

to be the hub of all this stuff, which makes sense if you use Apple devices,

there's no way to turn over ownership of an Apple Home to somebody else. And so, for example,

at my own house, like I have all these Lutron light switches. And I mean, I guess I could

disconnect them all, but that would require getting an electrician and stuff like that.

It would make more sense just to leave them. You have to rip them out of the wall.

How does the next person use them? You know, my HomePods are portable. Those you just plug into

a wall. So those you pick up and move. But the Lutron things, I mean, you could even argue

security cameras. You know, if I was looking to sell my house tomorrow, I could see the new buyer

saying, don't rip that stuff. You know, I'm going to want that stuff. They want it.

It gets complicated. And yet there's no way for me to turn over access. It's a question I had never thought about before. And obviously the author of the article was at Ben Lovejoy, you said, and I'm sure that other people have thought about this. So, I mean, I don't want to deter you from doing cool things to your smartphone, but I guess I would say like, if you know that you're in a home and you're not planning on being there for more than another one or two years, I mean, I guess it's not really your problem. It's more of the buyer's problem because they're losing access.

Yeah, but I guess you can argue it goes both ways.

It's just a fascinating issue that I thought, you know, good for you to think about it.

And it's something to think about.

And again, if he says a solution would be if Apple would just put into HomeKit or whatever

it's called nowadays, Apple Home, if they would add, excuse me, add the ability to transfer

ownership to a different Apple ID so that I no longer can turn the lights off.

That'd be easy.

The new owner, that would be the solution.

But Apple doesn't have that yet.

So hopefully somebody from Apple is thinking about this.

The only comment I would make here is, like I said,

where I know we're talking about Apple Home,

but first of all, I feel like Apple Home itself

is so discombobulated a little bit.

Like, I don't know that there's a centralized thing

where everything would go through even Apple Home.

And so I think of it as a bigger picture with Smart Home

because you've got Lutron,

which probably means you've got a Lutron account.

You've got Eufy, which means you probably have a Eufy account.

You've got, you know, if there's other smart locks,

that there's a whole lot of different device,

you know, systems and accounts

and platforms that you have to worry about

that may or may not work through Apple Home.

And so when I saw this,

that was sort of my bigger picture here

that I was thinking about.

It's like, well, wait a minute.

Like that's a lot.

Like there's a comment here.

The easy solution is to remove all devices

from your home account.

Yeah, that's good.

If everything was in your home account,

but we know that not everything's in your home account.

You and I've talked about this.

We both have UFeed devices,

which I think can work through Apple Home.

I don't even do that.

I go through the Eufy app.

You told me to do that a long time ago.

And I'm glad that you did

because it's a much better experience

than if I did everything through Apple Home.

Anyway, just things like that.

And now that I think about it,

I have an Ecobee thermostat set up in our house

is what we have.

That is connected to my home account,

but I don't ever go to Apple Home.

I go to the Ecobee's because I have an Ecobee account.

Anyway, just amazing stuff.

I just never really thought about that aspect of switching over on there.

So anyway, that's good.

And then you also linked in sort of the same idea.

If we're talking about these smart locks here,

great video from, is it Steve Robles?

Steve Robles.

Robles.

Robles.

Robles, thank you.

He's doing some great stuff on YouTube.

And this was a good one that he was talking about here.

This is the Schlage Sense Pro.

very expensive lock but it sounds like he likes it a little bit better than some of the other ones

that he's reviewed steven robles has been a great youtuber for a long time and now he has he's now

co-hosting with david sparks the um the mac power users podcast oh that's right yeah it was katie

it was katie floyd our friend from florida yes and then when katie decided to become um i think

it's public knowledge she became a judge steven hackett became the co-host and he did it for a

right and now steven's moved on to some other things uh with his relay network and now uh steven

another steven steven robles is doing it so he's great for that but anyway in this particular one

what he is specifically talking about is um if you have a smart lock there's lots of different

ways you can have smart locks on a house and one of the coolest versions of them is this thing um

it uses the apple ultra wideband technology and it's called um what is the name of it it's uh

i'm forgetting the name of it but what it basically means is as you're walking thread yeah well it's

and threats, but as you walk close to your door, it can sense that you're getting closer and closer

to the door and it can automatically unlock. So you don't have to, for example, hold up your Apple

watch. The lock is like an NFC thing and you don't have to do other things. And the other cool thing

about the ultra wide band is it can sense directions. So for example, you wouldn't want

it to be that if you're in the inside of your house and you walk by your front door, the front

door unlocks. You certainly wouldn't want that. You would want it to only unlock if you're on the

outside of your house coming in.

And the Apple Ultra Wideband is smart enough to do that.

And so this is the latest and greatest technology

for a smart lock on a door.

Until today or until recently,

there was only a single product that worked for it.

And I'm forgetting the name of it.

He says it down there with the company

that had the first version of it.

Oh, it's like a Kensington, right?

Was it?

No, it's Aqara, Aqara.

Aqara, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

And now a Slage, which by the way,

Slage is, if I'm pronouncing it correctly,

or Slage or whatever you pronounce it,

That's a company that's been making locks for a very, very long time, right?

They're a long player.

They're not a technology company.

They're like a lock company.

But they also have these smart locks.

And so they have it as well, too.

I would love to have one of these on my front door.

Yeah, me too.

Because we have a super old house that dates back to the 1800s.

My doors stick and they swell and I'm not going to replace the door.

So my locks don't line up.

It's very fidgety.

And so a smart lock would not work, unfortunately, for my door.

But if I did have a door that it would work with, believe me, I would love to try this out.

And so that's why I link it.

For people, if you have a house for it you can use, I mean, I would so love it if I could walk home every day.

I've got groceries in my hands, whatever.

And the door just unlocks for me as I walk in.

I don't do anything.

It knows who I am.

And of course, smart locks are cool because you can give guest access to someone coming over and then remove that when they leave and other things.

So anyway, it's a nice video.

It's a cool technology.

He does a great job of showing it off.

So if you have any interest in this aspect of smart home, check out this video.

All right.

Well, let's wrap up and we'll talk about one last little article that you linked to here

about an app that we've talked about several times before.

It's one of our favorites, certainly one of my favorites, the Flighty app.

And actually, I knew we were going to talk about this.

So in the know here, I've got a couple of other tips.

I'll just talk about it as well.

We can talk about a little bit of a bigger scale.

But I mean, this app continues to just so impress me

with the different features that they continue to add.

This one that you linked to today,

Flighty Update adds powerful new connection assistant feature,

which is so important because already I think Flighty

does a good job of telling me or informing me

about how much time I have between a connection now.

But what I typically sometimes will do, Jeff,

is that if I know I've got a connection at a certain airport,

I'm like, okay, I got to go to terminal A to B.

Okay, how do we get there?

Can I walk there?

Is there a train to get there?

Well, now the connection assistant

can help me even a little bit better know exactly.

I usually have to go to like a separate app

or the flight app or an image of a map

of the airport sometimes.

But now Flighty is continuing to add more features

and that's going to help me with that.

Yeah, I still subscribe to two different services,

which are a little duplicative.

One is TripIt Pro and the other is Flighty.

And I know I'm, quote unquote, wasting money by having both of them to a certain degree,

but I just like to compare the features.

You know, TripIt Pro has long had a feature that as soon as you land, it sends you an email

saying, here's everything you need to know.

You're landing at gate such and such.

You're going to connect from another one.

You've got 52 minutes for your connection, you know, all that sort of information.

And Flighty had some of that stuff too.

I like Flighty because, I mean, it's nice that TripIt Pro sends you an email.

Flighty would have it right there on your lock screen or at your dynamic island and stuff like that.

But it's one thing to know that I've got 52 minutes to make the connection.

But Flighty is using its knowledge of all the flights that it's monitored.

And AI, yeah.

For all the years and AI to actually say, let me give you a little bit more information.

You've got 52 minutes, but considering how long it typically takes people to get your landing at the very end of Concourse D,

and you're leaving at the other end of concourse a and you've got to take the atlanta airport plane

train to get from one to the other you know it's going to take you 33 minutes you know to get from

one to the other and so you actually have a pretty tight connection because they're going to start

loading that plane so it's it's that additional information that much like when you were talking

about you know hiking around denmark and the ai can act as like a tour guide giving you information

this is like an uh and you know an airline tour guide this is somebody who truly understands it

And it can provide you, you know, this is going to be a tighter connection than you might think, or maybe alternatively, this is a connection that most people have no trouble making.

So if you want to take the time to go to the bathroom, go get a snack, whatever, you're going to be fine.

So it's really cool.

I was actually using Flighty when I was traveling to Colorado when you and I recorded two weeks ago, and they had not yet added this connection, this feature.

So I didn't get it.

I think it literally came out like a day or two after I landed.

So I didn't get a chance to try it yet.

But I know you'll be doing some traveling in the future.

And I'll be if you do have any connections just to sort of see what you think of it.

But the idea of it sounds super useful.

And more importantly, it's another one of these examples of the people that make flighty.

I know it's a relatively small team, but they are just constantly thinking of ways to make

your travel experience more predictable, more dependable.

You know, they've already got features in the flighty app like, you know, this flight

historically runs late or this flight historically early or, you know, this plane.

that you're on is that, you know, you've, you've, you've all these, they, they take advantage of the

big data that they have to provide insights that no mere mortal would otherwise know. And I love

that they do that. And so this is just the latest example of it. I love it. Right, right. You're

right. You're so right. I mean, it just, this is like a must have subscription for me ever since

I started, it came out and it just, you can just tell from the design of it that they've got people

that focus on the design.

They want to make sure that it's clean.

All the information is there.

And, you know, just quickly on this connection side,

you know, so often I find, and I get it,

a lot of people may not travel quite as much,

but it's not just so much the, you know,

the connection you think is like, well, okay,

I've got 45 minutes to make this other plane.

But that might be when the plane is scheduled

to close the doors and take off.

And as you know, Jeff,

that's not when you need to get to the plane.

Like you need to be there even 30 minutes before or so.

And so having this information, I am hopeful will help people understand that it's like,

this is why this is critical.

Or don't schedule something with a 45-minute connection if you know it's going to be on

these different terminals.

And of course, planes and airlines will change the terminals and gates and stuff all the time,

which is why, again, having flighty is so important.

In fact, let's just go in the know.

Let's do in the know right now.

Because I knew we were going to talk about this.

I just have a few, I think about maybe three little tips on flighty.

You've already touched on a few of them as well here.

But not only can you see the history of a specific flight,

like if I know you're going from Cleveland to Atlanta,

it'll tell you how frequently that specific flight may get delayed.

So the other little thing that I always enjoy

is that it will actually tell you the history of the airplane itself

and how many times you've been on it.

I used to go back and forth between Cleveland and Chicago quite often, for example, right?

Well, there's several planes that will do this, but it can tell by the tail number typically is what they use.

And it will tell me you've taken three flights on this exact kind of airline.

And you can just scroll down into that.

And, you know, it's like some people are like, well, what do I care?

Sometimes it does because it will also tell you how old that plane is.

Is it 10 years old? Is it three years old?

Because that can have a big difference on whether or not there's even a screen on the back of the seat.

Again, I know some people may not care about this.

And if you travel more often, maybe you do care about some of those comfort creatures that you might want to have access to.

But I just like the fact that it will actually keep track of that.

And most people know there's a, quote, passport feature in Flighty that will give you, like, over your entire year.

How many flights you took, where you all went, how many miles, all that kind of stuff.

And that's just kind of a need.

It's almost like sharing, you know, with my other fellow travelers.

It's like I share my Spotify wrap-up kind of a thing at the end of the year.

The other tip that I have quickly is related to your TripIt.

I know that you subscribe to TripIt Pro.

I stopped subscribing to TripIt Pro when I started subscribing to Flighty.

But I still absolutely use the free version of TripIt, Jeff.

Because one of the great things about TripIt is that I can get all of my airline reservations,

hotel reservations in my email once I get them confirmed.

And then I can forward them to my TripIt app.

Now, you can also forward emails to Flighty.

But with TripIt, it's almost like an entire itinerary.

It's like rental cars.

It's the hotels.

It's the flight.

It's all of the information associated with your trip.

But what's great about Flighty is that it will synchronize with the flights that you've

already put into a TripIt trip.

So I just send everything to TripIt with all my confirmation numbers.

I know there's one location where I can get all of that,

but any flights in there will automatically synchronize

from TripIt into Flighty.

So I never have to add anything manually into Flighty.

Sometimes I'll go in and change,

you know, one of my flights got delayed or something

and may not pick up specifically on that.

And so I have to make that manual change.

But I still use the free version of TripIt.

It is fantastic for everything that I need,

but it will synchronize those flights with my Flighty app.

And so it'll tell me,

it'll give me even a little bit of a notification to say,

hey, all your trips have been synchronized on there.

And then the last thing

Can I just pause now?

Because I have thought about

whether I want to continue paying for TripIt Pro.

But the thing is, like you,

I like keeping my hotel information,

my plane information, my rail car.

But you're telling me the free version can do all of that.

Plus the free version can sync with Flighty.

So you use Flighty for all the real-time flight information.

And TripIt is just, you know, I have to think about it.

part of the reason that i'm still i think trippet pro is maybe 50 bucks a year or something like

that i have this is going to sound perhaps i don't know childish i don't know i feel like i have a

little bit of personal loyalty to trippet pro because i had two trips over the last decade

where trippet pro saved my bacon when it alerted me to some changes like there was a hurricane

hurricane ida and like i got out when my colleagues did not because of trippet pro and i came out i

I mean, it was amazing.

And again, you hope that those things never happen.

But, and again, I didn't have Flighty at the time.

There was no Flighty app way back when.

There was no Flighty.

It was TripIt Pro.

Part of me is like, you know what, TripIt Pro,

you saved me, like, I can't pay,

I can't put a dollar amount on you getting me with my family.

And then it was another issue too,

where they had issues with flights.

And so for that reason, I'm continuing.

And I guess I'm just telling myself, you know what?

I will throw away, maybe it's throwing away,

$50 a year on TripIt Pro for a little bit more,

just to be able to compare what I do get with that versus flighty.

And maybe I can share it with all of you.

So consider it my expense for the, you know,

iPhone and for in the news listeners. But, but based on what you're saying,

it sounds like, frankly,

if I canceled my pro subscription for TripIt,

I would probably still have everything I need. So anyway, if I'm curious,

I'm glad you're with me. Yeah.

Well, I struggled with the same thing, honestly, Jeff,

because I'm the same way I can,

I can remember two specific instances where traveling TripIt pro again,

many years ago before fighting anything else. I'm like,

I knew that flight was canceled before even the gate attended,

announced it and everybody lined up. I knew it.

And I was able to go down to another customer service or I was able to go,

you know, call, make a call. And so I, I,

I did used to subscribe to TripIt Pro and I had the same struggle when I was

thinking about this. I still use it. I'm, and they still improve it.

I think it's owned by Concord or something.

It's a bigger company that owns it now,

But they still have that free component.

And it is a great, great service, at least to capture all of your travel itinerary.

And I pay for TripIt Pro exactly for those real-time flight updates.

You know, it's not like you really need updates necessarily on your hotel or anything else.

You pay for flighty.

You mean you said you pay for TripIt Pro.

I mean you pay for flighty.

Well, I used to pay for TripIt Pro just for that.

And that's why I was paying for TripIt Pro was those flight updates.

Right, right, right.

But when Flighty came along, I was like, oh, this is even a little bit better, more specifically on that.

So anyway, I know everybody has to come to their own conclusion, but that's good.

The last thing quickly I'll just mention, because I just ended up doing this, is in Flighty, not only does it show you the gate where you're going to be at, it also shows you the gate carousel.

Now, this isn't as where you're going to pick up your baggage, like if you have a checked bag, right?

This isn't as important as it used to be because today you can track your bags.

I mean, it's great that all of the airline apps will do that and track your bags for you.

But I wanted to bring that up because a lot of people will tell me, I don't want to subscribe to Flighty, which, by the way, has a free version.

You can test it out on a pro version if you wanted to, but it has a free version.

But a lot of people will tell me, Jeff, I don't need to use Flighty.

I've got the United app or the Delta app or the American app.

And I tell them, well, so do I.

And I will use those apps, certainly, you know, for the boarding pass and all the other stuff.

but flighty just is one app that will aggregate everything into one place of

all of my apps across all of those apps. So you, yes,

you absolutely need your airline app and definitely download that and use that.

But for me having that one location,

I opened both of those flighty and the airline app,

typically whatever airline that I'm going to be flying at the same time.

And it, I, to me, both having,

both of those sources of information are going to be helpful on that. So those,

I just wanted to share some flighty tips and I'm glad that they were helpful.

Those are good. Thank you. My tip of the week has to do with a different type of travel. We're not

talking about plane travel. We're talking about car travel. And I'm going to share a personal

story involving my daughter. Hopefully she doesn't mind. I do not think she has ever listened to this

podcast in her life. So it's not a problem. But my daughter, even though she is 18 years old,

she just got her driver's license last month. And there was, you know, she should have gotten it

when she was younger, but like she brought, she broke a leg and she was on crutches and there

were things going on in her life. And so it just got to the point where it was finally,

she graduated from high school and we're like, she's like, okay, now I'm getting my license,

which is good because let's do it college this fall. And not that she's going to have a car as

a freshman, but like, I just think as a life skill, she needs to know how to drive, right?

Like that's just something you should know. So she's spending this summer learning how to drive

and, and she's driving my car by the way, cause we don't, she, we haven't gotten her a car yet,

which means that I've been, you know, sometimes she picks me up and work at the end of the day.

Anyway, because she's a new driver, for now, I have told her and my wife as well, don't drive on the interstate.

Okay, let's start with our interstate.

We'll move up to the interstate.

You'll get there eventually.

We did the same thing.

But the other day, earlier this week, she, and I've also told her, don't rely on car play.

I understand that you have it.

That's fine.

But I want you to understand.

I want you to get a sense of the city, right?

I want you to be able to drive independently of CarPlay because you cannot always trust it.

Plus, in my car, I've got like a little litch.

I have an old car.

The CarPlay doesn't always work.

Sometimes it freezes up.

It's pain.

So like I don't want her to trust it.

But it turned out she was driving earlier this week and she was going someplace that was a little off normal and she thought she had it fixed up.

And she was half paying attention to CarPlay.

It wasn't the way that she normally drives.

And when she got home that night, she's like, Dad, I drove on the interstate today.

I'm like, what?

And she said it was one of these things that like CarPlay was directing her and she took a right.

And next thing she knows, she's going up the ramp and she's on the interstate.

Oh, no.

She was on there for like one exit.

I mean, it was nothing.

And then she's like, once I was up there, I totally recognize because it's a place in the city that I've been with you and mom a million times.

And I knew what to do.

And I followed the CarPlay and it got me off.

So like, look, it was fine.

And, you know, frankly, since all I want her to do is to learn how to be a driver, you know,

I don't know is as being a driver, you need to expect like unexpected things happen.

You need to like learn to have your cool about you.

So I'm actually OK.

Thank God she's safe.

And I feel bad.

Yes.

Drivers on the interstate with my daughter there.

But I mentioned all of this today because as soon as this happened, the first thing I said

was, OK, it'll be fine.

Let's let's.

But then the second thing I did was I looked at this feature.

So you may know that when you are using the Maps app on your phone or on your CarPlay or whatever else, when you go to have a route, you know, of course, you can say, are you driving?

You can tap a thing.

Oh, no, I'm not driving.

I'm actually taking a train or I'm walking.

Or walking, right.

And another setting that you can change for an individual trip is you can tap on a button that says avoid highways.

And the Apple support site has a picture of it that you're showing right now.

So that's something that you can do.

You can say, I want you to avoid highways.

And then that would be, yeah, there you go.

Right there.

Little drop down, right?

My real tip is not that.

My real tip is if you want to say always avoid highways, or there's another one too.

If you want to always avoid toll rolls, this is actually not.

Yes, that's a big one.

But if you go into settings, like the settings app, and then you go down to apps, which is at the very bottom, and then you'll have a list of all your apps.

You go to the word maps.

And so once you're under maps, there's a section of maps called directions.

And underneath directions, this is where you can configure some things for your directions.

And one of them is driving directions.

The other one's like, I don't know, walking directions.

So if you go to driving under directions, you will have two choices.

And one of them is, it's a little switch.

Do you want to turn on avoid highways?

And so I told my daughter to do that.

She said that she did.

And so if this happened in the future, if she's driving around and she gets a little lost and, you know,

Apple Maps is going to help her to get home or get to work or wherever she's doing a summer job.

It will at least hopefully, if it works, it will, although you go, well, this is just for the general one, but it will avoid highways and it will keep her on more street traffic.

And now, although I'm sharing this as something that you might want to have for an inexperienced driver, which may even be yourself.

Another time that you might want to do this is if you're in a city that you don't know and you're just exploring the city, you know, just driving around, checking it out.

you might not want to get in the interstate because like the whole point is you're sort of

like enjoying the road, right? You want to see places, you want to see the city. And so as I'm

driving around the city that I don't know, I might turn off, avoid highways because, you know, I don't

want to necessarily go through like, you know, a dangerous neighborhood or something like that,

but I want to, I want to see the place, right? You know, you want to look out the window and get a,

get a feel for it. And so this is another time that you might want to turn off, avoid highways,

or maybe even avoid tolls if you don't want to deal with the tolls or, you know, what do they call it

up in the Northeast, speed, speed, whatever they call those things. And so it's nice to know that

these options are out there and it's not something you're going to probably use all the time,

but you can either do it on a trip by trip basis, or my tip is you can actually go into settings

and do it like for forever. And then in a couple of months, when my daughter is more experienced and

she's ready to drive the interstate, you know, then we'll turn that feature off for her and that's

fine. But so anyway, I had an urgent need for this setting this week. So I thought I would share it

with others in case, just so that you know it's out there. I'm glad that you did. And I will also

say, since I typically use Google Maps for driving, I like to use Apple Maps when I'm like walking

around the city. In fact, when I was in Copenhagen, Apple Maps was excellent at helping me get around.

But when I'm driving, I typically do Google Maps. You and I have talked about this before.

And it does the same thing. You have the same options. Now, I don't typically avoid highways,

especially when I'm driving for a long time, but avoid tows. Because where I am in Ohio,

there is a major toll road there. And a lot of times it will map us through. Now today,

these days, it'll tell you if there's a toll like on the little, you know, map icon. But in the past,

I don't remember that it specifically said that. And so I went in and there is a toggle switch,

just like you're talking about in Google Maps that will do the same thing. I just don't want

to pay the tolls if I don't have to. And I know that there's other ways. It may not be fastest by

like three minutes or something, but I'm like, okay, I'm willing to, you know, go three extra

minutes because I don't want to pay a buck 50 in total or something like that if I'm just being

cheap. But I typically have that turned on all the time, unless I think what maybe you were talking

about, we have easy pass up here in the Northeast, right? So that's our major. Yeah, exactly. So we

go like when we're driving up, as I said, we're in Maine now as we're driving through sort of,

you know, New Hampshire and New York and stuff, easy pass, I turn it on because it's like, that is

the better highways that we want to go on. So I make sure I go into Google Maps and I say,

I do want to, I'm happy, okay, paying tolls on there.

But anyway, I'm glad you brought that up

because again, avoiding tolls or highways,

I will sometimes turn it on just because I don't want to,

I know there's better ways to,

there's okay ways to get there.

It may not be exactly the fastest,

but I just don't want to worry about the toll

and the slowdown and all kinds of stuff like that.

But I hadn't really used it for the highway side.

So I'm glad you mentioned that as well.

Good stuff on that.

Okay, I think that is plenty for us.

I know we skipped last week

because we have the national holiday here in the United States.

And I know we're a day late this week,

but we wanted to make sure that we got a chance to talk about all this.

And boy, I'm glad that we almost did,

that we did wait until Saturday so we could talk about this.

Apple OpenAI, that's going to be something to watch here

for the next several weeks.

But all that's done,

and I'm sure we'll be talking about it again next week.

So we will talk with you again next week, Jeff.

Thanks, Brett. Bye-bye, everybody.