00:00:08 ◼ ► From Real AFM, this is Connected, episode 470. Today's show is brought to you by FitBod and ExpressVPN.
00:00:16 ◼ ► My name is Michael Hurley and I have the pleasure of being joined by Federico Vittucci. Hello Federico.
00:00:31 ◼ ► Okay, hello Michael. Well, we're gonna talk about it later, but I've lost some branding,
00:00:41 ◼ ► Now, wait for your introduction. I am Federico Vittucci and I am also joined by Mr. Steven Hackett.
00:00:54 ◼ ► Hello, I mean we can address the branding thing now if you want to and then we can talk about
00:00:59 ◼ ► everything else later on. Yeah, what branding do you think you've lost and we'll come back to it.
00:01:04 ◼ ► I have an audio clip to play for you. John and I were discussing this idea and obviously adding
00:01:11 ◼ ► another review to the mix of annual reviews that we do. It's not something we take lightly,
00:01:17 ◼ ► so if we wanted to do this, we were all in agreement, we needed to get it right to do it,
00:01:23 ◼ ► you know, to do the OS justice and what better way than to get in touch with the TVOS guy,
00:01:30 ◼ ► the expert, to get this done for Mac Stories and we're really happy with the results and
00:01:40 ◼ ► Oh, that was an interesting name at the end there, you know, because what it sounds like
00:01:45 ◼ ► Federico is about to introduce me to App Stories as the TVOS guy, you know, but it turns out that
00:01:52 ◼ ► there's been a new one, you know, now Sigmin's the TVOS guy, much to everybody's surprise.
00:02:01 ◼ ► I don't like writing. I could be the TVOS guy here, you know, the name you gave me, but now
00:02:19 ◼ ► ever think about writing or doing any kind of TVOS. Now you can go to the beach without an
00:02:24 ◼ ► Apple TV in your bag. That's going to be great. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'm just
00:02:33 ◼ ► Now Sigmin's the TVOS guy. I did this for you. No, you didn't. You didn't even know you did it.
00:02:57 ◼ ► Yes. Well, what I am not grateful for is the amount of messages that I've been receiving
00:03:07 ◼ ► That's a byproduct of the audience. No, but like seriously, I have asked you over the years
00:03:41 ◼ ► Wow did I feel when I saw Sigmund's piece go up on on Mac stories? I was like, oh, interesting.
00:03:51 ◼ ► And then I think, you know, I hear Federico doing a wonderful introduction and then he's just the
00:03:56 ◼ ► TVOS guy. And then at that moment, like a spirit left my body and went into the heavens. And then
00:04:02 ◼ ► no longer do I need to do it. Because let me tell you boys, I realized today I haven't even
00:04:07 ◼ ► installed TVOS 17. I forgot. I was like, oh, look at all these features. I forgot to do this. And so
00:04:14 ◼ ► I'm very happy to not have to have to think about that anymore. But now I am rebranded. Now I am
00:04:21 ◼ ► Michael Hurley. Mike Hurley was a TVOS guy. Michael Hurley is a different person. We don't know what
00:04:30 ◼ ► Nailed it. All right. I'll take that. I'll take that. So far I've had pretty good success with
00:04:37 ◼ ► that. So that's me. My guess is reviewing VisionOS is going to be much more complicated than reviewing
00:04:43 ◼ ► TVOS. I'm just saying the level of work may be different. But let's also say, though, probably
00:04:49 ◼ ► more fun and interesting. Or fun and interesting. Because TVOS, you know, it's great, but there
00:04:58 ◼ ► ain't a lot going on there on a year to year basis. But TVOS, no wait, VisionOS, that's the one.
00:05:05 ◼ ► I've got to get it right first if I'm going to become the VisionOS guy. So I'm so used to being
00:05:09 ◼ ► the TVOS guy, you know, it became part of my identity, but then it was taken away from me.
00:05:14 ◼ ► But now as the VisionOS guy, I get a new life. Michael Hurley, the VisionOS guy. That's me.
00:05:24 ◼ ► And now you're just a normal person walking around, but you kind of don't know what to do
00:05:28 ◼ ► Yeah. So I have to like get bitten by a radioactive Vision Pro. And then I can become the VisionOS guy.
00:06:08 ◼ ► All right. You can get bitten by an Apple executive and you get their associated platform.
00:06:19 ◼ ► You get their powers. So you become the platform guy. Okay. So you can get bitten by Craig,
00:06:37 ◼ ► I honestly, like between us and the rest of the audience, like I would totally let Craig,
00:07:02 ◼ ► No one can handle Eddie's power. No one can take that. That's too much. That's too much
00:07:52 ◼ ► There's some people in here I don't recognize. I haven't looked at this in a long time.
00:08:05 ◼ ► We all know that the fine woven case, it's not that great. And I went out and picked up,
00:08:14 ◼ ► I went out onto the information super highway and I bought myself a nomad leather case. Now
00:08:36 ◼ ► Okay. Well, I don't have any complaints about the less expensive leather, but I really like this
00:08:43 ◼ ► case for a few reasons. I like leather cases. Nomad has like plastered all over their website
00:08:51 ◼ ► that they've been carbon neutral since 2020. So smoke on that apple, I guess. But you know,
00:08:57 ◼ ► yeah, I think the leather is nicer than Apple's old cases. Even the, the poor man leather that I
00:09:02 ◼ ► got, the buttons are plastic, but they're really nice. Like they, they have a nice feel to them.
00:09:10 ◼ ► And one thing I really like is that the sleep wake Siri Apple pay button is textured. So you
00:09:17 ◼ ► can kind of feel, feel it real easily as opposed to the other buttons on the other side. And it
00:09:24 ◼ ► has a button for the, uh, for the action button, unlike the peak design case, which is a cutout.
00:09:29 ◼ ► I don't know if we made it to this point last week in the show, but peak design is going to
00:09:34 ◼ ► rework that case. And there's a bunch of options on their website. If you've bought one like me,
00:09:38 ◼ ► you can, they'll send you another one or you can get credit or something else. There's a
00:09:41 ◼ ► bunch of different things. Um, but one thing that's really clever about the Nomad case is
00:09:47 ◼ ► that the sides aren't flat. They're like scooped in. So what is that? Is that concave or convex?
00:09:54 ◼ ► I don't remember which one is which, but concave unless somebody says it's convex and it's convex.
00:10:00 ◼ ► That's hard to argue with. And so the buttons are like recessed a little bit and it makes the phone
00:10:07 ◼ ► feel more narrow in your hand and it gives a place for your fingers to kind of go when you're holding
00:10:12 ◼ ► it. I think it's all super well-designed. The only thing I don't love about it is that the bottom of
00:10:18 ◼ ► the case doesn't really hug the phone. It's like the peak design case and that there's some like
00:10:28 ◼ ► the case and like where the phone is, where it can collect like pocket debris and stuff.
00:10:37 ◼ ► the phone's not moving around in there though. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's just like there's,
00:10:43 ◼ ► But I am very happy with this and I think if you are looking for a leather case, I think
00:10:51 ◼ ► Federico can report back about the about the Horween leather, but I'm very happy with mine
00:11:01 ◼ ► and I give it a thumbs up. That's good to hear. Yeah and also like the reason why I got the Nomad
00:11:06 ◼ ► one is that I did a lot of research last week. Nomad and I believe another that is coming,
00:11:12 ◼ ► however, I sent them an email at the end of October. This other company called Bullstrap.
00:11:27 ◼ ► No, no, not again, not again, please. Not that thing again. These two companies, Nomad and
00:11:34 ◼ ► Bullstrap, they have proper action buttons instead of like having left like a hole for reaching the
00:11:48 ◼ ► Aren't these companies like, wasn't, isn't the whole thing about iPhone rumors that these
00:11:54 ◼ ► companies get these CAD designs beforehand, like months before and they can prepare accordingly?
00:12:00 ◼ ► Like what happened here with this action button? Why are all these companies struggling with,
00:12:08 ◼ ► Because it's how confident, right? Like that's what I'm looking, when I see this, it's like,
00:12:13 ◼ ► this is a confidence thing, right? Where like Bullstrap and Nomad, they were confident.
00:12:29 ◼ ► That's what I'm saying about the confidence thing, right? And like, so maybe some companies either
00:12:34 ◼ ► are more like, they're more willing to take a risk or they just have better sources, right?
00:12:40 ◼ ► Like maybe Peak Design sources, they weren't as confident on it. So they didn't want to
00:12:50 ◼ ► but like how big is the button? Like how much does it stick out? Like all that kind of stuff.
00:12:54 ◼ ► And so there's a, and also there's new tooling, right? That you're going to need for the button.
00:13:00 ◼ ► Where the companies that just left the hole there, right? They had a hole there before,
00:13:04 ◼ ► right? So they didn't, they wouldn't necessarily need to like redo their tooling to account for,
00:13:10 ◼ ► here's a new button. And then again, it was like, people didn't know at certain points,
00:13:16 ◼ ► if that button was going to be a physical button or like a button that was like the force touch
00:13:23 ◼ ► button. And then we weren't sure with like, would it actually require your finger? Was it going to
00:13:28 ◼ ► be capacitive or not? Do you remember all those rumors? And so like, if it was a capacitive button,
00:13:33 ◼ ► it might not be able to be, have a physical button cover at all. So you'd want a hole there. So
00:13:42 ◼ ► I could not even imagine running one of these case companies. It just feels like so much stress.
00:13:49 ◼ ► Oh, I hate it. I hate the thought of it. I think a lot about cases for somebody who doesn't
00:13:55 ◼ ► have one. I don't, I love it. I love not, I love this phone about case on boys. It's so good.
00:14:01 ◼ ► It's the, so it's just so nice, you know, and I don't have to worry about combos and stuff.
00:14:06 ◼ ► I'm all good. I don't have to worry about the grain of a leather or carbon neutrality of a case.
00:14:12 ◼ ► I just don't have one. It's great. Love it. We had to say a little collection of new iPhone
00:14:20 ◼ ► related questions and feedback from listeners. So I thought we could kind of go through these.
00:14:31 ◼ ► can the action be set to undo? I still find myself annoyed at the three finger gestures,
00:14:40 ◼ ► Nope, but that's a pretty good idea, but there's no sort of system-wide undo action in shortcuts,
00:14:53 ◼ ► It's so weird that we would shake and still shake our devices. That's such a strange thing.
00:15:02 ◼ ► Yeah. That first showed up as shake to shuffle on like ancient iPods. And they're like,
00:15:07 ◼ ► Oh, we can make it work on undo. And it was cute on the iPhone 3G, but now 2,700 years later,
00:15:22 ◼ ► It's my new ska band. Okay. Albert wrote in and said, I'm a cyclist and have been wanting to
00:15:31 ◼ ► upgrade my camera to take better photos while out riding of landscapes, closeups, animals in
00:15:37 ◼ ► the distance, that kind of thing. I have been debating a dedicated camera versus the new Pro Max.
00:15:41 ◼ ► Do you think the new camera system would do a decent job capturing long distance cycling
00:15:52 ◼ ► Okay. Actually, real quick. Can you ride a bike? What do you mean? Do you know how to ride a bicycle?
00:15:58 ◼ ► Sure. Yes. Okay. I don't. I never learned to ride a bicycle. That's what we can do. That could be
00:16:05 ◼ ► our next dad project. I can teach you to ride a bike. That could be the nephew and uncle.
00:16:10 ◼ ► My dad never taught me how to ride a bike. So uncle Steven will. There's something kind of
00:16:16 ◼ ► sad about that because it is actually true. Like, no, my dad never taught me how to ride a bike.
00:16:19 ◼ ► When I was little, I was big time into riding my bike. In fact, something that we would do every
00:16:27 ◼ ► summer with my friends at the sort of glamping area where my parents used to take me, we would
00:16:34 ◼ ► ride a bike for like 30 minutes off this like road that like runs along the coast of central Italy.
00:16:42 ◼ ► Because like 20 minutes away from the camping area, there was this golf course. Okay. And we
00:16:48 ◼ ► would go there outside the golf course where cars would drive because we wanted to steal
00:16:54 ◼ ► golf balls that made their way onto the road. So we would go there. We would go there with like
00:17:01 ◼ ► our bags or like a plastic bag or something and drop our bikes. And on the side of the road,
00:17:10 ◼ ► you're not stealing that ball. That ball's gone. That ball is lost to the world. That's free balls
00:17:17 ◼ ► for you, you know? We thought we were stealing them and then it would feel more dangerous.
00:17:34 ◼ ► I think the Pro Max is a great, great camera for this. You could do something like one of
00:17:42 ◼ ► those like little compact Sonys like the ZV-2 or you know, whatever RX100 generation they're on
00:17:48 ◼ ► now, but that's a lot of money. And they're really bulky compared to a phone that you're already
00:17:53 ◼ ► going to have on you. So I would say go for the Pro Max and enjoy it. I've got a phrase for you
00:18:01 ◼ ► I just came up with guys. I think you might like it. The best camera is the one you have on you.
00:18:06 ◼ ► Do you like that? Ooh, very interesting. I just came up with that. I just came up with that.
00:18:10 ◼ ► That's good. So I will, I will, I will insert here a comment about iOS 17 and watchOS 10's
00:18:18 ◼ ► cycling features where you can start a cycling workout on your watch. And you can have basically
00:18:24 ◼ ► a full screen live activity that turns your phone into a bike computer. I sent you all a screenshot
00:18:29 ◼ ► over the weekend. I was out on a ride and I love that feature. And there's a bunch of different
00:18:34 ◼ ► screens. So you could have your heart rate be the most important thing or your speed or your
00:18:38 ◼ ► mileage, whatever you want. And it's really awesome. And I like that cycling is getting
00:18:44 ◼ ► special attention over the Apple watch offices. Brent wrote in, I am one of the sickos that
00:18:50 ◼ ► listens to podcast-a-thon audio. I'm not usually able to tune in for the live event itself for more
00:18:57 ◼ ► than an hour or so, but I still enjoy hearing all the antics. Well, Brent, it's now in the departures
00:19:02 ◼ ► fees. So go wild. Yeah, but like, well, one Brent, I appreciate that you are willing to self identify
00:19:09 ◼ ► as a sicko because you are one. Uh, you can also watch it though. Like it's on YouTube. You don't,
00:19:16 ◼ ► you don't have, just cause you missed it. It's not like, Oh, now I have to have the audio.
00:19:33 ◼ ► for some fire up whisper. I wonder how long it'll take whisper to transcribe a 12 hour event.
00:19:40 ◼ ► It took YouTube to publish the, to process the video. Oh don't it dude. I can't even talk about
00:19:46 ◼ ► it. I'm so mad. I got a couple of GPUs. Maybe I can help. Fire up the eGPUs boys. Fire them up.
00:19:56 ◼ ► That's going to be totally carbon neutral as a thing to do. And yeah, just transcribe 12 hours
00:20:06 ◼ ► You should just do it. You should just do it. Just see why not? I mean, I, I, I do have whisper
00:20:16 ◼ ► set up to run on GPU as a thing I tested a while back. Someone should do it. Um, I also have a
00:20:23 ◼ ► piece of followup that I wanted to mention. Um, Apple is destroying my life metaphorically speaking.
00:20:31 ◼ ► Of course. Of course. They're at, they're, they're at his home taking his belongings out right now.
00:20:42 ◼ ► Too many nips. Um, no, but I am really struggling with reminders. Um, because of these two specific
00:20:53 ◼ ► bugs that I've been mentioning for the past couple of months and they're still not fixed in the 17.1
00:21:01 ◼ ► beta two that came out yesterday for developers just a few minutes ago in the public beta. Um,
00:21:07 ◼ ► they are making it impossible for me to keep using reminders, which by the way, I would love to keep
00:21:14 ◼ ► using reminders. However, when your task manager does not let you enter due dates for a task. Now,
00:21:20 ◼ ► that's a pretty bad issue. Um, and I have this problem in two different flavors on the iPad and
00:21:27 ◼ ► on the iPhone. On the iPad, uh, because of that floating keyboard thing that I keep mentioning,
00:21:34 ◼ ► whenever I enter a task title and part of that title, there's the natural language date,
00:21:42 ◼ ► the date picker disappears. So on my iPad with a magic keyboard, say, I enter call mom, and then I
00:21:50 ◼ ► type today at 11 PM on the iPad, the date picker thing disappears. And there's no way for me to
00:21:58 ◼ ► like, if I press enter, it does not get converted into a due date. The task title becomes call mom
00:22:06 ◼ ► today at 11 PM. Like, um, so that's on the iPad. On the iPhone, um, the there's no external keyboard
00:22:15 ◼ ► that I'm using of course, but when I enter a due date iOS, instead of correctly parsing the date,
00:22:22 ◼ ► just randomly assigns a random date. For example, if I type Monday at 10 AM, it becomes
00:22:32 ◼ ► today at 2 AM, just a random date. Why is this? Because this works for me. So a bunch of people
00:22:42 ◼ ► have asked me like, Oh, is it because you have a weird region setting on your phone? No, I do not.
00:22:48 ◼ ► I have my phone set to the English language. I am using the US region setting and I am not, yes. And
00:22:56 ◼ ► I am not using 24 hour time. So I am quote unquote, an American with an English speaking phone.
00:23:21 ◼ ► Living the American life. You have dinner at 6 PM and then you're like, well, I got a few hours here.
00:23:35 ◼ ► I'm living my best American life over here. And yet, and yet Apple doesn't let me because they
00:23:42 ◼ ► have these date bugs. And I'm like, look, I really want to use reminders. Like I really love reminders,
00:23:59 ◼ ► It's so weird that it's not working for you and not working for you so badly and on multiple platforms.
00:24:16 ◼ ► Everybody knows you could only get real task management done on the Mac. Everybody knows.
00:24:25 ◼ ► Yeah, don't mention that. Don't mention that. So while I am crossing my fingers and waiting for
00:24:34 ◼ ► these problems to get fixed, I have been looking at things again. I don't think like I don't,
00:24:42 ◼ ► I don't think I would like to switch the things for all the reasons why I love reminders.
00:24:48 ◼ ► The Siri capture, the column view, which is new this year. But things as one thing going for it,
00:24:56 ◼ ► which I mentioned last week and I've continued to play with it. And I think it's really interesting
00:25:03 ◼ ► that idea of using the action button in things to sort of as a right click, essentially.
00:25:19 ◼ ► And the idea is whatever is selected in the app, you can modify it. And so using the action button
00:25:26 ◼ ► with that shortcut, I created like a little thing where if I select a task in things and I press
00:25:34 ◼ ► the action button, I can reschedule it like a date picker comes up. And it's like, it's a
00:25:46 ◼ ► So this is a shortcut that you can assign to the action button that when you're in the app
00:26:18 ◼ ► Oh no. Yeah. So that's what I mean. You assign a shortcut action to the action button that is from
00:26:25 ◼ ► things. And then when you are in things and you press the button, it modifies something inside
00:26:50 ◼ ► So, all right. So a small spoiler, I guess. I am working on this system where, because I am
00:26:57 ◼ ► convinced that more developers are going to ship these actions that are like contextual to the
00:27:04 ◼ ► app that you're using. I believe Halide, the camera app, they're doing something along these
00:27:09 ◼ ► lines today. I believe they're launching it today or this week, something similar. And I think more
00:27:14 ◼ ► developers will follow. I am working on this system where the action button switches to that
00:27:22 ◼ ► behavior only if one of these apps is open. And it's a very simple automation. You're effectively
00:27:29 ◼ ► logging, is things open? Is Halide open? Is something else open? And if it is, you press
00:27:35 ◼ ► the action button and it becomes contextual. If it's not, it falls back to whatever you
00:28:09 ◼ ► Well, the biggest issue is the one that we've been talking about forever is the way that
00:28:14 ◼ ► they handle repeating tasks that you can't deal with them before the day. And that's the thing
00:28:20 ◼ ► that I just can't... I can't use it as my main app. I do use things for certain tasks. Like I
00:28:33 ◼ ► for posting Cortex, I have a very long checklist and I run it in things. And I've moved my
00:28:40 ◼ ► packing list from notes to things. And it's very nice and very easy. I just run a shortcut
00:28:46 ◼ ► and it can do it. And it just pulls in a project and duplicates that project and I can run with
00:28:53 ◼ ► it. And I love doing that and I find it very good. But I just can't... It's not something
00:28:56 ◼ ► that I could do for my every task stuff because I do a lot of repeating reminders, but I don't
00:29:04 ◼ ► necessarily do them on the day that I set. One last bit of follow up slash breaking news.
00:29:18 ◼ ► overheating concerns on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. Apple says this update provides
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00:32:08 ◼ ► support of the show and Relay FM. Exciting news. This is, for realsies, the final call for our
00:32:18 ◼ ► annual St. Jude campaign. Final call, part two, underscore final. Yes, yes. As of our recording,
00:32:29 ◼ ► we are over our previous record by $50,000, which is pretty great. Incredible. I did not expect
00:32:39 ◼ ► that. It's amazing. Our community is the best. But if you haven't given, there's still a few
00:32:45 ◼ ► days. And the reason we do this is because St. Jude's mission is that no child should die of
00:32:53 ◼ ► cancer. And with your support, we'll be one step closer to that day. One cure closer, one child
00:33:00 ◼ ► closer. We spoke about an area of the hospital called the Family Commons during the podcast
00:33:05 ◼ ► athon. And I think last week on the show, it's this really cool 45,000 square foot area that's
00:33:10 ◼ ► just for families. And there's a recording studio, an art room, a maker space, all sorts of things
00:33:18 ◼ ► where a family can unwind and disconnect from life in the hospital and reconnect with each other.
00:33:24 ◼ ► But something that is just as important of a space and I think just as innovative as a space is the
00:33:31 ◼ ► St. Jude Imagine Academy by Chili's. And this is a school that St. Jude has spanning from preschool
00:33:38 ◼ ► through 12th grade for patients who will be at St. Jude for upward of six weeks. And so the staff
00:33:44 ◼ ► of the school includes teachers trained in English language learner instruction, visual impairment
00:33:50 ◼ ► instruction and services. They have a librarian on staff, a STEM coordinator. There's even reading
00:33:55 ◼ ► dogs who visit to read with the kids. And this Academy helps patients keep up with schoolwork
00:34:01 ◼ ► back home when they're undergoing treatment, but also gives patients what they need at that moment.
00:34:07 ◼ ► So they can be responsive to where the patient is in their treatment, how they're feeling that day,
00:34:13 ◼ ► and they can adjust things as they go. There's also a kindergarten and high school graduation
00:34:19 ◼ ► ceremony every year. Our son Josiah graduated kindergarten through the school. And it was like,
00:34:25 ◼ ► the most adorable thing you've ever seen. I went to St. Jude patients in caps and gowns,
00:34:38 ◼ ► I love this because St. Jude is in the business of not only treating a patient's cancer or disease,
00:34:44 ◼ ► but they're treating the patient themselves and the family themselves. And they want to make sure
00:34:48 ◼ ► they can do everything they can to keep life moving forward for these families. It's super
00:34:54 ◼ ► cool. And it's just one of many, many things I love about St. Jude. So you want to go to
00:34:59 ◼ ► stjude.org/relay. We would love your support this year to support the life-saving mission of St.
00:35:06 ◼ ► Jude. And on Friday at 11 a.m. Eastern, Mike and I will be hosting the closing ceremonies. We're
00:35:15 ◼ ► going to wind down the campaign with a two-hour stream on Mike's Twitch channel. So be sure to
00:35:20 ◼ ► look out for that. But please go to stjude.org/relay to learn more and donate. Thank you all very much
00:35:28 ◼ ► for an amazing September. And yes, the closing ceremonies are similar to the closing ceremonies
00:35:33 ◼ ► on Connected in that they don't actually really close anything. We will be doing a stream, but
00:35:38 ◼ ► the campaign closes later that day. Yeah, the campaign closes at 10 p.m. Eastern on Friday.
00:35:44 ◼ ► Which is better than last year where we did the closing ceremonies and then kept the campaign
00:35:47 ◼ ► open for a week. We're evolving each year that we do this. Yeah, we're getting better. Like,
00:35:53 ◼ ► you know, this is a learning process for all of us, you know. But sometimes if people want to keep
00:35:58 ◼ ► giving money, you have to keep accepting the money for the kids. Go give. Which is why it's still
00:36:03 ◼ ► September and October because we're up to $756,000 now. Which I will just say, by the way, if you
00:36:09 ◼ ► happen to be sitting on like $36,000, you should donate it. That's a lot to say, you know. Because
00:36:18 ◼ ► that means we're at $3 million. Yeah. Yeah. In five years. We're like staring down the barrel
00:36:24 ◼ ► of $3 million. And so if you have that and you for some reason just haven't donated yet, like you
00:36:29 ◼ ► should go to sangeu.org/relay and donate that. Like, come on. I'll tell you what, if someone
00:36:34 ◼ ► closes that gap in a single donation, I'll give you one of anything out of my collection. Just,
00:36:39 ◼ ► you can pick whatever you want. Oh, there's a term up for grabs. It only costs $36,000.
00:36:43 ◼ ► Come on. That's actually, now I really hope you have to live to regret that. Me too. Mm-hmm. Come
00:36:52 ◼ ► on. $36,000 for the kids. Come plunder the pod cabin. Oh, come on. Write all this down. Write
00:36:59 ◼ ► all this down. It won't happen this time, but write it down. There are some new betas again.
00:37:06 ◼ ► Somehow. Yeah. How are we still talking about new betas? We do it all summer. Why is it here again?
00:37:11 ◼ ► We did it last week, but we're doing it again. But they are actually adding things. So,
00:37:15 ◼ ► 17.1 beta 2. So, we have some new display controls for standby mode that let you choose to turn the
00:37:24 ◼ ► display off after 20 seconds to never turn it off or to always allow Apple to choose what to do. It's
00:37:32 ◼ ► like automatic, which is how it's been set. But now there are options. It is worth noting that
00:37:38 ◼ ► these options only exist for always on display phones. You can't set it to never turn off
00:37:44 ◼ ► non always on display phone. So, that's there in case you want that. I've been trying out standby
00:37:50 ◼ ► this past week on my bedside. It's fine. I actually realized I don't need it. For what I like about
00:37:58 ◼ ► standby, it's not helpful to me on my bedside because when I put my phone on charge, I don't
00:38:05 ◼ ► look at the screen anymore. You know? But, so yeah, it's just like a funny thing, but it's there.
00:38:10 ◼ ► It's fine. Whatever. But I still love it for everything else. They also added the Apple Watch
00:38:15 ◼ ► double tap thing in watchOS 10.1. So, that's there now. I'm looking forward to trying that out. I'll
00:38:22 ◼ ► be able to report on that for the show. I'm the only one of the three of us that has it. I'm not
00:38:27 ◼ ► going to put the beta on my watch. So, we're going to need to wait until that comes out later on.
00:38:31 ◼ ► An interesting addition, but I think a good one. So, I really like the photo shuffle lock screen.
00:38:39 ◼ ► It's a cool lock screen option. They've now added the ability for you to choose photos from a
00:38:45 ◼ ► specific album in photo shuffle. Because previously you could only, you could choose, I think from one
00:38:53 ◼ ► of three things. One of those things was people where you could choose people, but as Jason spoke
00:38:59 ◼ ► about an upgrade once, not so long ago, it's a seemingly random set of people sometimes. But I
00:39:06 ◼ ► have one of Adina, like it just shuffles through when I'm in my recording. Focus. So, there are
00:39:12 ◼ ► just different images that show up on my lock screen, which I like. So, you can now, but you
00:39:15 ◼ ► can now just be, so Steven, you can choose from one of your many, many albums. That's good. I still
00:39:20 ◼ ► have a bunch floating around because they didn't add them to shared libraries. But now you can have
00:39:26 ◼ ► them on your lock screen, I guess. This is honestly the weirdest one thing that I found. New ringtones.
00:39:33 ◼ ► Yes. So, they added this new ringtones, I believe in 17, and they got removed in the first beta of
00:39:51 ◼ ► It's like, hey, where's the files? Where's the tones? It's like, now the tones are back.
00:40:02 ◼ ► That's okay. Right? Withering tone? Weird. And I feel like surprisingly, no new emoji yet,
00:40:08 ◼ ► but that might pop up in another beta, but I think, I reckon it will come out with 17.1.
00:40:12 ◼ ► I have a theory about this. Please tell me. I think that if, I think 17.1 will come and go,
00:40:21 ◼ ► and new emoji will be in 17.2 with the journal app. I agree with that. Oh, and maybe finally,
00:40:41 ◼ ► and collaborative playlists in Apple Music. That's a good release. Big, big chunky update.
00:40:47 ◼ ► Yeah. It's almost like 18. Mike, we opened the show with your feeling of abandonment from
00:40:55 ◼ ► Federico and John. Yes. There is a TVOS review over on Mac stories. And I would just like to
00:41:03 ◼ ► state for the record, I don't blame John. Just Federico. Yeah, Federico was the one who said it.
00:41:08 ◼ ► He said the thing. He said TVOS guy. And so because I said it, you think it's my fault.
00:41:22 ◼ ► Yep. And, but I look, Sigmund is really good guy. I had a good time meeting Sigmund at WWDC.
00:41:29 ◼ ► He is the proprietor, is that the right word? Of Screentimes.net. And he also hosts a podcast
00:41:37 ◼ ► called Magic Rays of Light. He's also, Sigmund has a great accent, you know, not biased or anything.
00:41:42 ◼ ► And he is devoted himself to these verticals, right? Like Apple's television stuff. And
00:41:52 ◼ ► Sigmund I think was quite smart. He's like one of these people that jumped in on this when Apple
00:41:56 ◼ ► started and then has been around since. And so he was a very good person to write a TVOS review.
00:42:05 ◼ ► new control center, which I do not like the look of. I think it's ugly. It is. It's useful.
00:42:10 ◼ ► FaceTime and continuity camera. So having FaceTime calls on your TV, but using the camera. VPN
00:42:18 ◼ ► support is going to be really cool. I think it'd be really good for people that like take Apple
00:42:24 ◼ ► TVs with them to hotels, which is like a very cool thing to do. Although Apple really needs to just
00:42:39 ◼ ► casting is so simple and like you can do it in basically all hotels. So Apple need to do that.
00:42:47 ◼ ► And there's also the Siri remote finding as well, which is a cool thing. And it works kind of like
00:42:53 ◼ ► how it did in the original AirPods Pro where like it just gives you the rough idea because it's just
00:42:59 ◼ ► using Bluetooth. It doesn't have one of the U1 chips in it. So, but yeah, it's a cool release
00:43:03 ◼ ► and it's a good review from Sigmund. It's really good. And I do want to use this as an opportunity,
00:43:09 ◼ ► Federica, I'm sure you all will share more about this on App Stories, but you are expanding the
00:43:20 ◼ ► over the past month. There are more and friends now. There are more and friends. That is correct.
00:43:27 ◼ ► You were making fun of me for being, you know, Federica with itchy and friends and the friends
00:43:32 ◼ ► were totally John and Alex. Now there's more friends and yeah, so we've been working on this
00:43:39 ◼ ► for the past month and a half or so. And today we sort of made it official. We have two new friends
00:43:47 ◼ ► of Mac Stories. Nielle Ann Dorfer. She has been an incredible member of our club Discord and just
00:44:00 ◼ ► out of the blue, I believe a month and a half or so ago, I sent her a DM being like, "Hey,
00:44:08 ◼ ► It's like sometimes I get a good feel for people who are into the same sort of things that I am
00:44:23 ◼ ► on the site today. She's got more coming. And Jonathan Reed. You may have noticed Jonathan has
00:44:30 ◼ ► been helping us out over the past month in the Discord as well as having a regular column in
00:44:35 ◼ ► Mac Stories Weekly. And Jonathan is going to be our sort of official Discord community manager
00:44:40 ◼ ► because we realized we needed some help in terms of, you know, keeping up with the Discord,
00:44:45 ◼ ► keeping up with content from members and sort of highlighting interesting things happening on
00:44:50 ◼ ► Discord. And so, yeah, we sort of announced this small expansion of the team today. It's been in
00:44:57 ◼ ► the works for quite a while and I have my eye on a few other folks. Watch out, everyone. He's coming
00:45:05 ◼ ► again. I am on a hiring spree. But yeah, no. Yeah, it's good to finally have the time and, you know,
00:45:15 ◼ ► mind space, I guess, to think about this, which is important to have more and different voices on Mac
00:45:21 ◼ ► Stories especially. I feel like the website really needed that. So yeah, it's gonna be fun to see
00:45:28 ◼ ► what they come up with. Today is the day of Google's Pixel 8 event. So we have some links
00:45:34 ◼ ► in the show notes to the Verge coverage, a video by MKBHD, a couple other things. I watched the
00:45:40 ◼ ► keynote this morning. It was pretty short. It was live in front of what looked like to be a very
00:45:45 ◼ ► small audience. So Google's been ahead of Apple in this. I don't think Apple's ever going to go back,
00:45:52 ◼ ► probably, to on-stage things. But they announced a new Pixel Watch 2 and then the Pixel 8 and Pixel
00:46:00 ◼ ► 8 Pro. And there were a couple things that I think were interesting. When I think about the
00:46:06 ◼ ► Google Pixel, I think about AI, software, magic, and the cameras. And those two things are very
00:46:15 ◼ ► linked in the Pixel, even more so than ever. So at the heart of these new phones is the Tensor G3
00:46:25 ◼ ► And there was a big emphasis in the event of doing machine learning and AI neural network tasks
00:46:41 ◼ ► but Google has not been immune to Apple's push for privacy in these things. And I think them saying,
00:46:47 ◼ ► hey, this, this, and this, including the big one, I think, for all speech to text, being on device
00:46:52 ◼ ► is a good move. And I think that in particular, people are going to feel much more comfortable
00:47:04 ◼ ► because it's faster. And it's faster, absolutely. And it works offline, you know, all those things.
00:47:18 ◼ ► even though that's going to be the first thing that everybody does is try to try it on themselves
00:47:31 ◼ ► basically what you're scanning. And it will tell you the temperature of it. And I think that has
00:47:38 ◼ ► to do with... Can you tell you're scanning an iPhone 15 Pro? Well, not after 1703. It's all fixed.
00:47:44 ◼ ► But why? Because three years ago during COVID someone was like, oh, it'd be great if our phone
00:47:50 ◼ ► had a thermometer. And it took three years to do it. I'm not really sure. I mean, so I was recording
00:47:54 ◼ ► at the time of the keynote, so I did not watch the keynote. I saw some of the end of it. I actually
00:47:59 ◼ ► didn't see the pixel part of it. I mean, they want to talk about it as a health thing, but without
00:48:05 ◼ ► FDA approval, they're a little tied to, you can measure the temperature of things. Isn't that cool?
00:48:12 ◼ ► I mean, don't you love the idea? Don't you love the idea if your significant other says, hey,
00:48:29 ◼ ► you just stick it in the... Like, what do you... I don't know. This is a weird feature to me, like,
00:48:57 ◼ ► Well, but even... Like I said, I want it on my watch. I don't... Like, so it's already on my...
00:49:06 ◼ ► Well, you know when Apple's gonna do it, they're gonna give it some silly name like dynamic
00:49:12 ◼ ► hotness or magic temperature, whatever. It's like... And now we're all gonna love it. We're
00:49:18 ◼ ► gonna be like, oh, this is incredible, the integration of hardware and software on iOS.
00:49:33 ◼ ► If it becomes a thing that people expect, like if somehow this silly thing takes you off...
00:50:05 ◼ ► Look, if we're now instituting the idea that we can just do it at any point, then sure.
00:50:15 ◼ ► And I'd like to be proven wrong that it is useful, but at the moment I don't understand it.
00:50:24 ◼ ► and you can place your phone while you're cooking a steak and it detects the optimal temperature?
00:51:13 ◼ ► but it jumped out at me that they've gone to high megapixel sensors on all their cameras,
00:51:25 ◼ ► I'm keen to see why they did that, because it doesn't really feel like it was something
00:51:39 ◼ ► The other kind of hardware thing is the design is basically what we've seen from the Pixel 7,
00:52:35 ◼ ► I think it's pretty clear at this point that we are on the precipice of some new age of
00:52:48 ◼ ► And I feel like at this point, stuff is moving so fast that like you don't really know what
00:53:33 ◼ ► user and you hear that, it's like, oh, well, no one else is offering me anything near this.
00:53:56 ◼ ► It is notable because Google has tried this so many times through various things through
00:54:18 ◼ ► That this is giving the Pixel a different competitive advantage over other Android phones
00:55:14 ◼ ► And I think that's great if the outcome is good, but it does lead to some like philosophical
00:55:33 ◼ ► And there is something in the moment in a minute that I am actually pretty excited about.
00:55:42 ◼ ► So like they're effectively putting the tools into Google Photos to just completely fake
00:56:35 ◼ ► Maybe like we get it that like, maybe, but yeah, it's a fine balance with all these things.
00:56:49 ◼ ► But I feel like I agree with you, you can only take it so far when you cross that threshold
00:57:11 ◼ ► But when you're doing it, like what's the difference between doing this and say, download
00:57:22 ◼ ► kid and you make your kid look like it is Batman, you know, just, you know, like, I feel like
00:57:52 ◼ ► It is remarkable from a technical perspective, but I feel like I come down on the side of
00:58:08 ◼ ► Like otherwise, if I need to dream things, I need to live a different life, maybe I guess,
00:58:22 ◼ ► If I wanted to have another mountain in front of me, I would have gone to a different place.
00:58:26 ◼ ► It's a strange, it's just, this is just the questions that we're going to be asking ourselves
00:58:33 ◼ ► And it's, you know, things are getting less complicated and more complicated every single
00:58:39 ◼ ► And what we're willing to accept now is very different to what we were willing to accept
00:58:50 ◼ ► But like, sometimes when I see these things, I can't help but ask myself the question of
00:59:00 ◼ ► Like similarly, they have a feature which is like, it's interesting, but it's also, it's
00:59:12 ◼ ► weird face, you can just replace their head in the image with like a better head of theirs,
01:00:15 ◼ ► My only question is like, cause the, you know, with the, with the email example, they're
01:00:23 ◼ ► Like, do I have to use all Google services to do this when like realistically this thing
01:00:29 ◼ ► should be able to read anything on my phone, but that's going to be the way this lock-in
01:00:40 ◼ ► I want to see where this is where I, you know, we spoke, we spoke about this on the show
01:00:46 ◼ ► And I think we did when it, with Microsoft office and, um, copilot and stuff, the things
01:00:57 ◼ ► taking my information that I already have and surfacing it to me in a easier, more understandable
01:01:13 ◼ ► You know, like it's just like, this is, these are my emails that already in my inbox, just
01:01:23 ◼ ► And I'm really intrigued to see what a, what do we call like these things like smart assistance?
01:02:42 ◼ ► You can choose from almost 100 different countries and just think about all the Netflix libraries
01:03:11 ◼ ► ExpressVPN is also compatible with all your devices, phones, media consoles, smart TVs,
01:03:20 ◼ ► So if you want to get access to hundreds of new shows, check out this link, expressvpn.com/connected,
01:04:20 ◼ ► I was just listening to Upgrade as I was driving back home this afternoon, and I got to that
01:04:28 ◼ ► And Jason raised this interesting point where he said, and he wrote as much in his review,
01:04:32 ◼ ► that the utility of interactive widgets on the desktop, on Mac OS, is to an extent diminished
01:04:39 ◼ ► by the fact that on a Mac, you can just open a window and get something done, and you can
01:04:48 ◼ ► And instead of checking a reminder on your desktop, you can just open reminders or leave
01:04:59 ◼ ► And I feel like for someone like me, who's not, maybe I'm not, maybe I should be ashamed
01:05:21 ◼ ► Because I also don't cover my Mac with windows, I've positioned the ones that I want to use
01:05:47 ◼ ► You know, like, it's like, oh, here's the battery of my keyboard and here's the battery
01:06:00 ◼ ► I think having them on the desktop doesn't make a lot of sense, even with the new feature,
01:06:14 ◼ ► Like, as somebody who does have that feature on because I use stage manager, it is a very
01:06:31 ◼ ► And I will just say, I think maybe the people inside of Apple currently using stage manager
01:06:52 ◼ ► And it would bring your most recently opened window into the stage that you're currently
01:06:58 ◼ ► So it's like a way to quickly bring applications from an existing stage into your current one.
01:07:37 ◼ ► So I don't know what it's supposed to be doing right now, but it's not working the way it
01:07:44 ◼ ► And there are no settings and it doesn't really seem like anything has changed specifically.
01:07:48 ◼ ► What I have found out today, I think it does the thing that I'm not sure if it did before.
01:07:52 ◼ ► I can click on the window and drag it in and it will bring the most recently opened window
01:08:01 ◼ ► But now shift click does something completely different that I can't get my head around.
01:08:05 ◼ ► I have no idea, but I am starting to wonder if people inside of Apple really rate stage
01:08:15 ◼ ► iPad version has got and is seemingly just started to collect bugs already within a year.
01:08:35 ◼ ► I think it's wild that we're now in this position where stage manager for iPad is the good one
01:08:46 ◼ ► Until then, if you want to read about stuff we spoke about, links are in the show notes
01:08:57 ◼ ► There you can get in touch with the submit feedback link and that goes to a form on our
01:09:04 ◼ ► There's also a link to get connected pro, which is a longer ad free version of the show
01:09:10 ◼ ► Membership comes with a bunch of really cool perks, including access to the relay FM members
01:09:45 ◼ ► You can find my writing at 512 pixels.net and I co-host Mac power users on Sundays here