What We Think We Like in the New Apple Operating Systems

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeff Battersby (00:00):
This sounds so lame, but it's not lame.

Tom Anderson (00:15):
This is Basic AF.
I'm your cohost, tom Anderson,and I am joined by the one and
only, and also fresh from theJersey Shore, looking like a
bronze to Donis, jeff Batters.
Bjb.
How you doing, brother?
Terrific.
How are you, man, doing?
OK, i've had anotherrespiratory thing this week, so

(00:39):
I do sound a little deeper thanusual, i think, but not as bad
as the other day.
It's the sexy Tom show.
Oh God, Go ahead and turn itoff now.
So I do have cough drops at theready and the cough button
Water.
If needed water all that usualstuff too.
So I want to first say thankyou to everyone that's here

(01:02):
again for this episode.
We do greatly appreciate yoursupport.
If you're new, welcome And I'mglad to have you here and hope
to earn a prominent position inyour podcast app playlist.
And if there's anything that,after you listen, if you've got
any comments or anything likethat, feedback at Basic AF shows
how you can get ahold of us,we're always welcome.

(01:22):
Welcome to your suggestions,thoughts, questions, if you have
any questions, because we do dosome technical things on this
show, or technical discussionsrather, and not too many
technical things.
We just sit here and run ourmouths, but so anyhow.

Yeah, And also, you know, subscribe like follow
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So you know the two schmucksthat are sitting here talking
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And so far we're up to what?

(02:03):
now We're almost 900.

It's getting close .
Yeah, we should with with.
if we don't screw this show uptoo badly, we should hit it this
month.
If we turn off a bunch of folks, we might never hit it, so
we'll see, or we might get abunch of people pissed off
listening.
Yeah, i don't think we'll justas good as it, but if you get a
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What better guys to do thatwith We?
also, you put us up on YouTubenow, so you can pick us up on
YouTube.
That's a new place, although ifyou're listening to us here,
you're already listening to us.

Yeah, i was surprised like I saw like 30% of
people listen to, like tolisten to their that, listen to
podcasts, like to do it on.
YouTube.
It's really interesting It is,and you know I've then more
thought about it.
I was like, well, that's nottotally surprising because you
know I've started listening tolike some music playlists on

(03:32):
YouTube while I'm at work Andyou know they're just rolling in
the background.
And so I think the same thingwould apply with the podcast.
So, we are there if you want tocheck us out.
Basic AF show on YouTube itself.
We're also.
It's in YouTube music, so youcan find it there too.
Well, we're singing that.
Well, we can go that far.
So this week and we'll onlytalk about this quickly because

(03:56):
we've got a lot of other stuffto get to the social media Clone
Wars continue.
So obviously everybody knowsabout the drama that's been
around Twitter of late with Elontaking over.

Can't wait to see that.

Yeah, the cage match should be interesting And
I mean, there's always beendrama around Twitter, but this
is, you know, with with theowner.
The new owner, yeah, the recentowner, and some of the things
going on there, and so meta hashad one of these in the works
and this week opened up theirthreads app, or threads social

(04:39):
media service.
I should say the threads app iswhat you use to do it.
Right now, you can only use amobile app.
There's no web service oranything just yet.
I suspect that's coming Andthat has taken off pretty
quickly.
I mean I saw they're up to 75million users.
Yeah, already is probably morethan that.

(05:01):
That was as of I think maybeyesterday or Friday.
As we record this, this isSunday, so it's taken off.
Jeff, i know you and I talkedabout this while you were on
vacation a bit.
Yeah, hanging out with Sookie.
Yeah, hanging out with theZocker.

Have you spent much time with it yet?
You know instant regret.
I did.
I did sign up.
You talked me into a time, asyou often do.
I'm wearing an Apple watch andnow I'm on freaking threads By
the way, same name at ReyesPoint, which is what I'm also on
Instagram which, by the way, ithink is why they got so many

(05:42):
users so quickly is real easyonboarding If you already had an
Instagram account, so you gotthreads.
All the people that youfollowed on Instagram
Immediately you were followingon threads.
One downside to that, by theway, is you want to get rid of
threads.
You need to get rid of yourInstagram account.

Yeah, and I saw that they're going to work on
that, so you can do one withoutthe other.

Yeah, sure, but yeah, i'm on and, to be quite
clear, not really on, as I'm noton Facebook.
I'm not on Instagram, really.
I do have a user account onInstagram that I haven't posted
anything to in a good long time.
I do not like the Facebookparadigm, so I have largely

(06:37):
avoided that.
You're going to cough.
I'm going to burp all the waythrough this, by the way.

Sweet.

Yeah well that would be fart too.

Oh, dude Yeah.

Anyway, i don't know.
It's one more thing.
You know is really what it is.
It is one more thing, and I'mkind of enjoying the Musk
tailspin over on Twitter.
That's been fun to watch.
By the way, if anybody hasn'tnoticed, mr Musk, via Twitter,

(07:14):
is suing the law firm thatallowed Musk to buy.
Yeah, that's a little circularlogic.
It's a mobius strip of genius.
That's what that guy is.
He's a mobius strip of genius,anyway, yeah, so that's that's
about it.
I don't know, man, i'm findingmyself now on Twitter watching

(07:35):
no context, humans most of thetime, which is actually pretty
fun, we'll follow if you'reinterested.

Yeah, and I think part of the reason that it's had
it's gotten so much we'll sayhype this week is that you know
people have been looking for analternative And I think you know
, i know a big part of the AppleTwitter community jumped over

(08:03):
to Mastodon.
But let's be honest, that's notfor the mass market.
You know, i'd been on Mastodonfor a few years before you know
it became the somewhat thing todo for certain groups And I get
it.
I mean, you want to gosomewhere and if enough of your
friends go that you're alreadytalking to, then you kind of can
keep things going, but it's nota mass market thing.

(08:24):
Totally not, and you know, intime we'll tell how this one
plays out.
And you know everyone's it'snew shiny people were feeling
good about it.
You know it was.
I admit it was kind of fun.
It was the first week to seethe enthusiasm around it.
But that's all going to changebecause you know they don't have

(08:45):
suggested for you orrecommended for you or ads
populating in your timeline yetAnd we know all that's coming.
Right, and that's what ruinedInstagram for a lot of people is
you follow, you know certainpeople and you don't see them
for months Because of thealgorithm stuff, and so we know
that's going to come and screwit all up, and so I would just

(09:07):
encourage people who are onthere and super hype about it to
kind of you know temper thatfor a big letdown, I think, But
for now you know I am there ifyou want to give a follow there.
Tom Anderson is the usernamethere.
It's just slightly differentthan on Twitter, which was Tom,
or is still Tom F Anderson overthere.
And I think that's just abouthaving Tom Anderson is still.

(09:29):
every year or two I get someonetagging me in something on
Instagram because that's myusername there, Thinking that
I'm the Tom Anderson fromMyspace Yeah, well, that's you
man.
I wish I had his money, but I'mnot Yeah, yeah, so Doing your
music on Myspace.

No.

No.

I think that I think the big thing, the big
difference, That experience forme was very organic and I will
say that I still have a verywell curated follow list on on
Twitter, which on Instagram Idon't, because I don't really

(10:09):
use Instagram And I I don't knowit.
That was a very organicexperience for me.
I started very early.
Twitter started, you know, manyyears ago, before it even
worked, you know, back in thefail well days which we're
seeing more and more of thesedays Was that 2008 give or take.

(10:31):
Yeah, it had to be somewherearound there.
I was on pretty early, i couldgo look and see.
Yeah, you know, i hopped onTwitter and really enjoyed it
because I was able to see thingsthat I wanted to see on Twitter
.
I don't know if that Instagramis going to be that for me.
I mean, i'm seeing sorryInstagram.
Well, basically is Instagram.
Let me just say that if youlook at what your feed looks

(10:54):
like on threads, what you willnotice or at least I have is I'm
seeing all the same videos frompeople that I would see on on
Instagram.
You know, the same pictures,the same videos, the same.
Hey, this is me not seeing muchdifferentiation, at least in my
timeline, between the two.
Your experience may bedifferent time, because you do

(11:16):
do a fair amount of Insta,particularly with your other
venture, subi and Ventures.
Right, i recommend that follow,by the way.
No thanks, yeah, you're welcome.
No lies, i'll send you asticker.
You already sent me a t-shirt,tom, and a sticker.

I was going to send you a basic AF sticker.

Oh, I don't have one of those.
Oh wait, I have a stack on mydesk.

You can have one more.

Anyway, for me I don't know if I'm I'm trying to
think of the last time I pickedit up in the last four or five
days, and it was maybe midweek.
I think I signed on Tuesday orwhatever day What day was it?
What would they think it waslast?

week I think it was Wednesday or Thursday that
came out, I can't remember whichday it was, to be honest.
So, yeah, and I think, at leastfor right now, I think, oddly
enough, that Threads is a betterphoto sharing platform than
Instagram is Because Instagramhas become so focused on being a

(12:24):
TikTok clone that they'repushing reels so hard and video
in general, which you know let'sbe truthful here That's what
most people want that photosdon't get the visibility that
they used to get, And I think,at least for now, photos and I
think the formatting for thephotos works a little bit better

(12:44):
.
On Threads too, Like you can dosome widescreen, There's not so
much cropping and the qualitylooks to be a little bit better
than you get with the Instagramposts.
But again, this thing is goingto be very dynamic and it's
going to be changing And youknow there are features that
aren't there yet.
Like you don't have a way toshow just the feed of your

(13:04):
followers.
It's kind of the 4U page forTwitter, if you will, where you
get a whole bunch of stuff.
You kind of get that So, likeI've seen Paris Hilton deal
without that And some other kindof you know, celebrity stuff
that I don't really care about.
I'm trying to get out in frontmaybe on some of the algorithm

(13:26):
training from my particularfeeds, So like when I see the
dipshits come in with thepolitical stuff, instant block
And that's what I did onInstagram.
I did the same thing.
I just don't want that.
Final comment is how bad offare we that we look at a meta

(13:47):
product as our saving grace?
It's like whoof man.
these are bad days, but anyhow,onto better topics.

Not me, yo, that's it.
That's pretty much it.
I don't think I'll be there,But anyway I am there and I
can't escape until they let medelete that account.
Maybe I should just delete bothof them.

Oh no.

Done with it.
You know, no Instagram, nothreads.
Anyway, yes, let's move on tofuner things, tom.
More fun, let's have more fun.

Yeah, I agree.
So a couple of shows ago we didour WWDC recap show And in that
show we focused a lot on theApple Vision Pro headset, which
I think was kind of the bigannouncement.
Anyway, We talked a little bitabout the operating systems, but
we said we would come back tothose at a later date.

(14:40):
So we want to do a little bitof that, as we are almost to
public beta season.
I would imagine maybe even thisweek we could see the first ones
of those.
It's getting close, Like theyusually crank those up in July.
So I would say in the next weekor two we should start to see
that.
So I thought it'd be good tokind of revisit that topic, Yeah

(15:00):
.

I agree with you , tom, and I have not.
I haven't put a dev beta on anyof my devices, have you?
I have not, yeah, and I'musually second-rounded on public
beta.
I'm not so so much into theearly, early stuff, and I
typically pop those on my phone.
But what we did want to do istalk about things that we're

(15:22):
kind of excited about in each ofthese new OS releases And there
are several things There reallyare quite a few interesting new
features that are going to popup on each of these.
That make for me someinteresting options, and so

(15:42):
we're going to kick it off withMac OS, and this is this sounds
so lame, but it's not lame We'regoing to see screensavers
similar to those are probablythe same as those that are on
Apple TV popping up on Mac OS,which I love.

(16:04):
I am often mesmerized by thoseon the, on the.

TV.

And so those are going to be showed up in Mac OS
.
I'm really excited about that,the ability to do that on my
screen And, tom, as you pointedout, animation when
transitioning to desktop image.
By the way, also, if maybe thisis only in iPad OS option,
maybe it is, but live photos onlock screens I think, so we'll

(16:30):
jump to that when we get there,right.

Yeah, i think that's going to be nice.
As you said on Apple TV, thoseare excellent.
I've got an Apple TV in myoffice at work for quote testing
purposes, you know, with the TVthere, because testing out that
only fans just blocks areworking at college.

Whoa, i didn't say that, tom.

I'll run that through the project committee
See if I can get that.
Definitely not doing that atwork.

It's what it says folks Yeah.

Don't believe a word of it.
But but though typically duringthe day I have the TV on and
just those screensavers rotatingthrough.
I don't have like an officewith a window And, and so it's a
nice little bit of you knowscenery there in the office, so
it is nice to see those.
Coming officially to the Mac.
There's been that third partyscreensaver I believe it was

(17:32):
called aerials that you coulddownload and it would pull the
official Apple videos and youcould use that, and so I used
that for a while.
But you know it'll be nice thatApple's going to have those
built in.
So that's a good one.
Yeah, yeah, i love it.
Definitely recommend givingthose a shot, especially if
you've got an Apple TV, forsomehow you've never tried those

(17:54):
.
Do that as well.

Yeah, i can't believe that you haven't.
If you're, if you haven'tabsolutely turned this on, i'm
sitting looking at him lastnight, and sometimes more
interesting than what I might bewatching on the television.
Often more interesting thanwhat's available streaming on
the television.
Next up some new videoconferencing features, and this

(18:20):
I really love it.
We've all used, i would like tothink, zoom or WebEx or God
forbid teams Although teamsseems to be the next big thing.
But the biggest pain in theneck with those is their
interfaces for sharing yourscreen.
They're not fun, not easy, andone of the new features for

(18:45):
video conferencing that Applehas introduced within the OS
itself is the ability to.
It's basically part of thesharing feature.
You can have an app up and fromthat app you have the ability
of using what Apple calls ascreen, a share screen picker,

(19:07):
and you have the.
That's mouthful, you know what.
I might have typed that wrongbecause I have a screen screen
picker in the notes.
I might have been at the beachwith a gin and tonic in me or
something, whatever.
It's called screen picker.
I think that is what it is.
It's a screen picker thatallows you, from the app itself,
to say share this via Zoom orshare this via whatever the
application is, which isbrilliant to me.

(19:28):
Rather than if you use Zoom oruse Teams, it jumps up a variety
of windows and shows youeverything that's possible.
Oftentimes it's difficult toselect the actual screen that
you want to be able to share,especially if you're using dual
screens.
This feature it appears thatwhenever screens are on, you

(19:49):
click that sharing option and itwill pop that up on the screen
for you.
I really like that.
That's a pretty cool feature, ithink.

Yeah, that should be a good one.
if we can just get peopletrained, that it's there.
Yeah, discoverability might bea little tricky with that one,
but it is nice to have, like yousaid, because when you do it
with Zoom it can be a bitoverwhelming because it comes up
with a lot to choose from.

Yeah, nine times out of 10, how many meetings
have you been in?
Where somebody goes oh don't,didn't mean to share that and
it's got their beach picturesfrom.

Or worse 1980.

Yeah, Worse does happen, It definitely does.
I still remember some this isearly in the pandemic some video
of a bunch of people in classand some young woman took her
laptop with her to the bathroomand put it down on the floor and
then realized she had hercamera on Mm-hmm.

Co-worker of mine has a story similar to that with
not with her, but a person thatworks at her husband's company
did something similar.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, god can't imagine.
No, it's like Jesus, i haveenough issues, i don't need that
.

Right.
Share that with the universe.
So anyway, yeah, so this.
At least it won't keep you fromwalking into the bathroom with
your laptop.

There's no block on that, right.
I think it's safe if you justhave a no devices in the
bathroom rule.
The good cause.
It's kind of the way I look atit, because then you just don't
have to worry about it.
Yeah, come on tell me.
Yeah, you know.

And it's nasty.

Don't take your stuff into the toilet.
Come on, you can put the damnphone down long enough to do
your business.

Okay.

Yeah.

Anyway, new rules, new rules, the new rules.

Right Basic AF rules for life.
That'll be our book.

All right.
So what do you got next on thelist?
Safari password management.
All right, man, i still want tosee some better version of the
key chain application orpasswords in system settings.
But we've got a couple ofthings going on here which is
separate Safari profile, so awork profile to store work

(22:02):
passwords and related a personalprofile for all your personal
stuff, which I love the idea ofthat And then also password and
pass key sharing.
So, with family members.
I believe this is the only waythat that would work.
At least is my recollection.
But what a nice feature.
Rather than the kids askingwhat's the Netflix password?

(22:24):
again, you know you have theability to share that stuff and
make it easy, so I like both ofthose.
Again, i really, really want tosee some type of standalone or
easier to access version of thekey chain.
I do use the key chain often tofind old passwords.
I'd like some tool that worksbetter.

(22:44):
As you know, tom, i know you'refully into one password.
I am now fully into the chain.
That is the way that I storeall my stuff And I would like a
better management tool.
It does work well, but ask mehow many people know how it is
that they can find their oldpasswords?
90% of people have no idea howto do that.
So some easier tool, even if itwas just a menu extra if that's

(23:10):
what they're still callingthose menu item I know they used
to call menu extras more RightAnd I'm old and can't change But
they something that would allowyou to look up those passwords
quickly, i think would be genius.
But the fact that we have nowmore features available for
creating, storing, usingpasswords and then sharing those

(23:31):
with others.
I love that.

Yeah, definitely a nice addition, a nice addition
to that, and that's.
That's one of the things I'veused one password for and why
I've stuck with that.
I've got a couple of vaultsthat I share out with the, with
the family, for you know Netflixpasswords and you know the
streaming services and stufflike that, so but yeah, they
keep tacking little bits on andit just seems inevitable that

(23:55):
there's an app coming, but Iguess there's always.
They need something for nextyear, so it'll get here
eventually, i expect, and by theway.

There's a feature and I think this will
show up in Mac OS.
I know it's definitely an iPadand iOS, but you know a lot of
times you get authentication viatext, but very often there are
companies that will only send itto your email address.
There is now a feature.
I know it's in iOS, in iPad OS.

(24:25):
I would like to think it's alsogoing to be in Mac OS.

Yeah, it should carry over Yeah.

Passes, those email.
you know, right now, if you geta text message, it'll
automatically offer to fill itin on on those devices.
Those codes will pass throughand you can just tap a little, a
little thing that'll, that'llput those pass codes in.
That's going to come throughnow in in mail So you get mailed
one of those things You can.
you'll have the ability to pushthat through as well, which I
think is brilliant.

Yeah, that'll be nice.
Yeah, because when they addedthat to messages and and or I
should say when they did themessages integration with Safari
so they would pick those up andshow it to you, i mean, that's
been a nice time saver.
And I think Android had thatbefore, so I remember when that
came out, the the Android peoplewere like it's about time.

(25:13):
But it was, it was about time,so I'm glad it's here And I
think that'll be nice too.
I don't have too many of thoseto just do the email thing.
And of course you know as awhole separate conversation
about the security ofmulti-factor via.
SMS versus authenticator appsand pass keys and all that kind
of thing, but that's a that's awhole different show, but I
think that Safari password,stuff that we talked about there

(25:34):
a minute ago, that should carryover as well, which which is
one of the the pluses, right.
So you know we're.
When we were outlining thisshow, we thought, well, we could
break it down by operatingsystem, but the truth of the
matter is the way that Apple'srolling things out is, these
things generally will go acrossthe whole ecosystem, so it'll

(25:54):
cover Mac OS, ipad OS, ios, to alesser extent, watch OS,
because a lot of it just doesn'tapply.
But so that's.
That's the nice thing.
It's like you get, you get afeature and it's across the
board so that you can really, ifyou dig into it and you start
to use it, you get the benefitin multiple ways.

Yeah, yeah, truly truly the case, and so
excited to see that and excitedto see again better and better
features for password management.
There's no reason that Applecan't do that, And clearly they
are.
they are in, of course, doingit well, at least as far as I'm
concerned, which, speaking ofintegration across multiple

(26:33):
devices, a couple of newfeatures coming that again will
be across devices which areupdates to both PDF editing and
the way the notes applicationworks.

Yeah, this should be great.

I really, really am looking forward to this.
So collaboration capabilitieson PDFs, which hasn't been a
feature before, so that's goingto be a new thing where you can
mark up PDFs together, automaticform filling using your contact
information for PDFs and betterform features in the.

(27:10):
the preview application itself,again, i noticed I used to use
PDFPenPro.
PDFPenPro got picked up byanother company.
do not like Adobe Acrobat'sinterface at all.
It's I don't know whose idea ofUI that was, but when the
revolution comes I think we needto take care of those guys.

(27:33):
But the tools that Apple lookslike they're adding to to the
PDF tools PDF previewapplication look, it looks
pretty brilliant.
Likewise, in notes, we usenotes you and I do for finals on
the on the show notes that wehave, we're still using Kraft,

(27:55):
although maybe it's time tobounce into into notes for show
notes as well.
but we're using Kraft for shownotes still presently.
But number of features beingable to link documents together
or link notes together.
One thing that I had notinitially seen in the in the
original presentation that Appledid is notes is also going to

(28:17):
let you push some in theanything that you've done or
anything that you create notesto a new pages document.

So that looks good .

Get some genius idea while you're on the road
and typing up, you know thefirst pages of your presentation
or your short novel, orwhatever it is.
You can push that directly intopages.
It will create that newdocument and pages, which is a
nice feature I'd like to seepopped over to other things.
I often as I've mentioned abunch of times here I use
Highland Pro to do all mywriting, and I often, though

(28:49):
we'll start with ideas and notes.
You know, have something or seesomething that I, that I want
to work with.
I would love that to be pushedbeyond just just pages, so
hopefully there's an API outthere that will allow you to do
that.
But I really like, really likethose features.
those are some nice thingscoming to both of those

(29:10):
applications that I look forwardto get my hands on.

Yeah, likewise, that's good stuff.

Next in line.
This wasn't super clear, butthere are going to be some
better screen sharing options.
Screen sharing works reasonablywell, whether or not you know
this.
From the messages app, you havethe ability to request to share
somebody's screen, or they havethe ability to to share theirs

(29:38):
worth with you, which reallyreally nice features.
It still is a little I don'tknow hinky.
For me, it doesn't always workin the way that I expected to,
or the notification that peopleget at the remote end They don't
doesn't always work, butapparently there are going to be
some new features coming upthat way And I would really

(29:59):
really love to see somethinglike this across all platforms.
You know, i know that that'sprobably unlikely, which means
I'll still be paying for teamviewer to work with clients,
which, by the way, ain't cheap.

You know, that's a .

It's a hefty, hefty nut once a year that I pay
for team viewer to be able towork with my clients, but I
would.
I have always liked, and theyhad this feature.
I think I have always liked andthey had this in iChat back in
the day the ability that you hadto be able to share people's
screens.
Any enhancements to that,particularly across other

(30:32):
devices, to me seems like anamazing tool.
And, if I'm not wrong, if I Ithink you also have the ability
now to see iOS device screensusing this, which you can't
really do with other things.
I believe that's the case.
It's not control.
I don't believe there's acontrol piece of that.
But man, so much, so mucheasier to be able to work with

(30:54):
people and walk them throughthings rather than the.
Okay, can you see this?
Okay, click that Right.
Okay, now that you've clickedthat, there should be five
options.
I'm not seeing it, Okay.

Look closer, Yeah, And you know, the biggest
complaint that I've had withwith screen sharing and and I
don't do a lot of it like we useApple remote desktop, which is
still limping along after allthese years, to, to, to get into
our classrooms at the office,It's just that it's so it feels

(31:29):
like it's in molasses, Like yeah, a little laggy, And it's like
you click something and the menucomes up eventually And it's
just, and I don't understand whyit's still that way, Because
when you and I think it's justthe approach they're taking must
just be different from howMicrosoft does it.
Microsoft does it because thisis one of those things that
Microsoft has nailed for years,Like if you use the remote

(31:52):
desktop app to get into a PCit's great, like super
responsive, and I've never hadan issue with it And I don't
know if they've got some type ofpatent around that or what, but
but Apple's has never been tothat level and maybe they just
haven't cared.
I mean, it's good enough, youknow.

I think there's and this may be a complete
fabrication on my own part, butmy understanding was I think I
read somewhere, and this isyears ago is that the way that
Microsoft remote desktop work itworks is you're not seeing a
video stream, You're gettingscreenshots and they're you know
they're basically update,update, update, update.

(32:37):
Much lower bandwidth andrequirement And in my
understanding, is that screensharing on the Mac OS side is a
stream.
You're getting essentially avideo screen to stream.

Right, because Apple says in the write up for
this on the preview page forSonoma and says the new high
performance mode sounds fancyYeah, which requires them to, i
think, uses the advanced mediaengine in Apple Silicon to
enable highly responsive remoteaccess over high bandwidth
connections.
And there's a one next to that,and let's scroll to the bottom

(33:13):
and see what that says Availableon Mac computers with Apple
Silicon.

Yeah, okay, so not not just M twos, it's Apple
Silicon, yeah.

So I can remote into a janky PC and get
fantastic performance, but Ineed Apple Silicon to get
something better than what we'regetting.
Anyhow, on to the next topic.

Yes, yes, yes.
This is maybe hard to explainon TV, but the feature called
visual lookup.
So you see a recipe you know,or you see a picture of a very
delicious meal on somebody'sInstagram since we were talking
about those guys This new visuallookup feature will allow you

(33:54):
to take that screenshot and sayfind me a recipe that makes this
particular meal, and it willpull that up.
Tom's looking like he's neverheard of this before.
No, no, i have.
Yeah.

Yeah, you got that .
look on your face And and andother things like my wife uses
that to look at plants and stuff.

I do too, and things like Merlin to you know
figure out what birds aresinging around me, but this is a
.
I really liked the idea ofbeing able to take pictures and
then have it pull up, you knowwhatever recipes it might be
able to find based on what thepicture sees Built into the OS.
By the way, this is built intothe OS, so you don't need

(34:32):
another app to be able to findthat?

Is that where they did the demo and the keynote?
where they showed like the?
I think it was where theyshowed like the refrigerator or
stuff on the counter and theywere like you've got the
ingredients here or some recipes, i don't recall that particular
segment, but I do believe thatthat's what what was getting
pulled up here.

So I like that idea.
So that's, that's good.
Also, as we kind of roll downthe line, there are going to be
some updates to the dictationfeature that will allow you to
both type and speak.
Not me, not not walking andchewing gum at the same time,
but the ability to both speak toyour computer.

(35:13):
So mostly when I'm speaking,when I'm typing, those would be
expletives, So that'll be fun,But the ability to to integrate
the two of those.
So I want to play with that.
Don't know much more, otherthan than there are some
interesting updates to thedictation feature.

Yeah, and they've been building on that the last
couple of releases too.
So good to see, and I thinkthat's something I'm looking to
to maybe use more.
You know, i've got thenewsletter that I do and things
like that, and all of that stuffflows easier for me verbally
than to to write it, so I mayjust start using dictation to

(35:50):
get the first first takes andthen I can throw it in Grammarly
and make it actually somethingpeople understand.

Pop it in chat GPT to change it completely.

I could do that.
Yeah, could do that.
Yeah, that'd be good.
Also, kind of, but not exactly.
You mentioned keyboard.
There There's some keyboardstuff coming too.
They're going to.
They say have made auto correctimprovements God please, i hope
so, And it's not.

(36:20):
All of us are thinking that,i'm sure.
And they've added inlinepredictions.
So if you start typingsomething you know, make a
recommendation for what itthinks you might mean to say in
the rest of the sentence.

Let me just say I hate that in Microsoft, like
when you're when you're typingan outlook and it maybe you
don't use that, look, but on theiOS I do it it will suggest Say
have that.
And it's like dude.

Yeah, i've seen it in Gmail because we use that
pretty heavily at work.
I don't use well, i should sayI don't see it a lot because I
don't use the Gmail webinterface a lot, but sometimes I
do And that's been pretty good.
So we'll see.
I don't know if I'll use it awhole lot, but it's coming If
you do that kind of thing,correct?

Sorry, that's hard to do me the bitch.
Yeah, and so we'll see.
We shall see what happens there.
And then you also mentioned Ithought we're supposed to get
the health app.
I want to see it in macOS.
I don't think it's there yet.

Yeah, I believe just iPad this year and maybe
Mac next year.
Okay, But, yeah, that'll begood.
I think is we talked about thatin our wish list show Something
that we'd like to see, becausethere's a lot of information in
there And sometimes the phonescreens just it's just cramped,
and so it'd be good to see thatmaybe spread out.

(37:38):
So looking forward to givingthat a shot.

Yeah, and in additions to that, actually,
let's just jump to the lastthing you put in desktop widgets
, widgets from iPhone.
Yes, that was you talk to me.
Why do you love that?

So well.
For one, I like the idea ofhaving dashboards and that could
be a task list, It could bemaybe just the music player,
whatever it is.
And it's funny, though, when wehad like the dashboards service
or feature, whatever that wascalled back in the day, remember

(38:14):
you can hit the little keyboardshortcut and those little web
apps would pop up.
I don't recall ever using thata whole lot, but a lot's changed
since then.
So we've had the iPad come out,we've got the iPhone and we've
had widgets on those for sometime now, And I've got a screen
like on my iPad Pro, that is.
You know, I've got tasks upthere.
I've got a photos thing upthere, weather, like the big

(38:38):
carrot weather notification.
I've started to use it becauseof summertime.
Now we're getting you know, rainat weird times of the day and
storms and stuff.
I've got one on there for theradar And it's just nice to have
that glanceable type ofinformation And all that desktop
space seems prime for thatbecause it's kind of just dead

(38:59):
space.

Yeah.

Especially on large screens.
Now, before they put stacksinto the OS, you could clean up
your freaking desktop.
Maybe not so much then, but nowit stacks at that whole size,
especially on a bigger display.
You know I've got a 27 inchdisplay I use here and at the
office, so there's a lot ofspace, and so I'm looking
forward to trying that out tosee how that goes.

(39:22):
I thought the widgets from thephone was kind of clever.
So if you've got some stuffthere, maybe they, you know,
don't necessarily have a trueMac widget.
It looks like you just kind ofbring your phone nearby and they
show up through some continuitytype feature there.
So you know, i'd like to trythat out.
And while we're on widgets,interactive widgets are back.
We used to have those because Ican distinctly remember like

(39:44):
having the things widget up.
I'd have my task list there,i'd finish something, i would
tap it and it would clear it andit would go away.
When they did the I guess there-engineering of the widgets
framework what is that?
Widget kit.
Everything's a kit, so I'mgoing to go with it.
That was probably somethingthat they were working on

(40:05):
putting back in, and it lookslike they've done that, so
that'll be nice too, excellent.

Excellent, excellent.
All right, since you're talkingabout widgets from iPhone,
we'll move on to some of thefeatures that are popping up on
iOS.
One of the first things that Ireally like is there are now
personalized phone calls, whichis to say, rather than you know,
your mom using your jankypicture from when you were in
third grade, is your face.

(40:30):
When you turn on the phone, itappears that you've got the
ability to push those, similarto the way you know, if you go
into messages now and somebodychanges whatever their little
icon is, it'll say Jeff's got anew icon.
Do you want to use that instead?
Which my brother seems to dothat like every two weeks.
I don't know what the deal iswith them, but anyway, for when

(40:54):
the phone, when you're making aphone call, it's going to pop up
something that you've createdor give them the option of using
a thing that you've created, sokind of like.
That looks fun, at least, and Ilike the fun in my iPhone, my
iPhone, so dig that.
And also and this is reallyslick live voicemail, which kind

(41:16):
of takes us back to the olddays of screening your calls.
Jeff, i know you're stringingyour call, come on, pick up.
We were supposed to go outtonight, right?
Weren't we supposed to go outtonight?

Yeah, now, that was the 90s version of being
left on red.
That's correct.
That's how we did it back inthe day.

So live voicemail actually will allow
you to pick up in the middle ofa call.
So it could be a junk mail call, but it could be legit.
You're looking for a job.
Somebody's calling you to saythat they'd like to interview
you, but it's a number you don'tknow.
You'll be able to see that onthe screen.
So, I really like that feature.

Can't wait to see those extended car warranties
come up.

Right, looks like your warranties wearing out
.

Do you still get a lot of phone calls these days?

Real phone calls ?
Yeah, occasionally depends.
The answer is yeah, i do.
Okay, i do get phone calls.
Yeah, and I make phone calls.
You know, i don't leavemessages typically if I do not
get you, I will not.
You know, if I don't, if youdon't pick up Tom you never pick
up nope, if you don't pick upthen, then I don't typically

(42:31):
leave a message unless there'ssome reason to do so.
You know, unless you're callingthe car shop or something, i
need to leave a message.
But I do still get a fairnumber of phone calls that
aren't you know, your carsextended warranty or You know?

the.

Hilton Club calling to tell you that you
could go on a five week vacation.

How about you?
No, not many like.
I was just scrolling throughthe phone list.
Primarily, you know, every oncein a while if I'm, you know,
out at work, somebody will call.
But most of our stuff there isin and our chat app.
Everything else is throughmessages, facetime calls, that

(43:13):
kind of thing, but kind oftraditional phone calls, not
much.

Yeah.

No, okay.
Yeah, I was just curious.
I do talk on the phone, okay.

Happens occasionally.
Talked to my mom this morning,but that was on my watch
messages Getting a couple of newfeatures which I really like.
One is the ability to alertpeople when you arrive at a
location Which you know you canalways have people follow you
you know that was a feature, Butmaybe you don't want that all

(43:42):
the time.
For example, right now My son istouring Thailand.
This landed there a couple daysago and he is sharing his
location there, which is prettycool, that's.
But that is a persistentLocation share.
You know he's constantly nowsharing his location as he's a
tour on Thailand.
Maybe you don't need that.

(44:03):
you know Your kids are goingfrom here to somebody's house.
You want them just to let youknow that they arrived there
safely.
You can have that that be afeature, so it lets everybody
know when you've arrived homesafely, but is not persistently
sharing Location information.
So really, really like thatfeature.

Yeah, that's nice.

It's.
These are the kinds of thingsthat you know, the kinds of
safety features that that AppleContinues to build into all of
their portable devices Maybe notso much iPad, but the watch in
the phone That are designed tokeep you safe, whether it's the
SOS feature that that you have,you know, in the watch, in the

(44:46):
event that you, you know, falldown and break your neck, or the
phone.
These kinds of things I reallyfind useful, without being
intrusive.
You know, they don't feelintrusive to me.
They, they, they feel likeHelpers more than than anything
else, and I really like that asa yeah, yeah, definitely some
nice quality of lifeimprovements there.

That'll be good like, because I know to this day
my mom says hook me up withthat location sharing before you
leave, okay so I'll do that.
And she sits and watches us aswe go places, you know, not
daily on trips, but like we'regoing to, you know, connecticut
or Pennsylvania, whatever stufflike that.
But right, because that's amother's love, it never fades,

(45:30):
so that'll be nice.
They've got some quick replystuff, like you can swipe on a
message to get to reply rightaway.
Some catch up stuff If you've,if you're in a group chat Or
just missed bunch stuff, there'san arrow that'll jump you to
where you need to go to kind ofcatch up with everything.
Some Changes to how the appdrawer works in messages And

(45:52):
that kind of rolls over into thestickers thing, which I don't
think Either of us are really inthe demographic for that, but
it must be popular because theykeep adding things to it.

Yeah, I know people that use stickers all the
time.
I just not a not a thing for me.

Yeah, never got into it, But for those who do,
they keep adding to it, so youshould like that.
You have here Where to go Mapsoffline.
What, yes, offline maps, sooffline offline.

Yeah, okay, let's let's talk a little bit
about that.
That's a a new feature and onethat's particularly useful for
me who does a lot of hiking.
You know, if you've got no, nointernet connection, you've got
no ability to See where the heckyou are in the universe.
I actually had this years ago.
Had this happen to me, i was inGeorgia teaching a class,

(46:43):
actually in Georgia, where I hada weekend off and so was hiking
, if I remember correctly,somewhere near the beginning of
the Appalachian Trail, and Got alittle turned around and turned
right when I should have turnedleft on my return back to my
car and Was stuck in the weeds,had no internet connection so I

(47:04):
couldn't see where the trail wason the map or any that kind of
stuff.
Now you'll be able to have adownloaded map It may not have
GPS location, although,depending on what devices you're
using, that might be possibleas well and Can use that then to
figure out you know Where youare and work your way back.
As luck would have it, i ranacross a road and was able to

(47:25):
hitch a ride from people And getback to where I was, but and I
would have been SOL I was likeout in the middle of nowhere and
Dumb me not enough water andall that kind of stuff.
So You know, could have been,could have been a bad story, but
the ability to have maps onyour download actual offline

(47:46):
maps Makes a huge lot of senseto me.
I currently use things like forhiking.
Now There's all trails app thatallows you to do the same thing
But not having to pay that suband getting the things that I
need makes me very happy.

Yeah, and speaking of, while we're on that topic,
you had that down below forwatch OS for the hiking features
, and I know we touched on thatbriefly in that episode a couple
shows ago.
So the hiking features, i thinkfor watch OS, that sounds like
something that will be reallygood for you.

Oh, hundred percent those.
I am super looking forward tothose features.
I I hike.
I want to say almost everyweekend I'm doing some kind of
hike nice in this time of yearanyway.
Other times here maybe not asmuch, or when it's a hundred
degrees out and humid, but yeah,i, that is something that I use

(48:40):
all the time and one of thethings that's a pain in the neck
.
By the way, if you track a hikeusing all trails app, it turns
off your exercise Tracking it.
It's really weird.
So the ability to have thatkind of I know it seems like a
bug to me right Is we'reresponding to Tom's face when,
when I said that that look of,but yeah, those things, for

(49:04):
whatever reason, one turns theother off.
So you know tracking your steps, your distance or any of that
stuff.
It's either coming through oneapp or the other.
The fact that I could have thosetrails and that kind of
information on my watch or on myphone and I do use both when I
hike because My phone is mycamera in my pocket Yeah, um, i,

(49:25):
that's a.
That's a pretty, a pretty slickfeature.
A couple of other things thatwe want to look at mental health
tracking features, which Ireally like, and, tied to that,
journaling Still interested tosee how that's gonna work out.
I used to journal a ton,obviously right, nearly every

(49:47):
day in some fashion or form.
But I like the addition of youknow how are you feeling,
where's your head at, and thosethings already do kind of exist
in in watchOS.

Mm-hmm.

So like like those, like those features
coming up in in iOS musicsharing and carplay, by the way,
is another feature You know,and, tom, you have a kid stay
off my lawn kind of attitude.

Lighthearted.

But and and then Back to the health thing, some
custom workout and meditationschedules that you can set up
using Fitness Plus.

Yeah, you're still using that a good bit.

Not as much, since it's warmer out, you know,
rather not being the basement,doing that when I could be
breathing outside a bike and dothat kind of stuff.
So limited, but.
But the answer is yes, and I'mpaying attention.

Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff And I think you know
we we've talked about it beforesome of the kind of you know
they've built this nicefoundation of health features
And a lot of it tied with thewatch, but now they can start to
add on to it and I think youknow you mentioned they're like
you know, how are you feelingtoday?
And then, you know, maybesurface some trends that you

(51:06):
could look at to say, okay, well, today I didn't, didn't feel
the best mentally, it's kind ofa down day And it's like well,
you have a chaplain, you knowexercise, but once in the last
two weeks maybe ought to pickthat up or something like that,
and that that's kind of my thing.
So, yeah, that's, that's allgood stuff.
So I think any of that kind ofthing that they can can build on

(51:27):
like I'm a big fan of thatstuff And that's why I've, you
know, been such a fan of thewatch for so long.
All for that I think that'sgood.
Standby is Coming to iPhone, andthat's the feature where, when
you have your iPhone chargingwhether that's with a lightning
cable or a MagSafe charger Andit's in the, you know, kind of

(51:49):
on its side, horizontally Youkind of get a heads-up display
of sorts Maybe that's not thebest phrase for it, but Almost
like a dashboard, i guess ofinformation on the screen.
Now, if you've got anything ButI think it's the iPhone 14 Pro
is the only one with thealways-on display at this point.
So if you have any other phone,you've got to tap it to get
that information to come on.

(52:09):
If you've got the Pro with thealways-on display, it's always
there, and so that's, that'skind of nice.
So if you've got one of thoseMagSafe charger stands, maybe
you've got it, you know, bedside, or if it's in the, even in the
kitchen or something, and itlooks like that'll integrate
with live activitiesnotifications And things like
that.
And I saw In a in an articleabout that that it looks like

(52:32):
with MagSafe, because they canidentify the MagSafe charger,
you can set up kind of customviews for different rooms.
Interesting, which I thoughtwas neat.
I'd like to try that.

I do have some MagSafe charger, so well, give
that a shot, buy some more.

MagSafe Yeah, and I'm sure that's what they're
thinking.
But so that looks pretty good.
I do think that is.
I think we're gonna see that inother places Down the road.
Like there was a story thispast week that Apple's working
on a display That when theeither the computer's offer in
sleep mode or something, thedisplay could be something like

(53:09):
that, have a standby mode on thedisplay to Show some stuff.
So almost like a smart homescreen, i think like that.
So that looks pretty good overon the iPad real quick.
So we're getting close.
Burn in time burn in time Yep,we've got stage manager
improvements.
Everyone got really excitedlast year when they announced
stage manager.
Everybody got disappointed lastyear when they released stage

(53:31):
manager Didn't quite live up toexpectations.
It was kind of rigid with thewindow sizing And just did some
weird things.
But to their credit, it lookslike they have been listening
carefully to the feedback andare making some changes And it
sounds like there's some moreflexibility in the window sizing
options and everything, becauseI'm still very intrigued by

(53:55):
that With the 12.9 inch iPad Pro.
You know I may not use it a lotin that configuration, but if I
haven't hooked up to theexternal display then it becomes
a bit more interesting.
So I do want to play with itagain And I think, as long as
they continue to work on it, youknow that's a good thing.

Yeah, a couple of other things before we wind
up.
If FaceTime using your phone oriPad on Apple TV which I love,
that idea much easier, you know,to be sitting on the couch and
be able to talk to grandma andgrandpa at a distance on a big
screen, which seems really slickto me, so that's going to be a

(54:36):
really good thing.
I think The other thing is andI just noticed this and we can
discuss it at some later datebut the ability to use an
external camera for FaceTime,which, on your iPad, requires a
connection to another device.
But you have the ability to usean external camera on that.
So that should be interestingAnd just going to throw this one

(55:00):
in there.
In WatchOS, a follow up to MedReminder.
Typically you get that messagethat says you know it's time to
take your medication And I willfind sometimes that I have to
remind myself oh, i'm going totake those you know, because I'm
doing something at the point intime when I normally take meds
during the day.
So there's a follow up remindercoming through with.

WatchOS, which is good.
I think that's probablysomething they should have had.

But yeah, yeah, no, it's coming.
Simple feature.
Yeah, tell me, i think that'sus.

That's it, brother .

Oh yeah, one last thing.
Yes, back to back requests onSiri.

Oh Lord.

Yeah right, we'll see how well it works.
The back request doesn't workso well sometimes, but the
ability to say you know twothings at once, which Siri
scolds you now when you try todo that.

Right, and they've reduced the command by 50% that
you use to invoke Siri too, soyou don't have to use the hey
any longer, which I think he'scurious to see if you still can
or if it's just I think you canuse both, okay.
So I don't know.
I think it was MKBHD the otherday that tweeted it's almost
funny how bad Siri still is.
Yeah, right, they're remarkable, or something like that.

(56:13):
It is remarkable, it is Yeah,and.
But anyway, you know, whatever,we'll see how it goes.
I don't have much hope for thatone, but nor do I Yep.
All right, good to end on ahigh note.
Yes.

Yeah, on a getting high note.
Yeah, yeah, we havesuccessfully wasted another hour
of your time, pretty much.

We have Yeah.

If you've stuck around this long, we appreciate
it And hope that you'll stickaround again.
Tom, good as always to see you.
Hope you're in better voice Andthanks for noticing my tan.

Yeah, you do look good, brother.
You should go out about towntonight, maybe you enjoy your
dinner.

You did that last night.

Oh, okay, didn't want to cook, all right.
So if you've got any questions,comments, concerns or rude
comments, send them to Feedbackat Basic, preferably rude
comments.
Yeah, we're that kind of crewFeedback at basicafshowcom.
You can find all episodes atbasicafshowcom.
If you like these sort oftopics and Apple stuff in

(57:16):
general, i'd love for you tosign up for my newsletter.
You can get to it attomfandersoncom.
You can subscribe there.
We'll put some stuff in theshow notes for this show, a few
links and everything like that.
Jeff, what else we got as wewrap up?

As a reminder, theme music by Psychokinetics
Celcius 7, one of the frontpeople Is that the way to say it
these days For Psychokineticshas a new album out as Celcius 7
.
So go check Celcius 7 out And,as always, our beautiful,
gorgeous, lovely art by RandallMartin Design, which we would

(57:51):
highly recommend that you giveRandall a shout if you have any
design needs.
He does a lot of differentstuff and able to do it in fast
fashion with your help.

Yep, He's fantastic designers I highly
recommend.
So that'll do it.
Thank you everyone for beinghere.
Hope you have a good rest ofyour day, rest of your night,
Jeff.
Take us out, See ya.

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