109: iLabor Day, Dubious App Data, and “Feels Like” Weather

Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/BGNYxdExEZI

Consider SaneBox for your insane inbox: www.sanebox.com/inthenews

In the News blog post for August 11, 2023:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2023/08/in-the-news688.html

• Today’s Sponsor: SaneBox! www.sanebox.com/inthenews
• iLabor Day
• Dubious App Data
• Where Have We Seen That Actor Before?
• “Feels Like” Weather
• Top 5 iOS 17 Top Features from Marques Brownlee / MKBHD
• Where Y’at? Segment - Lacrosse Luggage
• Try out SaneBox for FREE! www.sanebox.com/inthenews 
• Brett’s iTip: Be Aware of “Offload Unused Apps”
• Jeff’s iTip: Don’t Fear the Shortcuts App!

John Gruber | Daring Fireball: What’s the Deal With Sensor Tower?

Jason Snell | Six Colors: Callsheet Provides a Clearn Alternative to IMDB

Stephen Hackett | 512 Pixels: According to Foreca’s Weather Data, Everyone in Memphis is Dead

Marques Brownlee | MKBHD: iOS 17 Hands-On: Top 5 Features!

Filipe Espósito | 9to5Mac: Family rescued from wildfires in Maui thanks to iPhone’s Emergency SOS via Satellite

Julia Buckley | CNN Travel: The airline said her bag was lost, but her tracker said otherwise. So she flew to get it

Jeff Richardson | iPhone JD: In trouble -- an easy and potentially life-saving shortcut

Brett’s iTip: Be aware of “Offload Unused Apps” which was introduced in iOS 11 to conserve space on your iPhone by “off-loadnig” apps you haven’t used in a while. All your documents and data are saved, but the app is “off-loaded” until you tap it to re-download it. You can toggle off this feature by going to Settings - App Store - and toggling off “Offload Unused Apps.”

Jeff’s iTip: Don’t Fear the Shortcuts App! You can visit Apple’s Shortcuts User Guide to find out more about this powerful option built into your iPhone and iPad, including many free Shortcuts that you can enable from Apple.

Thank you to Sanebox for sponsoring today’s episode! Visit www.sandbox.com/inthenews to find out more. 

Transcript

Welcome to in the news for August 11th, 2023.

I'm Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

And I'm Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Hey, Brett.

Good morning, Jeff.

We just want to let everybody know we are thrilled to announce that

today's episode is sponsored by SaneBox.

You can find out a little more information by going to

SaneBox.com/inthenews.

You'll hear a little bit more about that later on, but Jeff,

We are coming up to a holiday, at least here in the United States, called Labor Day.

And, uh, you know, some people might think about that as a very auspicious,

you know, uh, uh, auspicious kind of a holiday, but we like to think of it as,

hmm, maybe there's a new iPhone on the horizon.

It's a holiday for us too.

Yeah.

It's sort of funny when you look back at, you know, the last gosh, 10 years or so

when Apple announces new iPhones, it is very consistent.

I mean, it's either that Labor Day week or the week afterwards, just about always.

Except for 2020, when Apple announced that everything was pushed back because of COVID

slowdowns and stuff like that. But so, you know, I, I feel quite certain that a new iPhone is coming

out about a month from right now, which is exciting. You know, I usually get a new iPhone

every year and it's I will tell you though, I have a little nervousness about this year, Brett.

I haven't announced this to anyone yet, but I'll just confide in you. You can be, this is,

this is all privileged therapy client just between you and me. I have, I have always purchased. I

I love my iPhone in the current size.

I have never purchased one of like the plus or the max or whatever.

The max.

Right.

Have you ever owned one of the really big ones?

Or if you always had that,

I did one time, if you remember just real quick, you know, David Sparks had one

and he went back to the regular size and I followed his, his trajectory.

Okay.

Well, they're one of the rumors and they're just rumors is that Apple is going to

improve the camera on the next iPhone by having a periscope, would that be the right

word for it?

So, so that the lens, because there's a limit to how far out the lens

can come out from the phone, you would sort of have a 90 degree angle.

And so the go down.

And so the rumor is maybe Apple will have the large max version of the iPhone

15 pro that will have like the bit like really the best possible camera.

And there've been times in the past when the max version has had a better

camera for one reason or the other.

But if the camera is so much better on the max, I'm going to be

really tempted to get it.

But the problem is, is that I don't know.

I mean, is it going to be too big?

I don't know.

So it's a silly problem to worry about.

Apple hasn't announced anything, but I've been thinking about this ever since I've been

seeing these rumors.

And so it's, it's going to be, you know, if Apple does what at least some rumors are predicting,

and there's a real advantage to getting a max model, I might get it.

And then I'm not sure if I'm going to regret it.

So we'll see.

But otherwise I'm excited about the new iPhone coming out.

So you're making me think I did the max for a little bit, Jeff, and I traded it back in.

It was just, it was, it was, I almost think of it as today.

like the regular size iPhone pro 14 pro is what I, is what I use.

That's what we're talking about.

Like the base model, the base size, if you will.

But I feel like the max was almost pushing me over the line of, I have

to have a fanny pack at that point.

Like it wouldn't fit in my pocket all the way nicely.

Like I tried both back hip pockets.

I try, certainly was like, I had a suit coat on, so I put it in my, like

my chest pocket and I felt like I was like walking sideways for the whole time.

I loved the big screen.

obviously don't get me wrong.

And this periscope camera is really interesting

because it sounds like it's going to be like on the edge

and it's going to go the length of the camera

of the phone or something.

I can't even, I can't even fathom that right now,

but yeah, you're making me rethink it.

I don't know.

I might, a fanny pack might be in my near future.

That's the case.

- We'll probably be talking about this again.

- Just for folks to know,

while we're talking about this in the post today,

Jeff did a great job of, you've like what,

going all the way back to 2012.

Is that when I see it every year when these new phones have been released,

Jeff will post on iPhone JD.

You can see September 8, 2022.

Why lawyers will like the iPhone 14, September 15, 2021.

Why lawyers will like the iPhone 13.

You had to skip 2020 because everybody skipped 2020.

Right.

And then we went to 2019, September 11th, 2019, when they released the iPhone 11.

Anyway, if you're interested in looking at this, you can go to a, the, in the

news post today at iPhone JD and Jeff does a great job of just breaking down

each year of exactly, and we should end Brett by saying that the rumor from

Mark Gurman and he tends to be pretty good with his rumors is that he says

it's going to be September 12th.

So that would be the week after labor day.

Um, uh, which would be the Tuesday after labor day.

So, you know, if you're going to put your money somewhere, I might as well

put it on September 12th for now, but, um, you know, but who knows anything's

possible for getting excited.

I'm so excited.

Like I do, I, I actually, I think I'm on a two year plan right now with my current

iPhone 14, but Jeff, I've already been scheming like, okay, how could I go and

like pay that off so that I can try that idea.

Like I'm already on the scheming side of it because I'm already getting excited

just from some of the rumors that we've looked at speaking of rumors.

Well, maybe this isn't that good.

Maybe not so much in the, in the, in the comical sense of a rumor per se, but

You know, there's always these companies that say,

hey, we've got a million downloads of an app

or you should try this.

Like, look how many times that our app has been downloaded.

And, you know, I thought you did a good job

of pointing to John Gruber's article today

and be like, you know, no one really knows

how many downloads of an app, except Apple, right?

Is that an accurate way to put it?

- And it's not just, it's not like

an individual app developer.

I mean, they know how popular their app is,

what you see is these companies that say, these are the top 10 apps. And it's like, okay, so unless

you went individually to those 10 people, but then you also have to go to every single other

developer to get their downloads. There's no way you would actually know who are the top apps,

across the board is an aggregate. And yet these companies release the data and it's reported on

by the mainstream news as if it's gospel. And so he dug deep into one of these companies and the

The way that they came up with their numbers is really sort of interesting.

They have apps on the app store that they encourage people to buy by making them

free.

And they do things like one of them is like some Safari plugin that supposedly

tells you if you've been using the web too much and you should take a break.

But in the process of doing so, it's sort of snoops and spies on everything you're

doing on the web.

And in theory, to a certain degree, what other apps you're using.

And because the way that the, the iPhone is sandbox, there's limits to how much an

app could even do, but they do some of it.

Or another thing that they'll have is it'll be like a free VPN software.

And you know, VPN gives you a private, you know, wifi.

But once, once all of your internet data goes through them, they could then peek

at that data and say, okay, right now it looks like they're using Facebook right

now, it looks like they're using, you know, LinkedIn or whatever else.

And so then they sort of spy on you.

Um, and then they aggregate that and they come up with their predictions.

But the thing is, look, there's two aspects here.

But first of all, these apps themselves are, you know, a little slimy in terms of the privacy

violations.

But I put that to the side because like, heck, if someone's going to, and the problem is

people using them may not understand that, but let's just assume that they do.

Even if they do understand that these companies are extrapolating from just that small subset

of all users, the people who are going to download a free VPN app, as opposed to a paid

one from a more reputable company, or as opposed to not using a VPN app in the first place,

is probably what 99% of iPhone users do. And so the, the, the sample size is so small and the

slice of the population is people that are just trying to get these free apps and trying to do

things. You know, I don't even know that that's a representative sample, even if it was, you know,

even if the, even if the sample size, wasn't the issue, just the nature of who's in that sample.

So for all of these reasons, you, when you see companies like what's the one here is called

sensor tower, but there's others, you know, when you see them reporting on, you know,

this is the number one app or you know that this was the top thing you know you should really i

mean it's not that they're completely pulling it out of thin air but the statistical soundness

of the conclusions are very suspect which is why when you let into this brett you said you know

this is sort of like rumor it is sort of like rumor you know when people have rumors right

maybe they heard somebody as they were walking out of the building mentioned something on the

subway and someone saying that that's the you know it's that sort of thing you know maybe there's some

some slick of knowledge and sometimes it's true.

But you should look at these things, you know, very, very suspect.

Maybe one of the reasons something like this is necessary,

I feel like it's almost like they're grasping a little bit. Right.

Because I remember back several years ago, Jeff, that we would

we would constantly be getting app referrals, right?

Or we would say, hey, have you looked at this app?

Like there's an app for that.

Like if I felt like the app excitement has maybe died off a little bit.

I mean, that could just be my own kind of personal experience, but, you know, I

felt like it's very rare that we see a really good new apps and that's sort of a.

I mean, some of those comments that I'm saying there, because I think it

really is hard to find newer apps.

It just feels like that even you and I over the past couple of years or so, you

know, when we see an app that we really like, it's kind of rare, well, one that

that you also pointed to today, I think falls into that latter category.

Like we're really excited about a new app called call sheet.

And I think either you said this or Jason Snell said this.

And one of the articles that you linked to, it really solves that.

Where have we seen him act before?

Like, where have we seen that actor before?

A lot of times we go to the internet movie database, IMDB, which has been

around for years and years and years.

But this little app called call sheet is, uh, I think I'm gonna

have to download it and try it.

It looks really good.

It's almost like a simplified internet movie database app,

but the execution looks really good here.

- And that's the key.

The IMDB app, I use it all the time

for exactly what you said.

I'm watching a TV show, an actor comes on,

I wanna see what his name is and see what else.

And it's like, oh yeah, I know him

because he was in this show I watched 10 years ago,

whatever. - Right, right.

- But the IMDB app is such a pain.

I mean, it's always, it's ads and it's pop-ups

and it's just so much nonsense.

Whereas this app, CallSheet, it's a very clean interface.

There's no ads, there's no pop-up,

there's nothing obnoxious about it.

I mean, it's just pleasant to use,

not to mention faster to use as a result.

And so just for that reason alone, it's good.

Now, it uses a different,

most of it uses a different database,

something called, that I had never heard of before,

called the Movie Database,

which I guess is a competitor and alternative

to the Internet Movie Database.

But, and so far I've only played around

with the app a little bit,

but it looks perfectly accurate to me

and the things that I've done.

We'll see if, you know, maybe it's missing something over time, but, um, but it looks

like it's about the same.

So, you know, why use a clunky interface when you, well, I guess the answer is because it's

free.

Um, but you can pay just a tiny bit of money.

I mean, this is only nine bucks a year or a dollar a month and you can get a very clean

interface and it's not just the nice interface.

It's got some cool features too.

I think that this one has hilarious, the feature of, um, spoiler prevention, because you can

tell the app don't show me character name.

many how many episodes there is. And this is not my example. I heard this in another podcast this

week. I think it was the connected podcast, but somebody told me that many years after the show

had come out, he was watching, um, oh, uh, I'm blanking out. It was the, uh, the Netflix show

with Frank Underwood, um, was, uh, the, uh, you know, that was what it was. It was one of the big

streaming successes, but he was watching one of the early seasons where the character was still

the speaker of the house and he looks it up on IMDB and it's lists the character as, you know,

the president. He's like, Oh gosh, I mean, I, I didn't want to know that he was going to be the

president in season three. And so that's the sort of spoilers that you can get from, uh, from,

you know, IMDB. And I've had that happen before too, where you'll see somebody and it'll be like,

Oh, this person is only one episode of the show. It was like, Oh, well, thanks for telling me he's

going to die in this episode or something, you know, those sorts of things. So you can turn

those things on or off if you don't want to have spoilers, which I think is really, really

interesting and funny, but it just looks like a nice clean interface. And this is a great app.

I mean, this is a perfect example of what I love about an app. Find something that's, you know,

we know people enjoy using, but just come up with a better way to do it, a better, a better mouse

trap. And, you know, when you led into this segment, Brett, you were talking about how,

you know, a lot of people aren't, you know, finding these, these types of apps as much anymore.

I saw, I don't know if this is, if this is realistic, but just to underscore

the issue that you're discussing, I saw a developer post the other day on,

I think it was a mastodon that he wishes that Apple could do something like his idea was everybody

that has the Apple one bundle. So you're paying an Apple like 30 bucks a month. You know, why not

give them a few dollars a month to spend quote unquote on the app store. And the reason for that

is he says so many people are averse, you know, people think nothing of, you know, going to

Starbucks and spending six bucks on a coffee. But when they look at an app like this one that costs

$9 a year, they're like, Oh God, I couldn't possibly think of spending that money. It's just,

You know, it's not that much money, really, if you're going to get some enjoyment out of it.

And he's like, why not give people a little bit of credit, just so that, you know, get them to get

used to buying some apps. I don't know if that's the right solution or not. But it does point to

an issue that I know many ad developers have is, you know, they want to put time and money into

developing an app, but there's got to be a return for it, they need to be paid for their work,

which means you got to pay for apps, you don't have to pay a lot for apps doesn't mean the app

has to be, you know, $200 or something, right. But so it's an interesting issue that you point

out that people, you know, discoverability and all that sort of stuff.

House of cards.

House of cards.

Of course, because I know that there are listeners screaming at, you know,

their stereo right now, like, how can you not remember that house of cards?

Well, again, which is why I like, like in this review by Jason Snell, it's not very long.

It's actually his friend, right?

Casey Liss is the developer.

And a lot of people know Casey Liss.

Yeah, he's on the Accidental Tech podcast.

He's very well known.

Right.

And that's his advantage.

So I mean, he's well known by a lot of people.

He has his own podcast.

And so he's going to get the publicity for his new app that if, you know, some Joe Schmo

in the street comes up with a new app, no one, it might be just crickets in the wind.

Nobody might hear about it.

I would also just like to thank Jason Snell for the, the screenshots that includes here

is from the actor, Mark Singer.

I remember watching beastmaster two through the portal of time.

And this was 1991, but I remember Mark Singer

from the original V miniseries in 1983.

- I loved that show in the 80s.

- Me too.

- I loved that show.

- Me too.

- Oh my goodness, wow.

- I remember we would race home on our bicycles,

I think from school, and we were like,

we gotta go see like, and I remember my friend had,

I think he had a V flag hanging in his room.

So anyway, thank you, Jason Snell, again, for that.

Speaking of another app that we know we have liked

talked about several times is carrot weather.

Now I know that you subscribe to carrot weather.

You said as much today in your, uh, in your post, um, I've dabbled in it a little

bit, but I just haven't found the need, you know, to your point, it's like, this

would be one of the apps that I know that I would pay for, like I've paid for flighty.

Like this would be a subscription app, similar to what we were just talking

about with call sheet that like it's worthwhile paying for, it's just, I'm

not that much of a weather hound.

So I haven't, but this would be one that I would definitely, you know, like

Another one would be a fantastic Cal for example, right?

Well, anyway, you link to a funny story

about Carrot Weather today, not the app itself,

but where the app is getting its weather data from.

It was a little scary, the headline, but kind of funny too.

- Yeah, according to the weather data,

everyone in Memphis is dead.

You know, Carrot Weather,

it's one of the things that makes it so powerful

is you can choose where do I want to get my data,

my weather data from?

You can get it directly from Apple,

because of course Apple years ago bought Dark Sky,

But you can also use Foreca or you can use some of these other ones.

I think there's like six or eight AccuWeather, you know, you can choose

what source you want because they're all a little different.

And I had been using Foreca for a while because I had heard good things about it.

And it was good results on daily temperature.

But I noticed the summer when it got started to get super hot in New Orleans

that, you know, the temperature might be in the nineties and believe me, it felt

hot, but he would say things that like my feels like temperature was like one 20.

And I'm like, well, you know, it's hot, but it doesn't quite feel like one 20,

know, and, uh, and he noticed some similar things in Memphis.

And so, uh, I hadn't thought much about it.

I thought maybe it was just like a fluke of my iPhone, but when I saw him put it, I'm like,

okay, well, whatever algorithm that they're using to do the feels like temperature,

a little off, or at least doesn't, you know, contemplate the hot weather we have in the

South of the United States.

And so I switched over to the Apple weather and so far it's been, it's been, you know,

much more, believe me, it's still hot.

Don't get me wrong, but the feels like temperatures are a little bit more accurate.

Um, but it's, it is sort of a good reminder that, you know, there's different sources of this data.

Um, even in this case, the exact same app can show you different numbers because of different

sources that you check. And so it's just a good reminder that if, if you do care about something

like weather data, um, consider the source. The, uh, Steven on his post here has three

different screenshots. One is from, uh, AccuWeather where the temperature is 96,

but it feels like one 15 when he switched to the Apple weather, the temperature was 97,

but it feels like 108 when he has a screenshot from Foreca.

The temperature is 96, but it feels like 138 degrees.

I always feel like, do we know where they're putting these sensors, right?

For the, like you said, it might be just an algorithm kind of putting things together,

but it's like, is there a thermometer, like sitting on top of a blazing, you know,

in the sun on top of an industrial air conditioning unit?

Is that where like, just a little crazy on there, but good, good app.

Nonetheless, carrot weather, just maybe change your source.

I think when you pay for this, Jeff, like when it's the free version of carrot, whether there's

only one source that's right, pick, select from. And then I, I want to say there may be six or seven

different sources that when you pay, it opens up those different sources and you can flip them

back and forth. Exactly. Exactly. We have talked many times already about iOS 17, and that should

be coming pretty soon as well. Right. It sort of does kind of parallel when the updated phone

is released. Um, is, is it before or after? Sometimes I want to say it's before the phone

comes out. Am I correct in that Jeff? So here's what I expect. So we're going to have the new

iPhone announcement in that first or second week of September. And then they're going to probably

say that the iPhones are going to be available to buy in, you know, usually about like two weeks or

something like that. And so let's just say like, you know, the third or fourth week of September,

you could actually buy a new iPhone and about a week before you can buy a new iPhone. That is

often when Apple drops iOS 17. And the reason I know that is because often in years I will,

you know, one of the last things that we'll do with my old phone, to quote us to speak with my

soon to be old phone is update the operating system, have a couple of days to play with the

new operating system and then see what that same brand new operating system looks on the new phone

with the new hardware, with all the new bells and whistles. So, so that's what I expect here.

So, but like you said, I really think we are about a month, maybe tiny bit more than a month away

from everybody getting iOS 17,

not just the people that are running the beta.

- Well, thankfully those people

that have been running the beta are many, many, many of them

including one of our favorite, one of everyone's favorites

really technology reviewers on YouTube, Marques Brownlee

otherwise known as MKBHD.

And you linked to his video today

which I thought he did a fantastic job as he always does

of breaking down like the top five features

that you're gonna see in iOS 17.

you know, a lot of people go into a lot more detail,

but Marques is always so good

at just kind of practically bringing out

what's kind of, you know, highlighting the practical aspects.

One of the main things in this video quickly, Jeff,

that I thought was interesting,

we've talked about like the name drop aspect.

We talked about the check-in mode, you know,

from other people.

What he said, Marques said,

is a lot of these newer features coming in iOS 17

really rely on someone else,

either in your family or a friend,

having an iPhone as well,

and having it updated to iOS 17.

I just hadn't thought about it in that aspect, right?

Because I can't name drop with somebody

that doesn't have iOS 17.

I can't like do that,

take advantage of that AirDrop compatibility.

I can't take advantage of, you know,

that check-in capability.

Like if I wanted my daughter to use it,

we all have to be updated to iOS 17.

And I just thought that was kind of neat.

You know, Marques is really good about, you know,

highlighting something like that

from the idea of most people really hadn't thought

about that, but it's a little bit

of a lock in there from Apple.

And I embrace it because we're already

on the other Apple family really,

but you know, just something to be, to think of.

It's like a lot of these new features

you may not be able to take advantage of

unless your other people that you're sharing information

with also has an iPhone and they have upgraded to iOS 17.

- Yeah, that's especially true once you upgrade, you know

if you're the sort of person that's listening

to this podcast, of course, you're more interested

in taking advantage of technology.

So you might update right away.

I mean, the thing is most iPhone users

do update the operating system fairly quickly.

Apple sometimes share those statistics about,

our new OS has been out for only a month or six weeks

and already 95% of people have upgraded.

So everyone is gonna get there pretty soon.

Apple will eventually,

for people that don't do the 0.0 update,

when Apple has the 0.1 update,

they traditionally include the new emoji in there.

And that will usually get the people

that haven't upgraded yet to upgrade

because they don't want their friends

sending them text messages with emoji

that they can't see.

So it's a good little carrot to get people to upgrade.

But that's true.

By the way, the name drop feature

that you were talking about,

that's the one if I remember correctly,

where you can have like a sort of a card of,

here's my personal information.

Here's what it should look like if I call you.

This is the picture I want on the screen.

And you can choose which information about yourself

you want to share with people.

And that's also, you can put two phones together

and it will share contact cards and stuff like that.

So yeah, this is a nice video.

The production quality on Marques' videos

is always amazing. - Of course.

- But I also think that the curation value here is good too

because there are countless new features in iOS 17

and the five that he picked are all cool little things.

- Yeah, on that name drop, by the way,

I was telling my wife,

who doesn't follow this anywhere near as closely as I do,

but she's like, "Okay, so what's the big deal about iOS 17?"

And, you know, I was trying to like go through and I mentioned the name drop

and she's like, well, I don't want that.

Like, I don't want people like just getting my contact card.

And Marquez in this video, to your point, Jeff does a good job of saying

you customize exactly the kind of information that you want them to have.

Marquez even says you can share.

Do you want your picture shared?

Do you want your phone number shared?

Do you want your address shared?

Do you want a fake phone number shared?

That's okay.

You can create your cards.

And then when you do that name drop

and that animation is brilliant.

I almost feel like, is this gonna be like a party trick

that people are gonna try a couple of times

and then never do use it again?

I don't know.

But when you basically bump two phones together,

you can almost like the screen almost like goes

into liquid form and it's just really cool.

So if you wanna see that right now,

Marques is one of the best videos on this

to check out iOS 17.

And we'll be talking about that in the following weeks,

I'm sure.

- We will.

Well, let's talk about where you're at.

- Where you're at.

- Couple of, one is more of a tragic story.

The other one's kind of a fun story,

but let's go on the tragic side,

because obviously our thoughts and prayers are going out

to all of the people that are being affected

in Maui right now.

- Oh my God, bro, this is so horrible.

- From the crazy fires.

Just the pictures and everything going on there

is very, very, very sad.

However, one story that you linked to today,

Apparently it sounded like there was a group

of maybe four or five teenagers that were in a van

trying to get out of the city if somehow,

and then all of a sudden they found themselves

literally surrounded, engulfed in flames, it sounds like.

They didn't have cellular capabilities because,

my goodness, it looked like they were

in a fairly populated area, but who knows?

I mean, the wildfires-- - Yeah, everything

were shut down, yeah. - Everything was shut down,

but they needed help, they couldn't get out.

And so one of the people in the van

apparently had an iPhone 14 pro that had access to the emergency S.O.S. via satellite.

And that's how they were able to be rescued.

Yeah.

For me, the thing that just makes this story hit my gut is not what you described is as

harrowing as it is.

But when you look at the post that somebody put on the service formerly known as Twitter,

they have a series of screenshots of the actual back and forth conversation between them and

the emergency services.

And when you read through it, gosh, I mean, I was on the edge of my chair.

It's like, you're there.

I know.

I remember the way that this service works is because it's when you send data to the

satellite, it just occurs in little bursts.

And so if you have the ability to interact with your iPhone to use this feature, it will

sort of interview with some questions like what's the nature of the emergency, what can

you say?

And then after it gets those answers to a few questions, it sends them in the burst

to the satellite.

So that's what you sort of see here is they're sending this, but they're talking, you know,

visibility is zero.

We're trying to move around the road.

get to the ocean, the car is so hot. We can't, and you can see the emergency services getting

back in touch with them and their responses. And then at the very end, they finally get to

the point where they say, you know, we're here, we're getting rescued at an emergency.

Put your hazards on.

They're like, put your hazards on.

Yeah. Put your hazards on because they're close by and they were rescued in about 30 minutes. But

you read through this. It's like a mini, it's like a mini movie. I mean, it's just, Oh, except

that it's real life. So thank goodness these people were saved. And again, so many people,

the loss of property, the loss of life.

You know, I've lived through disasters before

in New Orleans with hurricanes, but I don't know.

Rising water is scary, but fire around you,

ho, I mean, that's just, ugh.

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, from that tragic story, with a fairly happy ending,

at least for them, we can go to lost lacrosse equipment.

So we see this time and time again,

and I still don't get tired of it, Jeff.

I'm so glad that you linked to these still.

Um, this was, it sounded like a daughter, uh, or a, a mother and her

daughter were flying because the daughter was involved in a lacrosse

tournament of some kind.

Uh, I can't remember where they were going.

Maybe, you know, the story a little bit, but anyway, United, um, lost

their lacrosse, the equipment that she needed to play in this tournament.

And the mother kept trying to text or tweet out to you or X out to United

and say, listen, that, that equipment it's right there.

And it's like going around and around and around.

Some people said, well, you have no idea.

Some people said, well, that's not my job.

I can't go look for it.

So she ended up buying her own flight.

I think using her own miles on United to go back to Chicago, to go to the

place where her luggage was and try to convince somebody like this is where

it's located, um, crazy stuff.

In fact, in this story, they didn't even go to Chicago.

I think they went from like Baltimore to California or something like that.

Oh yeah.

The original flight.

Okay.

What happened was, and she only afterwards was able to reconstruct this, but apparently

somebody put the wrong luggage tag on her luggage.

So instead of putting the tag on her luggage for it to go back to her home, they put the

tag for it to go to Chicago O'Hare.

But of course the computer systems at United, as simplistic as they are, they certainly

can't capture something like that because they were associating that luggage with a

different person.

But so you feel for this person because she's calling, she's texting, no one's answering,

they're saying things.

You know, can you just put me through to somebody at the O'Hare baggage claim?

Cause they, cause the bags right there and they're like, nope, we can't do that.

There's no one there to talk to you.

You know, there's nothing you could do.

Um, and so when she finally decided to take the initiative, take a day off of work,

buy a ticket to Chicago using air miles, you have to pay for it, fly to Chicago.

As soon as she gets to that baggage claim, she had her bag in 30 seconds,

Brett, 30 seconds, 30 seconds.

She knew exactly where it was.

It was right there.

It's just, nobody could help her to get her the bag.

And as she described, this wasn't a case where she could just, you know, write it off and

say, okay, pay me money for it because she needed this specific equipment for her daughter.

And even if you bought something new, it wouldn't have been, you know, it wouldn't have been

broken in for her daughter.

So it's like, I really want this specific stuff.

I want my stuff back, which we can all understand.

And I think at the end of the day, after all of this, and perhaps only because it was advertised

on CNN and started, or the story was told on CNN, she eventually got United to refund

to her the miles that she had used to fly to Chicago.

I mean, some solace, the small sauce that is.

Um, but again, unless you have that 20, $25 air tag in your luggage, you don't

even have the option to know where your luggage is to have the possibility of

going to get it.

So, um, thank goodness she was smart enough to do that.

And again, if, if, if folks now, you know, who travel don't and who check

bags don't understand the value of an air tag, I don't know what more to say.

Stories like this, you know, it's the best, the best marketing Apple could have.

You know,

this is crazy.

Yeah.

Uh, you're not it.

I feel like United, you need to do better, like train your people, make

sure that they know about this, but also good on you for depositing

her 30,000 miles back into her account.

Uh, last one in this, in this segment, Jeff, where your son at?

Uh, this was a great post you had this past week from none other than your

teenage son, which I thought was brilliant.

So proud of him.

We're so proud.

He says, he told me and my wife, he's like, I'm going to run a test.

And so it was like, okay.

And so he, he just, he touches something in his iPhone and I get this text message from

him saying in trouble.

And then here's where I am.

And it had both the street address and it had like a map that I could tap on and go

to the maps app and it had the longitude and latitude.

And I was like, wow, that's actually pretty cool.

So he's like, if for some reason I ever find, because you know, he's driving now, he's got

his own car.

If he ever finds himself just in a truly bad situation, maybe even one that somebody is,

you know, who knows trying to attack him and he can't even say anything out loud, he could

just press this one button on his phone.

Um, and it will send this text message to me and my wife and just

let us know exactly where he is.

And it will at least alert us.

So, and again, I could always, um, we, we use find my within our family.

So if I wanted to reach out and find out where he's located or vice versa, him,

me, we can already do that, but I wouldn't know that he's in trouble.

And so this is a great way of, you know, him just, you know, reaching out to us.

The, what, what I love about this though, is when, uh, he was talking

about it later at the dinner table, because I put this post up and a

of people posted comments and some people sent me emails separately about it. I was sharing with my

son, the feedback on his app and that people had enjoyed it. And as we're all talking about it,

my daughter, who's a sophomore, about to be a sophomore in high school, she looked at him,

but she's like, you made a program? Like it was as if like you performed brain surgery.

It was that sort of a, because I don't think she understood, you know, that, you know,

it's not that hard to put together a shortcut like this. And so I thought it was really cool

that he put together something that again, you always hope that you're never going to need to

use this. Um, but in case you do, you know, that this would be something to let your loved ones

know where you are. That was my first thought on here is like, wait a minute, I've got to find my,

I use that, you know, several times a week to basically just, okay, is my daughter coming home?

You know, where is she? Cause in a similar way, she's driving as well, but just having this as

like an additional comfort button, if you will. Right. I mean, just be, I mean, almost like a

like a panic button, but I kind of hate to use that term.

But I just feel like I'm telling my daughter about this.

Like I want her to create this.

Like your son should create this

and sell it as a new app, Jeff, I'm just saying.

But this is really cool.

And like you said, it is the shortcuts

and you detail it out exactly here.

I think how they can create it.

And even somebody, as you mentioned

in your comment to your post today was like,

thank you, I've never used shortcuts

because we find that quite a bit, right?

People haven't really delved into shortcuts,

including myself, not very much,

but they're like, this is a good impetus.

Like I might make sure that I've got this

on my family's phone.

So thank you.

And thank you, Little Richardson.

That was fantastic to your son for doing that.

That's great.

All right, well, let's quickly talk about SaneBox

since they are our sponsors today

and we are thrilled to have them.

You can find out more by going to sanebox.com/inthenews,

just all one word.

We talked a little bit about this last week

about how to set it up.

You can go and get a free trial.

In fact, you can get a free 14 day trial

if you go to sanebox.com/inthenews.

And then if you decide to pay for a few of the features,

we'll talk about that probably maybe next week,

which features that you might wanna sign up for,

then because you signed up through that URL,

you get a $25 credit toward a subscription.

So it's like, it's a win-win on all of the aspects.

I gotta tell you, Jeff,

I wasn't a big SaneBox user

until maybe just a few weeks ago.

But one of the highlights that I will share

that I have truly enjoyed is I set up SaneBox

to apply to my personal email account

that I've had for probably 23, 24, five years at this point.

And so it's basically a catch-all

for lots and lots and lots of email, right Jeff?

Over the years, because I've placed orders,

I signed up for their newsletter,

or I signed up for, ooh, there's an interesting new blog,

I want to sign up for their newsletter.

And over the years I have found, or I guess I didn't realize it.

I'll put it that way.

I didn't realize how many newsletters and emails that I get.

And I don't want to delete them necessarily because I might want to read them.

Like a few of them.

I'm still very interested in and others.

I just keep on in case they have like a, you know, a special sale or something

like that, I want to get notified for it.

But once I've signed up for SaneBox and it looks at my emails coming in, it

look to just at the subject line there,

and it recognizes where the domains

or where it's coming from.

SaneBox automatically set up an @SaneNews folder.

And we say @ because that means it's a little @ symbol

and that usually means that your folder now

goes to the top of your inbox list, right?

For your subfolders.

And so @SaneNews means that now,

those newsletters that come in every single day

immediately get shunted over to that @SaneNews folder.

doesn't delete them, doesn't get rid of them.

It just puts them, parks them there.

So that now when I go to my inbox, Jeff,

it is so refreshing, I gotta tell you,

that I just see the emails

that I need to perform some action on, right?

- Exactly.

- It's like a family member has emailed me

or somebody has reached out to me,

a friend or something like that.

It's like all the newsletters are still there.

I can go and look at them when I need them,

but I'm not ready for them yet.

And I didn't realize how much time

that I spent previously, Jeff,

delete, like going through and filtering out and deleting or shunting over all

of those newsletter messages in between looking for the important messages.

That makes sense.

So for me, that at sane news folder, that's one of the features that you

can get when you sign up for sandbox.

It's I, I feel like now it's not a stress level to go and look at my mailbox,

because I know that it's just going to be the messages that I need to

take some kind of an action on.

And then that same news folder is parked over there

and I can go to it and maybe like once a day now,

I'll just go through and say,

oh yeah, well that's interesting.

Or that's a new sale on that place

and I can get rid of them all as well.

So that's one of my favorite features so far

in using SaneBox.

- Yeah, SaneNews is one of my favorite features

of SaneBox as well, because during the day

when I'm looking at my email, I just wanna be quick.

I just wanna look, see if there's something important

to deal with.

I use this for my iPhone JD email.

If there's something I need to deal with,

I'll deal with it.

But I don't want to be distracted by all these newsletters at night when I'm sitting on a

couch just sort of catching up on the news for the day.

That's exactly when I want to see my newsletters, read through them, click on link, decide I

don't care about this one.

But it's like, even though I'm doing two different things with email, there are two different

modes that I want to be in and just allowing myself to be quick and efficient.

I love another folder that they can set up by default that I love is called @saneblackhole.

And the way that this one works is if you get a message from somebody that you don't

I mean, I would never do this for a real person, but it's usually like these businesses that no

matter what I do to try to get off of their emails, you know, they still send me stuff or

it's, you know, Hey, we're going to, because it's my iPhone JD email, I use it on.

It's like, you know, we're, you know, we're going to improve your website.

And it's like, you're not going to improve my website.

Okay.

I've been doing this for a while.

I don't need you.

And I'll just take those.

And all I do is move them into the same black hole folder and I'm done.

I will never again, see something from them.

And it's not the same as a spam filter because people that send spam are usually changing their

email addresses every time, you know, use your built-in spam filter to deal with that stuff.

But for these things that, you know, maybe it's a, it's a legitimate or quasi legitimate company,

but you just don't want to get that stuff anymore. Just stick it in the same black hole. And the

thing is, it's not like it's gone forever. If I really ever wanted to go, I could, I could look

in the same black hole and pull something out. And all you do is, you know, training it. If I take

the email and move it into same black hole that trains same box using like artificial intelligence

to do the same thing automatically for future emails. And it works in reverse too. If I take

something out of same black hole or same news you were talking about, and I drag that into my inbox,

then it will know, okay, this is actually a newsletter, but Jeff or Brett has told me,

don't put those in the same news folders, actually put those in the inbox and it will do that in the

future. So I love that it's, it's sort of intelligent. It's easy to use, but anyway,

those two folders right there, nothing else. That's great reasons to use same box.

- Can I just point out real quick,

some people may say, well, okay, Brett,

that's great with the newsletters,

but why not just like set up a rule?

So like any email that you get from this newsletter

goes into a separate folder.

Yeah, you know what?

I've done that before and I got maybe about 10% of the way

through all my newsletters.

- That's the thing, yeah.

- Because you have to set it up manually on each one.

- For each individual one,

but Sainbox takes care of it automatically.

- Exactly, and that's part of the AI

that's built into it that you referenced.

Okay, so we would just wanna say thanks again to SaneBox.

If you wanna know a little bit more,

sanebox.com/inthenews, just all one word together,

and you can at least sign up for a free 14-day trial,

and then we'll even get you $25

toward a SaneBox subscription.

So thanks for listening to that, and thanks to SaneBox.

In the know.

- In the know.

- I have something that has been troubling me

for a little bit, that I've got a bunch of apps.

We were talking about apps before back in the day, Jeff,

when there was, it seemed like there was a new app every day

that was just fantastic.

And I downloaded a lot and lot and lot.

And so what would happen is I still got probably

around three to 400 apps on my iPhone

because some of them I just don't want to get rid of.

And I never know, maybe one day I'm going to like doing it.

You know, and Apple has given us ways to do whatever

they call that app folder or whatever it is,

you know, that last screen.

But I've noticed over the last couple of years now

that if I go to an app that I haven't even touched

in maybe six months, maybe a year,

that it's not actually available on my phone.

There's a little cloud download icon

next to the name of the app.

The app is still there, I see it on my phone,

but it's like I have to re-download the app.

Now this I found out was introduced in iOS 11,

offload unused apps.

So part of the things that I know Apple

is probably one of the number one complaints they get

is my iPhone is out of storage.

Normally that's because of the pictures

and of course Apple has addressed that as well

and I think very well.

But now even for some apps, if you are like me,

you've had iPhones for many, many years,

you've got a ton of apps that you haven't used,

you don't touch them maybe in six months to a year,

then Apple will automatically offload that app.

And what's interesting here is they don't delete the app

from your phone, and more importantly,

they don't delete the data from that app.

So like if you had documents stored in a certain app

or you had some settings that you had set up in that app

once upon a time, all of those settings are still there.

So if you wanna go and redownload that,

the major thing is you have to be connected to the internet

in order to redownload that app.

And it's very quick, I find, because it's offloaded

and not deleted, it's very quick to redownload those apps.

However, again, you have to be connected to the internet

in order for that to happen.

So I'm okay leaving this turned on,

but if you wanna turn this off,

you can go into your settings app

and you will go down to the app store.

So this used to be the iTunes and app store,

if you remember,

but if you go down to the app store in your settings

and tap on that and you scroll all the way down

to the bottom, this will be towards the bottom,

there will be a toggle switch for offload unused apps.

This automatically removes unused apps,

but it keeps all documents and data.

So reinstalling the app will place it back to your data

if the app is still available in the app store.

That's another danger, Jeff.

Some of these apps I've tried to redownload

and they're like, oh, no longer available

just 'cause it was so long ago.

Well, you know, it's not Apple's fault.

It's just the apps have gone out of support.

So anyway, that's a feature I just wanted people

to be aware of.

If you don't want Apple to automatically offload

these unused apps, you can toggle that off

so all of your apps are gonna stay on your phone.

I like having it on because I know that it does,

I think my iPhone does a very good job

of managing the storage components on my phone,

but you can turn that off, offload unused apps.

- When you were just describing where you go for it, Brett,

I thought you were saying the wrong thing,

but you're right.

If you go to settings under app store, that's where it is,

but I've never gone to that place.

The way that I get to the feature,

And it didn't occur to me that there's two ways to do it

is when you're in the settings app on your iPhone,

if you go to general,

and then if you go to iPhone storage,

which gives me a sense of how much free space I have

in that screen, there's also offload unused app

because that's way, in my mind,

that's the reason that you would turn this on

in the first place.

I'm running low on space on my iPhone.

So get rid of the stuff I don't use a lot.

I will tell you, Brett,

I turned this feature on a long time ago just to try it

because I needed to get some space.

it was, I was upgrading phones and I was, I didn't have enough space to upgrade from one phone to the

other because I had to move stuff over. Um, and I sort of regret that I ever turned it on, even

though I've had it turned off for a long time now, because I still, to this day, find times where I

go to use an app. And I guess by definition, it's something I haven't used in a while, but, and then

it's like, it's not there. And I mean, look, this is a first world problem. I mean, me downloading

it, right. Waiting for the app to re download for the app store takes what five seconds or something,

But it's still very quick. I don't like the fact that I'm waiting. I wish I'd never turned on that

feature. And sometimes the apps that it would offload, it's like, seriously, that's the app

that you offloaded. I use that app all the time. What are you talking about offloading that app?

So if you need it to save space, it's great that Apple gives you the option. But for me,

I wish I had never turned it on in the first place. And I hope that I never need to turn it on

again. So anyway, but I'm glad that people now know where it is, whether you, however you get

you get to it, whether you go through the app store,

through settings or through space, through settings.

- Yeah, and even on the iPhone storage,

like it goes and it will have a little iCloud icon

next to that list of your apps.

Like for example, Fimic Pro,

I don't use that on my iPhone,

I use it on my iPad a lot,

but it has the fact that it's offloaded

and you can't offload individual apps that way.

Like if you don't want it for a while,

anyway, just want people to be aware of that,

offload unused apps.

- One more thing, I mean,

I guess we could both be talking about this feature.

If you offload the app,

It doesn't offload your data.

So just so you know, like if you have a relatively small app, but you've got

all of these downloaded movies, like if you had downloaded movies on the Netflix

app and that, that part stays in your phone, it's just the app that goes.

Another thing I'll mention is if you're doing this to save space in settings,

when you go to it the way that I suggested through iPhone storage, it will actually

tell me like right now I can see in my phone.

If I turn on this feature, it's going to save me 14.68 gigabytes.

So that's nice that I'll know, like, this is what I gained by turning this on.

I know precisely how much space I will gain.

What it does not include in here is, however, comma, this will cause you agony for years

to come.

That's my little add to it that Apple should put, but does not.

Okay.

So my tip of the day is a continuation of what we were talking about at the end of where

you app, which is shortcuts.

You know, the, the shortcut that my son put together is very simple.

And the reason that I wanted to set out in my post earlier this week, the steps that

he used, which is just so simple.

Send a text message, figure out where my location is.

Send that location.

Anybody, anybody could create that shortcut.

The shortcuts app is an app that we all have on our iPhone, but I know from talking

around that most people don't touch it.

They don't even think about touching it because they think, Oh, that's like

computer programming or something like that.

And I guess to a degree it is, but it's so simple.

It's I think of it more as Lego.

It's putting together building blocks.

You know, first I want you to send a text message.

So you get the little building block that says,

send a text message and you just, you know, tap here,

you know, it's from me automatically.

Who is it going to be to,

or do you want to have a pop-up list

of who someone sends it to and then know what's next.

Now, here's what I want to say and what's next.

I want to get you my current location

and putting together these shortcuts.

It's really, it really is simple.

I mean, I mentioned the other day when,

when I said that my daughter was looking at my son

as if he had done something crazy to design a shortcut,

but it's not crazy.

It's something that anyone can do.

And there's so many, so many useful things

that you could do with shortcuts,

whether it's sending people messages

or whether it's putting together information.

I've mentioned in the past that I have a shortcut that--

and this one's a more complicated one--

where I take automatically pictures of any receipt.

And it helps me to format the title of where

the receipt is from, including places

that I might go to frequently.

I can just tap one button, and it automatically

fills in that name.

And then it saves it into a specific folder.

I used to use Dropbox.

now I'm using iCloud for it.

But just so that I can have receipts,

I don't need to keep the paper,

but I can get to them again.

And I have a million other little shortcuts

that are either very simple,

as simple as have a shortcut that you can tell your spouse,

I will be home in about blank minutes.

And all that shortcut would need to do

is figure out your current location,

find out how long it would take to drive

from where you are to your house,

and then put that in there.

These simple little things that you can trigger so easily,

just a million ways to trigger a shortcut. You can put it on your, on your, on your home screen.

You could put it in a million different places, put it on your Apple watch. And, and, uh, it's

just really, really useful, but it's, it's only when you start playing it, you know, the way to

get started with shortcuts is to find another shortcut and Apple has tons of them in the

shortcut gallery that you can download. They're all for free and you can download it and say,

okay, this is a simple thing. Now it's going to, you know, log, I don't know my weight today or

something like that. And you could say, okay, so it asks me for a number and then it logs it

And you can see, okay, yeah, those two or those two or three steps make sense.

And then you look at another one and look at another one.

And by seeing how they work, it's so easy to put these things together.

And the next thing you know, you're doing it yourself.

And even if you're not doing super complicated shortcuts, you can make your

iPhone a much more useful tool for yourself.

If you play around with this stuff and shortcuts apps can have all sorts of

triggers, even like location based and, and time of day and things like that.

You can do some amazing things.

things. And I mean, I consider it a gift that Apple even includes shortcuts. One of the things

that's often a distinguishing factor between an iPhone and an Android is Android phones.

I think are really good for a certain sector of the population. People that want to be super,

super fiddly about every aspect of their phone. Android gives you more power that way. Of course,

it also means that you're open to more, you know, hacking and other stuff too. So I'm glad I don't

I don't live in that world, but you know, shortcuts gives you so much power that you

almost, it's like, really somebody, Apple actually decided to give their users this

much power.

How amazing is that?

It's, it's a little on Apple, like, and yet it is Apple like, because it's so well designed

and so easy to follow so that anyone can do it.

So I cannot rave enough about playing around with shortcuts and, um, and she definitely

consider it.

Oh, that's a, that's a great idea.

You were showing this is, Oh, David Sparks, our, our, our friend in California has all

sorts of field guides. And I had forgotten that he has a shortcuts for iPhone and iPad field guide.

We've mentioned it in the past, I believe it's so good as you go through this, you go through his

steps. He gives you all sorts of practical examples. Um, but even if you, and so, you know,

definitely buy David's field guide for sure. But even if you don't do that, even if you just look

at what you were showing before Brett, which was the Apple guide, which is just right there on its

website, you could just go through its guide and you'll get a lot of the way to whatever,

whatever resource you want to use for this, depending upon how deep you want to go,

You can do so much. Yeah, great stuff. Great stuff. And it just reminds me, honestly, as much as I

play around with this job, I don't delve into shortcuts very much, even though I use probably

one or two almost every day. I have one where I tap the back tap on my phone, and it will pull

my AirPods from like my Mac or my iPad, so that it'll connect to my iPhone. I saw that a long

time ago because somebody just posted like a neat little tip. And it's like, that was a shortcut. I

I just had to go in and build a shortcut.

Anyway, don't fear the shortcuts app.

I like that.

It's like, just make sure that you go and check that out.

Lots of good resources on that as well.

Excellent. Thanks, Jeff.

We want to say thanks again to SaneBox

for sponsoring today's episode.

That you can get more information

at sanebox.com/inthenews.

And Jeff, thanks for being here as always.

And we'll talk with you next week.