Welcome to In the News for July 14th, 2023.

I am Brett Burne from appsinlaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Happy Bastille Day, Brett.

- Well, you know, I am in New Orleans,

I didn't know you celebrated.

That's great to hear, Jeff.

which is sort of a French town.

So, you know, we probably do celebrate it

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

here more than other places.

Not a big holiday in Ohio, yes.

Ohio is not that big of a holiday.

It's good to see you back.

(laughs)

I'm glad to be back.

Yeah, unfortunately after dodging COVID for three years,

We had to miss last week for a good reason,

an unfortunate reason.

It hunted you down.

it finally caught up with me last week.

So last Thursday and Friday were not pleasant,

That's right, we're okay.

but I'm now on the other side of it.

And I guess technically I'm supposed to wear a mask today

and tomorrow, but Brett, you're in Ohio,

I'm in New Orleans.

I think that's more than six feet away.

So we're just a little more than six feet.

We're in good shape, so.

Indeed.

It's all gonna be fine.

Well, it's good to see you back and healthy again.

I missed you last week, but we gotta catch up on some news.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I think two weeks ago,

we mentioned that Apple released iOS 16.5.1.

And if you did upgrade then, good for you,

Yeah, these are great.

but there's a something new.

In fact, I don't know if I,

we've seen this maybe a couple of times,

you would probably remember.

This isn't 16.5.2.

It's actually 16.5.1 parentheses A.

So it was a rapid response, security response.

I know we've talked a little bit about this before too.

Yeah.

great, this is something that Apple came up with last year,

where if they see

some security flaw that's actively being exploited in the wild.

If you go to the wrong website,

you could actually theoretically be hacked.

They want to do something quickly and you don't necessarily want to

wait for the next iOS update because

Right, right.

sometimes that might be a month or two away.

Yeah, it was very quick. Right? Okay, okay. Okay. So, yeah. So, I'm gonna go ahead and

With this rapid security response system,

they can just very quickly introduce a patch just for

this one quick thing and get it out super, super quickly.

And they're actually not too bad on the user standpoint

because they're so small that you can usually, you know,

update your phone in just a minute or two.

So they've only done it,

there was a test one earlier this year

or something like that.

And there's only been one, you know,

just a handful of them that we've even seen so far,

but this one came out.

Okay. Right. Oh,

But what was sort of interesting

and almost funny about this one is that

they released the A update,

which is the one that you referred to.

And I think it was out for like less than an hour

or something like that.

And I actually just happened to install it during that hour

without thinking about it.

'Cause I figured, hey, security update,

you might as well be safe.

And then Apple pulled it back

because in the process of fixing the flaw,

they also made it that the Safari browser

couldn't access certain websites like, you know,

Facebook and stuff like that.

And so they had to sort of retool,

(dog whining)

they rapidly retooled the rapid security response update.

Oh, oh my goodness.

And then about a day or two later,

they introduced the C as opposed to the A version of it.

And so that's out now.

Right, right.

And so anyway, long story short, it was a quick fix,

but I just thought it was funny

'cause it's almost like you were a little bit too rapid,

Apple and getting that fix out there.

I just, it just kind of amazes me now that, you know,

Right.

we use, I remember the days when even doing a point update,

you know, like to 13, you know, or 12.3,

that was a pretty big deal.

And like you had to set aside, you know,

half an hour or so to make sure that your phone could update.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And now that we're to this point,

I mean, I didn't even know that these were coming out.

My phone does notify me, but you know,

you have now even on the iPhone,

like the automatic updates,

or you can choose to have automatic updates.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And, you know, even sometimes my watch will inform me,

well, we're gonna try to do this update tonight,

you know, as long as it's being charged or whatever.

And I guess, you know,

We're putting a lot of trust in Apple

[LAUGH]

that we trust these updates to do what they're supposed to do

but it's just kind of good that certainly on the security side

that they are being more rapid,

rapider that they're coming down.

That's good stuff.

>> I will mention, Brett, that if you do have your iPhone on the automatic update

Well, not, yeah.

Right, right.

system, the way that Apple does it is those phones don't update the second or even the

Right.

minute or even the hour that the updates come out.

Those are sort of pre-programmed to wait a certain period of time.

I don't know what the period of time is.

Oh, okay.

And the reason for that, it's more of a practical thing.

Yeah.

Apple knows that it releases an update, some percentage of users are going to hear about

it and upgrade instantly.

And then once its servers have died down, then your phone does.

So if your phone's on an automatic update system, I see pretty much zero chance that

Right, you were watching.

you would have installed that A update.

If that's only if you're somebody geeky like me that I just happened to notice it was available

because I saw it mentioned in a website.

So I'm like, hey, I might as well go Patrick real quick while I'm thinking about it.

Yeah.

So but if you have if my if my iPhone I had just waited for it to do it on its own, I

would have completely missed that a and would have just eventually been told about the C.

Right, I just noticed in here too, if you go into your updates, you know, into general

Correct.

security, general and updates, and you tap on automatic updates, you can toggle on and

off iOS updates and install the iOS updates.

You have download and install.

And then there is a toggle down there that you can choose to automatically install rapid

security responses and system files.

I had that turned on and I think most of us would probably recommend that you keep that

turned on for the reasons that we just discussed.

Yeah, it's nice you have all those controls.

But if it's something that does bother you and you want to wait and do it manually, then

you are welcome to go in and make that change there.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Not only is it Bastille Day, it is happy birthday to the App Store.

15 years old.

This is great.

You link to Phil Schiller from Apple on Mastodon posting about the 15th birthday.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And not only that, I think even more interesting to me, you link to your post, Jeff, from December

2006, 2008, where you're talking about the fact that,

[LAUGHTER]

what was it, this was 10,000 apps available, I think,

or yeah, 10,000 apps available on the App Store in 2008.

And then another quick story you'll link to

even on TechCrunch from 2008,

talking about the top paid and free apps from 2008.

Really just kind of a nice walk down memory lane here for me.

>> Unless you've been using an iPhone since the very beginning,

you may not even know about this,

but when the iPhone first came out in 2007,

the only apps were the built-in apps.

Right, right.

You did have a home screen, but there wasn't really a lot to move around because all you

Right.

had was what Apple gave you automatically.

At the time, Apple was like, "Well, if you want some third party to do something, they

That's right, that's what they said, right.

can just make a website, have a web app as it were."

They did that for the first year, but I think everybody probably knew that that was only

Yeah, finally.

going to last for so long.

A year later in 2008, that's when Apple introduced the iPhone 3, I guess it was, the next iPhone.

Yeah.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And then they also came out with the App Store.

And when the App Store debuted, they were proud to announce that there were 500 apps

available.

[LAUGH] Right, right.

My goodness, 500 choices.

And then as I said, just a couple of months later, they were up to 10,000.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

What you're showing right now is a great ad from, I think that was from the Wall Street

Journal, but it was just talking about all the different types of apps that you can get

Yeah.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

to do all sorts of different tasks.

But what I thought was particularly funny was that TechCrunch article, because it linked

some of the top apps back in, what is this, July of 2008.

Right, right, right.

So this is like literally, you know,

soon after the App Store had debuted.

There's a few still here, right?

And you know, some of these apps are long, long gone.

But there are apps on here like MLB.com@BAP.

I mean, that's still a very popular thing.

That's right.

OmniFocus, I mean, OmniFocus is out there.

Omni-focus is there, yeah.

Question, Facebook, obviously still a very big deal.

Yeah, yeah.

So, and then there's things like, you know,

in New York Times, obviously.

Then there's things like AOL Radio and MySpace Mobile

that we're not really using so much anymore.

Yeah, maybe not so much, maybe not top 10 anymore.

But...

(laughs)

That's great though.

But it was a top app.

I mean, like I said, it was just fun to kind of walk down.

The top paid app in 2008 was Super Monkey Ball with 1,800.

Yeah.

That's the funny part, 1800 downloads.

I know.

I mean, 1800 downloads of an app today

I just, I can't help myself, but I gotta say, you know,

wouldn't even be a blip,

but in the very beginning,

that was enough to get you all the way to number one.

(laughs)

[BLANK_AUDIO]

kids these days, they just, they can't imagine an iPhone

without multiple apps.

I mean, I remember, you know, we were so enamored

with the iPhone when it first came out,

or maybe I'll speak for myself,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

but I'm sure I do for many other people,

that we just even had the capability of going to a website,

or, you know, I remember the notes app,

but everything was that skeuomorphic look to it,

you know, that looks so outdated by today's standards.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

But, you know, we could do all this, and we had email.

And I know, almost immediately,

I remember people started decrying the fact

that we can't, you know, have additional apps,

[AUDIO OUT]

we wanna do more on the iPhone.

But even what we could do was amazing at the time.

And then, you know, a year or so later

when Apple did finally have the app store

and it would just, you know,

things just started flooding in.

And of course there's been all kinds of issues

and complications since then

with the potential of the app store.

But certainly there's no question

that it has just made the iPhone experience

even so much better today and iPad as well.

Yeah, and just to highlight that a little bit, Brett,

Right.

because we almost forget about it.

I mean, at the time, the App Store really is a big deal.

It is, right?

though we're so used to it now, 15 years ago, 15 years later, I mean, I remember with my earlier

Right?

Yeah, yeah

phones, like I used to use a Palm Trio and before that use some Blackberry, you know, there either

Right

were no third-party apps or with the Palm Trio, for example, if I wanted to get like, you know,

a game, for example, Bejeweled, which you have behind you on your screen, you know, I would have

to go into a store and buy a box called Bejeweled probably for $30 at least, right? And then I would,

Yeah

Right, right

you know, get that disc and I would put it in my computer and I would transfer it over to my Palm

And it was complicated and a pain and everything else.

Right, right, right?

Whereas the idea that you have a store right there on the device,

Oh crap, I can't see that

Yeah, yeah

and that within a second, you could just tap and instantly get an app.

Okay. Oh, yeah

I mean, that sort of instant gratification.

That thing that

And of course, Apple, for better or for worse, when Apple introduced the App Store,

they really did a lot to keep the prices really low by having,

I had

encouraging apps to be just a few dollars and stuff.

And I know that for some people that made the business models more difficult.

What was it?

This copycon

But the flip side is the companies no longer needed to make that box

The wallet

and to have the distribution of putting it around the country.

So they definitely saved some money.

Right.

Yeah, right, absolutely.

And in the long term, it led to the point that for the most part,

apps were inexpensive enough.

And there's obviously some exceptions,

but they were usually inexpensive enough that,

you know, I don't mind spending a few bucks to try out an app.

And if I like it, great.

If I don't, you know, I haven't lost that much.

Right.

I mean, that is just completely,

completely changed the landscape of computers.

I mean, because even computers didn't work the same way.

(laughs)

You have to get these boxes.

So, you know, the App Store really was a fundamental change.

Right, right.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And I do think that Apple deserves credit for coming up with something that was so innovative

and just made it so easy, like you said, Brett, to expand the capabilities of these devices that

Yeah, some apps got better over the years and some software didn't.

we have in our hands. Yeah.

[LAUGH]

This was an interesting story that you linked to from our friend David Sparks

[BLANK_AUDIO]

about Evernote.

And I know so many people, Jeff, and you do too, over the years that we

[BLANK_AUDIO]

used Evernote as sort of just that catch all for just, you know, I mean, they, they, they

called it Evernote.

And if you, people that know, know that the logo for Evernote was an elephant, right?

(laughing)

Because it was like, capture your brain, like just dump your brain, track, you know, put

[ Laughter ]

everything into Evernote that you need.

And I still have an Evernote account.

And now read after reading this, I think to myself, maybe I should make sure I export

out some of that.

Otherwise our, our friend David Sparks, I don't think I've ever heard anybody describe

software as a roach motel.

But David does, and for good reason.

This was a story he wrote about Evernote and getting too big for your britches.

That it looks like the days might be numbered for Evernote now.

When Evernote came out over a decade ago,

Yeah.

it was really groundbreaking because it was one of

the first app/platforms, whatever you want to call it,

Right.

that encouraged the idea of,

Right.

you don't have to remember all these things.

Right, right.

Whatever little bits and pieces that you have,

little snippets of information or some text,

just stick it in Evernote.

That way, whether you're on your computer or whether you're

on your phone or wherever you are, you can just get it.

First of all, it was a pioneer in putting things in the Cloud,

because nowadays we take that for granted, but that was a bigger deal more than 10 years ago.

Yes, that's right.

That's right. Yep.

Gosh, we're going through memory lane today, Brett. But then additionally, it was important

I know.

Absolutely yes, yes.

because of all the uses of my iPhone, I really think that one of the biggest ones for me,

I mean, it's great that it can tell me the weather, it's great that it can give me directions,

but I always think of it as sort of my extra brain because of the elephant analogy that you

described. All of these details in my life that I don't want to waste my brain power trying to

Right? That's right. The notes app, right?

remember them, I can just put them in my iPhone, maybe somewhere secure like the One Password app,

if it's really confidential, or maybe just my Notes app if it's something more, you know,

but the idea of like just putting something in my iPhone so that whenever I need that information,

Right.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Agreed.

[Laughter]

>> I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

it's there, but I don't have to worry about trying to memorize it, that is revolutionary.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

But Evernote was really one of the pioneers of that mindset. And so the company deserves a ton

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

of credit for, you know, for all of that way back when. Now, over time, you know, the company,

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

you know, got, you know, all sorts of pressures and eventually sold out. And, and it's, it's no

(laughing)

Oh yes, oh my goodness, you're right.

longer what it is now. In fact, the guy that was one of the two founders of Evernote, Phil,

Lisbon, I think his name is, he actually went on to start, what is his name? Phil, yeah, Phil,

Here, I'll find it, I'll find it.

Phil Libin, L-I-B-I-N. He actually, I mean, he, he's been involved in a number of companies over

Yes, Livin, thank you.

Yes.

the years, but the current one that he's involved in is called Mm-hmm, which is like M-M-H-M-M.

That's right, that's right.

And they are one of the pioneers in teleconferencing stuff.

(laughing)

Exactly.

Like what their software does, and I've used it before,

(laughing)

where you run, and then on top of Zoom or Microsoft Teams

or whatever your video conferencing software is,

Right.

and it allows you to do all sorts of cool things,

In real time, right, right.

like have a document appear right next to you,

have slides come up next to you,

Yeah, yeah.

have animated things in the background.

Now, more and more, those features are being built

into Zoom and Teams and stuff

that you don't necessarily need the product as well.

Right, right.

But again, once again, he was on the forefront of something that was really cutting edge,

especially in the beginning of the pandemic.

So good on Phil for being involved in some of these groundbreaking products.

Absolutely.

I'm, yeah.

But Evernote, you know, even though it's no longer what it once was, you got to toast it

I'm so glad you highlighted that because that's exactly what I do today.

for what it was way back when, because I think it made a difference.

It moved the industry forward.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And typically the first place I will go to is my notes app on my phone.

And I even notice my kids do the same thing.

the same thing.

You know, if my daughter's trying to remember something,

Absolutely.

you know, a list to take to camp of things,

I mean, immediately she just pulls it out

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and she just starts typing a note.

And to your point again, the whole idea about iCloud

being able to synchronize in the cloud

or the notes app being able to synchronize through iCloud.

So I know that I can see that immediately

Correct.

on my Mac and on my iPad.

Or I can even log into iCloud.com on a computer somewhere

and find those notes.

And you're absolutely right that Evernote

was sort of the pioneer in that aspect.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I do just want to go back since I brought it up.

David talked about the Roche Motel.

You know, one of the biggest complaints

that I know a lot of power users had with Evernote

Correct.

was the fact that you could not easily,

at least initially,

you could not easily like export out your notes

in a, you know, a generic,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

a general reading format, if you will, like a text format.

It was like a proprietary file format,

if I can remember it correctly, Jeff, something like that.

And, you know, people, especially David, our friend,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

you know, hated that, right?

I wanna be able to take my information,

it's my information,

and I'm gonna put it in different places like that.

It's gotten better.

I remember there was even some third-party app,

That's right.

utilities that could do Evernote,

you know, to OneNote, that kind of a thing,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

so you can get your notes out in that aspect.

But anyway, and I hate to say it,

the story that David is talking about here

is that it was sold to an Italian company,

and it sounds like that they're laying off some people,

[silence]

which is never a good thing as well.

But another quick story just that I thought was great,

I just started reading this.

This was from 20, this is a 2013 Time Magazine story

about Everdope from Harry McCracken.

Right.

[silence]

Okay, there it is.

I got it correctly this time.

And it just is nice to be able to read through that.

Like you said, we've been going down memory lane.

So why don't we be done with memory lane?

Let's look to the future.

[laughs] Indeed.

We talked about iOS 16.5, and we have alluded to iOS 17,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

mostly because Apple had

Worldwide Developers Conference a month or so ago,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and they announced iOS 17.

Well, finally now, it looks like this this past week, right?

I think Jeff, that the public beta has now been released.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And so that means we have lots of people

talking about the updates.

And I gotta tell you,

I don't know if I've ever installed a beta

maybe many, many years ago,

but you and I are typically,

Yeah, I tell you, the developer beta came out immediately last month at WWDC.

because we use these devices a lot,

we don't usually get to the beta,

but I gotta tell you, everything you linked to today, Jeff,

I'm really tempted to jump in to iOS 17

and iPadOS 17 in the public betas.

Right.

But as of this week, you don't have to be an app developer.

Just anyone can sign up for the public beta and install it.

Right.

Like you, Brett, I have done the public beta once or twice

over the past decade.

Right.

And the problem is, is that even though,

like right now, for example,

everything I'm hearing is that it's mostly stable,

but there are still things here and there

What?

Right.

that it doesn't work.

(laughing)

And you never know as through the update cycle,

I know.

you know, when tomorrow's next update to the beta comes up,

things may break.

And although I'm really tempted to try out

the brand new features, because gosh, I love new features.

Right, right, right.

But I also use my iPhone and my iPad to get work done.

And I don't have an extra iPhone.

And even if I had an extra iPhone,

(laughing)

that wouldn't even count, because unless I was using

the new system on the thing that I do every day,

Exactly, exactly.

I wouldn't be really experiencing it.

So I usually-- what I typically do

is enjoy reading about the updates in articles like these

Yes, thank you very much.

and just get ready for it.

But the features, Jeff, these features, it looks so cool.

But I wait until the day that the official version is

released, because then I know that I have the security that I

can use it without it necessarily crashing my device.

But it's fun to read these articles.

And so many new things are coming out.

Exactly.

This standby feature, a couple of the stories you linked to,

Yeah, standby is going to be especially nice for the iPhones

the standby feature, which maybe you can describe it better,

but it basically is almost like, you know,

if you put your phone in the charging mode,

it now will show some information on the screen

and you can customize that even with widgets a little bit.

That alone, I'm like, I want that.

Yeah, the 14.

that have the always on screens like my current iPhone 14 Pro,

because that way I can just have a stand at my desk,

Yes.

Yeah.

I can have a stand next to my bed,

and I just put my iPhone in

the landscape orientation so that it's long ways,

and you can put whatever you want on there,

including this widget view where you can

decide which two widgets are next to each other.

Like maybe a big clock and maybe like

Right.

your upcoming calendar or the weather or

Uh-huh. Yes.

whatever you want or to-do items.

It looks really nice. In fact,

as I'm reading about it,

You're right. We're in the same mindset, Jeff.

I'm starting to get ready for it because the stand

that I currently have on my bed stand,

it actually holds my iPhone, it charges it,

but it holds it in portrait orientation, up and down.

And so literally just yesterday,

I was reaching out to the company Studio Neat

Yes, yes.

that makes the stand that I currently have

because they have a newer version that has,

it incorporates the Apple MagSafe charger,

Right, right.

which is that sort of puck-licking circle.

And so because of that,

Yay.

you can actually turn it either up and down

or you can turn it landscape mode.

Yeah.

And I just sent the company an email yesterday.

I'm like, let me just double check.

Yeah.

Is it gonna work with standby mode?

And they're like, absolutely,

because I'm sure that they're excited about the fact

that a product that they already have on the market

is ready for iOS 17.

So I may use that one.

Yeah.

I haven't decided which one I'm gonna use yet,

but that's just the one at home.

At my home, I wanna have something

that I can charge my iPhone and my watch

and maybe even my AirPods.

So I'm looking at their Trio charger,

but here in my office at my desk,

Right.

I think I want just like a simple stand

Yeah.

that just holds the iPhone.

It doesn't necessarily have to hold anything else.

Yeah.

Right.

But when I'm not using my phone at my desk,

Yeah.

I would love to have my iPhone just sitting there

displaying whatever it's gonna display,

Yeah.

even if it's something as simple as the time,

Yeah.

just so that I can use it for glanceable information.

What's my next appointment?

Right.

That would probably be really important in the office.

Or maybe I put email.

I don't even know what I'll use it for,

but I love the idea of having just a quick glanceable screen.

Yeah.

So standby mode seems like a great use.

for people that have an iPhone with an always on screen.

If you don't have an always on screen,

(laughs)

I think it loses some of the usefulness

Right, you gotta tap it.

Right, right.

because you have to tap it.

But over time, I mean, the new iPhones

Yeah, yeah.

That's gonna happen.

that come out this fall, they'll have that feature.

One of the stories you linked to

We're a year or two away from a large number

of iPhone users having phones with always on screens.

Mm-hmm.

was from Federico Vittici @maxstories.

And I thought this one image right here

(gentle music)

is exactly what I was thinking, Jeff.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

You and I are on the same wavelength.

It's like, I'm gonna be shopping.

Darn it, I'm gonna have to buy another stand

for my iPhone because I don't want to lay it down

like on a table.

Uh-huh.

I want it to be now standing up

[ Silence ]

just like Federica has got the picture here

next to exactly what you're talking about,

next to my computer.

So I want it to be upright and I want it to be horizontal

so that I have that screen that I can just glance down there

to see the next appointment,

you know, or a phone call coming in,

whatever the case may be.

And of course, another story you linked to

was from Dan Morin,

which I thought did a really good job of how he went in

and talking about how you can do even widgets.

And it sounds like you can flick up and down

to change the widgets on the standby screen,

Mm-hmm.

which I'm just continue to get excited about that.

That's just really cool stuff on there.

Yeah.

So standby is a cool new feature.

And then, yeah, yeah.

Go ahead.

What was the other one?

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Oh, another one, another one here,

live voicemail for the phone call averse.

This story in "The Verge", this is by Alison Johnson,

which I just thought was a great story.

She's a fairly witty in here.

And she's like, you know,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I'm never gonna answer a phone a call again.

And I liked it here because now we talked about this,

Live voicemail means that somebody can call in

and a lot of times I'll just let it go to voicemail,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

which means that I gotta remember to pick it up again

at some point in the near future

to listen to the voicemail, but no longer

because the live voicemail theoretically,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

we'll see how good this works,

theoretically, it will transcribe the voicemail on the screen

while I'm looking at the screen.

And I liked how Allison said here

[LAUGH]

that you can silently marvel as one robot

tells another robot how you could be saving 50%

on your cable bill.

So in other words, I don't have to answer the phone.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I just let it go to voicemail, but I can read it

and then I can immediately delete it if I need to.

And more importantly, if it is something important, somebody saying, hey,

Yes, pick it up.

your car's on fire or something like that, then you can immediately pick it up.

(laughing)

It's a way of screening calls.

Uh-huh.

And I laugh because the idea of screening phone messages

is something that people have been doing since, what,

A little tape recorder.

the 1980s when we first had those little tape recorder

things, exactly, to record your messages

Right, uh-huh.

(inhales)

when people called your telephone.

Beep.

So everything old is new again,

Yeah.

and once again, we'll have this technology.

But I have resisted so far turning on the feature

that only people in my contacts will make the phone ring

because if you want it to be productive

Mm-hmm.

and you're just sick and tired of the spam telemarketers

and stuff like that, you could say,

only have my phone ring if it's somebody that I know

that's in my contacts.

But I get nervous about that, Brett,

I know, I know, I know, same.

because sometimes like a court might call me as an attorney

or if I'm traveling a hotel or someone I don't know,

(silence)

Right.

I mean, enough people have my number

that aren't necessarily my contacts

that I don't necessarily wanna miss those phone calls.

Yeah, yeah.

But in iOS 17, where it's so much easier

to screen those calls and pick them up

if it's something important, I don't know,

I might actually turn that feature on and therefore cut down.

Yeah.

I don't get a ton of those telemarketer spam calls, but I do get them every week probably,

and they're always annoying.

I don't know.

It's something I'm going to think about.

- Yeah, I know.

[PAUSE]

And I thought this was a good story

that you linked to from Dan Moore

and he was going through the exact same thing.

He's never turned that off,

'cause he says there's always phone calls that he gets.

But now with this capability,

Mm-hm.

he is considering turning that on

so that only phone calls will come through.

Anyway, that's just gonna be interesting

[PAUSE]

to see how that lands on that.

The story, the headline from "The Verge,"

and I think you alluded to this as well,

It's like, there's just a ton of little, tiny,

really neat welcome updates in there

Correct.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

that make a big impact overall.

And this is another great review from Federico, of course.

He just goes into so much detail.

One of the last one quickly that involves the Apple TV

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and TVOS 17 and the iPhone,

which I know we've just alluded to this quickly,

but you can actually use your phone

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and an Apple TV together to have phone calls

over FaceTime, which I thought this story,

Felipe here in nine to five Mac did a good job

of at least saying it's very cool,

Yeah, you wanna have something to sort of prop up your iPhone the right way.

but it's just, it's a little awkward because,

you know, your phone has to be like facing you,

but it's just really neat.

I mean, it's something that he even says

he underestimated how cool it was,

even though you got to get used to it a little bit.

Right.

And it's the back of the iPhone that's looking towards you,

which is good because that means it's your best phone.

Better camera.

It's that best camera that's on the back of the iPhone.

Right.

(silence)

But you have a little stand or whatever you use

(laughs)

or lean it up against something,

put it right underneath your TV screen

and then use your Apple TV and have FaceTime calls.

I mean, I've said this before,

but during the pandemic, the height of the pandemic,

when that was the way that we would communicate

with family members was have these Zoom calls and stuff.

Right. Right.

Right, right.

And I had these janky solutions

where we would try to put my iPad

and connect it to the Apple TV.

And, you know, it never really worked very well.

Screen mirror right, right.

But something like this, that's really like with screen mirroring, exactly.

Uh-huh.

But something like this that's really made for the solution.

I just think it's great.

And, you know, with the Apple TV sort of by definition

Uh-huh.

being the television that you have in like your living room

or your TV room or whatever, it just sort of seems like for family,

you know, getting together with family when it's somebody's birthday

and you're not going to travel across the country to see them.

It just seems like a perfect solution for something like that.

So I'm really looking forward to it.

And I realize that there's going to be, you know, some time before multiple people.

You know, you got to have everybody in your family sort of using it.

But for some families and for some situations,

that's going to be just a completely transformative thing.

It's going to be great.

[Pause]

not only is iOS 17 coming for the iPhone and the iPad,

and I'm excited about that,

but I think I'm even more excited

about watchOS 10 coming out.

And if there was one thing

that was really tempting me to upgrade,

this would probably be it.

But to your point, Jeff,

if you're gonna do that public upgrade

and I wanna see iOS 17 on my iPhone and my iPad

and my watch, then I have to upgrade all of them, right?

To that public beta in order to take advantage of that.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

But the watchOS 10 features to me

are probably the thing I'm most excited about.

It's gonna be a little bit different

because the buttons are gonna be changed

Yeah, let me tell you two things that are really getting me excited.

and how they act, but just the fact that I can get access

to a little more functionality on my watch face

with even the widgets, I am ready for that.

Okay, yeah, love it.

One of them is the new uses of, you mentioned the buttons, but

I'm gonna focus specifically on the digital crown.

the little thing that you sort of spin on the side of your Apple Watch. I don't use my digital

Right.

crown a lot with my Apple Watch. Every once in a while, I'll have a function for it. But

Cool, yeah.

most of the time when I interact with my Apple Watch, I'm just touching the screen or I'm

Yeah, let's take a look at it.

Still able to see the videos.

sliding the screen. And I think that Apple realized that. And Apple realized that the

Again.

Yeah, I agree.

digital crown is pretty cool, but it's not currently being taken advantage of to its full

Obviously

potential. And so I think that is the thinking behind the new widgets and stuff like that.

Now, the new design of the Apple Watch is that you're going to be having a lot more information

I agree.

I think that the software is better

that you scroll up and down using that digital crown. And so something that people use occasionally

today.

I think is going to be an even more important button user interface. And, you know, the idea

that on any watch screen you can just scroll up with the crown and see all these little widgets

Right.

of snippets of information that you want, you know, that you need your time. That's great. And so I

Right.

Right.

I love the idea that Apple is rethinking,

let's make the best use of our buttons.

Now it does mean that some things that,

if you have just the brain memory of,

(sighing)

Yes.

this button always does this thing,

you're gonna have to relearn that.

And that's sort of a shame,

but we've been through this before.

Apple has changed what buttons do in the past.

And so I think it's fine

that they're going to change it again.

So that's one thing I'm looking forward to.

And I also hear that so many of the built-in apps

and the watch face and stuff

really take full advantage of the bigger screens.

The screens have increased over time.

Yeah.

And of course, Brett, goodness,

Uh-huh.

you've got the really big screen

with the Apple Watch Ultra that you wear.

Can't go back.

And so taking advantage of all four corners of the screen,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

making the most of it,

it looks like the new Apple Watch update is gonna do that.

So there's many other new features too,

but those two alone, for me,

Uh-huh.

like that's gonna make it a more enjoyable experience.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And you add on top of that,

things like the Snoopy watch face,

which I laugh at so many reviews are like,

Uh-huh.

I don't wanna waste time talking about Snoopy,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

but it's a really cool watch face.

But it's cool.

[LAUGH]

It's so awesome.

You know, that's, you know,

is it going to be something that you use all the time?

[BLANK_AUDIO]

No, but it'll be fun to play with when it comes out.

To your point quickly on the digital crown, I remember the first Apple watch that I had,

They may have called it time machine.

if you, and you remember this, Jeff, the digital crown did do something on the actual watch face.

I did, I used this one time and I thought, why would I ever care about that? Did they call it

time machine or no, that's, that's the, it was like time shifting or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah, but time travel or something,

but you would turn that and it would go back in

time so that you could see what was the temperature three hours ago.

Right, like, uh, cool party trick. Yeah.

I'm like, "Okay, I guess that's an interesting use."

It was really just a party trick.

Yeah, that's we, yeah.

It's taken Apple a while to figure out what's the best use of the hardware,

which is funny because the hardware from day one of

having a digital crown at the top right and a button on the bottom right,

Yeah.

they haven't changed that very much.

But over the years, they've said,

it's a good idea to have these buttons,

but how could we do something even better with them?

Now, here we go with the next iteration.

Hopefully, this will be the best one yet.

- I know.

I really think it will be though.

And I think even Dan says this in here.

I mean, he thinks, and I've heard this from other folks,

that this is maybe one of the best

like hardware interactive designs

that Apple has come up with.

And even to underscore that part,

we see this also in the Apple Vision Pro, right?

They're using something very similar in the Apple Vision Pro

>> Mm-hmm.

but it's just like after that was stopped

because I forget what iOS, I think Dan mentions it in here,

that they stopped doing that time shift or anything

because I don't think anybody was using it.

I can only think of two things that I use the digital crown

for right now, Jeff.

And that is, if I'm in like my Spotify app

or my Apple music app,

I'll use the crown to turn the volume up and down.

But I gotta tell you, yeah, it takes a while.

That's true.

[ Silence ]

It takes like a second or two for it to actually respond

because it doesn't know if you're doing that

or scrolling through anyway, but that's one use.

The other use is I usually put my apps on my watch

in a list as opposed to that big cloud, you know?

>> Me too.

And so if I scroll up and down,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I can just flick my finger up and down,

but then I use the digital crown sometimes to scroll faster.

All that just to say, that's it.

It's like, it's such a beautiful little piece

of interactive hardware.

[silence]

And all we use it for is these simple little silly things.

And yeah, I welcome the fact

that Apple is gonna change that.

And there's another great story here

from Alex on Mac stories that you linked to as well,

that was just going through a lot of the same thing.

But I actually liked here in Alex just quickly,

thank you for showing like what it looks like now,

like the Siri watch face,

and then what it's gonna look like

with a quote smart stack,

which I love a smart stack widget on my iPhone right now,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Jeff, the fact that I can have a smart stack of widgets

or additional information on my watch, bring it on.

I'm ready.

I might be upgraded to the public beta

Yeah, this is one of the best things about Apple lately, Brett,

for before next week.

I don't know, Jeff, we'll have to see.

Right.

is that whether it's the Apple Watch or the iPhone or the iPad or the Mac,

Apple will come up with something new on one of those platforms.

And then over time, they'll find ways to take the same idea and

Right, right.

implement it on another platform, which is just fabulous.

I love all that cross-pollinization and really taking advantage of great ideas and making new uses of them.

Yeah.

Here's a bonus tip for today.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I like this.

I think I had seen this before, but it's great.

The volume trick on your iPhone

that you never knew you could do.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

So typically just quickly when I'm raising

or lowering the volume on my iPhone,

like if I'm listening to music or so,

I'll just use the volume buttons on the side of the phone.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And I usually will look and see on my screen,

there's a little slider that comes up

and it tells me how loud and how soft that my volume is.

Yeah, and it's a neat trick because when you use your finger, so

But I don't know if I remember

that as you click the volume button, you see the slider,

you can actually use your finger

to interact with that slider.

Thank you, my friend, for linking to this story today.

(silence)

press your volume button to start changing the volume.

Yeah, right, right, right.

start changing the volume.

And then when you see the indicator show up on the screen,

put your finger on it,

you can be a lot more precise and a lot faster

in moving it way up and way down

than you can by press, press, press, press, press

Then click, click, click, click, click.

Right. (laughing)

the buttons on the side.

And so, you know, it requires using a second finger

Right, right.

or a second hand as it were to jump over there and do it.

Although I guess maybe you could do it one handed

if you're a little bit more,

if you're a little more clever than I am.

Neat, neat, neat tip.

But you do have a lot more control by doing it that way.

So it's just one of those things

that it's been right there in front of me the whole time.

Well, two weeks in the technology world, Jeff, is goes a long way.

and yet it never occurred to me to try it.

(laughs)

And I don't think we can we can go forward on a pod on a technology focused podcast without

Right.

mentioning the newest technology trend today, which is the threads app.

So this was Facebook's launch of basically a Twitter rival.

And there was multiple, multiple stories

[BLANK_AUDIO]

that we could link to,

but I think you did the best job of linking to John Gruber

at Darien Fileball today

with his bullet point list of thoughts.

It looks, sounds like you're on it.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I went ahead and jumped on it

because it links to your Instagram/Facebook account,

which I thought was fairly clever,

but I've seen some people not so happy about that as well.

But you know, we'll see where that goes, right?

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Twitter just continues to look like they become the Roach Motel or they look like they're

just becoming a little bit of a wasteland.

Yeah, Twitter was having problems and being mismanaged for a while.

We've talked about Mastodon on here before and I think that that's still thriving, but

boy, I've got to tell you, I've seen a lot of people that I know and probably you too,

Jeff, have gotten on threads, probably because it is so easy just to use your Instagram account

to join threads.

I spelled it right?

Yeah.

And then they sold to Elon Musk.

And I was hoping maybe that would make things better.

And of course, it's only made things worse.

And so a lot of people say, I like the idea

of just scrolling through text message type things

from people that I'm interested in following,

Right.

but I want an alternative to Twitter.

And so people like me, I've been trying out Mastodon

and that's sort of nice.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And then there are other things out there like Blue Sky,

which is still a closed beta.

But this, I was amazed how quickly threads

took the world by storm.

Suddenly, tens of millions of people

Right.

Uh huh.

are signed up for the service.

And again, I guess there's no surprise

Right, right.

because Instagram is so popular

and face and Meta made it so easy

just to take your Instagram account

and move it right on over to threads

with all of your followers

and who you're following and stuff.

And so the on-ramp was very easy,

but even so I have to admit,

Right, right.

Yeah.

I was a little surprised

that you got so many users so quickly.

And they're even saying that in the future,

Right, yes.

they're promising that threads

is going to be interoperable with Mastodon

and stuff like that,

which makes me wonder if one of the things

that I like about Mastodon is I really like using

the Ivory app, which comes from the people

that used to make Tweetbot for Twitter.

And so I love using Ivory with Mastodon.

Beautiful.

That's true.

If threads becomes compatible with Mastodon,

does that mean that I can use the Ivory app with threads?

That would be great.

I mean, that would, you know, maybe if that sort of happened

Ooh, that's nice.

so that instead of years ago,

when I was using Tweetbot to use Twitter,

Right.

maybe in the future I'd be using something

[silence]

very similar to Tweetbot Ivory

and something very similar to Twitter threads,

maybe that'll be the big new thing for the future.

So it's a lot of potential.

And again, obviously there's a lot of interest

since so many people have signed up for it so quickly.

We'll see how much it works.

One other thing I'll mention is that,

although I enjoy using Mastodon for a lot of the reasons

that I enjoyed using Twitter,

the Mastodon for me at least,

it's like a lot of the techie people that I follow

are on Mastodon, but when it comes to things like,

Right, right, right.

you know, news sites, like my local newspaper

or more general interest sites,

Yeah.

I find them harder to find on Mastodon.

Whereas Threads, because of its mainstream appeal,

it's getting all sorts of companies and news and stuff

I know, and that's.

like that in it.

And so maybe it will be able to scratch that itch for me

that Twitter used to and nowadays

is no longer scratching.

So of course, it's being run by Facebook.

And people can say good, bad, or otherwise about Facebook,

and that's (laughs)

much like you can say good, bad, or otherwise

I know, I know.

about Elon Musk and Twitter and everything else.

But, but again, if you're comfortable enough with that to use Facebook and to use Instagram, here's another choice that at least for now looks like it's got some real potential.

I kind of feel like you got to dance with the devil

[BLANK_AUDIO]

that you know, right?

I mean, even John Gruber in here says like,

"Mastodon is inherently too confusing

"for mass market adoption."

[BLANK_AUDIO]

the things that you and I probably like about Mastodon

is the sense that there is no one company that oversees it.

Probably for the mass market,

That's the issue.

for the masses of folks and our precious family and friends

that are not nearly as nerdy and geeky as we are,

they're not gonna go try to find a Mastodon server.

I mean, it's even very easy, but that's the whole thing.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

They probably already have an Instagram account,

just like you said,

and so it's very easy for them to get onto the thread.

But anyway, I just I'm glad we just talked about I thought there's a great post from Gruber and yeah

Indeed.

We'll be watching that and I think iPhone JD is already you already have an account correct on

Yeah, so there. All right. Where are you at segment? This is a good

[BLANK_AUDIO]

We're yet.

Another week another air tag helping to put a doomed burglar behind bars. This is from I'm more calm

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I think this is overseas right in the United Kingdom. I'm not sure

In the United Kingdom, yeah, such a story that I mean,

Yeah, yeah

some woman said that somebody, he didn't, I don't know if you,

Yeah it's open. Uh-huh. Incredible. I'm gonna go ahead and do a quick little test. I'm gonna

I guess you would call it breaking into her house.

Apparently one of her back doors was unlocked.

And so the guy just sort of walks in the back of her house and

grabs her purse and walks out.

I'm like, goodness gracious, nobody wants that to happen.

But because her purse had her keys in it and

the keys had an air tag on them,

it was very easy to follow it to a hotel and the police were

able to sure enough and capture the guy and arrest him.

Things that can easily be stolen,

[PAUSE]

it just makes so much sense to put an air tag in there.

You can get one for 20, 25 bucks,

attach it to your keys or just stick it inside of the thing.

But we all know the things that a thief is

likely to want to grab a purse or a briefcase,

Right. Right.

being a perfect example.

there's really no reason not to just stick an air tag in there to protect yourself.

[PAUSE]

I did it. I mean, and by the way, I think it's over now, but Amazon had their prime days,

[silence]

And typically Amazon will sell the four pack of air tags for what less than $90, maybe,

Mm-hmm.

[silence]

Mm-hmm.

you know, 80 something like that, which is a fantastic deal.

[silence]

One of the times that that happened a couple of months ago, I got mine and sure enough,

I've got all four of them.

I got one in my wife's purse.

I've got one in my, in my roller bags and you know, you try to hide it.

You want to make sure it's not so obvious, you know, if you can, you know, put it somewhere.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, and in fact, I, you know, especially with over the travel over the last, you know,

[silence]

several couple of holidays, I've just seen travel blogs

talk about this ad nauseum on most.

It's like the best travel accessory

you can have with you now.

And it worked for you too.

I remember when you went overseas, Jeff,

Mm-hmm.

it's like, and for me, I remember I landed somewhere,

[silence]

I think it was New York maybe.

And we were all waiting for my bag and I'm like, okay,

well, how long are we gonna have to wait?

It had to come from the plane.

And I was tracking it coming down the terminal

Yep.

and I'm like, I know when they're gonna be here

Yep.

Don't do that, don't do that.

so I know when to crowd, the little conveyor belt.

Anyway, just in this story quickly, I thought it was funny.

Apparently the woman initially went

and confronted the burglar and said,

and told the burglar, "You've got my keys."

And he fumbled around, he found the keys,

gave them back to her, but then obviously

the police were able to follow up on it.

But don't do that, right?

We typically say, don't try to be the vigilante

[BLANK_AUDIO]

and go after it yourself.

But in this case, at least the story worked out good.

Well, speaking of being able to track things,

here is a great article that I have to admit,

[LAUGH]

I didn't have the four days yet to read through it, Jeff,

but I cannot wait.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

This might be my weekend reading here.

This was a great article that you linked to.

It's about a year and a half old

about how GPS, global positioning system works.

And I do wanna know about this.

Thank you for the link.

Yeah, I wish I could pronounce the person's name who wrote it, but it's Bartosz Czanszynowski.

Good enough.

Oh, goodness. I know I've butchered that and I apologize, but there is a link to it on iPhone

(laughing)

Sorry.

JD today. And it's a really nice article on the way GPS works. It's nice because obviously the

Yes.

Oh, it's so good.

author understands this, but starts by explaining the most basic parts of it, very simple terms.

And over the course of the article, it gets more and more complicated, but only through building

Yeah.

Really, really cool.

blocks so that as you follow along the article you understand it, but the words are only half

the story. What's really interesting is when I started reading the story, I saw some note at the

end that said you can disable animations if you want to preserve battery power. I'm like, what?

And sure enough, I read this article on my iPad and over the course of me reading it for, you know,

(laughing)

Oh really?

20, 30 minutes, it dramatically drained the battery on my iPad because this page has got hundreds and

Oh, okay.

(laughing)

There's a lot on here.

hundreds of animations that if you have them all run,

I love it.

I love it.

(laughing)

and that's fine.

I mean, I made it to the end of the article without my iPad

draining or something like that.

But it really did make a noticeable difference.

This is great.

But over time, you can play with them.

There's little sliders and stuff.

But that's nice is it helps you to understand it.

Right, right. Oh, this is fascinating. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure if this is,

So as the article describes, here's how GPS works.

Let's start with the basic concepts

and then get more sophisticated.

You can actually sort of play around with things

and move some sliders and say, OK, now I

see how this affects that.

So, you know, we've always known that GPS works with the satellites in the sky.

But if you want to have like a more sophisticated understanding of here is actually how it works,

and here is why it works so well, this is a great article for it.

But whether you understand how GPS works or not, you know, it's always interesting to sort of step

[BLANK_AUDIO]

back and marvel at what an incredible technology. I mean, the idea that things like your Apple Watch

Indeed.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

or your iPhone know where they are in the world at all times and all the different things you can do

because of that, whether it be maps or weather or whatever. It's true, you know, what an age we live

in today. It really is amazing. Yeah, because it's not as simple as a circle. Like I would have

It looks like the first half of the article, like you said,

is just using simple building blocks, and then the second half goes in.

goes in and I mean, there's like pictures of exactly how the

satellites, you know, revolve around the earth. I don't know.

I just I can't wait. Right, right. That's incredible. I

assumed it's a big circle. That's not, you know, things have to go in an elliptical. He explains

why you know the way that satellites work it actually has to work like this and all these

different things you know I just never thought about this before but it's you know oh it's

think I'm gonna sit my kids down like this is almost like a

educational yeah

full like college level, college level course in GPS. Okay, well,

in the know

Anyway, we'll include the link in the show notes for sure.

And thanks for linking to that.

In the know, my favorite tips, Jeff,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

are the ones that frankly I just hit upon by accident.

And it's just, I'm like, my jaw drops.

I'm like, I didn't know you could do that.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Here's the story.

I was reading an article in a web browser.

And as I'm normally prone to do,

I wanted to share the article with my wife.

So typically what I do is in the article,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

there's a little share box, right?

The little box with an arrow pointing straight out.

And I tap on the share box and I do this with you too,

if I wanna share a story with you or send it to you.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

And I simply just will text, you know,

send it as a text message.

And what's always nice about iMessages

is that it'll put a text message

with just a little tiny, like a,

[BLANK_AUDIO]

almost like a little blurb or an icon,

you know, a screenshot of the story.

And that's great.

I love doing that.

And typically sometimes, especially with my wife,

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I'm like, hey, check out this story,

but in the third paragraph, this quote is really great.

Something like that, right?

So that means I have to explain a whole lot

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about what's going on, about where to go

and read something on the page.

Well, the other day, I wanted to share this story

with my wife, and it just so happened

that I had highlighted the text in the browser, right?

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'Cause I can't remember, I was either gonna copy it

and then paste it somewhere,

but I just had the text highlighted,

and as the text was highlighted,

I then hit the share button and I tapped on the text message

(laughing)

(laughing)

to my wife.

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And instead of just the link there,

it had the link to the story and it had the text

as a quote that I had highlighted.

(laughing)

Incredible, like, I don't know, it's not that big of a deal.

(laughing)

Bye bye.

I get it, okay?

I'm a very simple guy and this just made me so happy.

But you know, so often I like want to show my wife

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like either one sentence or I wanna share with you to say,

here's a quote that I thought was really best.

You know, here's the best quote.

And now I know that I can just highlight the text,

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I hit the share button and I send a text message.

I tried doing this, I don't think it works the same way

with like sharing it via email.

I couldn't get it to work even if I shared it.

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I think I was trying to do something

if I wanted to share it to a different app,

but in text messages on the, in iMessages

is really where this works.

Is that you just simply are in a browser, for example,

[silence]

or even I guess in a document or so,

if you highlight the text and then hit the share button,

it will pull out that quote of the text

that you have highlighted.

And I just, I love that.

I don't think I've ever seen that

either mentioned anywhere by anybody,

even all of the iPhone hacks,

nor have I seen it mentioned by Apple.

The only place that I saw anybody mention this

was on a Reddit thread from a couple of years ago,

There you go. That's a nice little feature and very useful.

which I just like, hey, I found something that's really cool.

Oh good okay.

When I saw that you were going to talk about this,

it reminded me of a related feature which I find annoying.

I wanted to talk about how to turn it off.

This is something that came out last fall with iOS 16,

that when you share,

I'm not talking about in messages.

In messages, this little automatic preview that you're discussing,

Ah, yeah, yeah.

you can't disable that.

It is what it is, and it's usually nice because it

makes it a little bit easier to see

what you're going to see if you click on a link.

And in messages, I tend to be sharing text messages

with people that I know and trust,

like you or my wife, something like that.

But when it comes to emails,

we are always teaching people nowadays appropriately

True.

that you need to be careful about links in emails

Yep, that's true.

because we all know that there are bad guys out there

that send phishing emails with the PH

in the beginning of it,

Correct.

where they want to trick you into clicking a link.

And sometimes they will do it by making the link look like

it's your, for example, your bank website,

right. Correct. Like a yeah rich preview right right. It is pretty. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm gonna

but they'll change around some of the letters

or they'll swab them

so that your eye doesn't necessarily see it unless you're paying close attention.

With that in mind, there's a feature that came out last fall that if you take a URL,

a web address, and if you paste it into an e-mail using the mail app on the iPhone or

the iPad, it will automatically convert that to a little preview of what the site looks

like, which makes it look nice.

It's prettier, and so that's an advantage of it.

(laughing)

I'm always worried that the person on the other side might say,

Yeah, yeah.

"I don't know exactly what I'm clicking if I click on this."

They may say, "I'd actually prefer to actually know what I'm clicking."

Okay.

If you don't want to send that preview to somebody,

you just want it to be very clear what the link is,

you can convert it back to the old way of link.

The way that you do it is,

once you paste in your mail message,

then tap on the little preview that it creates in your mail message.

Just tap once, and at the very top right,

Oh.

Oh, nice.

it will create a little arrow that shows up there.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

and if you then tap on that arrow,

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

you will see that there's an option that is called convert to plain link.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

When you do that in your mail,

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

again, this is not the messages app,

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

in the mail app, it will then change that preview back to the HTTP,

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

colon, slash, slash, and all the address like that.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

That way when you send somebody something,

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

you're just sending them a plain old link,

Oh, nice.

which they can decide if they want to click on it or not click on it.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

Sometimes it actually is nice to send it with the link preview because it looks pretty.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

Sometimes you want to just have a plain link,

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

Oh, nice.

but now you have a choice.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

If you did not know,

Okay, okay.

because you're not going to see that arrow show up

Oh, nice.

Okay.

unless you click in the middle of it

Oh, nice.

and then look for that right arrow.

Okay.

If you don't know, look for it,

Oh, nice.

Okay.

you won't know how to change it back.

Oh, nice.

But now with this tip,

Okay.

this is how you convert it back to a plain text link.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

Oh, nice.

I have to admit, for me, Brett,

Okay.

Oh, nice.

ever since this feature came out last year,

Okay.

Oh, nice.

I more often convert it back to a plain URL than leave it.

Okay.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

Right.

Interesting.

Yeah, I think that works.

I think of one of our friends that we know, John Simic, he is constantly railing, he's

That tends to be the way that I'm more frequently wanting to share something as a plain URL.

a security expert, cyber security expert.

So I convert it back to plain text more often than I don't, but that's just me.

And he even says, if somebody sends you like a bitly link, right, or a URL shortened, a

That's always dangerous because you don't know what you're clicking.

shortened link, he's like, exactly what you're saying.

He's like, I'm going to send you a bitly link.

And he's like, I'm going to send you a bitly link.

And he's like, I'm going to send you a bitly link.

a shortened link.

He's like, exactly.

Yeah.

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He's like, I will never click on one of those.

And then it's much the same way.

I'm glad that you mentioned this because it is good.

You know, if I'm sending something to my wife

or if I see a link from you, I'm usually gonna trust it,

especially with, you know, an iMessages.

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But if it's somebody else that I don't know,

or if I'm trying to send it to maybe a client or somebody,

you're absolutely right.

This is a good way to just make sure that,

Always a good idea.

hey, you can trust this.

And if you don't wanna trust it,

you can at least see exactly where it's gonna go.

And you're right.

that's the only way you're gonna be able to tell

if it's a phishing link or not.

Because sometimes they just use some weird kind

of shortened URLs and there are times when I'm like,

I don't know if I trust that.

And then in that case, if I wanna go to my bank account,

I'll just separately outside of that, without clicking that,

Always a good idea.

I go into a browser or go to my computer

Indeed.

and I will go to it individually and link,

or maybe even make a phone call.

So that's an excellent little secure tip on there as well.

Woo, okay, a lot of stuff,

but we have some things to catch up on,

which is good.

Great to see you again, Jeff,

Thanks, Brett. Bye-bye, everybody.

and we'll talk to you next week.

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