iOS Today 611 Transcript
iOS Today 611 Transcript
Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on iOS today, Rosemary orchard is out, but don't worry because I've got Matthew Castelli here and he is going to tell us all about focus modes on your iPhone. So pumped to talk about this. So stay tuned because we are about to get into the nitty gritty. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is is TWiT. This is iOS today. Episode 611 recorded Tuesday, July 19th, 2022. Setting up focus modes on your iPhone. This episode of iOS today is brought to you by ultimate ears fits ultimate ears fits are the world's most comfortable earbuds with premium sound and all day comfort use promo code iOS at ue.com/fits to get your pair and by Blueland Blueland is on a mission to eliminate single use plastics by reinventing home essentials that are good for you and the planet. Right now, you can get 15% off your first order when you go to blueland.com/ios. Hello, and welcome to iOS today. The show where we talk all things IOST OS home bought OS Watch OS it's look, it's all the OSS that Apple has on offer. There are a lot of them, and we love to talk about them here on iOS today. I am one of your hosts, Mikah Sargent, and Rosemary orchards out this week, but don't worry because we are joined today by Matthew Cassinelli. Welcome to the show, Matthew.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:01:34):
Hello, Micah. It's great to be back I'm it's a pleasure always to record with you. So I'm just excited to talk about focus modes today.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:42):
Yeah, me too. I mean, focus modes have been around now. But they, and it's kind of interesting how it started with do not disturb and branched out from there that there are all these focus modes and I'll be honest. And I haven't really done a whole lot with focus modes because they are kind of overwhelming to me. There's so much that's built into them. There's so many different things that you can adjust. And so I was hoping that you could start by kind of telling us what are focus modes for folks who might not know before we dig into what you can do with focus modes.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:02:15):
Sure. So I feel like at the most basic level, like you said, it expanded from do not disturb into more specific categories and Apple kind of starts with personal work and then just the sleep one for obviously the other time when you're not doing those things <laugh> on the highest level, it's about customizing the notifications and the ability to silence calls and things like that. But then Apple also kind of added some low key features in there where you can also customize the home screen that shows or how people can contact you through specific apps. And even this year with I iOS 16, they switched from just the ability to like you can only before you could only allow certain things. And now you can only disallow certain things, which is another level that's a little bit nicer. I think kind of what you were saying about setting these up is that it's hard to think of like, what do I need in a specific context until you actually are in it?
Matthew Cassinelli (00:03:15):
And so if you have to allow things, everybody was like missing calls and things like that. That happens to me all the time. I'd rather disallow certain spam calls or like, I don't want my boss to contact me when I'm not working kind of thing. I feel like that's probably how most people wanna use it is don't send me emails after hours and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so I think on the most basic level, I think that is just a simple way that you can use focus modes to customize your experience just so that you don't get pinged about things when you don't need to know about them and especially a nice thing is it kind of controls your lock screen experience and the notifications coming in. So if you're, you could only see your work notifications during the Workday and then your personal ones afterwards or whatever combination you want.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:04:04):
And so we're kind of showing now too on screen, like the scheduling or automation things is you can always just have your phone turn into work mode when you arrive at work, for example, or if you're working from home, you could do certain time of day or even specific apps. Like anytime you're in the books app, go into reading mode, for example, ah, don't get bugged by like random tweets or I don't know, doom and gloom news notifications coming through when you're trying to like escape into your fantasy world or something. <Laugh>
Mikah Sargent (00:04:35):
When I'm doing my crossword, I don't want anything bugging me kind
Matthew Cassinelli (00:04:39):
Of thing. Yeah, exactly. So I think like one of the biggest things last year when setting them up was that you just have to go through like four menus and it's like, what apps do you wanna allow? Who do you wanna allow to notify you? And my biggest tip, at least then, and still for people when I was 15 is just, just don't do that right at the beginning. Just skip it and just go to the very end and kind of get what your custom mode should be, and then go back through and think of how you want to set up later. Because I think that just that upfront work is probably why you ended up not doing it. Just cuz it's like, I still don't even totally know. I think that, that what they added in Iowa 16 of the disallow thing is a lot simpler to wrap your head around than like, I need to think of every app that I use for work and allow it to notify me.
Mikah Sargent (00:05:30):
Ah, so just you're
Matthew Cassinelli (00:05:32):
Like 10, 20 minutes. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:05:33):
You're going in reverse. So can you give us an example cuz I, you probably have several focus modes mm-hmm <affirmative> can you maybe tell us about one of the focus modes that you set up and how you came about, you know, making the choices of the apps or what have you that are allowed or are not allowed? Cause I think that that will give us an idea of kind of how powerful it can be. Maybe if you have like your most complicated focus mode mm-hmm <affirmative> or you know, the one that has the most settings. Can you tell us about that one?
Matthew Cassinelli (00:06:04):
I feel like I, I usually have, I mean I have the work and personal ones and then I kind of made subsets within those groups. So I have different work, focus modes also and then different personal modes like the reading or fitness ones are good examples there. I think work is more clear though with just like, so I do freelance articles for IOR. And so when I'm in that writing mode, I don't want messages notifications from like a group chat that I'm in or TWiTter notifications or things like that. But I do want slack notifications and air table notifications, which is what we use for like the content calendar. And I like pretty easily could miss those messages if I was part of it is like, I don't know. I sort of introduced the problem to myself where by using both of these, you do miss the other one, if it's a personal message or if you hadn't set it up.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:06:58):
Right. But I also think the, the level of just not getting notified things by things that aren't relevant right now actually really does help. And so I think a bit, the biggest thing for me that really takes this to the next level is that you can set the home screen for a focus mode. And so that's where beyond just getting notified, I bring the apps forward that I need in those moments and it shows it to me on a home screen dedicated for that focus mode. So I have a writing home screen that just has my writing apps and for me specifically a bunch of shortcuts widgets for writing. And so that's a major way that I actually a common complaint that I hear about shortcuts is do you actually use those? And I probably wouldn't as much without focus modes, putting them front and center when I need them and then hiding them when I don't need them.
Mikah Sargent (00:07:52):
That's that's really I, so I'm playing around with one right now for work. They've got this adorable emoji wallpaper. This of course is iOS 16, not iOS 15. But E even in IO, 15, of course you can set your own home screen, your own lock screen, that kind of thing. It just isn't as in depth, but it's, you know, just even going in now and playing around with it a little bit is inspiring me to want to create a mode outside of just do not disturb because there are notifications that I want to bleed through when I'm in, when I'm working, for example, where normally I would turn on, do not disturb. I need to know slack notification or I need to see slack notifications. And there may be some other apps or services that I need to get messages from.
Mikah Sargent (00:08:42):
And an example of that is like Rosemary. And I will text one another during the show whenever we need to communicate. And so that work mode would be helpful. And I guess I could even set one up, that's just cold iOS today. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> then go as far as to automate it where every Tuesday at nine, it turns on and stays on between nine and 10 30 or, or however, however long it might be. So it's, it can become a pretty powerful tool. I do, you know, I, I think about sort of folks who maybe don't, you know, their job is not to be in front of the camera. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so they maybe don't need to have the sounds muted or whatever it happens to be that, you know, that, that I'm doing. And I think that that is where it is helpful to have you in this place to talk about some of the, the diff whenever you're writing, for example, for, for IOR and how those work modes, or rather those focus modes come into play.
Mikah Sargent (00:09:45):
And, and using it as an organization tool is kind of an interesting thing where mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, now I can start to think of, instead of focus mode, it's like categories. And so I've got a focus mode called gaming and it just surfaces all of the gaming apps that I have, and kind of those are available to me to tap on as opposed to having to try and hunt for the ones that I'm looking for. So, yeah, it could become pretty powerful. Once you, you do get it set up and, and could you clarify a little bit, you were saying that iOS 15 versus iOS 16, what's changing as far as, as far as choosing what to do and what not to do, or are you saying that that's available that was already available and it's just a matter of changing one's perspective?
Matthew Cassinelli (00:10:33):
No, it is, it is a whole new feature, so it's, I don't have the same screen sharing capability, but in, I was 15, you have the ability to silence notifications from, or I think it's, you only allow notifications from specific apps, and then they added this year, the ability to only specify ones that you wanna silence. And so, like the, the issue that a lot of people had was like, in your personal mode, if you didn't allow, like you would allow your contacts or like nobody wants to allow all messages. So if you got a phone call, it wasn't in your allowed contacts and you would just miss the call immediately. And so I like if you get a delivery from some random number and they need a call you, as they show up, it would just silence it, cuz you're in your personal focus mode, for example.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:11:18):
And so this year they switched it from, instead of like blocking everything as do, not disturb by default instead, it's just like your normal everything's allowed in and you only block off a couple of things. So like in work, you don't want just that one group thread or something like that, but everything else is okay. And so that, I think that was a big limitation of Iowa 15, to be honest because, because it took that setup by default, you blocked out everything and you had to choose the, the, like the allowed list. And instead now it's just a do not allow list. So it's definitely a lot easier and they also just designed the interface to be more clear and they sort of hid, they even hid the home screen thing underneath a menu. And so I think it just like, if you didn't click on that, you might not have realized that was even an option.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:12:11):
And now in Iowa, 16 is more clear and it's part of that. Because it's also tied into the new lock screens and then they also added the Apple Watch, which a lot of shortcuts users took. There was personal automations for focus modes and you could then use the set Watch face action to set your Watch face when you change focus modes, they built that into the focus feature entirely. So your lock screen home screen and Apple Watch can all change depending on the focus mode. Wow. Which is awesome. And it's what, what ties into all of the customization stuff too.
Mikah Sargent (00:12:48):
Give me an example of when I would, what would I have on my Watch screen that sort of would tie into to this experience? I guess like what a fitness mode.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:12:59):
Yeah. Just switching to a different face that they have like dedicated Apple Watch for, or faces for the fitness mode that unless you're already using that, you'd have to like go switch into fitness mode as you did it. So like, I, I think part of it, I mean fitness one, isn't maybe the best example because it takes over the screen with the workout automatically. But just like being out and about, I have a travel mode, so it's kind of, I have like home versus out of the house and when I'm out of the house, it switches to showing like the maps app on my Watch and the weather. Oh. And a larger Watch face. And like find my, so that I, I think a, a big thing about this feature is sort of the response to you have all these apps and services and like no way you're really gonna ever use all of them at all times when it's the best ability to, because there's just too many and you'd have to go find it or have this super meticulous home screen. And like, even with home screen organization, they put it all into app library. And so it's kind of like why even bother at that point. But this allows you to surface these things when it's the most relevant, especially for Apple Watches, like a great example. I bet most people don't use all their Apple Watch apps or even the faces. And so now if you have five different focus modes, you can have five different Watch faces, or if you have 12 different focus modes, like somebody might have <laugh>
Mikah Sargent (00:14:28):
<Laugh>
Matthew Cassinelli (00:14:29):
<Laugh>, but it's, it's true. It really does help me like get a lot more out of each of those apps and faces because I can show them to me when I wanna use them. But then when I don't need 'em, they're not in the way also, which is the that's part of it is with with iOS 15. I think they introduced the ability to hide home screens. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, which for most people was just about getting rid of one and clearing out the folders, but you can actually hide them and reenable them whenever you want. And so the same with the focus modes, I can have all of my personal home screens show up and all of my work home screens separately. And then when I'm not in a focus mode, it just shows me one home screen and something like that. So which I've all done very extensively.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:15:14):
<Laugh> even just the, I think the lock screen thing really ties this all together because in a lot of ways, the lock screen customization and all the backgrounds and things like that, they kind of default to, it does sort of set your home screen wallpaper too. And then it's really is there's a feature that ties, if you are on this lock screen, it's tied to this focus mode specifically. Like I was saying that it, it was always like that with the home screen, but now that it's the lock screen, if you literally just change your lock screen and do like, I have 16 here and switch into a different one here, right there, this direction, I have many of them, but like this is my work lock screen. And now it actually changes my focus mode into work mode for me even just by changing the lock screen.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:16:06):
So like part of focus modes is you have to think to even switch into that context sometimes. And if you just wanted to change your lock screen, it could change before you too. But let me show a quick, a better example is so I have a widget over in my widgets area that has different focus modes. And so I've steamed my phone with all of these different modes. Like my planning mode is blue and now my wallpaper is blue. Oh. And my lock screen. And even my like main shortcuts page for those things is blue as well. And on my Watch, let's see if it actually worked. It might not have cuz I'm on the beta, but it should also be the blue face that I have and stuff like that. So wow. You can really like you fully shift contact, you get into that mode.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:16:54):
It's like, all right, it's work mode. Let's do this. It's I think maybe for somebody who's like in a more traditional job, even like meeting mode and you wanna pull open your notes in your calendar app and those things and you don't otherwise wanna like have all that ready to go, but then anytime you kind of change context at work, you could do that. Or I have like planning and then like getting stuff done mode. And those are very different mental modes that I shift between. And now my phone and all of the screens and everything shifts with me and even like the color shifts, I see that blue and I'm like, oh yeah, I should be planning, not psychological distracted with something else. And if I'm switching, I switch context fully. And then that stuff is serviced to me when I need it too.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:17:46):
So I, I really love this stuff. And I think some of the like super fancy bits are, let's say you were wearing an, a VR headset and you needed to change context and everything in your environment changed around you to the right mode, right. When you needed it. I feel like I'm like, I'm already there. I just need it to be in at VR <laugh>. And then I have all my shortcuts that I can use with my voice too and get those things done still. So I feel like it's really tied in to the feature of where Apple's going as well. Plus it, I think it just responds to the fact that we have all this cool, amazing technology, but you like look at your home screen and just pick the app that's on there and now I'm on TWiTter and <laugh>, if it, if my home screen showed me my books and things like that, I might be more likely to read then.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:18:40):
And so you can kind of guide yourself towards these more beneficial outcomes while also having the one that's like, I just wanna relax and go on TWiTter and look at tos. And so if I'm in that mode, it's okay and I'm not in that mode, I'm not gonna do it cuz it's buried otherwise. And I, and you're you have that like monkey brain reflux. Yep. To just pick the first thing that's on there. So absolutely I'm a huge fan of this stuff. Like I've been customizing my home screen. I did all of this before we even got focus modes and I just was really overwhelmed by having 16 home screens full of stuff. And then now it really shortened it down into just the focus modes allowed me to just show those screens. And then now the lock screens and all that just made it a lot smoother.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:19:27):
And I think helped my mental shift into those modes as well. So mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I highly recommend it. If once people get onto Iowa 16, set it all up. I even still like the people in the apps and the notifications thing, I think that's less, I mean, that's still important because once you're using the focus modes, you might miss some stuff, but like the home screens and the, that stuff is, what's more interesting to me than the notifications and that you can kind of hone over time and they have smart features too. That's like, if you're getting notified for a reminder constantly, while you're at work, it'll notice that and say, Hey, do you want to add this to your work notifications and stuff like that. So they have some affordances to help you kind of set it up over time without trying really I didn't even, I feel like I've been rambling, but like there's a whole feature called focus features or focus filters now too in iOS 16, where, when you're in the mail app and calendar, it can only show you your work mailbox and your work, email calendars and stuff like that too.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:20:37):
And you can even automate that with shortcuts, which is like a whole other, that's like one of those things where I'm like, I, even though I know I'm going to use it, wrapping my head around, it does take me like this whole summer to figure out because I'm like, how, like when would you run that short? Or it's like an automation that runs when I switch to work mode, it changes the Cal. I don't know. I don't know why I would need to automate that as much as just setting it up the first time. But
Mikah Sargent (00:21:04):
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Matthew Cassinelli (00:27:13):
Sure. yeah, so it's, it's definitely a good year. I think there are, are some things that certain people want that we didn't necessarily get, but there are also a lot of features that will take shortcuts to the next level, which is really good. I think I'm, I'm sort of interested to see if Apple's doing like a TikTok strategy as in like one year they focus on shortcuts for Mac and one year they focus on the system itself or like the features because the major headline feature this year is app shortcuts, which is the ability for all of your third party apps to automatically generate a whole folder of shortcuts for you that will just appear in the shortcuts app and will automat. I think I gotta see exactly how it ends up working, but they should just be available to use with Siri without you even ever opening shortcuts.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:28:07):
And so like, if you download TWiTter, I don't know if they're gonna have shortcut support, but if you did download TWiTter and they had shortcuts, you would be able to just use it with Siri and even say like, Hey Siri oh, no, I should. <Laugh> that's okay. All my devices, I haven't been on air like this in a while. <Laugh> just saying like what can you do here? And then the app will tell you the kind of shortcuts commands that you can use. And so it's a major like this is kind of their series strategy now is that when you download an app, it just works with Siri automatically through the shortcuts app. And then if you want to go further, you can take those app shortcuts and turn them into your own custom shortcuts. And that's kind of what the workflow slash shortcuts experience that we know today is more. So that's really cool because
Mikah Sargent (00:28:58):
I, I consistently only
Matthew Cassinelli (00:28:59):
Have to a ton of people.
Mikah Sargent (00:29:01):
I know I'm the beta. I know. I just, I thought that by now I'd see more than just one app shortcuts option, but yeah, currently it's only voice memos is, is my single app shortcuts option.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:29:14):
I think that's kind of what you, what I'm just waiting to sort of see is all of the Apple apps don't necessarily have app shortcuts yet, or all of the features that are native actions in shortcuts. You still have to build your own, or like my whole thing is I've already built them for you and you can just get them from our website kind of cuz that's kind of, my whole deal is app shortcuts is totally what I do in the shortcuts app. If there's something that it can do, I'll make a shortcut for it. And then I have 16 of them for just one app. And so I was joke, I joked in my last newsletter, their Matt shortcuts instead of app shortcuts. <Laugh>, I'm so sorry. I think I could only say that to you and <laugh>
Mikah Sargent (00:29:56):
And yeah, Kevin and me other two people. So this, this is, this is your audience. Matthew Castin do com
Matthew Cassinelli (00:30:02):
I'm sure new newsletter subscribers. <Laugh> making that joke.
Mikah Sargent (00:30:08):
Yeah, just wanted to mention Matthew castenelli.com Matthew spelled the way you probably think and then C a SSI, N E L L i.com where you can then get to the shortcuts catalog, the shortcuts library
Matthew Cassinelli (00:30:22):
Click on the library things cause that's, I just recently redesigned this and I like just added all my iOS 16 shortcuts too, but I have like folders and folders of every shortcut that you could, every category that you could think of. I have a lot more coming to it just, there's already 700, so there's a lot there, but that's, I'm very curious once people get app shortcuts, what it'll be like in the library because I have very many apps that support shortcuts. And so if it just generates a thousand shortcuts for me, I'm gonna have so many more than I already have. It's gonna be kind of a mess. But I think that's kind of the, the app shortcuts thing is kind of for third parties. And then the other thing is like developers also got a lot more powerful APIs that are easier to work with also, like I didn't realize really that they were kind of, it was very manual for them to set up and if you wanted to change things, it was kind of difficult.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:31:25):
And then now it's a lot, I'd interviewed a couple developers and they're like, oh yeah, this is great. Very easy to set up and change over time. And so in theory, there's kind of been slow adoption of shortcuts from, you would think after a couple years, like every app would have shortcut support, but it probably was a little too hard to get really deep into it. And so hopefully this year and going into next year sort of more apps will be adopting this, especially since it's Apple's major series strategy. And then you can kind of get a lot more functional stuff that you, if you wanted to like pull a bunch of data out of your app and work with it, like you might in a native shortcut, like a custom shortcut that you can with some of the other actions some of that just wasn't available from third parties or they couldn't really go that deep and now they'll be able to, and a lot more structured data and things like that.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:32:18):
So developer, Alex hay who makes toolbox pro and he's making toolbox pro too now, which is coming out on the Mac, which is expand shortcuts into a lot of different actions. He kind of went in and filled all the gaps that he's like, there should be an action for this. He just built an app and then built all the actions for it. He's been doing this long thread throughout the developer betas of like, here's all the things that are basically broken with it. And so they're fixing it all. So that's probably what you're saying is that it's just like beta three, doesn't have the right tools yet for apple. And by the end of the year or by the end of the beta cycle, we'll get that. So it's pretty,
Mikah Sargent (00:32:58):
I love toolbox pro, so I'm excited to hear it's coming to the Mac. That's
Matthew Cassinelli (00:33:02):
Fantastic. Yeah. It's and there's some great. The other thing that Apple did do is add their own actions for a lot of their native apps. But I think not in the ones that a lot of users tend to request. We have some stuff in the shortcuts corner where people wanted a lot of stuff from settings and changing little details, and that didn't really get touched yet, but voice memos books, notes, all got a really advanced set of actions that like, if you want to change from the grid view or the list view in notes, there's a shortcut to toggle that setting, which seems very, very specific to me. And so I'm hoping that like maybe the settings team didn't do it yet or like they get these APIs and need to work on it too. So I, that's something that we definitely need to see a lot more of, but there's a lot of cool just functionality in terms of being able to control the very specific parts or like adding tags to notes and getting really deep into that stuff that I think a lot of shortcuts users have been waiting for.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:34:11):
So it's kind of that all that is really great. I think we didn't really see a whole lot though for shortcuts for Mac didn't get automations for example, or a lot of these actions don't even work on the Mac right now, but I, I have a feeling that's the beta issue. I don't know why they wouldn't on the Mac app by the end of the cycle. But yeah, I think it was sort of odd to see shortcuts for Mac get introduced and then not really get a whole lot of highlights this year. Like there's some basic UI changes in the app where you can it's like how you change the name or the icon is more standardized across, I guess that's mostly iOS too. I think one, one Mac feature actually now that I remember is it does get the share sheet support, which was weirdly missing last year.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:35:03):
And so now you can run shortcut from the share sheet and pass the like link that you're looking at in safari in through that way instead of services and like other weird Mac stuff. So that's a little more cross platform now. But I think, I don't know. I think I was looking for a little more with shortcuts for Mac and Apple's own apps there, like final cut getting some sort of actions or something like that would be, I really want them to prove the productivity angles on the platform where people get most of their work done. Because I think that just like showing how these app shortcuts can work from Apple's own apps like you, like you're not seeing yet would be a good, good way to get started and just to take it to those deeper levels and really start getting people ahead on work.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:35:54):
Cuz I think shortcuts is like where you can really see all the groundwork is almost finished being laid now, but mm-hmm, <affirmative>, they're all in here. Like I want to go a hundred miles per hour and they're not necessarily there yet or something like that, but you can still do what you want with it. And there's even like, I, they gave, they gave like 50 new actions and I made like 150 shortcuts within like a few days out of it <laugh> so it's just like any new things that we get we can do a lot more with. And so I think opening it up to the app store in a huge way and making that easier to set up and then you can just open shortcuts and use it and not be greeted with a blank slate. I think that's what freaks people out a lot. But I, I wanna see like multi-step app shortcuts combined across apps by Siri for me by following what I do. And so that kind of stuff maybe we'll see in the future, but I gotta write up my future requests <laugh>
Mikah Sargent (00:37:01):
Yes, indeed. All right. Let's go ahead and move into the news. Although again, I wanna remind everybody Matthew, M a T T H E w Cassin L a C a S S I N E L L i.com. For all that great stuff. We of course include a link in the show notes to be able to check out it as well. First little bit of news from nine to five Mac is it's actually, it's a really interesting thing from I, I mislinked, it, it originally came from the verge so it is about thread and home pod and matter and all of this stuff and I am pretty pumped about it. So if you have a thread border router, which Matthew and I have in the past, talked about this on our show that we used to do smart tech today.
Mikah Sargent (00:37:49):
A thread border router is a device that serves as sort of the, the, the bridge between thread enabled devices on your network and your wifi router. So an example of this would be, I have some lights behind me, this, this light that's inside of this lamp. That's behind me. And then also the light strip that runs around the back of that cabinet. I have behind me are both threat enabled devices. I also have this Waymo scene controller that has three buttons on it that is threat enabled. And what happens is the, these devices. They talk to a home pod mini that I have in my office and the home pod, many kind of serves as the networked brain of these different devices in my home. But with thread thread also will make different sort of always on or always powered devices, routers or bridges themselves.
Mikah Sargent (00:38:51):
It's it kind of gets into depth, but essentially with thread, what you have is a network made up of a bunch of different devices that communicate and sort of create a mesh network. And so the more devices you add, the better the network actually gets versus how things work right now, where if you've got a wifi router and a bunch of wifi connected devices in your home, as you add more, the system starts to get overloaded and it doesn't work as well. This works in the exact opposite way. The more you add the more of a mesh network you're creating and the more ways you can reach out and these devices can communicate to one another. So as it stands, the different devices in our homes all have kind of different versions of thread and different versions of the different protocols that allow these devices to communicate.
Mikah Sargent (00:39:43):
So they aren't able to do the communication between one another well thread 1.3 0.0 is now out, and it is going to help to let these devices communicate with one another. So an example of this is the nest hub, max smart display, the next hub, second gen smart display, which I also have behind me, which you can't really see it it's tucked. There we go. It is right back there. The Apple TV 4k, the Apple home pod mini the latest echo Euro routers and some of the nano leaf devices, including in this case, that lamp has a nano leaf nano leaf bulb in it. But anyway, all of these devices, when they get updated to support this latest version of thread, they will be able to communicate with one another. And that is what matter is all about actually the idea that's what matters.
Mikah Sargent (00:40:46):
That's what matters. Bing Bing, Bing is that these devices can all communicate with one another and be able to, then I could tell the echo to turn off the lights, or I could tell my home pod to turn off the lights or I, it that's the idea. We wanna be able to have all of these devices talk to one another without you having to be on one specific platform or another. So this is a really exciting thing to see that this update has come. And also one of the other things about thread 1.3 0.0 is what's called streamlined over the air updates. So what happens is you can update firmware on threat enabled devices and you can do it at the same time without it affecting the performance of the network. So firmware updates, aren't gonna be this thing where everything has to kind of come to a, a stop and everything slows down.
Mikah Sargent (00:41:43):
No. Now all of these devices can be updated remotely and you don't have to go. You don't have to go next to your, so an example of this is that right now, when one of my contact sensors on my door needs to be updated, I have to walk over to it. So I'm within Bluetooth range to be able to do that update and then stand there until it's completed. No, no, no, no, no. With thread 1.3 point, oh, if you've got a threat enabled device, then it will update without you needing to be right next to it. Very cool. It seems like, and I'm looking forward to that.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:42:18):
It seems like overall, this kind of ties in threads like initial growing pains and kind of like, I don't know the metaphor to like cut them off where it's like, if you had two different thread networks, they weren't initially, or two different devices with thread, they weren't initially designed to work with each other and now they can just like the whole protocol was designed originally. And then plus like now we're starting to see the benefits of thread where it's just like, you have this whole smart home network and you just need to tell your device that needs to be updated and it can bounce through the thread network and get to that device rather than like this whole smart home network, actually just being a bunch of standalone things that you have to go around and update manually. So it does, it does just seem like, oh, this is kind, it's kind of like one of those things that you're like, great. Now I don't have to think about this anymore, but that's kind of, it's like, people don't believe that the smart home is like this. And so it's a weird, it's like a news thing. That's like this thing that sect is no longer exists and you're just good to go. You don't have to worry about this anymore, but it's still important to really know that this is actually the progress is happening and it'll be a lot smoother going forward, which is great.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:43:32):
Yes. Agree our guy, Jonathan Huey. I think that's how you say his name, right? Yep. That's we actually talked to him on smart tick today about thread. So that's where we know a little bit about this <laugh>
Mikah Sargent (00:43:44):
This next story from Bloomberg kind of has me a little Novi Facebook and Google had already announced that they were going to be doing this now. Bloomberg's mark Gorman reports that Apple will also be slowing, hiring and spending in the coming year due to the issue or due to their concerns with the recession. So this is something that we saw Facebook say, or excuse me, meta say that things were about to get lean and they weren't gonna be doing any new hiring and that teams were gonna have to kind of work with smaller budgets. And then Google soon after said that same thing, and now Apple appears to be also planning to slow hiring. I don't, you know, of course, I don't know how this translates directly in terms of, of what what effect it has on future devices from the company or future updates from the company. And that's not the part that really, you know, is of, of concern. To me, it is just this idea that all of these tech companies are preparing for a economic downturn. And I think that that means that, you know, everyone should be preparing for that economic downturn and how it's going to impact what we do over the coming years. So, Hey club, TWiT TWiT do TV slash club TWiT <laugh>
Matthew Cassinelli (00:45:11):
I think, I mean, I think though I, there are, it's always, I mean, I don't, I'm not an economist or anything like that, but what I do think what's hard about is I thought something like somebody like Apple is literally like their parts are more expensive and their, their whole supply chain runs through China and things like that, where a lot of this, that the scale that they go at is like, if your widgets cost $1 more suddenly at scale that affects them so much higher, as well as the stock market and things like that, that aren't necessarily like, I don't know. I think about it cuz I am an independent creator. And so I'm like, that all seems important, but like it's going to affect you the most through prices of things rather than, I don't know. I think for a company like this that does just like hit their scale so much harder.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:46:04):
So I I'm, I'm just curious, especially like, like even they were just saying their margin and things like that is where that sort of evaporates during times like this, but also Apple has like billions in cash. So that's where I'm like, <laugh>, it's like you, oh, you don't get a new MacBook this year because there's something like that does seem wild to me from a company like apple, but also it's when they hire whole teams and pay them lots of money that goes a long way too. So I'm, I'm not like as worried too. And I think, I don't know I'm I don't wanna, I should stop talking <laugh> I'm not an economic resource there.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:46:46):
I still wanna get like freaked out by like Apple doing this because they, they need to, and a lot of companies also had like Facebook, I know hires so many people and they don't necessarily all generate that amount of revenue for the company. So there's definitely some overlap there. But yeah,
Mikah Sargent (00:47:07):
Yeah, no, that makes that, I mean that that's a fair, fair concern or, I mean, a fair observation. Lastly Apple pay is apparently coming under more fire. Now there is a a lawsuit in effect. This is a class action lawsuit that is looking at suing Apple for Apple pay because of what is essentially a mono, what they consider essentially a monopoly. It says that Apple has an illegal monopoly over contactless payments on the iPhone which of course then requires card issuers to pay fees using that. And it's starting with affinity credit union an Iowa based company. But the lawyers at the, at the root of this are actually the lawyers that have in the past one in cases against Apple regarding antitrust concerns. So, and, and I think other class actions. So that part of it is kind of interesting that you know, this company has a history of, or this, these lawyers have a history of winning against apple.
Mikah Sargent (00:48:21):
And it'll be interesting to see how that plays out, but the idea, I guess, is that because of the way that Apple pay works versus when a, a payment platform can make use of the NFC chip that's inside of the iPhone you know, whether I add my, my card to apple wallet versus using the, the tap to pay like on the card itself, that those are two different things where the, in order to use the NFC chip, that's built into the iPhone for the purpose of pay, it needs to be added to Apple wallet first. And then Apple does that thing where they sort of obscure the the card number that you have by using kind of a, a whole separately generated one. And it doesn't allow that to be tracked over the course of different payments that you make.
Mikah Sargent (00:49:18):
So of course, Apple on its part says that the reason that it does it, the way that it does it is for the sake of privacy and security and the different companies that would like to not have to pay a fee say, well, I, we think it's because you wanna make money. And I say, why not both? I feel like that's probably the reason is that yes, it is a moneymaker, but also it is more private and secure due to the nature of the way that Apple pay works. But yeah, go ahead, Matthew.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:49:46):
Well, I th what you just said actually is really important context. It actually isn't in the story or the other one that I saw, like the actual features of Apple pay are worth it to me. And that's more than just having a wallet, like being able to obscure that stuff. So like, I hadn't thought about that. And it's interesting that that's not in these stories sometimes of like, there is a reason to use Apple pay over another wallet because of those benefits. And so, like the credit card companies are upset because Apple charges them to process that Apple bay fee rather than just using their own direct wallet thing. And so, like, it's a weird financial thing there that you kind of don't care about as the consumer it's like, so, I mean, like, do you want to use Samsung pay on your phone?
Matthew Cassinelli (00:50:36):
Like, I, I think most people just wanna pay. And so, like, it kind of, it gets into this middleware ground. But the part about actually providing there is like a benefit to using the card through their service. It's not actually just interchangeable with using another wallet is kind of an interesting argument, but I'm curious too, if this is one of those things that like, admittedly, like Apple does this and they probably shouldn't and they get away with it until they get sued by this. And then they'll conveniently with iOS 17 release a feature where you can use any mobile wallet <laugh> and then this will be sort of irrelevant, but they made $4 billion in the meantime. So like, it is that weird. Like why, why, why would they, and I don't know, even reversing it from like, if you were from I Apple's perspective, they never had all of these things available.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:51:34):
And so they made the service. And so it's like a weird, I don't know, it does, it needs to be decided by the market kind of thing of what people actually want. So I'm it'll, it feels like that's inevitable with all these stories come out. It's like, by the time this actually gets resolved, they changed it to be more fair, but also would they have ever done that if they didn't get pushed? Who knows? So interesting story. Let's see how this pulling plays out. And it does. I mean, like you were saying the context of it being by a firm that has won multiple times in the past, I'm sure Apple's like, dang it, like, come on now we actually have like, we're going to, we're gonna really get into this and, or they'll pay and settle with the companies. And then that might be all that really changes or something like that.
Mikah Sargent (00:52:21):
Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break before we come back with, yes, we're gonna do shortcuts corner. Matthew is here, so don't you worry and so much more. I wanna tell you about our sponsor Blueland Hey, did you know that an estimated 5 billion plastic hands soap and cleaning bottles are thrown away each year, 5 billion, and if that's not bad enough, most cleaning formulas, those things you buy at the store or order on Amazon or elsewhere, those, those formulas are 90% water. That's super heavy to ship. It leads to excessive carbon emissions that you don't really need to have. Plus those products are often filled with nasty ingredients. You know, chlorine, ammonia, that's a lose, lose situation for you and the planet. You're both losing there. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the number of plastic bottles and containers you throw away ever thought about purchasing more eco-friendly products, but didn't know where to start, or maybe you've tried a few green products, but found them pricey or ineffective.
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You can feel good about. We have some blue land products that are really nice just to open up the bottle you throw in the tablet, you get that nice smell immediately of whatever the, you know, the, the, the choice that you make. There are some different choices that you have. There are also unscented products as well. And it's just really, it's fun to kind of do your own little chemistry at home <laugh> but then after that, of course you have these, these products that you can use and always get refills when you need them without having to buy new bottles every single time. It's so nice. You out there should try the clean essentials kit, which has everything you need to get started. Blueland products come in signature scents like Iris agave, fresh lemon and eucalyptus mint. Ooh, eucalyptus mint. That's one of my favorite scents in general. And for a limited time, their hands hope is getting a summer upgrade with three refreshing new scents, including strawberry rhubarb, a love as strawberry rhubarb pie, citrus Petly and coconut Palm. Right now you can get 15% off your first order when you go to blueland.com/i O S that's 15% off your first order of any of Blueland products@blueland.com slash iOS. Once again, blueland.com/ios. Thanks so much to Blueland for sponsoring this week's episode of iOS today, and now it's time for shortcuts corner.
Mikah Sargent (00:55:42):
Hello, this is shortcuts corner of the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts corner requests. And this time Matthew Castelli gives you a response. The first shortcuts corner request comes from Anthony. Anthony writes. I get a lot of very useful information from your program. Thank you for what you do. You're welcome, Anthony. Anthony says I'm a massage therapist. I have been looking for an iOS shortcut that is based on my location, the office that will automatically bring up a specific music playlist on Apple music. When I arrive any suggestions would be appreciated. So is there a way to bring up a specific Apple music playlist upon arrival at the office,
Matthew Cassinelli (00:56:22):
Matthew? Yes. <laugh> so I was thinking I mean, there's always with shortcuts, multiple ways to accomplish something like this. I think the most straightforward sounded like a personal automation to me, based on your location that and not one that triggers in the background, but just one that shows up it's triggered by the context changing. So you can just set when I get to work open or do this kind of thing. And so I would set that location and then it sounds like you wanna open the playlist, not just start one, cuz if you wanted to start one, you would probably just use the play music action and then specify the playlist there. But otherwise what I'd do is go into the playlist and in the top corner, there's the little dots and you can find the share menu there and then just get the link to the playlist and have your shortcut open the URL to that playlist.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:57:17):
So basically when you get to the office, it'll pop up a little notification saying like, do you want to run this shortcut? And then you click it and it'll open the playlist for you automatically. And then you can kind of shuffle it or something like that from there. Or even if it's like, I know that Apple music has the whole, they've really advanced the categories in the music app and they probably have, I think they have a spa or like relaxed category in there. So you could open to that curator page and have multiple playlists available for you. For example. I feel like that'd be the main way. The other thing that I just thought of because of how we did this episode was you have a work focus mode that is set to automatically change or like a specific spa focus mode that's set to change based off of your location.
Matthew Cassinelli (00:58:09):
And then on that home screen, you have a shortcut or a widget or something like that, that opens just to that specific playlist. And I feel like, I don't know, I just like that because I think the personal automations thing can be a little, like I don't always see those notifications that come in and I really want them to add the ability to give it just a name so that I can say like the spa playlist or something like that, but it just shows me the icons for the service or like whatever actions I'm taking. So that's not the most ideal I'd say. But the other thing with focus modes is that it's the only location shortcut automation that can actually change itself without it being a kind of a security issue for apple. Like if you put a specific location, but you were near the edge and get off shortcuts is very specific about like always do this thing. Whereas the focus modes use a little bit more, sir intelligence to determine whether or not you're there and whether you've left truly. And so then that can kind of just, it's like when you actually are in the building at work, it'll switch it and then it'll show you that shortcut that then takes you right to that Apple music playlist. So just kind of bridging the, the gaps with what we were talking about earlier too. <Laugh>
Mikah Sargent (00:59:30):
Yeah. All right. And then we've got two that they kind of fall into a specific category. So I'm gonna read both of them. And then Matthew, you've got some things you wanna say. The first one comes from Roy and Roy says, are you able to make a shortcut to turn on silence, unknown callers, and another shortcut to turn it off. I already have a shortcut that will get me to the location in settings for me to manually turn silence, unknown callers on and off, but that takes two clicks or two taps. I was wondering if there was a shortcut that would do what I want with just one tap. I realized that I will need two shortcuts. The next one is from Carol, who writes I'm in need of shortcuts help. I wear hearing aids, Oticon hearing aids, which connect to my iPhone and to my TV.
Mikah Sargent (01:00:14):
I set the volume. So it is perfect for Watching TV. When a phone call comes in, the hearing aids correctly, switch to the call away from the TV and so far so good. However, when I finish the call and the hearing aids switch back to the TV, the volume is back to the maximum volume. So I have to open the hearing aids app, the Oticon app, and move the volume back down to where I want it all this time. The volume is way too high for comfort. I've talked to the manufacturer and they say, that's the way it's designed. So I would like to have a shortcut that when I end a phone call, the Ocon app is opened automatically. At that point I would have, I would love to have the volume adjusted back to where I had it previously, but honestly I am fine with manually changing it at that time. I just need to streamline getting to the volume control on the app to minimize the amount of time I am being bombarded with the max volume. And now Matthew, you've got some words to share
Matthew Cassinelli (01:01:09):
<Laugh> yeah. So I think both of these, my response was pretty similar about how even tied into what I was saying earlier in the show about apple. Didn't go this deep with these kinds of apps yet, or even the automation. So like for the hearing aid thing, there isn't new additions to the personal automations to respond to more specific events like that, like the end of a phone call. And then again with the other one silence, unknown callers, it sounds like they actually have the solution that I would've suggested if they didn't say they already have, it is a deep link into the settings app to that specific page. That's like mostly what people can do right now with settings is like, it'll just take you to that spot and then you can change it, but you can't actually automate the feature itself.
Matthew Cassinelli (01:01:57):
So I do think like, I think at this point, this is, this is officially overdue in my mind because I've seen it on this show for years that like people wanna change all of the settings. If there's a setting there, they want to be able to automate it with shortcuts. And then also having more specific personal triggers like this would be really good. I do think for Carol I think Ocon now probably can add more shortcut support to be able to turn down the volume for the hearing aids specifically. If it was just, I don't know, actually how hearing aids work with the OS. Like I don't th it sounds like it has a custom volume control and it's not tied to the system. If it was tied to the system, you could use a shortcut to lower the volume. But again, it doesn't react to the end of the phone call immediately.
Matthew Cassinelli (01:02:48):
So unfortunately both of those things kind of aren't currently possible, but I think this is we're in that realm now where it's like Apple should really be getting to these kinds of like the settings controls should be automatable. And even now there's, we are seeing examples of it in the notes app. So maybe it's kind of coming to settings later this year or something like that. And then even more specific responses for personal automations would be nice. I'm almost just imagining there is there's sound recognition in, I, in iOS and mm-hmm, <affirmative> now in iOS 16, you can also customize to listen for a specific sound, but I guess, I don't think that would really work with getting a phone call, like, unless you heard the phone call and then, but it, it wouldn't automate the after it ends sort of thing. Like maybe <laugh> you customize it. So it it's like listens for the word goodbye. <Laugh> oh,
Mikah Sargent (01:03:51):
That would be, that would be tough. You'd have to say it's well,
Matthew Cassinelli (01:03:53):
You always say you always your sign off. You're like goodbye. And if I don't see you today morning, good afternoon and good night.
Mikah Sargent (01:04:00):
Right? Exactly. Have to say the,
Matthew Cassinelli (01:04:03):
I I'm sorry. I'm just, I think that's just a cool feature too. And it, yeah, it is for sure. Even for someone who like has accessibility needs that custom sound recognition and having that can actually respond to any sort of like, that can be truly automatable with shortcuts. And so that's actually super powerful. So maybe there's something, something along that.
Mikah Sargent (01:04:23):
Yeah. All right. Well, we are starting to run out of time, so I'm gonna do a couple of feedback and questions before we head into the app caps. The first one comes from John. John writes in will the new iOS work with iPhone seven. So John was asking about iOS 16, and if it will work with iPhone seven John, unfortunately, if you go to the apple iOS 16 preview page and you scroll down to near the bottom, there is a compatibility guide, and the earliest iPhone is the iPhone se second generation or later. And then next is the iPhone eight plus and the iPhone eight. So iPhone seven is just outside of the update for iOS 16. So you'll need an iPhone eight or newer. If you want to check out the new features that are available in iOS 16 the next one comes from AC who writes good afternoon, good afternoon to you.
Mikah Sargent (01:05:20):
Or I guess it's so good morning here, but any recommendations for ad blockers on Mac, iPhone and iPad? Yes. I have one it's one I've used for a very long time, and it is available on all three of those platforms specifically. It is an app called one blocker. And what one blocker does is it's not just an ad blocker. It is a content filtering solution. One blocker works across all of your devices, so you can get it on your iPhone, your iPad and your Mac. And it is part of at one point safari up, or excuse me, Apple updated the operating system to include something called safari content blockers. And so there are kind of two different ways to do adblocking one is that the ads load, but they are just made invisible on the page. And then the other one is that they're actually blocked from loading in the first place.
Mikah Sargent (01:06:11):
This is what one blocker does. This is what content blockers from safari do. You can set it up to block ads. You can set it up to block things like cookie notices or some sites that will use your brow, your computers browser, to help with cryptocurrency mining mobile app banners, comments, adult sites, widgets, trackers, all sorts of stuff that you can block, and you can set it up how you want to, when you want to it's available to download for free. There is a paid version that has some extra features like YouTube ad blocking and stuff like that. And that's special magic. But the free version is fantastical on its own. And as I said, it works across all the different platforms and as of iOS 16 and iPad OS 16 and Macs, Ventura you'll be able to sync those extensions between your different devices. So you'll be able to buy it, set it up, or rather just install it, set it up and turn it on and it'll work across all of them. So AC I think that will be helpful to you all right, up next, we've got our app caps, the part of the show where we wear caps at top our heads and talk about apps. We like
Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
Greetings iOS today, listeners. This is Dave Hamilton from the Mac geek G podcast. And I would love to thank Mikah and Rosemary and the whole team for having us here to tell you a little bit about our show. We've been producing this show for 17 years. And the goal is for each listener to learn at least five new things. Every time we get together, most of that is done with answering your questions. You send 'em into feedback@mackeb.com and we share those answers on the show. We also share tips and cool stuff found. I've got three tips. Did you know that if you press and hold the mute button during your call on your iPhone, it will put that call on hold. Yep. Did you know that dictating smiley face to Siri? We'll put that little text based smiley emoji in your message. One last one saying reply with audio to Siri, we'll let you record an audio message, which
Mikah Sargent (01:08:14):
Is super handy if you're in the car. So visit Mackey g.com or research for Mac geek, gab on Apple podcast, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast, don't get caught without having Mac geek, gab in your rotation, Mac to you, Mikah and Rosemary. It is time for the app caps. This is the part of the show where we place caps the top hour heads to honor our app or gadget picks of the week. These are the apps or gadgets we are using now, or maybe we've been using for a long time, but we want to share with all of you and and in a way to celebrate them. We, for some reason, put goofy things on our heads. Matthew gas in LA. Tell us about the CAPA top of your head, and then tell us about your app pick.
Matthew Cassinelli (01:09:09):
All right. I've got my classic blue beanie with reversible style inside. I'm pretty sure this is my girlfriend's cuz it's got a nice pink hue to it. Not that pink is for girls. It just happens to be hers. My app cap pick of the week is milli notes. I'm gonna say this is my thinking cap because this app is great for thinking I'm sorry about that. <Laugh> but mill note is its it's like a white boarding type app that has infinite nesting of boards and you can kind of organize things visually and I'm using this to produce videos because there there's something just like too structured about most apps and videos. Don't really benefit from that. A lot of times there is a lot of malleability in between things and it's like, oh, I need a mood board now. And then I need shot lists and things like that. And I have 10 different apps for each phase of the process. And instead me note kind of lets me combine them all into one and sort of progress progress through that stuff. And so I've just been really appreciating it and they came out with an iPad app lately. And so that is very nice. And so I'm a big fan Melan note.
Mikah Sargent (01:10:25):
Awesome milli note. I actually saw you tweet about it and I downloaded it that day that you tweeted about it. And I think it's a really neat app for
Matthew Cassinelli (01:10:32):
Sure. Yeah, exactly. <Laugh>
Mikah Sargent (01:10:35):
The app that I wanna talk about is an app called flighty. Flighty is actually an app that my pal Johnny jet mentioned on the tech guy radio show over the weekend, this past weekend and flighty is an app that is, it gives you kind of the power of a pilot in terms of not, not actually controlling the plane, don't worry. <Laugh> in terms of knowing what the heck is going on with specific planes. So I will, there's a cool feature in this that says view a random flight. So I will tap that link. And then it will show me a flight from Charlotte to Chicago via whatever. I think that's American airlines. You can live share, which gives you the ability to actually see the live status of the flight in different ways. You can share it on Instagram, if that's your thing.
Mikah Sargent (01:11:26):
But it has all sorts of information including where it's departing or where it will depart alerts for when you are, when things are changing. You know, if, if the, the gate closes or the gate changes or something like that the booking code, the seat that you're in. So I could find, let's see where, you know what we're in first class seat, I don't know, the window seat. And that's a one cuz that's probably how American airlines says that. I don't know information about the flight, including the time zone change that's taking place, the weather that it's gonna be. You get a full forecast where the plane is currently versus like when it touched down the type of plane and how old it is and then a detailed timeline of everything. And what I'd love too, is it goes as far as to give you information to contact American airlines via the phone on their website, via TWiTter, as a lot of people seem to do <laugh>
Matthew Cassinelli (01:12:30):
Yeah, that sounds,
Mikah Sargent (01:12:31):
Yeah. And then also
Matthew Cassinelli (01:12:33):
It prefills a complaint to them. Like, yeah, it's like, here's how many followers you have. <Laugh> I, sir, I have 10,000 followers. You
Mikah Sargent (01:12:42):
Must listen. Exactly it should do that. And then, you know, so on and so forth with updates and, and everything there. Let's see. So this, so showing my flight that is because it's being it's keeping that history. So that way I can see how many times I've taken this flight, but I would say a friend's flight, cuz that's not actually mine and then be able to access that. But what Johnny jet was talking about is that it is so in depth and will give you information as far as to know, like before you get there, oh, I need to change my flight or it's eight minutes delayed. And the last I haven't taken a flight in a really long time, but the last time I took a flight, I did use flighty leading up to it. And it was very helpful because the plane ended up getting there early and we had been like at a restaurant nearby.
Mikah Sargent (01:13:37):
So we had to come and kind of speed things along to, to get the, the seats that we wanted to get. That's available flighty app.com, the free version of the app. You can obviously download, but for the pro features, which if you were Watching along with me some of these features are pro features and they were tagged as such it's 5 99 a month, $50 a year, or you can pay one time, $250 and it's yours with all the updates and you may be going six bucks a month, $50 a year, kind of expensive. Well, there are two things to understand. One, if you don't fly regularly, then chances are you're going to get this app. You're going to subscribe to it. And then you're going to end up canceling your subscription until you need to fly again. So the developer needs to take that in mind, but two, the getting access to all of this data is actually very expensive.
Mikah Sargent (01:14:31):
And so this in a large way is going to pay the developer. It's going to pay for the information that the developer needs to be able to show that information to you. And it's ridiculous and unfortunate that that data costs a lot of money. It should, I think be free, but it's not. And so because of that, you know, that's why this price needs to be a little bit higher than you might be expecting because you may not be sticking around if you don't travel regularly. So there's no reason to be paying every month for something that you only use, you know, two times a year. And so the developer has to keep that in mind to so it can be sustainable, but also as I said to pay for those high costs of data, but that's flighty app@flightyapp.com and folks with that, we have reached the end of this episode of iOS today.
Mikah Sargent (01:15:16):
If you have questions feed feedback or shortcuts corner requests, you can send those to iOS today@TWiT.tv, we record this show live every Tuesday at 12:00 PM. Eastern 9:00 AM Pacific. You can go to TWiT.tv/live to check it out. And we think the best way to get the show is by subscribing to the show which you can do by going to TWiT.tv/ios. You can click to subscribe to audio or subscribe to video across all sorts of different platforms, Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, YouTube. We try to be in all the places that you are or want to be. And I should also mention club TWiT for seven bucks a month. You can join the club at TWiT, do TV slash club TWiT that's $7 a month or $84 a year. And with that, you get access to the club TWiT. Well, I'll, I'll talk about that in a second.
Mikah Sargent (01:16:05):
I first wanna mention that you get access to ad free versions of the podcasts that we do. So you will just get all of the content on its own because you are supporting us directly. You'll also get access to the TWiT plus bonus fee that has extra content. You won't find anywhere else and access to the club, TWiT discord server. That's a place where you can go to chat with your fellow club, TWiT members, but also those of us here at TWiT and often is a place where we've got some great questions from folks for the shortcuts corner and feedback question segments of the show follow that sounds good to you. Twit.tv/club TWiT. Oh, and I should mention my new show. Hands on Mac is a club TWiT exclusive also available via Apple podcast subscriptions. And that show is all about quick tips and tricks and apps and gadgets and all sorts of stuff. That's worth checking out. So if you want to get that new show, that's where you can go to do that. Now this is the normally the time where I'd ask Rosemary orchard, where we find her online, but this is where I now get to ask Matthew Castelli, where folks should go to find you online. Sure.
Matthew Cassinelli (01:17:09):
As Mike, I said, Matthew castelli.com is where you can find all of my shortcuts and my membership program that I have as well. And then also Matthew castelli.com/newsletter is where I have a weekly newsletter. That's everything new with shortcuts. And so you can kind of just keep up at, keep up with everything easily there.
Mikah Sargent (01:17:29):
Excellent. And you can find me online at Mica Sargent pretty much any social media network. We're head to chihuahua.coffee. That's ch I HOA hoa.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. So very simple to scroll through there and get some of those QR codes or what have you. And let's see you can, this week, you'll be able to see me here and do just a few minutes on Mac break weekly tomorrow for windows weekly, Thursday for tech news weekly Saturday for the tech guy. And then I will be then it'll be my weekend. So quite a few shows. Yes, I will be sleeping like rip Vanwinkle. So quite a few shows to do this week. So if you're tired of me already, sorry about you. Anyway, thank you. <Laugh> thank you all for tuning in, in Matthew Castelli. Thank you so much for being here this week. We appreciate it. Yeah.
Matthew Cassinelli (01:18:18):
Thanks for having me.
Mikah Sargent (01:18:20):
Goodbye everyone.
Matthew Cassinelli (01:18:21):
Bye.
Jason Howell (01:18:24):
The world is changing rapidly so rapidly. In fact, that it's hard to keep up. That's why Mikah Sargent and I, Jason Howell, talk with the people, Macon and breaking the tech news on tech news weekly. Every Thursday. They know these stories better than anyone. So why not get them to talk about it in their own words, subscribe to tech news weekly, and you won't miss a beat every Thursday at TWiT TV.
