[00:00:05] Speaker A: Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to Crosswires, the technology variety show. We are currently recording this live on Riverside with streaming going out to Twitch and YouTube. Probably goes as no surprise, but it's about what, at this point, couple of.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Weeks after the Apple event, probably two weeks, isn't it?
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Yeah, two weeks. And that should have given everyone time to have a little think on the event and for people to who've got devices or maybe family members have got devices to have some thoughts and, you know, obviously things to settle. And also, of course, we'd be able to install the latest versions of iOS, ipados, and macOS. So we've got a bit of experience on that. But let me introduce panel, of course, without, you know, any surprise, my beautiful co host and fiance, J. How are you doing to.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: Oh, sorry, I was using iPhone mirroring and I was playing a game on FrK.
[00:01:04] Speaker D: I'm doing good.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: You know, the thing is, what's really, really sad is I could tell that that was scripted because she was, like, too focused on. That would have been great if I'd been a gimmick. Anyway, carry on.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: I'm doing great. And I just got word today that I finished my penultimate college course. So next year, you will have a college graduate on the crashfires team.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Nice. Oh, does that mean I got to start paying anymore?
[00:01:31] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Or actually paying you. I know.
All right. Thank you, Jay. It's always good to have you here. And thank you. I know you moved a few things around to be here, so I appreciate that. Next up, returning, of course, because it's an Apple event. We couldn't have an Apple event without Alex low phone V interface. Alex, how you doing?
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Hi, James. I'm doing good, thank you. Yeah, not too bad.
I didn't buy any devices this time, so I haven't got anything to share on that front.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: But, yeah, that's fine. We can still all drool, can't we? That's fine. Right? And a new guest to our apple event discussions. But by no means a new guest of the show. Please welcome back Gideon Mayhew from the icon factory. Gideon, how you doing?
[00:02:14] Speaker D: Hey, thanks, James. EJ. Nice to meet you. Alexe. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Good to be here.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Well, we figured we should get maybe a designer and a developer's influence as well. Plus, do you know it's always a laugh. Okay, well, let's have a little bet now, how many Star Trek references can we or Sci-Fi references can we get into one recording? But there's nothing at all to do with Star Trek.
[00:02:38] Speaker D: Is that a challenge? Because if you want to make it a challenge, I'll go for it.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Then I think we could do that. I'm thinking, how well, I wonder, can.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: I get Siri to start saying daisy, daisy, give me your answer, too.
[00:02:53] Speaker D: Nan's mixing Sci-Fi references.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Oh, although I'll grant that one. Me and Jay did watch 2001 the other night, or tried to. I think I fell asleep quite. Only cause he was late, not because. Although it's a long film, it's a long.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: At least more entertaining as, like, it keeps your attention more than Star Trek the slow motion picture.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: What do you think, Edie?
[00:03:18] Speaker D: Is more entertaining than Star the motion picture?
[00:03:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:23] Speaker D: See, like most things in life, it all depends on how old you were when you first saw it. And, you know, I was a kid of seven or eight years old when I saw Star Trek the motion picture. So I was in heaven in the theater when I saw it. I still have fond memories of seeing it in the theater and everything. I never saw 2001 in the theater. I didn't see it. It was before I was born or. Yeah, and I mean, I saw it on tv later on, and it just didn't do anything for me at all. But I'm sure the people who did see it in the theater loved it, because I'd never been seeing anything like that before in their lives, and it was just amazing and blew people away. It all about your first experience, you.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Know, that is a fair point.
Star Trek motion picture, it is a hard film to watch at times. However, I will say this, that dry dock sequence of the Enterprise is still just starship porn.
[00:04:18] Speaker D: Yeah, just.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. Anyway, we are not here to talk Star Trek, as much as I know I was gonna say, everybody apart from Alex will be like, in heaven, let's talk the Apple event. I mean, look, I will say it again, and I think we really don't need to keep saying this on every episode now, but I am really liking the pre filmed events.
[00:04:41] Speaker C: One thing I noticed this time, because I was actually watching it on Twitch in the evening, they also had audio descriptions as well as. So as you're going along, you could get descriptions of what's on screen at different times.
This also allows them to make it more accessible to more people. And that is, I think, one thing we'll get into later on in the show, kind of a teaser for later on. But Apple is about accessibility, and by doing it this way, you can do it. And I think I was watching this thing during fireball where Jobs was a bit more like a keynote from Tim versus Jobs. Tim has more of the. If he scripted it is fine. Jobs was more of the charisma of on stage.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, Gideon, you were obviously more out that way, if I remember correctly. Have you been to an apple? Have you had beyond. No. You've not been to an.
[00:05:41] Speaker D: I mean, I've been. I went to an early one at Macworld long, long, long ago, but I haven't been to one since then. And, I mean, I'm with you. I enjoy the prerecorded ones myself.
They cut out all of the dead stuff in the in between parts that were on stage presentations. They get rid of that butterfly nervousness of a demo that can fail on stage. There's a lot more diversity in the people that are giving the presentations.
I really appreciate that. And of course, it's nice to get to see Apple park and all of that. I think they're really well done. This one was a little long. This one went on a little bit too long for me, considering what they had to show, which, honestly wasn't a whole lot.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: I think some of it could have easily been press releases. Certainly. I'm gonna say this, the new bands for the Apple Watch Ultra did not need to be included.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: I think the Apple Watch Ultra refresh itself probably didn't need. Didn't need anything. Such a new color.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: Well, yes, exactly. Yeah, I forgot, you see, that's how unimpactful it was. I forgot that they even brought out new colour.
[00:06:54] Speaker D: Do any of you have an Apple Watch ultra?
[00:06:57] Speaker B: No, I've already won one.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: But one of the things that they could have done to bring down the time, because we've seen Apple do a very fast event. Spooky fast was, like, done in 20 minutes or so. What they could have done was done another event about Apple intelligence once it launches. Cause right now, it's a public testing. Cause a lot of the presentation was reiterating things that they already did at WWDC and trying to mention more about the privacy. But still, that could have been another event.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Just looping back. Giddy. Are you an Apple Watch Ultra user?
[00:07:30] Speaker D: No, I have a. I have an eight. I think it's.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: I'm on an eight, just. But I'm only. I'm only on the 40 1 mm because actually, that's a pretty good size for me. I used to. When I first got my. When I got my first Apple Watch, I was on the bigger size, but when they increased the size of the watches, I went for this one. So I know someone who's got a watch ultra and may absolutely love it. But, yeah, I think that's a very fair point, Jay, about Apple intelligence, because it's not out yet. They did cover a lot of it in WWDC. The only comment I would make there is, remember the target audience between WWDC, which is for us apple nerds. I think it's far less of a press event, whereas this event is a out and out. Realistically, this is for the press and consumers. Right?
[00:08:21] Speaker D: Yeah. And investors in general. They don't want Apple to feel like they're falling behind on the AI front. So of course they have to do everything they can to hype it, even though it's not released yet. And I think it was more for them than it was anybody else.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Agreed. Is that sort of hype? Hype, AI hype? And we will talk about Apple intelligence a little bit more in terms of what we've seen. We've obviously now, at least for half of the audience, we at least know when it's coming to our little island.
I think December. Is it December? They've said for Apple intelligence?
[00:08:58] Speaker C: Yes. And they're also working on. I think I was reading more than just English, which is really good that they're trying to see it more.
I have my concerns about apple. Tells people to save that for later.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Okay, awesome. I think, look, let's. Because obviously Apple went in a certain order. Let's actually start with a big. What's probably say the big thing. It was these people call them the iPhone event for a reason. Right. So let's talk about the 16 lineup. I mean, I open forum particularly to Gideon and Alex to start with, at least. What do you think? And obviously, is it something you considered? I mean, yeah. What are our thoughts on these two new phones? I was about to say two new cameras. And in a lot of ways, they are becoming more camera than phone.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: I mean, the camera improvements, because I do a lot of filming, I don't tend to use the iPhone for filming that much anymore. But the stuff they're doing, like I saw a video from Mister who's the boss. He demoed this new audio feature where audio behind the camera can be. I don't know how the hell they've done that, but it can't pick. It basically can ignore the stuff that's the other side of the phone, which is just insane.
And the improvements they've made to the entry level iPhone 16 in terms of the camera and the different things on there is just massive, massive improvement. And I. Yes, you might look at what is different on the new phones and think it's only a little tiny incremental upgrade for a lot of people because I bought the 15 last year. But, like, yeah, I'm really impressed with the camera stuff as a person who films a lot of footage. So it's quite good.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: So just to be clear on that microphone thing. So effectively, if you're filming. So you're filming with the back cameras and there's noise like you. Yeah, it will cut that out and just focus on what's on the. The other way around.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Both.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: What also I found, I saw one thing today I was researching before the show is that you can have. You can film something, but then the audio track to go with the video can be something from your phone, like a music song or anything, like a song to go with it. So you can skip some of the editing work afterwards. So you can sort of do live editing kind of, and see, that's some.
[00:11:12] Speaker C: Of the best use cases because I used to do training videos for one of my former companies, and sometimes you didn't have the budget for a big camera or a lot of mics. And I remember one training literally was kibosh because people were talking behind the scenes. All you heard was they were talking. This would have saved that. And that blew my mind so far. And I was just like, wow, that on a consumer device, I mean, it's the pro level, but still consumer.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: I mean, is that a pro only feature, Alex?
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Oh, is it? I didn't. I didn't know if it was or not.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: Yeah, that one is pro only because they had to build in some more stuff on the.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Oh, and put more microphones and things. Okay.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: And also give you a reason to upgrade it. I mean, there is always that caveat that Apple does have to differentiate their line in a certain way.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: So just to go around the table, because I'm on a 15 pro. Jay, you're on a 13 pro? 15 pro, I believe. Alex?
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, this was. Yeah, that year's gone so quick.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Gideon, what were you on?
[00:12:19] Speaker D: 14. I think it was a 14 pro max. Yeah.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Okay. And I guess that makes a really good point, because effectively we've got three generation of phone here, but aren't the latest. Now, I will say, I can consistently say this. IPhones, for me, hold their value and hold their functionality a lot longer than maybe other devices in. I want to be careful. I'm saying this because I don't want to turn this into an Android Apple debate, but I do think the fact that you've got this generation of phones and it's very clear what's supported on each, does make the iPhone a good.
[00:12:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker C: Well, I mean, for the fact that. Look at it. I've got your older phone. Your dad's got my older phone now. And I mean, look, and, like, the only thing I won't be able to get will be some of the Apple intelligence features, which does hang a bit, but I'll get them eventually. You know, it's that problem of not buying the latest and greatest, but still, my phone, it does what I need.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: So last year, I went from the iPhone eleven Pro to the 15 Pro and sold my eleven Pro on eBay for more than I thought it would get. So it still held its value, even though it was an old. An old phone. So it would do someone quite well. And that phone will still get iOS 18, I think.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it will. It will. Absolutely.
I haven't actually. Could someone just dig up what 18 is supported on while we're chatting?
[00:13:48] Speaker B: XR is the oldest, I believe.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Okay, so that means even my mum's ten s will be supported because that's the same generation as the ten rite.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: That's the point I want to raise, actually. I don't understand that. I believe the XR and the X have the same chip.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: So why is X nu.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Why.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: Yeah, why?
[00:14:05] Speaker B: It doesn't make any sense, does it?
[00:14:07] Speaker A: I thought the XR and the Xs shared the same chip, just the lower feature set. I thought it was a Xs and XR that shared the same chip.
I might be wrong.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I lose track of what things they've decided to do over the years.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: I will say, though, I am very glad that the cause, obviously they announced you Apple Watch series ten. I'm glad it's series ten, not series X. Yeah.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: I confuse a lot of people.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: And I think they might want to distance themselves. Platform joke. Joke.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: I think. I think that's a very good thing of ice. Illinois. Gideon, I mean, he wants to do stuff. Anyway, for me, the real feature of the 16 that I.
I'm still buying, going to upgrade for my 15 Pro because it's a brilliant phone, the brilliant camera. And actually.
So it's that new camera control little area. I think that's going to be incredibly helpful for people who do use the iPhone, but only camera, and that is me. Okay. I did have DSLR. Jay, I don't think your camera ever really leaves your studio? Because it's designed for filming.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: Absolutely. And when I'm out and about, I don't really want to take a big camera with me.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: No.
What about yourself, Gideon? What's your sort of. Are you a. Are you a photographer with a real camera or are you.
[00:15:36] Speaker D: No, no.
I used to own one back in the day, but I haven't needed to for years. You know, the iPhone is more than sufficient in most cases. You know, I don't own an SLR or anything, but I mean, the 16s are impressive. They are every year. They're more of what makes Apple so successful. The action button and the camera control in particular are interesting. I'm curious to try them out on my wife's iPhone, so I have yet to try that yet. I hope Apple opens up the APIs for that camera control to other apps, other than camera apps. I'm not sure if that's going to be possible or they're going to allow that in the future or not, but fingers crossed for that. I could see a whole bunch of uses for it other than camera apps, which would be nice.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: It would be a perfect scrolling tool through a upcoming social media reading app, possibly.
[00:16:45] Speaker D: Who knows? There are all sorts of things that you could use it for.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: I mean, you could always try the private APIs.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:59] Speaker D: Apple's good graces.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yes. I was going to say, let's not talk about private APIs, Jay.
I remember that discussion back in the day, but I'm with you. It's a really interesting. They said it would work in other camera apps, I believe.
[00:17:15] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Because didn't they mention, was it halide? They mentioned Halide.
[00:17:18] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is a gorgeous camera app, by the way. But I'm with you. It'd be really cool to be able to, you know, imagine if we can make it something again that developers could surface and. And use.
You can see really use it. You really, really useful in editing apps like Lumafusion. You could have a little scrubber for scrubbing your footage.
[00:17:42] Speaker C: And I'm even thinking about, like, because we've talked with people behind accessibility devices here. We have an upcoming guest behind accessibility software that it could be a good accessibility tool.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
A massive thing. There's a lot of tactile input there. I think that's really good. I just. Okay, look, great iPhones. I do like the design of the 16, but I'm not upgrading. I don't think any of us here are. But you know what? If you are upgrading, let us know. Drop us a note. Podcastwise.net dot.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: You're mentioning the camera stuff. So, like, there are quite a few youtubers I've interviewed on my podcast that they film lots of different kinds of content. They just use their phones. That's all they use because it's just the easiest for them to use. I can see why. Because it just works really, really well, so.
[00:18:31] Speaker C: And I used to be afraid of like wearing out my phone, which is why I bought this camera. And I mean, nowadays I don't think I would. There is one caveat to using that, and James and I have discovered that. So iPhone mirroring does not work. You have got the new camera turned on, right?
[00:18:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So, okay. That morse is nicely into. I guess, I mean, I do we. Before we. Before we move on to iOS 18, because that is a great segue, Jay. Shall we talk about the rest of the hardware announcements? Because there are a few more. Apple Watch series ten. Bigger screen, rounded corners, thinner, better speaker, better charging. I mean, it just seems like one of really good trajectory.
[00:19:13] Speaker C: You missed the evolution sleep apnea testing.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Well, that.
Isn't that coming to watch OS itself? Not just. I might be wrong. I thought that was coming to watchos, not just when you.
[00:19:28] Speaker C: I'm going to check that out, I.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Think, but from a hardware point of view, I mean. Yeah.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Series nine onwards, I believe.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Okay, series nine on. Okay, so fine. Okay, so I won't be able to get it, but anyone who's got a series nine, which will include both ultras, I believe.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Yes, that's right, sir.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: I thought that was the hardware feature. Sorry.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: That's okay. Well, this is the thing. It can be very confusing when we talk watch because it isn't always clear what is hardware and what is software with a watch OS. So that's an absolutely valid point, but, you know, to get mixed up on. But what I mean, overall thoughts, what do we think?
Is it just a nice upgrade? It's not amazingly compelling over my series eight.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: I mean, I've got a series five. It's probably over g for an update because it doesn't get what to us, eleven is it? Or watch was ten. I forgot which one we're on now.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: I think 111. Now I think 111. Yeah.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: So I'm missing out on those, those features, but it'll still work just fine. The thing I'm happy about is always, every year you hear the rumor that the bands won't work with a new watch, and every year they just still do. They've still got some bands from the first Apple Watch. So, yeah, I'm happy they still work because people invest a lot of money in different bands and things over the years. So for me, that's quite a good thing.
[00:20:43] Speaker D: Be great if iPhone cases work like that.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yes.
Just like a mod. Yeah, would be nice. I do not have a case on my iPhone right now because I had to put it into my Osmo mobile mount and it does not like cases.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: And I think one thing to be noted is the materials. Like, they're using metal on some of them, but they really have been trying to do a lot more materials that are recycled and nothing. Not like new.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Hang on, hang on, hang on. Sorry, sorry for using metal on some of them.
[00:21:18] Speaker C: Oh, true, yes.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Just. Just think about that statement for a second. Check.
That's it for using metal on some of them.
Aluminium.
And that is the correct way of pronouncing it, by the way. Aluminium.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:21:36] Speaker D: Getting ganged up on that one.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:39] Speaker C: We had a president who got ganged up on for saying it that way.
[00:21:42] Speaker D: Well, at least we don't have to deal with the fine woven anymore, you know?
[00:21:46] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: That quietly got booted out, didn't it?
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Was it just me? I like those cases. Mine's fallen apart, but I quite like the look of it.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: But isn't that the point, Alex? Yes, that's the thing. How long have you had it?
[00:21:58] Speaker B: A year.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Exactly. A case should not fall apart.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it's. Well, not structurally, but, like, some of the stuff on the bottom near the ports have gone a bit crumbly. But I don't know, I kind of. I kind of like them. But they. If they're not durable, they're not durable, so not worth it.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Is it just me, by the way, over magsafe cases, you know, the ones that have, like, the. The white, like, that's ugly. It is. I don't quite understand. Why is that? Because they have to be able to extend the magnet out. Is that why that's bad?
[00:22:29] Speaker B: I believe so, yeah.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: I don't like it. Mine's got that and I just don't like it. I mean, I did. I know. Jay, you got a really good case for your 13 pro.
[00:22:37] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Which. Which is mic safe compatible. I need to get a better case. What was your case preference, Gideon? What are you rocking?
[00:22:46] Speaker D: I always use that apple. Well, I have always used an apple silicon case. I really like it because it's slightly grippy, it doesn't slip right out of my hands. I cannot go without a case. If I had just have an iPhone that's just sitting there, I will drop it. I mean, it's just. They're just so slippery, especially coming out of my pocket or something like that. I know I will drop it. And, you know, the silicone is great for that. It little gets a little lint and stuff, but it got the nice grippy feel to it, that tactile feel to it and stuff. The only thing I don't like about them is, like, they do fall apart. It's like they reach, like, this. This event horizon with those cases where they're fine, they're fine, they're fine, and then they reach some limit, and then they just fall apart.
They just start shedding pieces off of them, like huge chunks. There's an inner core of those silicon cases, and then there's the outer silicon. And when they get to that point, the silicon just starts coming off. And mine got that way three weeks ago. Just started falling apart completely. I had to get a new case, but I wasn't going to about to spout 50 more dollars or 40 more dollars for a new apple case. So I went on Amazon and got one for, like, $14. And I honestly can't feel the difference. Like, when I'm holding it, I can't feel the difference. The only thing that isn't there is there's no Apple logo on the back. So, you know, it feels like it. Hopefully it'll last just as long.
But, yeah, I always usually go with silicon, so I cannot go caseless. I absolutely cannot go without a case.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Jay's showing off her case, which was. How much do you.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: Six pounds. So literally was $6, Jimmy. Yeah, $6.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: You haven't immigrated yet, dear.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: I was getting confused if I. Because I know I bought one thing in pounds and one thing in dollars, so.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Right, okay, fine. Yeah.
[00:24:44] Speaker C: But, yeah, six pounds in. Yeah, $6 and on it.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Six currency units.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: Yes, six currency units. And it's all made of recycled stuff. It's falling apart. Apart. But for $6, I don't care.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Fair enough. We did, on our old merch store, we did stock some iPhone cases. They were not the best quality. I don't know if we're going to restock those on the new store.
[00:25:05] Speaker C: No, I want to see, because we might. But we'll see.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: We'll see.
[00:25:11] Speaker C: But Magsafe is amazing, though.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Mic say. I mean, I know people rag. Cause, like, did they update the mic safe duo charger event? No, we've done a new puck, haven't we? We've done a faster puck, I believe.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's 45 watts. I might be wrong with that.
[00:25:27] Speaker C: Now, one thing I was reading about, I was listening to ATP about this. Just because it can charge faster doesn't always mean you should. For instance, if you're. If you're sleeping, you might want to use a slower charger because you don't want to wear out your battery faster.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: But in fairness, iOS 18 in particular has. You can set charging limits. So you can set it to 80% or 90%. Now, I think that's good. So it will never charge beyond that.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: It's quite funny how the phone charging has got, like, ev style sort of limits and sort of speeds on it now.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Well, honestly, Alex, I have to explain that I work in that industry. I have to explain to some people that, yes, there's a reason it slowed down to protect your battery.
Sleep apnea stuff. Going back to the watch, I mean, I think one of the things I really am impressed with, a very high level with the Apple Watch is how much of a sort of.
It makes health monitoring. It makes things like, you know, blood oxygen, heart rate, ecgs, all of that stuff just so super simple.
And I cannot. I know. I mean, can we share. Your mum has had. I think we share this so many times. Your mom has had Afib. Afib didn't. But watch detective, she was an Afib.
[00:26:56] Speaker C: Oh, it did. And it's what. It's what led her to actually go ahead and get things done with her heart. And they finally have. She's so much better. She has so much more energy now. And I actually want to see about encouraging her to use the sleep apnea function once she upgrades her watch. Because just because she has sleep apnea, you can at least monitor to make sure she's getting the proper sleep.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Right? And didn't we say that most people a lot. There was some stat. It was quite a high stat. But people who. Most people go undiagnosed.
[00:27:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I probably have it.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: I mean, but, yeah, most people. And it's actually been a running theme throughout. A lot of this stuff is. A lot of their health announcements have been. Most people who have the things that we're trying to detect for you don't know they have it.
[00:27:42] Speaker C: And that's what this is, these devices. I loved how. I want to go back to one thing that Apple opened the thing with, because it's part of this discussion. They opened with all the people who had lives saved.
And these are devices.
You're not buying a device to track your sleep apnea. You're not buying a device to check fall detection or trash detection and all that, or to have a device when you're out somewhere and you need satellite, but these devices have it, so when you need it, it's ready there. And you're not going to buy a bunch of devices. They're not as well calibrated as some of the medical devices. They don't cost the same amount either. This is to try to help people. And again, I was almost crying seeing all those people who are alive because of this device that they didn't buy for that purpose.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Well, like just kind of a point on that. I remember when iOS eight came out and I downloaded the beta in the summer, and this is before the Apple Watch came out and I was like, I was logging all the stats manually and stuff, like how many stuff I done. I was like, I was thinking at the time, what would be so good if Apple came out their own device for this? And they did. And yeah, I know it's a little bit simple things, a bit controversial, but it's one of the companies I would trust with that sort of data. There's no other company on the planet really, that would take your data and not do anything with it like Apple really. And the fact it's just passive and it is super accurate, it's just there tracking all the information you need about yourself and they're adding more and more every time and they are taking the care to make sure it's properly certified in places where it can be and stuff. It's just, it's good.
[00:29:24] Speaker C: And one thing I want to add there, tracking both mental health and things like ovulation and things like that in the United States is becoming very much, that's being watched for a variety of reasons.
And the fact that Apple can protect all of that without having people be in fear of their government finding out and arresting them or doing anything like that, that is why the fact that they have such huge focus on privacy is amazing.
[00:29:55] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that there's, I mean, let me, I want to say that, you know, when Apple is at its best, when it does this kind of stuff, this is, I think, the kind of thing that like Steve Jobs cared the most about when he was running the company. And that is like Apple's passion that really shines through. And the, the whole bit with the hearing aid, with the AirPods in this particular one, is it, of all the things that were announced in this event, that by far is the most relevant, the most important, the most exciting of all of them, and for a lot of reasons, obviously, but it's doing that particular announcement of having people be able to assist their hearing with just a quote, unquote simple Airpod purchase is disruptive to that entire industry in the same way that the original iPhone was when it was first introduced. And anyone who doesn't see that or understand that or denies that is really not paying attention, because, I mean, it was also the same way with the Apple Watch. I think when the Apple Watch was introduced, people were just like, so what? There have been watches for as long as we can possibly remember. And it's no big deal.
Apple turned it into a big deal. Apple gave it to us in a way where it was new. And granted, right even out of the gate. I don't think that even Apple quite knew what the watch was supposed to be. No, it tried to be everything. It tried to be your phone on your wrist, and you can run all these apps and everything. And over time, it became clear. I think it is clear to Apple, at least now, that the watch is primarily a health tracker, a goal tracker, a notification venue, so that you don't have to look at your phone when you don't want to, but it's not a place where you're going to record a podcast or you do all these things that apple professed that you could do on your watch. In that case, they learn, of course, because it's the first version of it, and things evolve, uses evolve. Same with the vision pro. They trying to hawk it, as you know, all of these things. But obviously a lot of that hasn't panned out, and that's par for the course.
But for the AirPods, this is a new realm of what people can do with it and a new level of, oh, I need that, or I should have that. And as someone who suffers from, I have hearing loss myself, and I've had it for years. And my doctors had been telling me, you need to get hearing aids. You need to get hearing aids, and if you don't, the longer you go without them, the worse your hearing is going to get. Your brain gets used to not hearing those frequencies and it adapts. And so your hearing gets worse over time. When you don't hear those things, your brain can't compensate for them and your hearing goes even quicker.
My doctors have been saying, you need hearing AIDS. Why haven't I got them? Well, one is because they're so damn expensive.
A pair of the hearing aids that they wanted me to get with $3,600 here, that's just like. And insurance won't pay for them. Insurance won't pay for them here. And that's ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous. And so to have Apple just waltz in and say, not only does it going to help your hearing, but it adjusts frequencies to your specific kinds of hearing loss and helps you to overcome those things, to listen to what's in front of you, to concentrate on what's in front of you, all of these things, it's a game changer, and it's going to change a lot of people's lives. All of these videos that you're seeing, Jay, in the beginning of the presentation of people whose lives were saved by their Apple Watch or whatever, they're going to be videos of people who can now experience listening to things they couldn't do before or have their hearing improved that they weren't, weren't before. And Apple is going to, and rightfully so, publicize the crap out of that. I mean, I'm looking forward to it. I'm really, really looking forward to it. And I applaud them for it almost as much as we're all going to. The day when our Apple Watch allows us to sample our blood sugar, that's going to be another one that will come eventually. And when that happens, Apple is literally going to sell billions of apple watches. There's so many people in the world with diabetes that could use that.
It's just, it will happen. But there's so many technical hurdles there.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: But anyway, yeah, well, and like, some, some of the stuff that, like, I'm neurodivergent and I'm, I'm really excited to try. To try. I've actually told my family I want the AirPods Pro for two for Christmas, not because I want it, because I can try to. Like, sometimes sensory issues will, will affect me and, and if I can tone down and I have hearing loss, but if I can tone down the noises that I don't want to hear and focus on what I didn't want to hear should be great. One thing I want to say, though, that does concern me is we all have seen, like, especially like, autistic individuals have, have started the trend of wearing headphones. And sometimes you look at them, they'd be like, that person's ignoring you. But no, sometimes autistic individuals wear that for noise canceling or just to focus out all the noise that are over censoring. We are about to see another resurgence where employers and things are going to have to change policies because, like my employer, you're only allowed one earbud and only when there's no customers. And even that is a store by store. You're not allowed to outside. There's a lot of things that are going to have to be decided, and unfortunately, people are going to get in trouble for these uses.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: Okay, so let's just take it a little step back because vaccines are brilliant. Point. And actually, I want to give a visual demonstration of one of the potential challenges.
But before we do that, let's actually. So we're talking about AirPods Pro two. This is not. So there are new AirPods, the AirPods four, and we'll loop back to them. But this is the existing on sale right now, AirPods Pro two, that are going to get an update. I think Apple said this fall the firmware update is coming now. They are planning to get the functionality around the world. I think at this point it's got FDA approval, so it's in the US. I cannot imagine it won't get approved in. I think it's going to be UK. I really hope so. But there's two parts to this. There's actually three parts, but two parts. So the first part is the hearing test. Now, if anyone's ever been for. I know I have. And, Gideon, you have been. Jay will have been done by yourself. Alex. No, no, be. But I know, because. I hope you don't mind me. I know your. Your dad's got a hearing loss because we discussed hearing aids. Right. Because I showed him mine, and I'm actually gonna show them to stream, but so what you'll do is you puppies. And I think the reason it has to be the AirPods Pro two is because of the sealed design. Right.
[00:37:37] Speaker C: I. So one thing that. That happened with the. The air seal, I was actually reading about how much work it took them to add active noise cancellation to the AirPods Pro four without the seal.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Airpods four air fries for pro four.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: Yeah, it's gonna be confusing all these different things and like. And like, I want the new AirPods pro two. Wait, the one we already have? No, I want the new ones.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: So.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: Yeah, so these. So let's. These are the pro two s. These are ones that have been out. This is the ones with us. So I so remember these got mid cycle update to have USB C and.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: The speaker as well.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: And the speaker. Yes. I love this. I love having one cable to charge everything. So these are Airpods. You've all seen them. And as Jay said, they go. They. They go in your ear now. They are very different to a big pair of cans like these, which we're all wearing. But for comparison, one of these I have. So these that is so. I have a severe hearing loss. I'm actually almost completely deaf in my left ear. This is a Specsavers advance receiver incanal hearing aid. So that bit, obviously. Hang on, that bit goes into my ear. That bit loops around my back. So that is incredibly inconspicuous. Gideon asked me before the show, well, how much did those cost you? Well, I'm gonna say the bank of mum and dad very kindly paid for these on the condition that I would wear them. And I do wear them because. And I'll explain why. These were 1800 pounds from Specsavers. Now, they are obviously tiny, but correct me if I'm wrong, folks, how much are AirPods pro? 250 UK maybe 300. Yeah, they are very affordable. Much, much worse.
But Jay makes an excellent point and I really hope it doesn't take away adoption, because once you've done. Once you've done the hearing scan, which will be. It's basically played tones at different frequencies and you have to tap normally, you've got like a trigger button. It's like a whole where you sat with, like, you know, say about, you've got a trigger, you make sure, you know, you feel like you're firing a missile or something. Yeah, brilliant. It's great fun.
But in this case, you'll type your phone when you hear a frequency and it will do it in both ears, because obviously your hearing loss can be different in both ears. Well, it will then create your hearing profile and then obviously it can turn on hearing aid mode. And if it's as good as the demo looked, and it's going to be powerful and it is going to be a huge gateway to improving hearing because as Gideon said, it's not covered by most health insurance here in the UK. Yeah, NHS hearing aids are a thing, but they are typically not that advanced. My hearing aids do connect to my iPhone. They are MFI made for iPhone hearing aids with one big disadvantage, I imagine. When I'm taking. I know that when I switch to taking calls on these, I'm using the Airpods mics. When I take calls on my hearing aids. No, it still uses the iPhone mic because it doesn't pass for microphones through hearing.
[00:40:45] Speaker C: Yeah, because we've learned that many times where you've switched the mic, I can't hear you.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:50] Speaker D: At least because hearing aids don't have microphones in them. I mean, do they? Well, I guess they do. They must. They must amplify what's around you. But. So why, why wouldn't it pass? I mean, I guess they could, if it was a software update. Right.
To work with that particular brand of hearing aid, it probably could do it, I guess.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: Yeah. But I guess the challenge, I guess with limitation is if you're wearing that and he's only got enough processing power to do the live listen because otherwise it would have to pass that to the phone for microphone to a phone and you might lose your outside hearing because I don't think there's enough power in these. I. I am.
[00:41:30] Speaker D: I have asked, how long do they last, by the way?
[00:41:32] Speaker A: Well, battery wise.
[00:41:33] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: All day.
All day. And. But when you wear them, charge them. What's this? Right?
[00:41:39] Speaker C: When you wear them.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: I do. Look, I don't wear them around the house because they get uncomfortable when I've got these on. But if I'm going on longer trips, I will wear them. And the audio quality. So they are all day battery. But the charging case is not a battery case, it's micro usb.
Yeah. And, you know, whereas obviously I think you're going to be fine with these, I'll be really curious to see what sort of battery life. Cause obviously putting transparency mode on, which is very similar. Apple, obviously a building on my transparency mode tech will drain that battery. But when you've got a battery case, I think you're gonna be fine. So I'll be interested to see.
[00:42:20] Speaker C: And also that hearing test. One thing that they said, your profile will go across devices, whether Mac, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV. So it'll follow you, the user, which.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: Is very interesting because that means that in theory, what should happen is when you're watching, say, Malcolm Riddle on Disney, on your Apple TV, then your hearing loss no longer has to be the boss of you now. And it's not so big.
That was absolutely.
Oh, have you never seen Mark Amiddle?
[00:42:51] Speaker B: No.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Oh, uncultured. Uncultured. Sorry, I guess. Shouldn't say that.
I changed.
[00:43:00] Speaker C: I'm Jerry. Lois.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: That doesn't quite work. Anyway, the point is, but at $250 pounds, these are going to be amazing. But the feature that I rely on because I'm deaf completely in my left ear, my left hearing aid is not in hearing aid mode. It's in what's called cross mode. And what that does is. And it, well, it takes a while for this to get used to this. When you start wearing them. They said to me when I got these, it is going to take you at least two to three months, if not more, to get used to this. But what it does is it takes the microphone from the left hearing aid and sends it over to the right. I don't know whether or not the AirPods Pro hearing a feature is going to be able to do replicate that.
[00:43:47] Speaker C: I am going to say possibly it will, because this is a quick tangent. I went and did an Apple vision protest, and they had thought about eyes, like how eye tracking. So my guess is if they were thinking about that on Vision Pro, I'm gonna hope this is speculation that they have the same forethought for that, for the hearing aid.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: It will be interesting, but there's something that they mentioned in Makino keynote, the event, they said affordable and high quality because. But one thing, my hearing aids. So podcasts, fine, audiobooks, fine. I can play the media through them, and it does make you look like a little bit of a secret agent where you, when you're wearing rigs, you know, receiving canals, because Canada do look cool, but the audio, I wouldn't play music through them. So what I would end up doing is if I'm on the train journey, I want to, particularly if I'm going to edit our podcast, I'll take my hearing aids out and put the Airpods in because it's really uncomfortable to wear receiver in canals and then wear in canal stuff. And as someone who had to go to the emergency room because part of one of the receiving canal domes got stuck in my ear, I can attest, but it is not a good idea. Anyway, so that was my ramble. I mean, kitty, I take it you've got AirPods Pro.
[00:45:14] Speaker D: Yeah, I have both.
I bought pros when they first came out, and I didn't really. I couldn't really. They didn't stay in my ear well, and they're not comfortable. And so I went back to the Airpod three s, and I prefer them. I have a pair of the pros, but I prefer to wear the threes when I do wear them.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Gotcha.
Do you think this hearing aid feature, because I take it you don't have hearing aids.
[00:45:41] Speaker D: No, I don't.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Do you think this might convince you to try it again?
[00:45:46] Speaker D: It would. I bought a set of third party of the little covers, the little nibs that go on the AirPod pros, and hoping that they would fit my ear better. They're like little deformable foam ones instead of that thin plastic that apple ships with it. And it does seem to work a little bit better. So there was the whole part of that presentation about how they scanned and, you know, millions or tens of thousands of people's ears to try to come up with the optimum shape of, you know, the Airpods and stuff like that. So hopefully they'll, they'll fit better. Maybe they've changed shape a little bit, I don't know. But I'm, I'm willing to try it and I'm totally willing to try it because if it does what they're promising, it will be awesome. I suspect it won't be as good as what they're promising. The same, same with heartbeat and heart rate monitoring on the Apple Watch.
If you track your pulse on your apple Watch and then you actually put a pulse monitor or take your pulse separately, they don't always line up. They're not exactly the same. There's some degree of error there, but that's not the point. The point is to augment what you have and to get close to what you need in order to make use of it and have your life improved by it. And of course, if there's a big emergency, if you're starting to have a heart attack like we were talking about earlier, things like that, then you'll be made aware of it. Or if you fall and it calls for emergency services, things like that.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: And I think that, again, I think that combination of APO, ecosystem of watch AirPods phone is incredible. Jay, go for it.
[00:47:35] Speaker C: I remember back in December, I was feeling really August or December of last year, I was on a trip with you and I was very sick and my watch started saying, hey, you really.
[00:47:49] Speaker D: Just want to watch?
[00:47:50] Speaker C: It was August. Yeah. It was like, you want to watch your heart rate. It made me take some extra steps when I still got that alert to try and keep my, my heart rate down. So it was that, it was good to get that alert and on a device that I bought just to get notifications versus buying a dedicated device.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: I went to the emergency room or a and e a few months ago and just have interest. While they were taking my pulse, I checked my watch at the same time.
The three times they did it, I checked it and it was always one BpM out. Like only one. Like, it was like, it obviously does depend on what equipment the hospital's got, but like, it was. I found that quite fascinating.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: I'd be really interested in how the blood oximeter works compared with, you know, whatever ones they put on your finger.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: That's for the little thing that goes on your finger.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a, I didn't know what it was. Proximity.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: I just said, okay, just whatever you need.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: But that's why you saw it, like, as the frequent thing in Covid was people without on my finger because people are buying them because you could do it obviously on my iPhone.
[00:48:49] Speaker C: And I think this does bring up an interesting differentiator between the AirPods four and the AirPods pro two, that the AirPods pro two has the hearing aid functionality. Its biggest function has been for a long time acting on noise cancellation. And now they brought that to the AirPods four. And whats interesting, I was reading on one of the social networks, I cannot remember which, but in an engineer saying it took a lot of work to get that to work without it being a suction into your ear. And they had to do a lot of things to try and make it where you could still hear the normal sounds that come through. And then also the, and I have to say I'm glad to know they've improved ANC because ANC on AirPods Pro one, it can sometimes break some of the higher frequencies I can, fridges come through too much.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: But it's interesting. I mean look, the AirPods lineup I think is really good right now. I think, I mean, I'm really glad I got my Airpods Pro too.
[00:49:50] Speaker C: I want to say one thing that like I, I lost my AirPods Pro case and I went to a, another brand. I don't want to say the brand because I don't want to, but it was a really highly rate reviewed brand and james can attest it's just not the same experience. And even for me, it wasn't the same experience on those.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: So my quality was awful. Yeah.
[00:50:10] Speaker C: And then now I got, James got a new case for my AirPods Pro and then I got a locking case that works. So those bop and now I'm using them at 200 from work and it's so much better. But there's something to be said about the quality of the Airpods. It sounds like hype, but they just work in such a way compared to other, other headphones.
[00:50:34] Speaker D: I want to real quick, I need to do just a real quick story. I had a couple of months back that I hadn't experienced with my Airpods that was just awesome. And I mean, you guys might have already been through something like this.
I had to go look for a new couch for my living room and I went to a bunch of different furniture stores in the area to look for furniture. And while I was doing that, my airpod slipped out of my pocket. When I was in the furniture store, I was reclining in the reclining, you know, chairs and testing them out. And unbeknownst to me my airpod, and the case slipped right out of my pocket and down into one of the mechanisms of these chairs, and I didn't even know that I had lost it. And then I got home later that night, like hours later or something like that. I'm looking for my Airpods, like, where the heck are they? And I was like, okay. I turned on find my, and I looked for the Airpods. And of course it says, like, initially trying to find it in the house, and I thought it was because usually when they fall out of my pocket, they fall out into the car. And so I go out to my car and I'm like, it's got to be here, but it's not. And then it actually locates it, and it's at this furniture store that I was at earlier in the day. And I was like, what? Really? You know? And so, but the stores are all closed, of course, because it's like 11:00 at night. But it says that it's in the parking lot of this place. So I thought, okay, well, must have fallen out of my, when I got into the car. So I took a trip over there in the middle of the night to look for my AirPods in the parking lot of this place, and I couldn't find them. So I was like, that makes no sense. But then the next morning, I called the place because I couldn't get there. I had to go to work. I was like, my Airpods are there in. Some of the salesperson knew what shares they had shown me, and they went and looked and they found it and they held it for me.
And it was just a great example of Apple technology working exactly how it's advertised to work.
If I hadn't had that, they would have been long gone. I have no idea where they would have been. I would have been out a couple hundred bucks. I would have to rebuy them the whole deal. Someone would have found them and c'est la vie. But find my work. It did it as advertised. And it was one of those, like, this is awesome. This is, why hasn't it always been like this? You know, when it works, it's great. It saves you so much pain and suffering. When it doesn't work, it's the opposite of that. And it causes so much pain and suffering. First world problems, we're all aware of those. But when it does work, it's tremendous. I love it.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: Can I put a plea to passport issuing authorities? Because as someone who can't drive because of my eyesight, my only form of national id is my passport. The number of times I've misplaced my passport. Not that I'm traveling internationally, but it is like if I have to go and vote or what, you know?
[00:53:42] Speaker C: Well, I mean, they're working on that because, like, in my state, we have driver's license is added.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: Rub it in.
[00:53:50] Speaker A: Don't rub it in. No, like, we don't. Jay, we barely have, like, the one NHS trust exposure.
[00:53:58] Speaker C: My state never even had Covid-19 contact exposure added in, like, when they had it.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: Whoa. Wow. I mean, of all the things to be like, no, actually I need to. Okay, so there is one thing, but I would really love to see because of my eyesight, because I am registered disabled, I do have a disabled person's bus pass, which means I can ride any bus in the UK, in England at least for free. Please, please, please. Apple. Work with governments, work with UK bus companies to give us apple wallet passes.
[00:54:34] Speaker C: Express transit is so nice on the bus and the train. For me, I mean, for you, it's not so nice.
[00:54:41] Speaker A: So hold on. I mean, obviously we're looping around a little bit here, but.
Which is fine, but find my is a brilliant thing. A number of times.
Jay got me one of the is it aaa spo?
[00:54:56] Speaker C: And I got it to you because I was gonna say, it talks about imperfections being beautiful and it was made by recycled stuff, which I got it for you.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: But. So now he doesn't have ultra wideband, but it does play sound. So I've got a fit. It just slots into slits. Slots into one of my credit card slots in my wallet. And I've got a.
[00:55:15] Speaker C: You need to change the battery and your airtags on your key.
[00:55:18] Speaker A: I do know that. Thank you.
I get. Okay, so I share some of my devices, my airtags with Jay. That does mean that every now and then I'm like, darling, I know my battery's low. I don't need to text about it in three in the morning. Thank you very much. Thanks for watching our program. Anyway, let's move on because obviously where we've got quite a bit to cover. I mean, it's rainy. I mean, obviously we talked hardware. Is there anything else we want to talk about hardware? Or should we just do a bit of a. Oh, things we like. Things we don't like about iOS 18 and macOS, sequoia and ipadOS 18 so far. I mean, because there's got to be a lot.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: I don't think there's any of the hardware stuff, so. No, I've got anyone else has.
[00:56:00] Speaker C: No, because, I mean, that's some of the main stuff that's there. Again, it was a very. The event itself was just a restating. A lot of WWDC showing some of the new stuff, but it wasn't. But it wasn't for us. It was for the press.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: All right, so let's talk. Let's talk, I'm gonna guess, have we all upgraded our phones to iOS 18 at this point?
[00:56:23] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:56:24] Speaker D: I have nothing.
[00:56:25] Speaker A: You have not.
[00:56:26] Speaker D: I've upgraded my iPad, but not my iPhone.
[00:56:29] Speaker A: That's fine. We'll let you off. That's fine. But thing is, they released at the same time they did release. Was it 17.7? I think, which was the security patch and the. Okay, I'm not ready to upgrade to iOS 18 just yet. Patch, which is good that we're doing that. I think in some ways, in recent, more recent years, Apple has been better about nothing, forcing iOS updates. They've let you stay on the current version with a security patch. And I think, yeah, I think we have been getting better in general.
[00:57:01] Speaker C: Part of why they do that is they can stop jailbreak. I've never jailbreak on my phone. I wouldn't want to, but I heard that all the time from certain sites.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: So I remember back in when jailbreaking first was a thing, right before we had the app store, two of my friends convinced me. They said, oh, yeah, we've done it. We've jailbroken our phones. We can help you do yours. Well, turns out they hadn't jailbroken their phones, and they tricked me into being the guinea pig for jailbreaking. Oh, it went fine, but obviously I don't anymore. IOS 18, obviously, one of the big focuses there is Apple intelligence, which is not out yet, but there's a lot of really nice new features.
[00:57:44] Speaker C: I think one of the biggest ones that I have liked on it is iPhone mirroring to Macs. Cause it's at the place where I also wish. I wish I could mirror my phone to my iPad sometimes, but at least with them on my Mac, not all apps work with it. Like TikTok, for instance, is. I'm having trouble with some of the video editing there, but, I mean, that's probably just good. But it's amazing how many things are there. And your notifications are now synced from your iPhone to your Mac. And for the most part, this is really cool. And I learned for anybody who's like me and does not have a magic mouse or a trackpad hold down shift, you can do horizontal scrolling.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: Okay. I have wanted that feature for, like, I'm very unimaginative when it comes to wanting feature requests for the operating systems. I get surprised every time they bring out stuff because I just can't think of what I'd want. But that feature of mirroring your notifications to the Mac and accessing your Mac so your phone from your Mac, I've wanted that for a very, very long time because I don't really go on my phone that much. I just tend to use the Mac a lot. So I want to access, like, banking apps like Monzo to authorize payments and stuff like.
Yeah, that's my top one feature, I think.
[00:58:59] Speaker C: And it really feels so fluid, like I've been using it and again, a few times. Again, TikTok being an example, I have to go to my phone, but otherwise, I'm just. I've actually been messaging and I even had an app that I had a Mac subscription for. I uninstalled the Mac app and I just use my iPhone for it. Cause it's like, I don't need to pay extra when I have.
[00:59:20] Speaker B: My only criticism with it is that it requires, I think, the phone, even though they're on the same Wi Fi network.
[00:59:26] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:59:27] Speaker B: It requires Bluetooth. Cause I leave my phone in where I am now and go in the bedroom, and my MacBook won't connect to my phone because it's technically too far away for Bluetooth to work.
[00:59:37] Speaker A: So even though I'm the same Wi.
[00:59:39] Speaker B: Fi, I'd rather do local network, like layer two discovery, rather than kind of.
[00:59:44] Speaker C: Like it does with sidecart.
[00:59:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:59:48] Speaker A: But again, that makes sense to an extent when you maybe don't have a infrastructure based Wi Fi for whatever reason. Yeah, but it is. I mean, it is very cool. The limitation I mentioned earlier, which it kind of makes it. So I've. I have not upgraded this Mac, my Mac mini, right, to sequoia yet, because it's my production machine for streaming. Jay braved it, and I run a.
[01:00:14] Speaker C: Whole issue or two.
[01:00:15] Speaker A: So you've run into. Exactly. I know that all the audio apps work, but it's our streaming software that when we're not using Riverside has a few glitches which we developers are aware of and are working on, actually. And I'm going to put a play out this, and I think Gideon will appreciate this. When software is in beta, as in public beta, please remember that the developers didn't get that software much more.
They have not had it much longer than you have. Do not scream at your favorite software. Developers for not getting their apps ready.
[01:00:51] Speaker C: I was wondering why tapestry wasn't working on iOS 18. Gideon, come on.
[01:00:56] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:58] Speaker A: There might be a problem with even saying that, Jason. It's not out yet.
[01:01:01] Speaker D: Oh no, not at all.
[01:01:05] Speaker B: That happens. It's one thing having a consumer y type of thing like iOS and people just don't understand how things are made. But off topic, like ubiquity added, like, we discuss ubiquities now and again, they added a very major feature. They added third party support for cameras, which is quite a technical achievement. But it was in beta. They said it was in beta. And the first thing that these people do, and bear in mind that it's an it focused community, you'd expect them to have some sort of level of knowledge. They just whinge saying, oh, these cameras aren't working, this camera's not working. And there's a very large amount of devices to support of different operating systems and stuff. And just the very first thing they say is, these don't work. These don't work, these don't work. What's going on? It's beta, like you said.
[01:01:47] Speaker C: Exactly. Just like in retail. I think anybody who hassles a developer should probably have to spend a week working out as a developer or even their support agent.
[01:01:58] Speaker A: You might say you can get more support staff for Icon factory, recruit the people who run iOS betas. Look, it's really funny you mentioned Matt, Alex, as a quick side note, did you see the new flex 2.5 g that got released? I did.
[01:02:13] Speaker B: Looks good. Look at price as well.
[01:02:15] Speaker A: Very good price anyway. Yeah, yeah, actually got. There you go. We're going to make sure we get the plugin. I warned Jay not to do this too much, but I'll do it now. Ui chat, ubiquity podcast.
[01:02:28] Speaker B: I won't tell, I won't say too much, but I won't say too much, but recording a very, very special episode on Thursday with a very, very special guest. So you'll have to see, see who that is next week probably when it comes out. But yeah, that's what I'm going to say.
[01:02:40] Speaker A: All right. All right, well, we'll check that out. Awesome. And make sure you subscribe, folks. Gideon, there's one thing I wanted to ask you about on the whole iPad on the. Because one of the big things this time has been the icon customization, the dark mode and the tinting. So I want to, because obviously icon factory, you've probably seen the icon factories work on a lot more apps than just your own right?
[01:03:07] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, we do, you know, tons of icons for developers and companies and so, yeah, I mean the icon customization in iOS 18 is, I mean for me it's one of the most exciting parts of it. I know it's, for most people it's probably just an afterthought or something like that, but I've always wanted more. Customization of icons in iOS, not so much the tinting, the tinting really just doesn't do anything for me. It's really, I can understand it from a point of view of like accessibility for someone who may find it easier to look at than a bevy of colorful, brightly colorful icons that are all in your face.
But overall I don't. The tinting is, is not as great as large icons, icons with no, you know, being able to turn off the labeling on the app grid in iOS and then finally, thank goodness to be able to put them wherever you want, not have to have them fall into this grid and have them always take up the least amount of space. You can arrange the icons on the home screen the way that you want. You can put the widgets where you want for the most part anyway.
[01:04:32] Speaker C: And like if you have a photo of your, of a loved one or an amazing wallpaper from Wallaroo on your, on your desktop. Sorry.
[01:04:40] Speaker D: You can arrange it. You can arrange your icons around that.
[01:04:42] Speaker C: Exactly.
[01:04:43] Speaker A: Yeah, around my go, around that gorgeous Christopher pike image. Just put all the icons around his head. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:04:50] Speaker D: And exactly. So, yeah, that, I mean that gives people a whole lot of more ways to customize and make their phone their own, which is good and it makes.
[01:05:00] Speaker C: It their home domain. Like I will say, I find I'm less stressed when I look at my home screen now because I do tent because all the colors were stressing me out. Now it's much easier for me.
[01:05:13] Speaker A: So then question from a practical level, because obviously now there's the light mode, there's the dark mode. Now do you as a developer designer, can you specify which is which or do Apple just figure it out?
[01:05:27] Speaker D: No, if you don't specify, iOS will do it for you.
It'll calculate it based on what's available for the app, which in a lot of cases is not awesome.
We really suggest that you either hire someone like us to do customized versions of your app icon that are optimized for both light and dark and now tinted, and to get the most out of your app icon, which is like anything that's gone before.
Apple is so strange in some ways because for many, many years we had to create over a dozen different size variants of icons for iOS apps. You had to create the ones all the way down to the list views in iOS, like when you do a search and things so that they look great and all of the various sizes in between. Now we don't have to do that.
The OS uses the large 1024 version of the icon and it creates all of those variants for you. They won't look as crisp as possible, obviously, in all instances, but it's a lot less work in that way. It's a good thing, makes it more attainable for individual developers because they can do it more on their own. That's not good for us as a company that designed them, but it is good for us and that it saves us time when we're doing them as well. We can concentrate on the design and not the production of them, which is a welcome change.
[01:07:10] Speaker A: Quick question on the tinted ones. J would come to you on the tinted ones again, is that something, do you provide like a. So say for example, you've got an icon that in normal mode is really colorful, detailed. I mean, obviously with dark mode is maybe the inverse of that, or however you want to design it from a tint. Do Apple allow you to provide effectively like a monotone version, but it can just be tinted or how does that.
[01:07:39] Speaker D: Yes, what it does is what you provide is you provide a grayscale version of your app icon and the OS overlays the particular tint with opacity and hue on top of that. So the problem comes in is if you have your, if your app icon has a lot of colors, some of those colors, when you flatten them to grayscale, those colors will flatten out in the image. And so you can't tell where one tonal area is versus another. And so when they get toned with a single color, they just, it just blends and it all gets muddy. So you have to increase the contrast. You have to bring out areas in the icon that you want to be visible. In the tinted version, you can't just use a straight grayscale, grayscale version. In most cases, it won't work.
[01:08:30] Speaker A: That's what I was thinking, because I did turn, I did try tinting and a good portion of my icons look bad, right?
[01:08:39] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do. Until, until developers go through and do a pass on their stuff, they probably will not look great.
[01:08:48] Speaker C: And like I said, what I like is that it lets you, again, make it your own where you feel ownership of this device. And here's an interesting idea. I've been reading some discussion about this.
Would Steve jobs have allowed stuff like this?
[01:09:06] Speaker A: Oh, all right, open it up. I think that's a very good question. Alex, what do you reckon? Is this something Steve would have allowed or is this a. No way, Jose? Yeah, probably not.
[01:09:17] Speaker B: I think also that's not just him, but a Johnny Ive thing as well, possibly, yeah.
Yeah, probably not. I don't think.
[01:09:27] Speaker D: I don't disagree with that.
[01:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah, like the. Similar to the stuff of, like, it was very minor, but like, you can put the icons wherever you want on the screen. Now, we're still conformed to a grid, sort of, but they don't have, they don't conform to like, left or right.
I think the idea of it wasn't it to do with. Same with why the Apple Watch still doesn't have third party watch faces is that they don't want their products to look ugly in person. If you give your phone to someone that might not know, but I think. I think we've entered an era now, or quite a while ago that people know what an iPhone looks like. If your version of that iPhone looks like crap, I mean, like, they're not going to judge Apple on that. They're going to judge you a little bit. So, like, I think they think. I think that's fine that they've gone away from that thing that the device need to look like, gorgeous, I think.
[01:10:14] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. They can control how they look in their stores. Yes, exactly. Not on your device. But the nice thing is, even with the customization of the home screens, you've still got, the settings are always going to be the same. Right. Your setting screen is going to be identical between one iPhone uses another, which is great for tech support.
[01:10:34] Speaker B: Yes, that's what I was thinking of.
[01:10:37] Speaker C: Speaking of tech support.
[01:10:39] Speaker A: Yeah, good segue.
[01:10:40] Speaker C: There is.
I love it. There's the ability to now share your screen, there's the ability to, when someone's sharing a screen, be able to take control of the screen. And we've even testing out, you can draw stuff and you can even do it in tandem, but it is so much nicer and it's going to make.
[01:10:58] Speaker A: Tech support, the support stuff. So me and Jay tried it out on, I think it was on your iPad and. Yeah. So before you take control, you can actually tap to point at things. You can circle things in the screen sharing without taking control. When you take control, you do take control. But what's very clever is that if the other person starts controlling, you don't have that thing that you've had. And I've had. Even with our really wonderful toolset with Ninja one, with splashtop, and also ninja remote, there can be times where you battle for control with a person.
One of our clients calls it, let me drive now. I'm like, okay, where is screen sharing on ipados and iOS? Actually, what happens is it gives priority to a person whose device it is. And it will say, Jay is controlling. She's not.
[01:11:54] Speaker C: Yeah. And I've seen that on Android for a while. And that is a nice feature. In fact, I think something we might want to look into anyway. But it is nice. And I think this was a feature, though not built for consumers, probably built by Apple support technicians, who then would be safe, because I've been amazed. Apple has streamlined their support process a lot. I have learned don't take your stuff to best buy because I'm sorry, they are not.
I'm going to call them out. I had a very bad experience with them with Applecare. I had to go to Apple Store.
[01:12:29] Speaker A: Yes, I remember. Your iPad, wasn't it? Yeah, but you're right, this was probably built by support people. But for all of us, and I'm sure actually all of us here had some experience of having to be the family tech support. Right.
[01:12:40] Speaker C: I mean, just recently, I mean, we had to do that.
[01:12:46] Speaker A: I don't know. Has anyone else use the new screen sharing features yet?
[01:12:50] Speaker D: I've done.
[01:12:51] Speaker B: No, not yet.
[01:12:52] Speaker A: They are really good and we'll be using them a lot. There is one thing in iOS 18 I want to open up for a little bit of discussion because there's so much stuff. There's two things that I really am excited about and Gideon's dog agrees. There you go. I don't know about which one yet. So maybe if we get women, if we get a response to. So the first one. Which passwords? The new passwords app. Now, I know me and Jay have one password users. Alex, you're not. And I know you were really excited about this app.
[01:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it's awesome. I'm glad to say it's because my iPad Pro is an iPad Pro 10.5. It doesn't have iOS 18, but actually the syncing is still working, which is really good.
[01:13:35] Speaker C: Oh.
[01:13:36] Speaker A: Because it's still icloud keychain based. Yeah.
[01:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So thankfully for the foreseeable, that actually is actually working. Nice. No, it's good passwords. It's replaced the keychain app, that legacy thing from macOS ten back in ages ago. It's like a really old app that's been part of macOS, hasn't it?
[01:13:53] Speaker A: You mean keychain access?
[01:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they've replaced that with passwords. It's got support for all sorts of stuff. And one quite nice feature is. I think I noticed it.
I noticed that. Imagine if you're putting a username and password in and then the two factor code. If you're on a Mac with a touch id, you'd have to put the touch id for every single one of those. All three of those actions. Now you just do Touch ID for the first one. And if the password, like Gmail, is a separate screen, it now just requires a click. So they've removed some of that interaction, which is quite good. There's some nice, nice features with it. It works well.
[01:14:26] Speaker A: So there is one feature which I think Jay's maybe about to mention that.
[01:14:31] Speaker C: I don't think was in iOS 17.
So, for instance, we have an app to a Golden Arches store I signed up for using an Apple ID. I didn't think about the fact that I was gonna share it with him. I was 18. I was able to share that actual Apple login. So now you can log in.
[01:14:50] Speaker B: Oh, seriously?
[01:14:51] Speaker C: Yeah, seriously.
[01:14:51] Speaker A: Yeah, you can share your shit. Sign in with Apple.
[01:14:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:14:54] Speaker B: Oh, interesting.
[01:14:57] Speaker C: Because that was a huge change because we were trying to figure out, like, I was, like, I was trying to give him the code and because I'm already over the US, McDonald's would not let me. Would not let me give them the code.
[01:15:06] Speaker B: There was another thing I noticed as well. I signed up for actually a charging app today, an EV charging app, and I put the username password in and it said, do you want to save this password, but also save it for the app itself?
So it puts like a tag on the password to say prompt when you use the app.
[01:15:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's cool.
[01:15:25] Speaker B: Very clever.
[01:15:26] Speaker C: Because I actually leave passwords, one password and authenticator on. I've got reasons why. But I mean, but what's cool is you can now, you can also now do three autofill passwords as well.
[01:15:37] Speaker B: Oh.
[01:15:38] Speaker C: Because like I said, you can only do two. And before, now you can have Microsoft authenticator as well on there. There's some Microsoft stuff that requires authenticator.
But yeah, you can add three apps versus just two. So I've got passwords, one password and authentic. So they're making a lot of changes to it. And I even noticed when I was looking at my mom's password app, it was so smooth for her to migrate from the password setting to the password app.
[01:16:03] Speaker B: I like how if someone's moving from something else, you can import a CSV of your passwords into the password app.
[01:16:09] Speaker A: Which is a great.
[01:16:10] Speaker B: And that app is now on Windows as well.
[01:16:13] Speaker A: Yes. Now that is going to make. Honestly, yeah, I'm a huge one password fan and there will always be reasons. For me, one of the big things is be it has really good cross platform, cross browser support, passkey support across more than just Mac and Windows. Okay. But also for me, server admin for a lot of our infrastructure, the Ssh key stuff. Right? Yeah, Gideon. I mean, Gideon, I assume being a Mac user for a long time and a developer, I'm going to assume you are one password user.
[01:16:47] Speaker D: Yeah, I was one password user for a long, long time, many, many years. And then a few years back, I switched Apple passwords.
It just became too much of a headache to manage stuff.
I appreciate them. I have a lot of friends who work at one password and so I didn't want to switch away, but it was just easier to manage them right in the os. But of course it was limited in some ways because there was no app for it and you had to do with these settings and all of this. So this new app is most welcome. I really am looking forward to using it.
[01:17:33] Speaker A: There's a comment in our chat and I have to show this. I have to put this on.
This is from Bacon Masher 56.
And I have to put this on there because I think we just need to. I just write down my passwords. I have a dedicated paper for this.
[01:17:53] Speaker C: I was going to say, what happened if he had a fire? What happens if stuff. And please don't be the one at a retail store who puts the password.
Let me just say there was some scams at some retail stores that might be working for, and they put the POS passwords on a tape behind the thing, behind the catch register.
[01:18:15] Speaker A: But it is really interesting to see the number of people who are migrating from not just one password, but things like Bitvorden, Dashlane and other tools.
[01:18:27] Speaker C: Please migrate from LastPass.
[01:18:29] Speaker A: Gosh, yeah, please. The fact that Apple have made this passwords app available on Windows, on Mac, on iOS, actually, for one of my clients, once I get them upgraded to iOS 18, this is going to be a huge boom for them. I was going to try and get them running on one password and again one password for sharing in the passwords app. And because we've made it so easy, you've got your one time password, you've got your passkeys, you've got your passwords, but because you can do sharing groups, it is so, so much easier to do. But there are going to be cases where from an organization point of view, you want auditing, you want things like that. And that's where tools like one password still very much have a home. And I think we've seen that very clearly that particularly one password have pivoted more to the business and enterprise world of features. And I think that's good.
[01:19:24] Speaker C: And honestly, I'm just glad to be able to have something that I can recommend to people, especially on the Apple ecosystem.
It would be a dream to be able to have an Android app for this, but I don't see that happening.
[01:19:39] Speaker A: But I can't see Apple doing it. I can't.
[01:19:42] Speaker C: No, I get people off of Google Chrome passwords manager.
[01:19:46] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. Well, anything is. Any browser based password manager has an inherent flaw. It's tied to that browser. Right. Because obviously we've all got a version of iOS 18, including ipadOS 18.
Has anybody tried Vin? Is it math? Was it called math script?
[01:20:08] Speaker C: Yeah, math notes. I actually did try it out.
[01:20:10] Speaker A: Math notes.
[01:20:11] Speaker C: Um, it's pretty cool that like, you can write down. You have to make sure that you write it in a particular way. It was trying to ask me what some of my numbers were, but you. But you can write it down and then it'll. It'll try to mimic the answer to be like you're writing and I'm trying to. I know they were talking about simplified script as well. I don't know if that's something in there as yet, but it is still pretty cool to be able to write out the math and see what it's saying.
[01:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Has anyone else played with it yet?
[01:20:38] Speaker B: Yeah, we played with it. I'm not really good at that sort of stuff, so I didn't understand what things to ask it.
[01:20:44] Speaker A: But we.
[01:20:46] Speaker B: But one thing I noticed is the calculator app on iPhone at least has like a built in unit converter, which is quite useful for kilowatt hour stuff, and like currency conversions as well, so. Seems to work quite well. I'm glad that's all built in. Saves me to Google. What is this in this? And then.
[01:21:00] Speaker A: Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Because I've always used p calc for currency conversions. Again, the functionality in the calculator app does not. Sherlock. And Sherlock is a wonderful phrase. And I think Gideon's probably old enough, or Mike user long enough to remember the original meaning of that term.
[01:21:17] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. The old search app. Sherlock. That got absorbed by Mac Apple.
[01:21:29] Speaker C: One thing I wanted to bring up is some of the features that have been touted, especially iOS 18, are not going to be, are not out yet and they're not going to be on all devices. So I think one of the big features of it is the promise of Apple intelligence.
And for instance, any iPhone before. IPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro. 15 Pro. Okay. And, oh, can you let me bring up the point because actually it's a very good point by big investor.
[01:22:04] Speaker A: They're saying, I think two factor authentication will make actual passwords useless in the future. It's more secure and you only have to hold one password for your fab. Ah, okay. So not two factor authentication, because two factor authentication, you still have to have a password to the site. And then the second factor is something like your Google authenticator. However, passwordless like passkeys is amazing. So I'm really glad to see Apple pushing forward with passkeys.
[01:22:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. Passkeys can be a bit confusing if you're not familiar. If you're not, I'd imagine if you're not too familiar about how it works, because it looks like there's two different implementations. There's one where those are your credentials to log in and you technically don't have a username password, or it gets replaced, or the way that some companies have done it, like ubiquity has done it. The passkey is your two fa instead. So you still have username password, and then your two fa is not a code, it is just the passkey, which is still more secure than using two fa.
[01:23:07] Speaker A: So.
[01:23:08] Speaker C: And a lot of biometrics don't rely on just like, like the finger. So, like, there's always a backup method. For instance, if a finger, if you lose a finger or you lose, or you lose even the, the printing, I know people who have lost finger, the fingernail or the fingerprint, but it is.
[01:23:25] Speaker A: Yeah, Alex is right. There are so certain apps, like UI, Uiaccount, they are requiring standard username and password, and then they allow a security key, which can be a passkey, to be your second factor. Fastmail used to be like that. Fastmail used to be. Passkey is a second factor. Fastmail have just gone to allowing you to save a passkey for your primary authentication.
[01:23:54] Speaker B: It just depends on what type of devices you have to log into that account. Like with your victim example, you'd log into all kinds of different devices with that account. The ones that don't support two fa for whatever reasons, because they're not.
[01:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:24:08] Speaker B: So you have to have a code sent that way you couldn't use passkeys in those situations. So just depends.
[01:24:16] Speaker A: Well, give me an example where that wouldn't be the case.
[01:24:18] Speaker B: The. The OS of the actual machine itself.
[01:24:22] Speaker A: But wouldn't you. But wouldn't you, when you log in to that, isn't that going through ubiquity first and then that? So you'll never. When you're setting up your machine, it's still through a web interface.
[01:24:35] Speaker B: It is, but sometimes, say, if you're offline, for whatever reason, it needs a way of getting back on.
[01:24:42] Speaker A: I thought, oh, that's interesting. I guess in my case, it fall back to maybe TLTP. But I. Well, no, because it wouldn't be able to authenticate you if it's offline.
How would you be able to authenticate to your ubiquity account?
[01:24:56] Speaker B: I still definitely off topic now, but I've logged into. I've logged into some devices offline and it's taken those details and then authenticated it later.
And then also, like, if you've got older device on older software that don't know what to do with biometrics potentially as well. My fallback is tier is email. So, yeah, sorry.
[01:25:18] Speaker A: It's very good. But passkeys are slowly rolling out. Yeah, they are really cool. Yeah. I want to see more places, use them. I think they are a brilliant, brilliant.
[01:25:29] Speaker C: I am hoping one day that my work will use them because it would make things so much faster for me at work. Literally just. Can I come on my phone bn not having to, like, type in all this stuff.
[01:25:40] Speaker A: Well, that's the beautiful thing about passkeys. Even if you're using them on a device where you don't have a passkey store, you can scan the QR code from a device where your passkeys are stored and it should then log you in. I've had a few issues with it, but it does work. Anyway. Mathtype is really cool. Are there any other big software features that people. I mean, we talked, you know, Apple intelligence. I want to make that our final thought, but I'm also very aware of time and appreciate Gideon being here. I mean, to be fair, whenever me and Gideon record, it's always quite a long episode because we just go off on Tangent.
[01:26:14] Speaker D: I have a question I want to ask you guys. What you think of the. I mean, without getting into a whole huge can of worms, but I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts are on the whole european commission thing with Apple intelligence and I not having features be fully available in EU doesn't affect us.
Oh, because you're outside the EU?
[01:26:40] Speaker A: Not even EU.
[01:26:43] Speaker D: So you don't have thoughts then? Well, you don't have thoughts.
[01:26:47] Speaker C: I have thoughts because I know the.
[01:26:49] Speaker A: Hang on, Jay. Jay, let's let Alex answer that one first. Cause you're not in me.
[01:26:55] Speaker C: Even when I was gonna go with this. The Department of Justice is following now after Apple because of all. So we could be technically another one coming up.
[01:27:06] Speaker A: Okay, that's what I was going. What was your take though, Alex? Because although we're not in the EU anymore, I can't imagine our government not following the lead down the road. I miss.
[01:27:18] Speaker B: It seems like from just reading the news that certain things that get looked at by the Eudez, I do feel like they are a bit overbearing in terms of what Apple are doing for whatever reason.
I don't know. Obviously certain things the EU has done, like USB C has obviously benefited the consumer. But there are certain things that. Sorry. There's certain things you should look at, like AI, that a lot of companies are doing that aren't Apple, that they probably should look into. But I don't know, maybe they're just treating every company fairly and looking into what they're doing regardless. Regardless of giving apple some sort of.
[01:27:57] Speaker A: Special treatment, which for you absolutely shouldn't do. Everything should be scrutinized. Yes, but I think there is an element where Apple do seem to get picked on unfairly at times.
[01:28:06] Speaker B: Like, I go on macromers every day and then there's always something in there, something on that website where there's like, EU picks fight with Apple again or something along those lines. It's just like, why? Just because. I just don't get it.
[01:28:17] Speaker C: Think about this. You go after Apple, you have all that. Whereas with Android, a lot of it can be based off of different, because Android is not Google, Android is the open source project. So it's harder to go after the open source project, getting each of the manufacturers, whereas with Apple, you know, they have billions in the reserve, you can go after them. And that's, I think, what they're looking at.
[01:28:45] Speaker A: But as a really good example of what Gideon's talking about and VeU, I mean, first of all, obviously, yes, we know that we're in the UK. We're going to get Apple intelligence in December, which is great. I don't know what feature set it's going to have yet. In the UK. We will see. There's a lot of Apple intelligence. I'm really keen on. But an example of where I think the EU's regulations has gone too far. Look, this whole thing about third party app stores, I mostly support that and I won't get into a whole thing about that. But the one thing I absolutely do not support is the EU are now saying that they want to compel Apple to open iOS to third party hardware.
[01:29:23] Speaker B: What I haven't seen what.
[01:29:26] Speaker A: Right. That was my reaction. That was my reaction as well, because it's a point I made. I did a little. I did a TikTok. Did. Yeah, I did a TikTok on this. I know, me on TikTok.
[01:29:39] Speaker C: For anybody listening, TikTok is.
You can find us there.
[01:29:46] Speaker A: Yes.
We'll soon be on loops as well once it launches. 14 days at this point until loops launch, I'm ready. Which is a federated TikTok, as in Fediverse TikTok. Anyway.
[01:29:59] Speaker B: Okay, that's cool.
[01:30:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's gonna be really cool. It's by the guy who do pixel.
[01:30:04] Speaker C: And Pixel is an amazing Instagram alternative.
[01:30:07] Speaker A: Anyway. But what I said, and I think may, I would imagine we'd all echo this. One of the biggest challenges Android as a operating system has is that every phone maker can do their own things to it. So I can say, oh, I've got an Android phone. And my sister in law can say, she's got an Android phone. Well, guess what? The Wi Fi settings in a probably different place on both phones because they're different brands. And if you open up iOS to anyone who wants to make an iOS phone, how do you keep the quality of the OS and be okay, you can't do a presentation saying, this is going to work like this on every phone that we make that the supports with.
[01:30:52] Speaker B: The other problem is, oh, that wouldn't even be my first thought. My first thought when you mentioned that entity was security this way.
[01:31:00] Speaker D: Security, yeah, security.
[01:31:02] Speaker B: Like keeping everything secure, like, because a lot of the, a lot of the OS is, sorry. A lot of the iPhones benefit is the hardware security they've got on. On it. And you just, you just compromise that. Look at how.
Yeah, look at how fragmented windows is because they've got different levels of hardware everywhere. So I just.
[01:31:19] Speaker A: Right, some devices can't even upgrade to Windows eleven because they haven't got TPM.
[01:31:23] Speaker B: I know, and people don't understand why and. Yeah, I just.
[01:31:26] Speaker C: Yeah, and like, Apple has opened up some of the hardware because I heard it's on ATP. They've started adding in. Certain components are now locked behind find my. So they can open up more, more activation lock. Not by my, they're locked behind activation lock. But you can now change some things and they'll allow certain things to pop up a warning, say this is not authentic and.
[01:31:51] Speaker A: Right, but that's different.
That's not, well, I know, but I'm.
[01:31:54] Speaker C: Saying they take security of that very carefully. That's what I was at, that they don't even allow just regular parts to be used. And it's not just a trying to stop. Right. To repair. They're trying to keep the security of the hardware.
[01:32:08] Speaker A: Right. Because all it could take is one dodgy, you know, replacement camera that's got a little, you know, replacement camera that's meant to be your face id camera. And it's got a little tiny thing. I'm not trying to be paranoid, but imagine any it not, but not being my authentication lock tiny chip that's sending all your biometric stuff.
China, you know, and I'm not picking on any particular nation, just unfortunately some nations do have far less.
[01:32:36] Speaker B: Maybe bad actors would be the best word to use.
[01:32:38] Speaker A: Oh, I like that. Yeah.
[01:32:39] Speaker C: I mean, there's a reason why Apple has had to send out emails to certain customers or countries that their data might have been the target of a, of a foreign national or nationality and all that.
[01:32:50] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, yeah. There are bad actors. There are bad actors in all nationalities. Again, just to be really clear, but going back to the point about apple vision. Not apple vision, Apple intelligence. Apple intelligence. Because none of us got Apple vision pro. Jay's tried.
[01:33:06] Speaker C: I liked it. I will say it was really cool.
[01:33:09] Speaker B: I was going to try one and then I realized that they have certain time slots in Apple stores. So I was like, oh, I'm not going to wait an hour and a half, do another day.
[01:33:16] Speaker C: But yeah, I did it. And I will just say I was feeling like I was sitting on Mount Hood. Wow, I see Apple's vision.
[01:33:26] Speaker A: Oh dear, that's good. But going back to Apple intelligence again, I think it's right for regulation to be around data. But I will say, I think from my point of view, as someone who does care about, I'm not on any meta products, I don't want to be. I reluctantly, and Jay will tell you, very reluctantly, allow us to be on Twitter for our Twitch community. Very reluctantly. TikTok, very reluctantly.
[01:33:53] Speaker C: Can I bring up one thing? We were speaking about privacy and encryption. One big thing. I think we need to bring up rcs and the snafu, that is.
[01:34:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point.
[01:34:04] Speaker C: I didn't like that. But I was thinking about. Because you and I like, we use signal a lot because we like signal even more than iMessage. We like signal because it's also more, I find, more reliable than some of these imessages.
[01:34:14] Speaker D: But.
[01:34:15] Speaker A: So, okay, so let me. Yeah, because. So rcs. Now, there's major hurdles with RCS. I don't. Because your carrier, Jay, doesn't support RCs from iPhone to Android yet.
[01:34:26] Speaker C: Not yet. They're working on it.
[01:34:27] Speaker A: But RCS, is this basically meant to be this cross platform communication. So it's got a lot of issues. The biggest challenge out of a box, it is not end to end encrypted. Now, apparently they are working on this because Google had to implement their own end to end encryption, but they haven't opened that up to anyone. So. Okay, so I guess, Jay, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I guess a question just for the panel. What is your. If you, if you've got people on multiple platforms, what is your go to messaging app?
[01:35:02] Speaker B: Reluctantly, it has being WhatsApp, but I've two GScar deleted it and then I haven't. I hate that. I hate that we have to use WhatsApp.
[01:35:13] Speaker A: I think it is much more prevalent here in the UK and Europe, isn't it?
[01:35:17] Speaker B: It's my least favorite app.
[01:35:18] Speaker A: It's awful. Signal's far better. Gideon, what about yourself? What's your cross platform messaging tool of choice? Are you.
[01:35:25] Speaker D: Well, I hate to say it, but it's Skype sometimes still and messenger.
I have friends on messenger that I reluctantly have to use family members on messenger.
[01:35:45] Speaker B: Just cut them off. They'll understand.
[01:35:48] Speaker C: And I definitely get that because I recently signed it back up for Facebook on a private account just for friends and family only. But I.
[01:35:59] Speaker A: Thank you, Alex. Thank you. That was my reaction to, unfortunately, we have some very lovely but very stubborn people in our extended family and a.
[01:36:08] Speaker C: Lot of people that I would like. I have friends, like, see this. I was like, no. So I did sign back up for it, but again, private. I got off because of Facebook's lack of policy around harassment. And I just found out that they also will not handle impersonations because one of my friends has their encountering first native fish was like, ah, we don't see anything. So.
[01:36:31] Speaker A: But RCS is. If it was full end to end encryption, I'd be all for it. I'm just going to say again, please, please run signal, because it does.
[01:36:41] Speaker C: Signal even has been blocked in a couple countries and they have proxy servers. I mean, I mean, signal is really working on end and encryption and despite what some news stories might say, signal.
[01:36:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Anyway, anyway, but Apple just. Yeah, apple intelligence. Just because I'm aware.
[01:36:58] Speaker C: Absolutely.
So I think Apple intelligence, the idea looks amazing. Private language learning model on your phone and all that. Before we get into the realities, can I ask what everybody else's thoughts on it as well?
[01:37:15] Speaker D: What do you mean?
[01:37:17] Speaker C: Like when you, when you've heard about Apple intelligence or do you see what's your, what's your take on it?
[01:37:23] Speaker D: That's such a loaded question.
[01:37:24] Speaker A: It really is. That's what we're here for.
[01:37:27] Speaker D: I mean, we could talk for another 2 hours on that. You know, it really. I have so many thoughts about it that I am all for artificial intelligence to make my life easier. I am not for artificial intelligence to take away my agency and my creativity. I don't want it to write things for me. I don't want it to create images for me, not even emoji. I don't want to like, create emoji in messages and send them along out of thin air. I mean, I'm sure that's fighting against the machine. I'm sure people, millions of people will love it and it'll fly off the shelf. That thing doesn't arm me. And it's not as bad as people just using AI that's trained on other people's creations unethically to create stuff out of whole cloth. These things are night and day different. I never really expected Apple to bow to that kind of stuff, and I'm not sure what exactly form it will take when it finally does ship. It seems like Apple will limit the use of image playground with AI when it finally does ship, but I'm not sure as none of us are because it hasn't shipped yet.
Do I want AI to rewrite my messages to you guys when I type it in? In messages? No, I mean what I say. I mean, we all do. So I don't know. I'm really conflicted about it.
[01:39:01] Speaker A: Can I pose one slight rebuttal to that?
[01:39:05] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
[01:39:06] Speaker A: What about autocorrect?
[01:39:08] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, autocorrect is, is artificial intelligence, right? And helping you grammar. And I'm not. I'm, I'd be a hypocrite if I said I haven't used AI. I have, especially in coming up with rephrasing of something or like, as a thesaurus for something. Like, I want to, I know what I want to say, but I can't quite quite figure out the words for it. So I asked chat GPT or whatever, tell me another word for this or give me another way to say this and then I'll tweak it and then I'll post it. You know, I wouldn't post it right out of the screen and stuff like that.
[01:39:50] Speaker A: So you mean you wouldn't submit a piece of AI work without checking it? Maybe. You know, for example, for a final assignment, there will be a link to a podcast episode about that.
[01:40:00] Speaker D: I absolutely cannot imagine what it must be like to be a teacher right now.
[01:40:03] Speaker C: Oh, I know.
[01:40:04] Speaker D: Can you imagine what it must be to be a professor at a university and try to ask your students to do work? It must be absolutely maddening in order to do that. I don't.
[01:40:21] Speaker A: I caught a colleague at work who's in our customer service team using chat GPT.
Now, again, some people in miss call know who I work for and know the industry I work in. Do you think that chat GPT is an appropriate tool for that industry?
[01:40:38] Speaker D: I mean, for myself, like, for. I myself don't have a problem with having, like, we have a knowledge base at the icon factory. People have technical questions all the time they need answered, and we can't think of every question that they could possibly ever ask. And so if an artificial agent could answer that question without having to bother me or another person on my team and answer it correctly, that's the key point. Not give them misinformation or make it worse without supervision, without people looking at the actual answer, then I'm all for it.
And also, and finding things, if AI can narrow a search down very, very quickly and find the thing you're looking for out of billions of records, hallelujah. That is awesome. I'm all for it. Again, it is not the same as writing something for me, it is not the same as replying or speaking to a customer. For me, that is not the same. It's just not. And you'll never convince me that that's a good thing.
[01:41:51] Speaker C: Whenever I have used AI, I strictly use it through Duckduckgo's browser, because through their browser you can do their desktop browser, you can do chat, but that is never stored, that is all private. And again, it's looking at the information and again, checking it out.
[01:42:11] Speaker A: Exactly.
Giddy made two good point. A really, really key point, correctly and not misinformation. Now, I do think that when you are, when we're talking Apple intelligence, the idea of it's built on your data, your context, and only processed for you is a good thing. I love the fact that when it needs to go off to extra compute resources, that's affect to be your own little private AI cloud. Am I the only one who's really, really, really excited? But that's all powered by Apple silicon.
[01:42:45] Speaker C: I love that.
[01:42:45] Speaker D: Yeah, that's cool. That's very cool.
[01:42:48] Speaker C: And ATP brought up an interesting, so there's what I'm interested to see is the real way to use this because ATP had one where it was trying to guess a customer. There was a message summary. Somebody had a username that was at museum something and it thought that the person was talking about uk museums had nothing to do with the phrasing. So the issue with is the assistant one of the people on ATP said made a good point. If you're trusting, if you have to double check your assistant, they're not saving you time. People hire in person assistants to save them time because you trust they're going to do that. What they are giving you is going to work, right?
[01:43:33] Speaker A: I mean, some people have said in the beta of Apple intelligence, oh, it's really messed up my email summary. Yeah, because it's still learning. It's still in beta. Is it going to be perfect all the time? No.
Are the things that I kind of like the idea of it doing, maybe, but I'm not going to rely on it and I'm certainly glad that it will ask consent before going off to services like chat GPT.
I guess the proof will be in the eating, won't it? We will see.
So just remind me, when's it launched in the US? When do you lovely people get it?
[01:44:09] Speaker D: I am checking in January or something. I don't, I'm not sure.
[01:44:14] Speaker A: Well, we get it in December, so I hope you get it before we do.
[01:44:19] Speaker C: Starting next month.
[01:44:21] Speaker A: Next month, so October. Okay, so maybe that's another discussion for us to have is our maybe, maybe January time when we've all actually had a chance to play with it. Maybe we gather this group together.
I'd be very interesting to see some of our, you know, because obviously Catherine flick would be a great person to talk to on this. We have done lots of episodes on AI, by the way, and the reason I made the joke and Gideon made about being, Gideon said about being taught to be a professor, you know, we've got family experience of the really, really bad side of that happening.
[01:44:58] Speaker C: And can I say one thing? As a college student, this last course, there were so many AI checks on it. When I submitted it, it was saying to me many times we were checking for AI for plagiarism and none of it came back. But it was just so interesting that it has already become that ingrained in culture.
[01:45:24] Speaker D: I think I really, the more I think about this, this seems to me like there's going to have to be a fundamental c shift in education because of this. Professors are just not going to be able to say, go write an essay for this and turn it in next week. You can't do that anymore. It's going to be more like, let's sit down and you tell me about this subject right now here. Tell me, you know, and that's how they will get graded. That's how well they will pass or fail. And no help, no looking at your phone, no going off, no anything else. You. You have to prove to me right now. Let's have a debate. Let's have a discussion, something like that, to just to prove to me that you know the topic at hand and you have a depth of understanding of it. And I don't know if that's actually what will happen or not, but that, I mean, that seems like it's where it has to go to, does it not?
[01:46:20] Speaker C: I mean, well, can I add, now that you mentioned that, that explains why this course was so different. I won't explain, like, what they. But it was a lot of experiences. They wanted a lot more. What do you think on this? Even my. And that explains why it was such a weird course compared to what I was used to. And they wanted to know, did you grasp material and in your own words? And so, yeah, I think I'm starting to see it.
[01:46:47] Speaker A: I think. I mean, I was never good at exams in school, if someone had sat me down and said, explain how a computer does this. I go, oh, yeah, it does this. It flips for, you know, it flips the quantum inversion. It uses the LCAR's network and me isolinear process and the box capacitor. That's it. Wrong side of that works. Anyway, look, I am very conscious of time because I know we try not to make these episodes longer than the Apple events themselves.
I think it is the biggest challenge in Apple related podcasting. How do you keep a Apple event podcast short of the event itself? I think we're doing okay at this point. Oh, actually, there's one thing I wanted to very quickly bring up that Jade brought up and made up. There's something. There's been a bit of an uproar from. Because one of the things in iOS 18 is you can now hide apps, right, and lock them. Well, there's a lot of stuff that's been going around saying, well, this is actually helping cheaters, you know, adulterers. I don't. I think that is completely the wrong take because yes, it could, but also, doesn't it help people who are in an abusive relationship who need to hide critical apps like, for example, signal or what if.
[01:48:02] Speaker C: And I'm just going to put out there, what if you are questioning yourself and you might be afraid of your parents or your friends finding out. I've known about partners who have started transitioning and they want to find the best way to tell their partner that freaking them out. So they have to be like, how can I talk to my partner about this? So there's a lot of ways where this could go. And with are the US heavily turning into a much more of a dictatorship? I'm going to say that. That it is much. It is important to be able to know what data enforcement can see on your device. So there's a lot of things, I think the cheating thing, if you're worried about your partner cheating, there's a whole bunch of other stuff you got to worry about in that regard.
[01:48:46] Speaker A: Any other thought sum up nice and simple, right as we wrap up, then. Well, I think one of the things if we were to give apple, you know, I don't want to steal six colors idea here, but let's give apple on the back of iOS 18, iPadoS 18, and my new products a. Let's give apple a grade. I'm going to start with. I'm going to start with Gideon just to put him on the spot for.
[01:49:11] Speaker D: The AirPod stuff alone. They get an a for not shipping Apple intelligence with the rest of the releases. It's probably a b plus.
If it's in service of getting it right, then I'm all for it. And take as much time as you need. I'd rather have it be useful and ethical and accurate later than all of those things. Not so now I'm perfectly willing to wait. And it probably wouldn't. I probably wouldn't mind if I never came at all. But that's a whole other discussion on the hardware itself. It's very cool. I would give them an a minus, maybe.
[01:49:55] Speaker A: I mean, they're still very pricey devices. So I think.
I don't think we're ever going to see Apple do rock bottom hardware prices. But remember, this is a company that never did went into the netbooks, never went into the cheapest machine, is still the map mini, which I still think is a great machine. Alex, what about yourself?
[01:50:14] Speaker B: Yeah, the software side of things this year there's a definitely more. For me personally, definitely more useful things I've noticed since last year.
The Homekit improvements are really good this year. The little tiny changes, the iPhone mirroring and different things like that. And for a lot of people, the customization as well. It's obviously a good thing for a lot of things. The software side of. It's a solid effort this time around, the phone stuff. So hardware related, I don't really know how to score the. I'll do numbers if that's all right. I don't really know how those letter things.
So I think the software is like in seven or eight this year. The hardware is probably about the same, like an eight as well. Cause the new watch is good. Nice sort of improvement in places. And then the phones, the batteries are bigger. So we've got much better battery life. We got wifi seven or six e now, I think, on the phone, seven on the pro.
[01:51:07] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:51:08] Speaker B: So that's a nice improvement for testing things. Yeah, it's a solid event. It was a little bit too long, as we mentioned earlier, but because I was sat on the sofa watching it, I was like, uh. It's like watching a really long movie. So, um, is it gonna finish anytime soon? But no, no, it's a solid effort. Um, it's always something I look forward to the events and the Apple events, even though we don't write about it as much as I used to, but.
[01:51:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Jay, what about you? What are you going to give them? And you can. You could always do maybe's grading scheme from. From arrested development if you want.
[01:51:36] Speaker C: You mean. I mean, um. A dollar for every banana you thought about wrong scale. You mean the grading scale. But I'm going to say that I've been doing a lot of introspection on my life. When I started my degree was in 2010. I'm honestly going to give them an a plus because there's nothing that's. Wow. But if you think about where we've gone since even like 2010 or before, these are devices that are in our pockets, on our wrists. These are devices that are with us at all times, allowing us to stay connected with people across vast distances.
[01:52:21] Speaker B: This sounds like an apple commercial now, Jake.
[01:52:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I was actually picking up piece of Tim Cook there. I was, like, getting a bit of a. Yeah, I.
[01:52:29] Speaker C: Well, I just found out last night that I sound like my dad, too, and some of my TikTok.
I think that, honestly, the fact that nothing is groundbreaking, as in, like, ground. It's nothing of the UI changes. I think it's great. I mean, they're making work, they're improving on what they know and trying to give us what we need and want. And I think, honestly, the biggest thing I would say with apple, fake cross region f stores, much easier to do.
I got workarounds for that. And I won't say anymore, you can buy that. But anyway, just Apple's doing great. So a not perfect.
[01:53:10] Speaker A: No, pretty decent. And I would echo, I would absolutely echo about where we've come. You know, we joke about this sound like apple commercial, but. Okay, so Jayde, Jade texted me something earlier in my recording and she asked if she could mention something on the show. And at first I said, and she said no because she texted me, said, can I mention how Apple has saved our long distance relationship? But when I first, okay, when I first read it, I'm like, nah, that's so sappy and cheesy and so like secretly sweet. And then I realized just now, recently, things like, okay, things that might take the quality for cameras means that obviously when we're doing FaceTime calls, we've got lots better quality. We're able to content create together, we can stream together, but little things like Shareplay collaboration things have all come along in the last few years have really, really made it. So what was it like? Disney supports Shareplay. So me and Jay have been watching arrested development because my first three seasons are on Disney. Plus have to figure out how we're going to watch the second last two on Netflix. But that's okay, we'll figure it out. But things like that and screen sharing and being able to just walk around with AirPods in and talk to Jay, it actually is quite astonishing. I'm going to give Apple. I'm going to give Apple an a because I don't want to give him an a because there's so much room for improvement. There's things like the use case around the continuity camera. There's little tiny things where I'd like them to do maybe a little bit more value. Hardware, not cheap, but more affordable because I could not convince my dad, for example, to buy a MacBook Air because it's so far above his price range for a laptop. Admittedly, my dad's price range for a laptop is about pound 300. So we ended up getting a second hand thinkpad, which are my second go to laptop. But yeah, I think Apple are doing really well. I would like to see a bit more openness on the app store stuff with the caveat that it has to remain secure. That's a big reason I stay with Apple is because they are secure. I like their privacy. Focus. I'm not massively excited about Apple intelligence, but I'm willing to give it a try. That's my take.
[01:55:32] Speaker C: And again, think about how much Apple is letting us choose stuff now on our phone, which Android people are like. We've had that for years. But for Apple people, this is huge.
[01:55:40] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's wrap out by making sure that our two guests get the appropriate plug. So we'll start with Alex, because, you know, obviously quite a few podcasts are plugged there. Alex, where can people find you?
[01:55:55] Speaker B: So they can find me at theinterface Dot UK. That's my sort of media outlet, I guess, where I covered news and reviews about automotive, Ev's, technology, and networking gear as well. And then I've got three different podcasts as well. I've got, for Ubuxi fans out there, I've got the UI chat podcast, which I do with my former colleague and friend Evan McCann. He's from Washington, I believe, got charging status, which is a podcast that me and James started together almost two years ago now. Can you believe that? Which I do, my friend Jim now to talk about EV's. And then lastly, it's a fairly irregular podcast. It's called Correct Spotlight, which was my first podcast I started thanks to James.
Thanks for helping for that. And then I interview journalists creators, I guess YouTube creators as well, just asking them how they got started. And it's not focusing on big people, it's focusing on interesting people that make interesting stuff. So you can find all those bits and pieces at the interface dot UK, I think. Podcasts, I believe. So I have to double check that, but, yeah.
[01:56:55] Speaker A: Thank you, Alex. Gideon, you may want to unmute now, because it's your turn to plug. Yeah, there we go.
[01:57:01] Speaker D: Apologize for Max there. He's the mama's on truck down the street. So you play. Come on.
[01:57:05] Speaker A: I was thinking, easy thinking. His new apple watch is arriving.
[01:57:09] Speaker C: Or his bark box, right?
[01:57:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Bark box.
[01:57:12] Speaker D: Yes. Bark box.
[01:57:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that is the thing, actually.
[01:57:17] Speaker D: Yeah. Max gets a bark box every month.
[01:57:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I want one when we get a dog.
[01:57:23] Speaker A: Okay, very quickly before. So last night we got to meet on Twitch, our friend Cerucci's new dog, Lazlo. And cute. I cannot have pets in Miss flat, but I'm for a dog. Anyway, apart from Max's recommendations, first of all, I guess, what do you want to plug this time around? Because you've got quite a few apps and services that you might want to plug. I don't know how far we are on tapestry, but by all means, share away.
[01:57:51] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, tapestry is our. The Kickstarter that we started earlier back in the spring to try to bring your social media into a unified timeline.
All of your blogs, your YouTube, your mastodon, all of that, it got funded and it's going really well. We're getting in the home stretch. We're. We're going to do everything we possibly can to get it out before the end of the year. So when I have more information about that, I hope you have me back on, but it's getting there. We're close. Kickstarter backers have had weekly builds since July and they're very happy.
[01:58:30] Speaker A: I should talk to you about that because I thought we backed about level, but I don't think I'd be. Maybe we didn't. I should talk to you about Alpha. Alpha?
[01:58:37] Speaker D: Yeah, a lot of people did. But then they signed up with Kickstarter. They use their Apple relay addresses and those things are horrible. They get lost. Their test flight emails get lost and everything.
[01:58:51] Speaker A: I will ping you offline, see if we can sort that then. Very, very excited. But you've also got stuff like, oh.
[01:58:58] Speaker D: We have lots of apps. If you want to see all of our apps, you can go to apps dot iconfactory.com. that's the easiest way. And they're all there. We have games and utilities. Wallpaper app Wallaroo that lets you quickly set your wallpaper on your iOS or macOS desktop.
We have tools for designers and developers like Xcope and World Wide Web, and a great drawing app for the iPad. Linea sketch, which was just inktober, starts in just a few days, if you're familiar with it, where you try to do a creative drawing every day of the week, every day of the month in October. And we provide templates for that if you have an iPad, which makes it a little bit more easy to digest and stuff. So if you want to find me online, the best way is on Mastodon, social idion Gedeon.
And that's where I am online. I'm not on Twitter. I am not.
[01:59:56] Speaker A: Unsurprisingly. Unsurprisingly. Anyway, listen, thank you both for being here. Especially for being here so long. Can I also say a big thank you to Riverside for massively improving the live stream capability? All three streams have stayed stable. We've had people on all three platforms. Thank you. We are so, so impressed with your service. I think we have an affiliate, so we'll put it in the show notes. But yeah, absolutely. Want to hear everyone's thoughts? Head over to Crosswires.net comma. You can find all our socials there.
Just really simple crosswise social on mastered on we are on blue sky as.
[02:00:34] Speaker C: Well, which is at crost wires social.
[02:00:39] Speaker A: Right? There you go. That's on Bluesky. And we won't promote the others because we don't really want to, but we are on certain select other platforms for various reasons, but you'll be able to find those. We'll have awesome YouTube content coming soon, and we'll have more amazing guests for you to listen to.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Crosswires. We hope you've enjoyed our discussion and we'd love to hear your thoughts. So please drop us a note over to podcastrosswires.net dot why not come and join our discord community.
[email protected]. forward Slash Discord we've got lots of text channels, we've even got voice channels, and we've got forum posts for every episode that we put out there. If you are Mastodon, you can also follow us either by heading over to white or just follow Crossedires social.
[02:01:29] Speaker C: If you'd like to check out more of our content, head on over to Crossedwires.net YouTube for all our videos and keep an eye on our Twitch
[email protected]. live for our upcoming streams.
[02:01:41] Speaker A: If you like what we heard, please do drop a review in your podcast directory of choice. It really does help spread the word about the show.
[02:01:47] Speaker C: And of course, if you can spare even the smallest amount of financial support, we'd be incredibly grateful. You can support
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[02:02:02] Speaker A: Until next time, thanks for listening.
