In the News
In the News
211: Apple Awe Drop 😲 AppleNoCare 👎 and Apple Invites a Widget to Dinner 🥳
Watch the video!
In the News blog post for August 29, 2025
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2025/08/in-the-news793.html
00:00 20 Years Since Katrina Tragedy
05:59 Apple Awe Drop
16:05 Ad Partner
22:44 AppleNoCare
28:03 Widget Invitation
32:20 Interest in Indigo
37:14 Bordering on Non-Privacy
47:30 Short Notice
52:33 In the Show! Better Buy Cupertino (BBC and Apple TV+)
57:50 Brett’s iTip: Change your driving avatar in Google Maps
1:01:23 Jeff’s iTip: What is the “gear with arrows” icon in the iPad status bar
Jason Snell | Six Colors: Apple event set for September 9
Brittaney Kiefer | AdWeek: From Jobs and Clow to Now: How TBWA\MAL Is Evolving Apple's Marketing Legacy
Zac Hall | 9to5Mac: Apple Invites adds a helpful new iPhone feature
Joe Rosensteel | Six Colors: A better camera app? Reflections on Adobe’s Project Indigo
Matt Burgess | Wired: Phone Searches at the US Border Hit a Record High
Max Goldbart | Deadline: BBC Buys Apple TV+ Sitcom ‘Trying’
Brett’s iTip: Change your driving avatar in Google Maps
https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7543749?hl=en
Jeff’s iTip: What is it? Gear with arrows in status bar at top of the screen
Learn the meaning of the iPad status icons:
https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/learn-the-meaning-of-the-status-icons-ipad9940e50c/ipados
Apple discussion page:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255921269?sortBy=rank
Brett Burney from http://www.appsinlaw.com
Jeff Richardson from http://www.iphonejd.com
Welcome to In the News for August 29th, 2025.
I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.
And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.
You know, Brett, as I think about that date, August 29th, 2025, 20 years ago to this date,
August 29th, 2005, was when Hurricane Katrina came through my hometown of New Orleans.
And that was a big hurricane, obviously.
It was huge when you saw it on the map.
like it filled up the entire Gulf of Mexico as it was coming through. It was crazy. But then the big
thing was that like the day afterwards, the levees failed. And that's when the city of New Orleans,
which is sort of like below seawater and our levees are sort of like, you know, the edge of a bowl,
the city filled up with water. And that was just a crazy, crazy experience. You know, very sad. A
lot of people lost their lives and destruction of property and stuff like that. And then there were
also just all these incredible stories of, you know, people being brave and saving people and
recreating the city afterwards. And it was, it was just something I'll never forget.
20 years. 20 years. You know, one of the things are all the distinct memories,
and there's so many of them, but just one I'll mention. So I had evacuated initially to Baton
Rouge, Louisiana. Gosh, I feel so bad for the people that live in Baton Rouge because the
population of that city just like doubled because all these New Orleans people came through and like,
You know, every time you would want to go to like a restaurant, like an Applebee's, it would be like a three hour wait.
It was crazy.
But I remember I was walking to our sort of makeshift offices when my office moved there.
And there was a, you know, like on the side of the street nowadays, perhaps not so much.
But back in the day, you would see like a little newsstand where you'd put in your 50 cents and get a newspaper or whatever.
And they had one for the Times-Picayune, which was the New Orleans newspaper.
And suddenly, you know, this was about a couple of weeks after the storm.
I saw there was a new Times-Picayune in there.
I'm like, oh my goodness.
So like I had to buy it.
So I put in my money and I got it.
And I think the newspaper was like four pages long
or six pages long.
It was so short.
But like just the idea that like,
hey, the newspaper's coming back
and they're publishing stories
and just like to hold that,
it was just sort of a symbol for me of,
we're gonna come back.
And then of course, over time, everything did.
But anyway, it was a huge memory for me.
So anyway, August 29th, that's what I think about.
I'm just gonna share my quick,
obviously I wasn't in New Orleans.
We had, my wife had family there
that was evacuated before the storm came in.
But one of the things that just comes to mind
is pictures of people on the roof,
like just boats coming by.
And then I wish I could remember the name
of this company, Jeff,
but there was apparently some IT company
that was in a high-rise downtown.
And I remember I was glued to my computer
watching the updates from this one company.
There was like two or three gentlemen that had stayed in the city, and they were camped out basically in whatever one of those buildings was downtown.
And they somehow had power that they could get, I guess, from generators.
And they were trying to like support whoever customers were still there in the city.
But I just remember they would show a camera like down on the city and just give updates like they were some of the only people that were there in the city.
I wish I could remember the name of that company, but I'm sure there were several little pockets like that.
But that just was for me, like I just remember several days there just being glued to their little live cam that they had and some of the updates that they posted 20 years ago.
That's just incredible.
You know, you talk about those live updates.
We had evacuated initially to my brother's house in Mississippi, and he also had no power because the storm, I mean, not the same, but it was still a big storm there too.
But we had a radio. And so we were listening to a radio that picked up one of the radio stations out of New Orleans, which which is a broadcast, you know, for you can broadcast for hundreds of miles of stuff called WWL.
We were able to pick it up. And there was a reporter that was downtown in New Orleans, like you were talking about.
And he was the one it was like the Katrina was a Sunday and this was a Monday.
And he was looking out the window of the street. And he's like, you know, this is interesting.
He's like, I see like there's water on the street.
But he's like, I noticed this morning, like the water was at this part of this, of the
car, of the tire on this car.
He's like, in an hour later, the water's higher.
And he's like, why is the water higher?
Because the storm has passed.
And then later on, he's like, you know, it's higher still.
And then that was, and I remember listening to that thinking, well, that's really odd.
Why would the water be going up, not down?
And then it was after that, we finally learned, you know, that the levees had broken everything
else.
And so that was, you know, it was crazy listening to those reports.
I'll say one last thing, though, that as sad as it was to me, Hurricane Katrina is almost
a almost a happy story because I was amazed.
I was amazed at how many people from within New Orleans were helping each other from outside
of the city were helping.
I mean, it was just a such an amazing thing to human to humanity and people reaching out
for each other.
Me personally, for example, one of my clients was in the city of New York and they reached
out and said, you know, we know things are totally messed up down there. If you want to come work in
house with us, you know, we have some, we could really use your help and give me something to do.
And so for me personally, after that short period of time of living in Baton Rouge,
my wife and I moved up to New York city and we ended up staying there for gosh, 10 months,
maybe. And it was such a fantastic experience for me personally, as an attorney to have a chance to
work in-house, you know, for a client to get a sense of what that's like to be an in-house counsel,
which even to this day has just totally made me a better attorney as an outside attorney as I work
with in-house counsel, because I have a sense of what that's like. Not to mention the experience
of living in New York was so nice and everybody was just so nice to us and stuff. So it's, you know,
sometimes these tragedies are, you know, what brings us together. So anyway, enough said about
Katrina. Well, thanks for sharing. And wow, what a kind of a crazy reminiscing there on that, but
let's talk and switch maybe to a little bit of a happier
about a date something that you and i have actually discussed and suspected but and just a
little over a week from today it has been official apple will have an event the apple event is what
they call it other folks i think you put a link in here to jason snell over at six colors uh the
tagline that Apple has put on this event on September 9th is all dropping. They always have
something cute on here, but also cute is the logo that they always put on this Apple, you know,
on their event page on apple.com. People have been talking about this. Look at this. As I move my
cursor around on this little Apple logo, I've got like a, like a heat sensor is what, like an
infrared or a heat map or something yeah and it's like you know typically there are so many people
that try to read the the tea leaves or the apple leaves you know in these logos when it comes out
because it's like okay what is apple going to announce we suspect several things you you're
discussing today the the iphone and some other maybe pieces of hardware but the logo sometimes
it's like we try to figure out what was it it's it's funny i never i never hear people talk too
much about the logo after the fact. That's what it was, and that's what it came out. But boy,
Heidi, there's a lot of people that try to speculate what this is going to be. Do we need
an infrared iPhone? I hope that that's not where Apple is going, but it could be something. You
reported on several other thoughts that we are suspecting that we're going to see come September
9th at, what, 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. Yeah, the criminology is always interesting,
And sometimes every once in a while, like you can look back and say, oh, well, that was sort of a sneak peek of something.
And sometimes it's just Apple thought it was cool to put the picture on the invitation.
And so who knows?
We'll see what this I mean, it is sort of a glowing sort of thing, which sort of reminds me of liquid glass.
I don't even know.
Not that that's anything new.
So but it's exciting to know that we'll have September 9th.
So what are we going to see?
I mean, we've been talking for weeks about the rumors.
Of course, it's the iPhone event.
And so I'm sure we're going to have new high end iPhones.
We've seen some supposedly pictures that the back of the iPhone, instead of just having the camera bump on one side, that the camera bump is going to extend across the entire back.
If that is what they do, I would hope it's because they are making even better cameras and that allows space for it.
It also might mean that if you don't have a case and you put your iPhone flat on a table, it will stay more flat as opposed to sort of wobbling.
So that's the high-end iPhones.
You know, the big rumor is that Apple is going to have a new thin iPhone, which some people say will be called the iPhone Air.
We'll see about that.
Just this week, I've seen, you know, what they claim are leaks.
But then again, who knows if they're legitimate or not of cases for the iPhone.
You know, Apple loves to sell cases because it's, you know, they can easily sell them for 100 bucks and make money.
Way back when they used to have their leather cases, which I actually really liked.
But they decided it's not quite environmentally friendly enough.
So they moved away from leather.
a couple of years ago, they had the, what's called the fine woven cases, which were sort of
universally panned. They really didn't hold up very well. I bought one and I wasn't thrilled with it.
I didn't buy a case at all last year. But the rumor is that Apple has a new material,
their high-end material that it's going to be called tech woven. We'll see. I don't know. We'll
see how that's different from fine woven. And I also saw a rumor that on the bottom of those cases,
They're going to have like two little sort of holes that you could stick a lanyard in and Apple will sell a lanyard that goes across your entire body, which seems like a weird way to have an iPhone with a landlord around your body.
And I saw some other speculation that that people might sell like little, you know how people you can buy these little things like you put in like the holes in a crocs.
What do you like?
Little, little.
Oh, yeah.
Whatever those things.
Charms is whatever.
And like maybe they'll have the pop circles or pops.
Well, that's true, too.
but also just like a charm type thing.
I don't even, who knows anyway.
Okay, okay, I got you.
But that's the whole iPhone universe.
I don't expect an iPad announcement.
They usually do have the Apple Watch announcements though.
And in fact, I was just listening to a podcaster,
David Sparks.
He said the same thing that you said last week,
which is that he has that first generation Apple Watch Ultra
and is ready to upgrade.
I know that you are as well, Brett.
So if there's a new Ultra 3,
that might be in your future
and we'll see what the new iPhone is,
the new Apple Watch is.
So those are the big announcements.
There's some other tiny rumors of like maybe new AirPods,
maybe a new version of the AirTag
that might have like a stronger radio
so that it can sense the iPhone around him
like even further away.
My current AirTags work fine,
but who knows, maybe it'd be better to have a new one.
I think that's pretty much the extent of the rumors,
but I'm sure Apple will have some surprises in there too.
But it's exciting that we now know the date.
So September 9th, we can all plan for it and look forward to it.
And after, you know, not terribly many things in the news from Apple this summer, you know,
suddenly it's going to start the busy season of iPhone announcements and then perhaps even new iPads after that and all sorts of stuff leading up to the holiday season.
I'm getting depressed about the lanyard in the case.
Like, I mean, those are cool.
It's just let's focus on the phone first.
Like, give me the phone that we need and we want.
And the aftermarket lanyard case, the afterthought on that.
I mean, I know I might be changed around on some people.
Maybe that's their first thought on there.
But, I mean, let's get the phone.
Okay, so quickly on that.
No foldable phone, you don't think, in a week.
No, everyone seems to say that Apple is working on it.
Yeah.
And that if they do announce a thin phone this year, that's sort of an incremental step.
Because first you've got to make it super thin before you can then make it something that you can fold.
Yeah.
And so that's probably still a year away.
And I tell you, I mean, who knows?
The product's not even out yet, and I'm already thinking about whether I want it.
But it would be sort of cool to have something the size of an iPhone, but then you can turn it into something like a little iPad mini.
I used to love my iPad mini.
So I don't know.
But that's probably a year away.
I don't think that's this year.
Unless Apple truly surprises us, but yeah.
True.
Well, that's the thing.
We always think about this as, quote, the iPhone event, because that's typically when they're going to release this.
This is always in time for the holiday weekend, you know, coming up the season, coming up on there.
But, yes, yes, please, for the Apple Watch Ultra.
We don't think a new Apple Watch regular, right?
Because we just –
No, I actually think that they might have a new Apple Watch regular.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know how many significant changes it'll have.
But what – I have the Series 10 from last year.
I think that – or anything's possible.
But I suspect that they will announce a Series 11.
I just don't know what it would have.
And I mean, unless it's something truly extraordinary, which would really surprise me.
I seriously doubt that I'm going to get a new Apple Watch.
But I think it makes sense to refresh it just so that people feel like they're buying the newest model.
And again, looking into the holiday season, this is sort of that ramp that's going up into that.
I saw the same thing about the Apple AirPods Pro.
However, I saw somebody say probably no updates on the AirPods Max or the AirPods regular,
which I kind of find to be a little odd as well, but not surprising.
The AirPods Pro, I think, are typically what most people are going to be, you know, looking for on that.
And so getting away from the hardware side just quickly,
obviously we're expecting, you know, some time spent on the new updates for the operating systems.
Right, iOS 26.
iOS 26, iPad, even the Apple Watch, the, you know, the Apple TV.
I mean, all of these systems will get an update,
And Apple will, you know, they highlighted that quite a bit over the summer.
But I saw just the other day, like the public beta is available now, right?
I got an email that, you know, invited me to download the public beta if I wanted to jump in on that.
And what's interesting on that, Brett, is just on that software is, you know, the betas have been out for a while, the developer betas and public betas.
The developer betas, right.
Every once in a while, I would say more often than not, Apple will still have some feature of the operating system update that they've held back.
And so we might learn, you know, even though we feel like we really have a sense of what iOS 26 is, there may be a few more surprises to be revealed in September 9.
We'll see.
What about the HomePod screen or the error?
You're right.
That's been a rumor for a long time now.
You think?
It seems like my guess is that if Apple, I think Apple probably does have something in development.
In fact, there were rumors that they wanted to come out with that last Christmas season and they just weren't ready.
So I suspect that the hardware is there.
The rumor is that the hardware was ready and then the software wasn't quite there yet because it was going to rely upon Apple intelligence.
And so I personally, I think it would also be a pretty busy event if Apple had an iPhone and an Apple Watch and the new version of iOS 26, which is a bigger change.
And maybe some of these other things like AirPods or something like that.
I feel like it would be just too much to have a new HomePod.
If one's going to come out this year and if it does come out, you know, Apple's going to want to be it before the holiday season.
I could almost see like maybe in October, Apple might announce a new iPad and a new HomePod.
In fact, the HomePod with the screen is almost like a HomePod with an iPad attached to it.
So there's some sort of some synergy there.
So my prediction, and you know, nothing to base this on except for my gut,
is that we're not going to see a new HomePod in 11 days.
But we still might see one before the end of the year.
You can go to apple.com, and I think it's on their home site, now homepage.
page, the Apple event, you can actually add it to your calendar, which I already did.
And I'm sure that you did too, Jeff.
I already marked that out because that will be a time when I sit there and play around
with it.
And as I was making a joke about the infrared, I've literally been playing with this the
entire time we've been talking here because it is fun to interact with.
It's a nice fidget toy there.
Yeah, it's a very nice digital fidget toy.
That's a great way to put it, Jeff.
That leads us into the next story, though.
So maybe the marketing ad agency for Apple had something to do or contributing to that infrared little Apple there.
I thought this was a nice story.
It's always been fun to follow sort of this creative agency.
And I say that in a general sense because I remember it was Chiat Day.
It was a weird name, and it continues to be a little bit of a weird name in my mind now.
But it's almost like Apple and the media agency that they have always partnered with has been in sort of lockstep since the 1984 commercial.
That was one of the big breakthroughs, right?
And really just kind of something that we had not really seen between a company and their ad agency, at least from my perspective.
Just the way that that was put together and the impact that it has continued to have all of these years later, right, on some of this.
But this is a good story that you link to in Adweek, from Jobs to Cloud to Now, how the company is TBWA slash MAL.
Again, I know that that stands for something, but it's a good story about how that relationship has evolved Apple's marketing legacy over all of these years.
Yeah, I mean, as we talk about new products about to be announced, of course, Apple is going to market those products.
and it was back in the 1980s that Steve Jobs hooked up with Lee Clow, who, you know, everything I know
about advertising is because I watched the show Mad Men. In fact, we just talked about that recently
about that famous scene in Mad Men where, you know, Kodak had the carousel and they were going to call
it the circle. And of course, you know, Don Draper had the, you know, famous idea of no, we're going
to call it a carousel. But I do think it's true, certainly historically, that sometimes these ad
people will have at least a substantial reason that a product successful is not just because
of what's made, but also the way that it's marketed and sold.
And so marketing can be really important.
And of course, Apple, ever since the 80s, when Lee Clow helped them come up with the
initial, you know, 1984 commercial, which is, you know, still some people say is the
best commercial of all time that just ran once during the Super Bowl.
The and so he, you know, about 20 years ago or something, founded this TVWA slash Media
Arts Lab.
And there's like a subset of the company that really just focuses almost completely on Apple.
In fact, I was interested in this article because not only do they talk about a lot of the major ads that they've done over the years, you know, back in the 90s, we all remember the Think Different campaign, which was, you know, when Apple was really on the brink of bankruptcy.
It was at that point, it was just sort of a feel good campaign.
And then after that, Apple would come out with the new iMac and everything else.
And then, of course, the iPhone and they took off.
But, you know, I think that a part of the reason that Apple was able to to get out of that dump and that slump and not completely go away was marketing.
And then since then, the marketing for the iPhone and other devices has been fantastic.
But at the end of the article, they even talked about it was a little unclear, but they mentioned that Apple is now moving into things like with the Vision Pro, some of those immersive videos.
And because they were talking about it in the context of this article, my assumption is that what they're saying is that these people at TBWA Media Arts Lab are actually helping Apple, not just with pure marketing, but also helping them with some of their storytelling.
Like they mentioned the submarine movie that came out, which was on Immersive.
And so I didn't realize Submerge, I didn't realize that these people were actually involved in, you know, not like a true ad that you might watch on television as you're watching a football game or something.
But just, you know, sure, the videos that Apple is just releasing on Apple TV Plus or on the Vision Pro.
In fact, they even mentioned here, I had never seen it before, but they referenced that there was an immersive horror movie being developed for the Vision Pro, which I don't remember reading about that before.
So, you know, suffice it to say, this is not just, you know, you go out and you hire an ad company to give you an ad in a magazine or something.
It seems like this is a true symbiotic relationship here that's lasted an incredibly long time.
And obviously it's been very successful because, you know, not every Apple ad is amazing, but some of them are best of breed.
So I thought this was interesting here.
The shot on iPhone campaign.
Right. Yeah. For example.
First of all, 10 years ago, it's 10th anniversary this year.
That's crazy. And it says here it started as out of home ads.
But the marketing agency, MAL, progressed the platform into video, social media and long form films.
And I remember that, like the shot on the iPhone, just that phrase and that idea is, I think, fairly pervasive.
Absolutely.
I think about it that way.
But I remember that it used to be just those, you know, very, very short commercials.
But then they expanded.
Like there was one, I think, you know, from an Oriental perspective that I just remember was really cool.
And like you would see the behind the scenes on that.
Like they turned it not just into shot on iPhone and the video itself.
As again, it wasn't just a commercial.
It was almost like a little short form video, but then they would always follow up with behind the scenes.
And that was even more interesting almost to watch that because it's like, oh, that's how they got that shot.
And sure enough, they are just using an iPhone for that.
That's what's always amazing to me is you see these incredible shots, these incredible videos.
And it's like, yeah, they used the same device to do that, that I have here in my hand.
I mean, obviously they might have like a gimbal to hold it and, you know, incredible lighting and really smart, you know, people creatively to figure out how to frame the shot.
But at its core, I could do it too.
What a fantastic idea for a marketing campaign.
And it's true.
It's really good.
I always had the question, though.
It was the shot on iPhone video.
Then it was behind the scenes shot on iPhone.
And my question was, do they use an iPhone to shoot the behind the scenes shot on iPhone?
So that's shot on iPhone.
do yeah i don't know i mean do they have another iphone i want to see behind this iphone's all
the way down yeah all the way down really cool stuff though and it is i mean it's one of those
things that's always been sort of in the background and frankly you know we talk about it from almost
like a pure marketing perspective but honestly jeff i think of it just a little bit bigger
it's almost like the perception of apple right i mean we have apple the company and sure certainly
they have done a lot but i mean just this we're talking about shot on iphone we're talking about
like the crazy infrared logos there and it's really just the way that the public perceives
apple in general a lot of times and uh anyway just just really nice little symbiotic relationship
that's uh continues to uh evolve which is nice they might need a little bit of help apple might
need a little bit of help on helping the public uh perceive apple care one so quickly this is a
subscription uh for apple care that i think it included what three or four different devices
you start with three but you can add more if you want but it starts with three we talked about this
at least a week ago maybe two or three weeks ago on this and we liked it i mean you said you like
it you're a fan of it i think it's a great i haven't made that switch just yet uh but but i
might be getting some new devices here pretty soon so i might make that switch but this was really
interesting john siracusa who is a very highly regarded you know apple uh pundit uh for a long
time brought out something that i just thought was interesting he's been having an issue where
apple care one the subscription this new subscription didn't support one of his macbooks
and he finally found out what the issue was that apparently he has multiple icloud accounts or
multiple Apple accounts on this computer.
Is that accurate?
And Apple is not supporting that component.
That blew my mind, Jeff.
So, I mean, it's very,
Macs for incredibly, incredibly long time
have had the ability to have multiple users logged into it.
And so John Syracuse has said that both he and his wife
use the Mac and so that they can each have their own desktop
and their own environment, you know,
he will log on and his wife will log in and stuff like that.
And again, there's nothing unusual about that.
This is Apple's support.
But what happens is that when you have the AppleCare one, it wants to tie the support to a single Apple account, what they used to call the Apple ID.
And so, you know, his wife would log in and suddenly the computer would freak out and say, oh, I can't be giving Apple support, you know, AppleCare support to this because it's no longer John's computer.
It's now his wife's computer. And he would get these announcements that said that, like, unless you fix this in the next 24 hours, I'm canceling your AppleCare.
And, you know, it would just keep popping up every single day.
And then he described that he called Apple and Apple said, yeah, it's a bug.
We don't really have a solution.
And so what he had to do was he had to downgrade from Apple Care One to the Apple Care Plus.
But the problem is that he had been grandfathered into one of the older Apple Care Plus plans, which offered more protection for various reasons.
And so suddenly, because he couldn't, you know, because this changeover didn't work for him,
he had to switch to another support system, which offered him less features and was a little bit
more expensive. He's like, well, that's not really fair. And so he complained to Apple,
and he describes in this post that they gave him a $200 credit to go buy an accessory. And he's
like, I didn't really need anything. And he's like, I bought a Mophie charger for my wife,
because she sort of needed something. He's like, but I didn't really need it. You know, it's just
sets. So, so it's surprising that Apple didn't think about this because many devices, I mean,
it's not just your computer, although that's what, I mean, I, you can, in theory for an Apple TV and
Apple TV, can you can put an Apple TV on Apple care one, and you can have multiple users logged
into an Apple TV. But, but I guess don't do it because, because you're gonna have problems here.
I don't know if it works, if it's a problem there too. I thought the most insightful thing was a
a post that I linked to from Jason Snow of Six Colors,
where he posted on Mastodon.
You know, this is just another reminder
that Apple launches all sorts of products
without really thinking about the Mac.
The company is all about the iPhone and then the iPad.
And, you know, a lot of people at the company are like,
oh yeah, we do have Macs too.
And, you know, maybe it's being a little bitter here,
but I think that there might be some truth to that comment
that, you know, if Apple, whoever came up with the plan,
just it did not occur to them that people have Macs.
with multiple users logged in?
Come on.
I mean, that's pitiful.
Well, maybe it's a little tongue in cheek,
but Apple has a very good solution here.
It's like, just buy another Mac.
Buy a Mac for that other person
so you have multiple Macs and you tie them.
Anyway, the point is very well taken
and kind of unfortunate.
I mean, again, I feel like it would be
maybe a little bit of a small percentage.
Although we don't do this anymore
because my kids are old enough now
to where they actually do have their own Mac for school purposes.
But we used to have a family Mac, Jeff, where that would be down there.
And the kids would log in with like a family account.
And I'm going to have my own account as the administrator account
because I would have my administrator account, like that I can make changes and stuff.
But then I'd have the kids would have their account.
And I think my wife had a separate account as well,
just so that she would have all of her icons and stuff.
So maybe it's not quite a small percentage.
It's just unfortunate that Apple hasn't fixed it.
And again, I feel like there could be – there should be a fairly easy fix for this.
There should be.
It's got to be coming, right?
It can't be that difficult of a problem.
You've got to think they're going to solve this, but they haven't yet.
Well, I'm just glad that John Syracuse and Jason Snell have highlighted it because at least that brings – I mean, it looks like John spent a lot.
He says, I'm now paying $48.03 more per year than I was before to cover this.
I mean, he took a lot of time to call the Apple support line, and he's not happy about that.
Well, we talked about in 11 days that iOS 26 will be out with a whole ton of new features and new look and everything, but Apple did it out.
It's a very small new addition to the Apple Invites app.
I remember you sent me an invitation and tried this out.
What, it must have been a couple of months ago?
I think it was this calendar year.
Yeah.
This is a brand new thing.
Apple invites.
And it's this cute little icon.
I love this little icon.
I feel like it's a letter with confetti, although it could be glitter, which, you know, may not be make a lot of people happy.
But this is a way that you could invite somebody to like like you sent it for us for for our podcast date.
But like a birthday party or get together anniversary party or something along those lines.
And it's cool.
I got to be honest, I haven't used it just because I usually send people regular calendar invites, even though the invite can be included in this.
But they added a new little feature this past week, which means you could add a little widget to your home screen, which I think is pretty cool.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's nice, too.
I mean, again, I haven't used the app since it came out either, but I did.
I went in when I heard about this feature.
I opened up the app and I created an event that I called like Apple event or something like that.
In fact, I sent you a picture of it.
And then I, I, I, uh, I did a, uh, so there's like, you can have all sorts of different size
widgets. You can have like the small one. That's the size of four icons. You can have one that's
of eight kinds. And I didn't even send it to you, but you could also make one that's like the huge
widget, which takes up like two thirds of the iPhone screen. And so if you have an event coming
up in your life, you know, how many shopping days until Christmas, for example, or how long until my
birthday or how long until my son's birthday or whatever you can just, even if you're not going
invite other people to it, you can just go ahead and put it in the app and do it. And when you
create it, you can make a picture. Like if you go back to the one I just sent you, you can either
use something from your photo library from the picture, or you can use the, what's it called?
Apple's image playground app, which is not great. And so I said, you know, give me an image of an
iPhone. Now it wouldn't do that because it says I can't make a picture of an iPhone. You know,
wouldn't want to, and somebody's trademark, although this is Apple's own app. So I said,
okay, well, you can't make a picture of an iPhone, make a picture of a smartphone. And that's what it
gave me is this sort of, you know, smart phony looking picture here with a home button,
plate with the old home button. Although my wife still uses an iPhone with a home button. She,
she doesn't want to give that up. So anyway, but you can make like a little, so if you have an
event in your life and you want to just have a little widget on your iPad, I think it's,
I only tried on the iPhone. I presume it works on the iPad. I don't even know that. But, but if you
want to make a little widget just to count down the days, now you have a free way to do it. And
I think this might be a feature of Widget Smith.
I don't even know.
But, you know, Apple's got a nice solution.
And it is very pretty.
It is very nice.
So if you want to have, you know, you got a wedding coming up.
You want to count down the number of days to the wedding.
You know, we all have things in our life that you might want to count down the days to.
And this is a nice little feature.
So now I actually have a reason to use the Apple Invites app that I didn't have before.
This is an Apple app.
It is free.
But you do need to go to the App Store and download it.
I just did that right now.
Sure enough, there's a get button on there.
Although I wonder if it's going to be included in iOS 26.
I don't know one way or the other.
Could be.
I think so.
Wow, it's really gotten some excellent, excellent reviews on here.
But it is a free app.
I was just going to say in this story that you linked to today, is it Fernando?
I forget his name, but he really does an excellent job over at 9to5Mac on some videos.
I think this is Zach Hall, actually, that wrote it.
Oh, the video.
Yeah, Zach Hall.
But the video, yeah, I forget.
Is this Fernando?
I can't remember his name.
But he does an excellent job, and I'll make sure that the story is linked to in there.
Apparently, you do have to have an iCloud Plus subscription in order to send invites or something.
Maybe not receive them, but it says something down here.
I remember that.
You're right.
You do.
I forgot about that part.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So just know the app is free.
You can download that and check it out.
But if you wanted to do maybe send an invitation, you'll need one of the subscriptions to iCloud Plus on there.
But anyway, just a cute little, I mean, that is really a cute little icon, I have to say.
I just love that a lot.
Makes me smile.
It looks very happy.
Another thing that could be pretty happy is a new app from Adobe, not Apple.
Adobe has been known, obviously, we know it as the Acrobat PDF Reader.
They do Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, several apps.
I did not know that they were working on Project Indigo,
but a great story you linked to here from Joe Rosensteel at Six Colors
that it's worth checking out.
It's like, why do you need another camera app?
Well, Joe does an excellent job in here of showing you side-to-side comparisons
of the regular iPhone app and then using Adobe's Project Indigo.
In some cases, the pictures look really good.
Yeah.
And Adobe says that this is an experimental app.
You know, they're very upfront about that.
It's very simple.
All it can do is take pictures and edit them.
It can't take videos.
It can't take, you know, all those other fancy things, panoramas, et cetera.
But it uses some interesting technology because so much of, you know, as we know, part of the
reason the camera app on the iPhone is so sophisticated is because the actual hardware
has gotten better over the years. But another reason is it's the post-processing. That's really
the secret sauce. And so, for example, if you take a picture, you might think to yourself,
oh, I just clicked the button and it took a single picture. No, no, no, no, no. It actually took like
10 pictures or 20 pictures in rapid succession. And Apple, you know, one picture was used to get
the highs and one is the lows. And it sort of blends all that together to make a more perfect
picture than just a single frame would take. And so that's one of the reasons that the iPhone
pictures are so much better than before. And so Adobe, who knows a thing or two about pictures
from Photoshop, they said, you know, let us take a crack at this. And so they have, they will take
even more, you know, instead of having 10 pictures that they merge together, they might take 30 or
something like that. And they use some of their secret sauce. And like the one that you have right
here with the cups on it is a good example, because this is somebody that took a picture of just like,
you know, a cup. And the one on the right is the Apple picture. And it has a little bit of a yellow
tint to it. The Joe is saying that's actually not what it looked like in real life. Whereas the
Adobe app, it's the color is a little more true to life. And so does it really matter? Who knows?
But like, if you're in a situation where you're taking a picture and you just, you think that,
you know, as good as the Apple picture is, maybe it's not, maybe I wanted to make it better. You
fire it up, take one or two pictures with the Adobe.
And then when you look at them later,
you might actually say that this Project Indigo
did a better, more accurate job of capturing the moment.
So it's a subtle difference.
Most people are not gonna even notice,
but if you care enough, why not?
So thank you Adobe for giving us some more choices here.
And then of course, this is a comparison
against the current camera app.
Every year, Apple improves it.
So when iOS 26, we know, maybe when iOS 26 comes up,
its camera app will be just as good as Project Indigo.
But I love the fact that there are, you know,
let's have different companies try to one-up each other
and be a little bit better
because we as the end users get more options.
So it sounds good to me.
It comes down to one of the same things
that we've said many times.
If I didn't see these pictures side-by-side,
I wouldn't really know the difference to you.
But when I do see them side-by-side,
I'm like, oh yeah, that's really better.
I would like to get the best quality picture that I can.
I got to tell you, the picture right below that is the one that really hit home for me on the left here.
It's just a very nice little walk path with the sun shining.
But shadows on the left, the shadows look a lot more what I would expect it to see in real life and nature.
And on the right, it just looks really washed out.
Now, the one on the right is the Apple camera.
And that's what I would have normally taken a picture of.
But I much prefer the one on the left here.
Yeah.
For this particular one, I do agree.
The one on the left looks better.
I will admit, however, that I often take pictures, especially if there's like people in it.
And I will appreciate the fact that although there were some shadows, that the Apple Photos app, the Apple Camera app, excuse me, will actually bring out a little bit more so that you can see the person's face in the shadows.
And in fact, one of the changes that I will often make in the Photos app is there's an adjustment setting called shadows.
you can actually make it better. And so sometimes I will make the person easier to see, even though
perhaps it's not quote unquote true to life, but I just prefer the picture, but it just, you know,
it's just your, it just, you know, there is no one picture. There's different ways of bringing it in.
So, so I understand why Apple's default is to make the shadowed areas a little bit brighter,
but I will agree with him in this particular shot. There's more, there's more drama,
you know, it's more dynamic, the one on the left.
I like that. I like that.
Well, let's go back to something scary.
I feel like we keep going back between sad, scary, good and bad.
Yeah, exactly.
This is on sort of the potentially bad.
We've talked about this a little bit before.
The ability for, I guess it's border patrol agents, customs and border protection,
have the capability and potentially the right, arguably, to do some kind of a search on your phone.
When you are in this, what do they call it, the border section or something.
There's like certain, you know, I mean, this is all so legalese field, but you can do a better job of explaining this.
But this is just another story. It's from Wired.com.
You've talked about this in the past.
I think you have written about this.
Yeah, in fact, you do have a post on it, Jeff, to where how do we get around this?
Is it legal?
Number one, of course, that's a very crazy question these days in some of our political
environments.
But how do we get around it?
How do we avoid this, especially for folks like you, Jeff, that might carry some very
private and confidential, client confidential information on your phone that you are responsible
to make sure does not get out and to be seen by anybody else.
Yeah.
You know, I don't practice criminal law, so I don't know the current law on this, but
I very much remember when I was a first year law student in the 1990s, I remember when
I took my criminal procedure class, we talked about how, and many of us know this, even if
you're not a lawyer, you know, if the cops want to come in your house, they need to have
probable cause and they need to have a warrant and stuff like that, unless there are exigent
circumstances like that someone might be unsafe. And then there's a lower standard if you're on
the street or you could drive away and you don't necessarily need probable cause. I think it was
like reasonably articulable suspicion. Gosh, I'm going back to law school. But the point is there's
different standards. But when you're coming into the country, the standard is there is no standard.
You know, customs has the legal right, no matter who you are, whether you're a US citizen or not,
they can demand to search all of your stuff and you can understand the safety reasons for that
you know in theory if it's not being abused but you know there's there's questions about how far
they're going and i'm not going to get into the political discussion of immigration and stuff with
the trump administration but suffice it to say that that you know this has been an issue for a
long time i first wrote about it the post that you're showing right now was back in 2018 so this
is not something new this has been around for a while and the question has been like if you're
someone that has information you consider private let's say you're a reporter for example and you've
at sources, you know, you might be concerned about customs looking through your phone or making a
copy of your phone so they could look at it later. You might not be thrilled about that. And then if
you're an attorney or I guess a doctor too, perhaps if you've got, you know, privileged information,
well, that's a whole nother level. So back in 2018, I wrote this post because a new policy was
announced by customs that said that if you are an attorney and if you have things that you believe
are privileged and confidential, here's the steps that you can go through to say, no,
I don't want to just let a third party look at this because of course that could waive
the privilege, not to mention allow leaks.
Now I will tell you, it's not great options.
It's really not.
That was true back in 2018.
And last night, Brett, I looked online to try to see if this is still the same policy,
you know, now that it's what, seven years later.
And I can't find anything confirming whether the policy has changed for attorneys or not.
So maybe that's the same policy.
I don't know.
But the bottom line is that you don't have a lot of options.
And in fact, I posted this this morning and I checked my email this morning, Brett, and
somebody who's an iPhone JD reader, he reached out to me and said that he had been in England
recently.
And when he came back home, he said, I was a little concerned because some of my friends
were sort of making jokes with me via text message about the Trump administration and
immigration and stuff like that.
He's like, and they were the most recent texts in my messages app.
He's like, and I was concerned if Border Patrol had demanded to see my iPhone and looked at my most recent text messages, suffice it to say they were not very nice things said about our current dear leader in the United States.
And he's like, I didn't want to get in trouble because of that.
And he's like, you know, on the one hand, the article says that border searches are reaching an all time high.
On the other hand, you know, let me be honest here.
They still say that it's like point zero one percent of all people, which is a very small percentage.
On the other hand, how many, what, thousands, billions?
I have no idea how many people come into the United States every day.
So even 0.01% is still a pretty high percentage.
And you always hear rumors that maybe they're less likely to stop you if you look like you're
like a blonde-headed white person like me, and maybe they're more likely to stop you if
you're a different skin color and stuff.
You may decide that you are a more likely target, fairly or unfairly.
And so it's something to think about.
And I'll just tell you, I mean, not to reveal too much about my own firm, but we have been
policies of like, maybe, maybe not necessarily for all travel, but maybe for certain countries.
And this is not only because of customs, but also because certain parts of the world just,
you know, have a reputation for if you are in, you know, China or Russia or some places,
they're more likely to try to search your devices when you're there, you know,
search you, snoop over you versus wifi. Maybe what you should do, and this is mentioned in
this Wired article is maybe you shouldn't take your electronic devices when you travel.
Or maybe you should get like a burner device.
So like keep your regular iPhone at home and just have a device that's completely wiped.
And then maybe once you get to another country, you can then download what you need and use it.
But that's something to consider.
We've talked in the past that 1Password, I mean, this is just one tiny aspect of it,
but you wouldn't want customs to have all your passwords, right?
Because who knows if that could be leaked or somebody could use it inappropriately.
And 1Password has a cool travel mode feature where you can tell 1Password,
I'm about to travel and it deletes all of your passwords except for like one or two.
And then once you get to your destination, you could say, okay, now re-download them
through a secure internet connection and it helps them all back up again.
And so at least at that point in time, I mean, customs would still be able to see your emails
and your other, you know, your messages.
But so that's another option you could do.
You could like momentarily delete things as you go through the border and put them on again
once you feel like you're in a safe place.
But I will tell you, I don't have, I wish I could tell you, here's the answer.
This is what you should do if privacy and confidentiality is important.
But I don't really have an answer.
And I haven't traveled internationally in a while.
I guess I was in Italy a few years ago.
But the next time that I travel, I'm going to think about this.
And if anyone out there has the perfect solution, let me know.
But I don't know that there is a perfect solution.
I think it's all tradeoffs.
It's just, I guess what I can say is you should be aware of it if you're going to be traveling
and you have confidential information.
So a couple of questions on this, and there's another article here that Wired wrote just over a couple months ago on this.
First of all, can you refuse to give your phone over?
You can.
And similar to that, can you refuse to give your passcode if you have a passcode on there?
But there's consequences.
So if you're not a U.S. citizen, the consequence is, well, you're not coming to the country.
If you are a US citizen, they can't stop you from entering the country is what I understand.
But what they can do is say, you can come in the country, but not your phone.
You leave it here.
And so then your option is, do I wipe my phone?
Do I give them my phone?
Do I throw it in the trash?
So yes, you can say no, but it's not a great option to say no.
And then, like I mentioned, if you're an attorney, you can say no, but you can escalate it to
a next level so that instead of just, you know, Joe customs agent being the one to go through your
phone, you can ask for basically, can I talk to your superior, you know, and you can, you can try
to escalate it to the level of hopefully somebody that is actually an attorney who has a more of an
understanding of the law. And then you can maybe have a give and take over whether they will look
at your phone and, you know, keep in mind that this all takes time. If you're flying back into JFK
and then you have a connecting flight to Kansas city, you might miss that connecting flight as you
go through all this nonsense. So like there are some practical considerations here too. Yeah,
they can, they can eventually. So again, yeah, you could say no, but that's not really that,
that's it's, you know, there's some serious practical problems with it.
Okay. Well, that was my question. Like you said, no good looking solutions to this and boy, yeah,
it is, it is, you know, I guess, I guess my other, my, my quick thought on your,
on your statement there, like if they do keep the phone, but let me go on.
If I know that I've got a good iCloud backup, I could theoretically go get a new phone,
right? Once I get back and I could wipe the old phone and then download, you know,
I had that thought too. You could like wipe your phone, you know, as you're coming back in and then
there's nothing on the phone. And if they, if they do take it, well, then all they had was an empty
phone and you have to buy a new phone that you can back up from, you know, restore from iCloud.
Of course, we all know that restoring an iPhone is a pain in the butt because not everything is a perfect restore.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
But yes, you're right.
That would be an option.
Yeah.
And again, we're just talking about customs here.
But keep in mind that when you're in another country, you might need to be nervous about, you know, dangerous Wi-Fi.
And it's a dangerous world out there, Brett.
My goodness.
Well, the thing is, I don't even like the thought of, like, maybe using a burner phone or so.
Because at least for me, as a common guy, you know, like when we went to Europe, I would use my phone everywhere.
Like, I didn't even bring cash.
I didn't even, I think there was only one time that I actually used cash.
So my phone was cash.
My phone was my map.
My phone was, when we got on the trains and everywhere, it was my ticket everywhere.
Yeah, you want your phone, right.
Yeah.
I had everything on there.
I mean, I used the SIM, the eSIM card that I've talked about.
Like, everything was available on my phone.
That was my main thing.
Like, I don't want to give any of that up.
I want to keep that phone.
So, oof.
Okay.
We'll move on.
just a little scary.
Unnerving.
Maybe unnerving is the thing that I would say.
So let's get back to a happy aspect.
Not speaking of unnerving.
Oh, my goodness.
iPhoneJD.com has been running on a new foundation for several months.
I just got to tell you, I think it's been going fantastic.
I love the new website.
I feel like I've kind of watched you as you go through this
because you have been running iPhone JD for over 16 years, Jeff,
and that's pretty amazing.
And I remember when you started this, it was on the old TypePad Foundation,
which that was the bee's knees at the time.
I mean, that was the actual selection that a lot of people made.
But then I know over this, you've put this off and put this off for a long time
since I've known you, but you finally made that switch, I think, what,
just in December or just at the end of 2024?
February of this year, actually.
Okay, okay.
So, yeah, you started.
But then you did it.
You are now running on WordPress, which obviously today is the bee's knees, and that's what everybody selected on this.
But I'm glad that you did it.
I mean, your timing was pretty good on this, Jeff.
I had like –
Now it's going away.
You know how sometimes in life, like you'll see something and you feel your heart drop, and just for a brief moment, you're like, oh, my goodness.
And I literally had that moment yesterday because when I saw this announcement that TypePad, I mean, what happened is TypePad said, hey, by the way, we're going away in 30 days.
So, you know, get your stuff and get out of here.
And we're like, 30 days?
And, like, even though I made the transition earlier this year, like, my heart dropped because for a brief second, I'm like, oh, my God, do I need to suddenly move everything in 30 days?
I'm like, oh, no, I don't.
You know, when I started using TypePad in 2008, it was recommended to be by somebody, a friend of both of ours, Ernie Svensson, Ernie the attorney.
Yeah.
And, you know, at the time it was a really good option in 2008 and I stuck with it for
years.
And over the last few years, you know, the service hasn't been quite as good, but it's
been, it would be such a hassle to move.
And thank goodness I decided at the end of last year, you know, it's just time to move
because it took me months to do.
And in fact, there was a lot of technical stuff that I could not figure out how to move some
of my old content.
And I asked you, my dear friend, and your suggestion to me was to use a service called
Fiverr.
What is it?
F-I-V-E-R-R or something like that.
which is a way that you can like hire people.
And so I just put out a request saying,
I need someone with experience
moving from TypePad to WordPress.
I found somebody, he was amazing.
In fact, he had a team of people working with him
and like, oh my goodness, I am so happy
because they solved so many things
that I just could not figure out how to do technically.
And so it took me a few months and I got it done.
And now that I'm on the WordPress platform,
which by the way, there's a WordPress company
that has a specific site,
but then there's a platform
that many, many, many different sites,
it's like an open source type thing.
And so I don't actually use WordPress.com.
I use a different company that I've been very happy with because it's super fast.
I love the fact that my website loads so incredibly fast nowadays.
Oh, yeah.
But it has taken me a while.
I still hate the fact that with TypePad, I felt like I knew how to do everything and I could change whatever I wanted.
In WordPress, there are still times that I want to do something on my website and I, what, how do I do this?
And there's a million support articles and videos and there's almost too much information about it.
It's hard to figure out.
But it's more complicated, but it's awful, far more robust.
But I feel so bad.
Last night, I was actually looking at these different websites that are running on TypePad.
And some of them had been like this one guy I saw.
He said, I started using TypePad in 2003.
And I've been using for all this time.
He's like, and I've got like 9,000 posts.
And now I suddenly have to figure out how to move all of this.
And like, this was just like a personal, I don't think it wasn't like a business or anything.
But it doesn't matter what it is.
for whatever your reason that you have a blog, I don't know blogs aren't as popular now as they
used to be, but that is, you know, what I take from all of this is I think it's a good reminder
to all of us. This is not a typehead story. This is just a life story that if something that's
important to you, you're relying upon a third party. I mean, we all rely upon Apple for having
our iPhones and stuff. If Apple went away in 30 days, I don't think that's going to happen.
Although back in the 1990s, some people thought it might happen as we talked about earlier today.
You know, if there's someone that you rely upon or a service, you know, there's always the risk that it's going to just go away.
You know, one day Twitter wasn't Twitter anymore.
It was X.
You know, companies go away.
Typepad goes away.
And so it's always good to just keep, you know, who do I depend upon and what would I do if that had to change?
It's not a bad personal hygiene just to sort of think about that and have backup plans.
Thank goodness that I made this transition because Brett, I would be pulling what little hair I have left out if I was trying right now to figure out between now and September 30th what to do with my website.
I would have had a heart attack.
So thank heesh.
It's just, you know.
Thank goodness.
It can be crazy.
Yeah.
And iPhoneJD.com, better for it.
I agree.
I like it.
It is better.
Yes.
And everything.
Yeah.
And you're one of the people, Brett, that encouraged me to switch to WordPress.
Thank you for that.
You were right.
Yeah.
Yeah. Let's do a quick in the show.
In the show.
We've talked about Apple TV plus content, first of all, getting so much better.
And then we start to see it maybe popping up in a little bit different places, like almost like Apple is getting confident enough to say, hey, you service over there.
You can have a few of these popular series.
And if people want to see more, well, they got to come to Apple TV plus.
And it sounds like this story that you link to, a show called Trying, which, by the way, based on your recommendation, my wife and I started watching it.
It really is fun.
It's about a British couple trying to adopt children.
And it looks like, I think this is correct from here, Apple has given BBC, obviously the British Broadcasting Corporation, the rights to what?
The first two or three seasons?
The first three seasons, yeah.
But if people want to see more after that, they got to come to Apple TV+.
I mean, really, this is sort of a brilliant marketing-type move, right, to be able to say, hey, we've got a lot of press out of the first couple of seasons.
We're going to let some other people enjoy it.
But then if they want to see more, we know we could probably get some additional subscribers for that, which is pretty brilliant.
The strategy is not new.
There have been other shows out there that have, for example, released their first season or their first two seasons to Netflix because so many people have Netflix.
And their hope was, you know, go see it on Netflix.
And then once you get hooked, you'll come to our service to get the more recent seasons.
And I know that's happened before.
I can't think of what shows it's happened to.
And it's not even the first time that there's been a show on Apple TV Plus and another service.
And the example that comes to mind for me is there was a really good show that I enjoyed watching called Tehran, T-E-H-R-E-N.
And it took place, it was about a secret agent in Israel that went into Iran.
It was a really good, like if you like thrillers, like, you know, James Bondy sort of stuff,
it was an excellent show.
But that show was co-produced.
It was co-produced by both Apple TV Plus and whatever the, one of the broadcasting companies
in Israel is.
And so you could watch it in Israel on that service and on Apple TV Plus.
But this is different because this is a show that was created by Apple and originally was
just an Apple TV Plus show.
And now there's, I guess, selling, I don't know how much money they got for it, but I
don't know if they just gave it away completely, but who knows.
But for whatever reason, they have an arrangement with the BBC so that if you are in, you know,
in London or if you have a BBC account somehow, some other way, you can now watch the show,
you know, for no extra charge.
And it makes sense because the show takes place in England, right?
You know, it's definitely a British show.
In fact, the Deadline article points out that this was, you know, years ago, Apple was looking
to expand their offerings.
And so they got involved with a company to like, let's make some shows in England.
And it was this one.
It was Slow Horses, which is like one of the best shows ever on Apple TV Plus and some other ones, too.
And so anyway, it's Apple TV Plus is trying new things and hopefully is where you're trying.
Ha ha.
Because the show's about trying, too.
But I'm glad that they're trying new things.
And I will say, you know, this is just another opportunity for me to give a plug, as I have in the past.
This show is adorable.
It is funny.
It is heartwarming.
It is cute.
And I know it attracts me a little bit more because we adopted our kids.
So like so much of it speaks to me.
But it's just a great it's just a great show.
It's very funny.
I'm so thrilled that a fifth season is coming out because the show always makes me laugh.
And it's a feel good show.
You know, it's you know, even when there's drama, you're going to still end up the episode with a smile on your face.
I really encourage you to see trying.
And if you don't have Apple TV Plus, but you're listening to us from London, you can now see it for free or pretty soon at least.
You can feel good watching Trine, and then if you want a scarier movie, go to a little video clip that you linked to today, The Savant.
And I'm like, okay, well, this can't be too bad.
So I watched it this morning, and I'm like, now I'm not only scared about my iPhone coming across the border.
I'm scared about worldwide terrorist organizations and who is actually tracking them.
But this does look like a pretty good little movie coming out from Apple TV+.
Yeah, it stars Jessica Chastain, who I think is a fantastic actress. I love her. And she apparently plays an undercover agent that like infiltrates these domestic terrorist organizations so that she can sort of become a part of it and understand when they're going to have like the next attack and hopefully try to prevent it.
But, you know, obviously ripped from the headlines, because I know that some of the stuff does happen.
Just this week, there was another horrible shooting at a preschool or a young school, which was horrible.
I mean, every day it seems like you hear about people, you know, using guns inappropriately to do great harm.
So I know that there are people who try to infiltrate these organizations and prevent it from happening.
In fact, you do hear every once in a while, they don't necessarily publicize it, but like they have success.
And like what could have been another horrible disaster is prevented.
So this is sort of a ripped from the headlines type story.
but it looks like it's going to be dramatic and it starts in just a couple of weeks it's not a
series i think they said it's a limited uh it's not like a t like a show it's a what do they call
it it's a it's a limited series so i think there's just going to be a one season like a one season
with eight episodes but um yeah from looking at the trailer this looks like it could be good so
i'm looking forward to this one in the know in the know here's a tip that i will admit i stumbled
upon but okay my wife thinks it is brilliant so we we were driving my wife was driving i was in the
car she asked me to map give directions on google maps so we typically we talked about this many
times i still when i'm driving tend to lean toward google maps it's when i'm walking in like a
downtown area or somewhere i find apple maps does a little bit better so we were using google maps
And you know this when you get directions or navigation on either of these apps, you are resembled by a little icon, usually a little dot or an arrow icon in the maps, right?
And it kind of follows along as you go through.
So I gave us a map, and I somehow just tapped on that little icon in Google Maps.
And if you're doing this right now, Jeff, you will find that when you navigate somewhere in Google Maps and you tap on the little icon, you will immediately get the option to change your little avatar on there.
You can change it into a little car, a sports car, an SUV, a little hatchback, whatever it is, and you can change the color of your car as well.
Did not know that.
There's two ways.
I didn't know this either, but I got to tell you, this little change just makes my wife smile every time to wear the car because as you're driving now, instead of this little icon going on the roads, it is a little tiny white SUV, which is the kind of car that we drive.
And you can change it up.
In fact, here, if you go in there right now, there's a couple ways to get to this.
But if you go in there right now, this is going to be another marketing avenue because one of the options is like generic, kind of like cartoonish looking cars, right?
You have a little icon.
But the other one is you can change it to Benson Boone's car.
Now, I don't know if you know Benson Boone, but he's a singer today that apparently in one of his videos or something has like this little cool, it's like a little Dodge Challenger or something like that.
So you can change it to Benson Boone's car as opposed to like a generic little car on there.
So there's a couple of different ways you can do it.
You have to start in Google Maps.
You have to navigate to a place, okay?
So once you start navigating, it's got like this little map.
Now, you can tap the little, it's called trip options.
There's a little option there in Google Maps.
And this is where you would go that if you wanted to say avoid tolls, you could turn that off so that the map makes sure that you don't go through a toll road.
I do that a lot of times when I'm traveling different places.
A lot of times those highways close to airports always have tolls.
And I'm like, just give me a way that doesn't include tolls.
But if you look down and go to that trip options page, you can see driving avatar.
And there you can find where you can customize that.
Or if you navigate somewhere and you say start, right, so that immediately the little icon comes up and you've got the little arrow.
And if you tap on that little arrow, you can get to the same area, the same place where you can change your driving avatar.
Now, I have tried and tried to see if Apple Maps has this option, and I cannot find that Apple Maps has it.
So this is only in Google Maps.
Choose your driving avatar.
change your little driving avatar to something that's a little cuter and it just makes you smile.
So that's my tip for the day.
Good tip. Good tip.
So my tip is I have some visual aids for this one if you're watching the video version of the podcast.
It's not how to describe it.
But start by clicking the link that says learn the meaning of Apple.
Yeah, that one right there.
So this is a page on Apple's website called learn the meaning of iPad status icons.
We've talked about this page in the past.
At the very top of your iPad or your iPhone screen, you will see all sorts of symbols.
And some of them we know very well, you know, it tells you the strength of your connection to Wi-Fi, the strength of your, you know, cell phone connection.
We know those very well.
And then there are some, you know, 5G, LTE.
And then there are some that you might not know quite as much.
And so anyway, I was thinking about this page the other day because on my iPad, I saw an icon at the top that I did not identify.
And I looked on this page.
There it is right there.
I looked on this page and I could not find the icon.
I'm like, what is that?
Yeah, it's not on this page.
That's crazy.
Yeah, show the other picture I sent you
that was just like a picture of my iPad
and it was the very top corner.
And I'm like, what in the world is that blue icon up there?
I didn't know what it was.
And then sure enough, I did some search
and I finally found this Apple support.
So it's like a blue pill icon.
And in the center, it's got what looks like a gear
and it's got an arrow at the top and an arrow at the bottom.
So it's arrows that are circling around a gear.
I'm like, what incarnations is my iPad doing right now?
So I found this Apple support article that explains what's going on.
And they say that what it is, is this is a indication that your iPad, I don't know if
this shows up on the iPhone as well, but it's an indication that your iPad is synchronizing
something.
Oh, I'm like, okay, what is it synchronizing?
I do not know.
Right. And after doing a little more searching, I've heard some people say that after you update your iPad.
And again, I don't know if it's in the iPhone. I haven't seen it there.
After you update your iPad to like a new operating system, sometimes it continues to download some stuff in the background for a little bit.
And so you might see it there. For me, I actually think it was a bug because I it was like a weekend and I was I was sitting there working on my iPad, sitting on my couch in my living room.
And I was downloading a huge, I was working on something called a red application, like
an appellate brief that somebody else had filed and had tons of exhibits.
And so I don't even know how many megabytes, let's just, you know, 200 megabytes, whatever.
It was a pretty big file that I was downloading using the PDF Expert app.
And I think what happened is that when it was downloading this huge, or maybe it was even
Dropbox, but whatever it was, whatever service I was using, I think that because it was a
big download, that icon popped up and then it just did not go away.
Even after I finished downloading it, it sort of got stuck or something like that.
But like it just it made me a little I don't know, but this little I was like, what are you doing in the back?
It may be uncomfortable. I don't know what's going on here.
And so I just restarted my iPad. And when I restarted my iPad, it was gone and it hasn't come back since.
So but the point is, this is an icon that you might not know what it is.
But now you do. In fact, I'll mention one more.
If you go to the Apple support article that I mentioned that I gave you the link to not that one, but the other one, the one that was on the support page.
that if you scroll down a little bit, somebody has another icon.
Do you see it there?
You just passed it.
It's the blue.
There it is.
It's the blue icon that sort of looks like the end of a USB thing there.
And apparently it's an icon that appears briefly if you connect your iPad to a USB-C hub.
Not something you're likely to do or not.
But this is another example of a status icon which is not on Apple's page.
They need to update it.
And yet you might see this and say, what in the world is that?
And so now you know.
So anyway, I love the fact that Apple gives you these little icons just to give you a little like, for example, one that I enjoy seeing is location services.
Because like if I've recently used location services, it's up there.
But like if somebody was tracking me, you know, this is not necessarily a bad thing because I allow my wife and kids to know where I am through the Find My app.
But like, it's just to giving you a sense of, hey, you know, somebody, somebody, you know,
your iPhone was sharing its location with somebody.
And if it wasn't one of your loved ones, you know, is it some app that's, you know, going
rogue and looking at your location?
I'll give you an example of that.
I was using my Vision Pro the other day and I was watching a show.
I'm watching that new Dexter show on Paramount Plus.
And in the middle of the show, like every 15 minutes, the little icon for locations, like
what is, why does Paramount care where I am as I'm watching the show?
Like I'm not really thrilled that they – I presume that it was that app doing it.
I don't know.
So I may have to – whatever.
It made me upset.
But anyway, so it's – sometimes those status icons can sometimes be very informative, but sometimes they can be a mystery because we don't know what they are.
So that's my tip of the day.
Well, that's it.
I like the icons.
I am unnerved that there's at least two icons that are not on this page.
Maybe more, right.
That there could be more.
And then specifically on the one with the syncing, I'm still not comfortable with the fact like it doesn't give me enough insight into what is syncing.
Or to your point, I see that location services come up.
I'm glad that it's there exactly like what you said, Jeff.
But I want to know what app is doing that.
Now, I think there is a way you can go into the location services and you can see like which one is being used or maybe the last time that it was being used.
But it's a little convoluted in how that goes, and I don't want to take the time to go and do that every single time.
I wish I could just jump straight to that maybe by tapping on that icon, but that's not what they allow us to do yet.
In fact, you're reminding me I am not running the iOS 26 beta on my iPad, so I haven't been able to confirm this.
But when I was doing some research, I found one person that said that in the new iPad OS 26, one of the new features that you and I have discussed is that it can now handle background sync, background downloads and background activities, excuse me.
And so, for example, if you're exporting a movie from Final Cut Pro on your iPad, that could take, you know, many, many minutes.
You know, in the current system, it's going to time out after a while and your export is going to fail.
But in iPad OS 26, it will continue to work in the background.
And I saw somebody say that there, I don't know if it's this exact same icon.
It might actually be that you will see this icon to let you know that there's a background
activity going on.
And what they said was, and this was just a Reddit post.
It's not trustworthy, but we'll all find out in about two weeks.
If you tap on that icon, it will give you a list of here are the background activities
that are going on.
And so I'm hoping that that's true and it would make sense that it is true.
So we'll all know for sure.
If you're listening to this and you're currently running the beta, then maybe you already know the answer to that.
But that might be another icon that will be very useful because it will provide the information that you were just saying would be nice to have.
We will talk with you in a week from today, Jeff.
But I feel like we're just going to be talking more speculation for September 9th.
That will be the Tuesday after.
But that being said, it will be fun.
I'm looking forward to seeing what's going to, you know, everything that who knows what could get, you know, released or rumored out into the public in a week's time.
And there'll be plenty to talk about in a week.
So we'll talk with you then.
Indeed.
Thanks, Brett.
Bye-bye, everybody.