iOS Today 653 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on iOS today, Rosemary Orchard and I, Mikah Sargent, are going to get on board with iPad games. Stay tuned for the explanation of that pun, <laugh>,

V.O. (00:00:15):
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:25):
This is iOS today with Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent, episode 653 Recorded Tuesday, May 9th, 2023. Get on board for iPad Gaming Fun. This episode of iOS Today is brought to you by Delete Me, reclaim Your Privacy by removing personal data from online sources. Protect yourself and reduce the risk of fraud, spam, cybersecurity threats and more by going to join delete me.com/twit. And using Code TWiT for 20% off and by Grammarly go, you'll be amazed at what you can do with Grammarly. Go Go to grammarly.com/go to download and learn more about Grammarly. Go and buy electric e-bikes. Celebrate your mom and give her all the freedom that comes with electric e-bike. Visit electric e-bikes dot com to learn more and explore the epic models electric has to offer. Welcome back to iOS Today, the show where we, Rosemary Orchard and I, Mikah Sargent, talk all things i o s iPad, ost, V o s watch os home pod os send all the OSS Apple has on offer. We love to help you make the most of those beautiful, wonderful Apple devices you have by showing you apps and features and services that you can get to make your experience even better. This week we are playing games, not with your heart, but with our iPads. I of course am one of your hosts, Mikah, Sargent,

Rosemary Orchard (00:02:05):
And I am Rosemary Orchard. And if anybody's there going wait, board games. Wait, that's just so dry. Well, don't worry. This episode's gonna be ha be plenty of fun for you. So, or at least I hope so.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:17):
Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, your, your classic board games can become bored games in the sense that I, I'm not a huge fan of things like Monopoly, for example. I find that game to be just absolutely grueling. Even in its, you know, whenever it's properly played following the instructions, it just is so, it, it is just like input X output, why you go around the board. I just don't like it. <Laugh>. I guess that's what I'm saying. No, but there are so many other board games out there that I have been sort of shown and to realize that, that there's just so much more that you can do. And it turns out that some of these are board games you can play on your iPad itself and play with friends in some cases. So, yeah. Rosemary, let's talk about some of the options that are out there.

(00:03:20):
And I, I wanna say too, before we do get into things as we're talking about these, you are going to hear, especially in the first few games some prices that may seem a little expensive to you, but understand that buy i I, I don't know the last time you've bought a board game, you out there who's listening to this. But if you go to the store and you buy a board game chances are that board game's going to be anywhere between 20 and $50 here in the United States. And of course, yes, there is a physical part of that. You're getting printed out cards and you're getting something that's going to be available for as long as you can keep it going. But the prices that you hear for some of these apps are, you know, at least half of the costs that you would experience if you went into the store and bought them. So they may seem kind of expensive whenever it comes to them being compared to other apps that are available in the App store. But just keep that in mind that this is, you know, a, a sort of replayable reusable experience that is meant to be like a, a digital board game. So with that, Rosemary, tell us your thoughts and our first our first option.

Rosemary Orchard (00:04:49):
Yeah, so I mean, I, I wanted to start by saying that if your experience at board games thus far has been Monopoly and Scrabble then I, you really are missing out. And there are so many great games that you can play out there, which are so much better. And there's a reason why if you search for how to stop Monopoly arguments at Christmas, the one of the suggestions is try other broad games before divorce because there are so many great games out there. And one of the ones I wanted to mention today is a game that I've been really enjoying, and I've been playing this in physical form, but there is also an iPad version, and that game is called Wingspan. Now, there are various levels of complexities when it comes to board games. There are very simple games, which, you know, might be sort of card games like Snap and things like that going all the way up in difficulty level.

(00:05:36):
And Wingspans probably at the higher level. But essentially your goal in wingspan is to collect birds and birds mean points. Birds have nests, and you can lay eggs on those nests. And sometimes they have bonuses on them. So for example, here I've got spikes pip or I did have it where I was moving around. I'll tap on another one to show Fox. And so now I've got a black crowned night heron. This one's worth nine points. I can find out a bit about it. It's wingspan, it's 112 centimeters. And it has a little activation action. And what I really like about this game is how they've sort of added animation to it. So I don't have the audio playing at the moment, but obviously when you're playing a board game in person, it's, it's kind of static.

(00:06:22):
You know, you've got things that are just there and you can pick them up and move them around. But what they've done here, there is cherry blossom. There's a little lovely gazebo in the background and they've really just sort of made the point of animating this. So as I, as I touched on that little bush there, it's moving and shedding some flower blossom. And sometimes some of the bur cards when you tap on them can actually animate a little bit. There we go. Sprays pip is back and there we go. It's doing a little animation and there's even a song for it. This is a really great game, I have to say. If you, if you get the physical version, it is beautiful. And it's nicely printed and it's usually sort of 40 pounds or more.

(00:07:04):
And this version is 9 99 to download. Now, the only thing I'm gonna say about this is it took me a little while to figure out how I needed to interact with it because I kind of skipped the tutorial cuz I know how to play the game, but it turns out you're dragging and dropping instead of tapping, and that's what you need to do with it. But it's, it's really nice the way that they have taken all of those physical elements of the game and brought it together. I don't wanna try and explain the whole game. Yeah. because it will sound very complicated and overwhelming, but it, you can play it in less than an hour with friends. And the iPad version will let you either play by yourself, which is something that you can do in wingspan or play with people or play against the computer. And there's also an autonom version, which is built into wingspan, which you can play against the game itself as well, if you would like to. And that's all built into this. It's an official copy of the game and it's really beautiful.

Mikah Sargent (00:08:02):
Nice. That's was going to be my question, if there was a way to play with other people or if this was a solitaire style game where you just are sort of playing with the cards as they're dealt. So it's nice that you have that experience that you can now, whenever you're playing with others, is it a matter of passing an iPad around or is it that it's networked? How do the, does the multiplayer feature work in wingspan?

Rosemary Orchard (00:08:30):
Well so there's a couple of different options which I've got up here. So first of all, I've got my first player, which is human and that's me. And then the second player I've set up is AI easy, but if I am, if I want to, then I can play against other humans here in person. And that's the, the regular play. There is also the option to play online where it will go ahead and log me in. I can choose my username, which I haven't done that yet. So I will just do that. So if anybody does want to try and play me in Winman later, then hopefully that will be my name and I've even chosen a color. And there we go. I'll pick my, I'm gonna go with a nice seasonal background and you can yeah, so this is playing against got

Mikah Sargent (00:09:15):
It. So yeah, you could do a custom game. Yeah, yeah. Or do it

Rosemary Orchard (00:09:19):
Exactly. But yeah, I, I did also want to mention over in the settings there's some nice little bits. There's trivia activation, so you can get trivia for every bird that's played for new birds that are played. Never you can control, for example, the, the music versus the sound effects volume and all of that to give you a really nice little experience. And this is available in English, Polish, German French, Spanish, Portuguese that's Japanese and Russian as well as Chinese and Cantonese. So Mandarin and Cantonese, Italian, and a number of other languages. I believe that's Thai, but I'm not a hundred percent certain that they, they, they've made the effort to make this available to a lot of people in a lot of languages. And mine is now not in English, it's now back in English.

(00:10:04):
Wonderful. So I'm actually gonna know what's going on here. But yes, there's animations, habitat, descriptions, all sorts so that you can truly enjoy this. And another thing about this sort of game is it can be much more accessible for some people instead of having to, you know, pick up cards and things like that and move things around physically where you don't necessarily know where stuff is on a table and what is what. A lot of these games, although great, don't necessarily have, for example, markings on the different sides of the dice to let you know what is what. Of course by being able to use voiceover in a game like this, then you can actually bypass that problem and jump straight into having fun with your friends and family.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:41):
Beautiful. so that is Wingspan the board game available for in the US 9 99 on the app store. Yes. All

Rosemary Orchard (00:10:50):
I should note, the in-app purchases are the expansion pecks, which are available as physical expansion pecks as well for the physical game. So yeah, the, there, there are in-app purchases, but they are for the expansion packs that you can buy in person anyway

Mikah Sargent (00:11:04):
The next one really fits within the sort of scope of, of, of the way I introduced the show. It's a very popular, well known game, it's Ticket to Ride available for 6 99 in the app store, or $3 or, and $3 to add extra boards to the game. Now tickets a ride, of course is the railway building game where you are competing with other players to try and kind of be the most dominant railway on the on, on the map. You want to sort of try to take over other railways or in some cases block other railways from being able to continue their building. And so yes, it makes you into quite the competitive railway mogul as it were. And I'm curious, I've I've not played the, the digital board game version of Ticket to Ride. What are your thoughts on, on the experience?

Rosemary Orchard (00:12:13):
Honestly, Mikah, as I've played this over time and I've, I've got some of it up here on my screen at the moment where I'm just restoring some of the ps that I already had. I found this really easy to play because one of the things with board games is you can often end up with lots of little pieces sort of dotted around your room. You know, cats are coming in trying to eat them, dogs are playing with them, you know, somebody knocks something off the table. And especially in ticket to write where you are trying to build, you know, long railway sections. If you've got a rickety table, that's kind of a problem. But if you are playing the digital version of Ticket to write, then of course that's not a problem. And this has both a local version as well as pass and play. So there, the difference between those is the local version. Other people can download like the app on their phone as well and connect it so that you've kind of got your pieces in front of you and then the iPad sits in the middle as though it were the board in the game. Whereas the pass and play is, you know, you you pass the iPad to the next person for them to play it. Which yeah, it's quite nice to have both of those options available.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:19):
I agree. Yeah. now Ticket to Ride I think is what I like about this game just in general is it's quick to, to sort of pick up on you. You can understand it pretty quickly. There's not a whole lot of, of, you know, special extra secret features <laugh> that you can kind of learn over time, or not features, but sort of movements. And so I think this is a great way to kind of get into the digital board game area and give it a go with Ticket to Ride. Now I, this next game I absolutely despise, but it's one of the most popular game among board game people particularly as a way for people to kind of like when you get together, you kick off your night of board gaming with this game. So I think people will be happy to hear that there's a digital version, but I wish this game just didn't exist at all. Tell us about the next one on the list, Rosemary.

Rosemary Orchard (00:14:23):
Well, you and I, my head differ greatly when it comes to Car Casson. So Car Casson is a a game where you are attempting to build a world. I've just entered it and I've, I've launched into the tutorial mode. So you, you, it's walking me through what I need to do, but essentially you get stacks of tiles and you need to try and place them so that you can do things like line up your roads, your roads do have to join up. And then you can choose to place your meatball in various and your meatball will help you claim things like fields and castles and roads and more. There's even a dragon in one of the expansion packs. And at the end of the game you tally it up and you get points for various things like sizes of castle, the number of roads you have, the number of fields you have et cetera.

(00:15:12):
And it all adds up. It's quite nice having it as a digital version. And I'm just gonna see if I can skip through the tutorial here because I wanted to go back to some of the settings. But there are local and online versions that you can play. And local is either a solo match or a pass and play. And then there are also rules for not just the base game and tutorials for it, but also the various expansion packs available because of course, with many of these games there are expansions that you can use to extend your time playing them and hopefully maybe extend Mikah into something enjoyment. I personally like <inaudible>. But this one is available and what I really love about this, it's 4 99 in the app store.

(00:15:59):
And so, you know, they, they're in app purchases for some of the expansion packs but it's just 4 99 to buy the, the official version of this board game. And yeah, it's, it's, it's good fun to play. It's very different to some other games because there is no board that you are based around or anything. You are just building it. So if you were playing this in person, I'd recommend having a large flat surface available. Preferably one free of interruptions from pets and small children. But as it is the iPad works quite well as well. And if you've got a, a top 0.9 inch iPad Pro, I've got the 11 inch here, which it works pretty well, but the top 0.9 inch would be even better for most of these games just cuz it's gonna give you even more space to seal all of that stuff.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:45):
I am looking forward to the emails. I'm going to be getting <laugh> about this game. Yeah again, I'm, I'm happy that folks like this game is that's great for you. I'm, I'm happy about it, <laugh>. All right, moving right along. Let's talk about Love Letter, the card game. I actually had not heard of this game before today. And I am looking forward to getting this game for sure.

Rosemary Orchard (00:17:17):
Well if you love romance or the idea of romance and you love the idea of winning the Hardware Princess, be that, you know, whatever form they end up embodying for you, then you may enjoy Love Letter. So Love Letter is a game. I've not actually played the game. It's been on my list of games to play, but I've just never had the opportunity to play it with folks in person because I didn't have a copy. And whenever I was with folks, yeah, I, you know, like we didn't have it with us. Well, now I've got it on my iPad so I can play it with Fox. So there is a single player mode and then there's an online mode as, but essentially what you're doing is you are trying to win the heart of the princess. And you can have two cards in your hand.

(00:17:56):
You have to draw cards and play them or discard them, et cetera, to try to get closer to that princess. And so I'm, I'm gonna just start it quickly in the learn to Play mode. But it, it will walk you through it. And you essentially are trying to get your love letter all the way to Princess Annette in this case. And you, everybody has a card to start with. They draw one and now they must play, and you have to try and get rid of the other players. There's a bit of competition to it as well as luck. And yeah, there's lots of different characters. There's eight kinds of characters. There's guards, priests, Barrens, handmaids, s Kings, countesses, and of course there's the Princess as well. And the cards that you draw represent the different kinds of people involved.

(00:18:45):
So this is the priest, for example. And that's the person who's currently carrying your message. And so your goal is to try and get it to her. And yeah, it, it's one of those things. I've heard great things about the game and I've gone through the tutorial once already for this and I enjoyed it. So I'm looking forward to playing it and I'm saving it for an opportunity when I can actually play it with some friends instead of just doing it in single player mode. Because as I'm sure some people are aware sometimes games in single player mode or two player mode can be very, a very different game to playing it with a group of people. And yeah, I think I will enjoy this more if I play it with some friends.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:24):
Absolutely. and then let's quickly talk about Kaan, right? Is it Kaan or is it Katan? I've heard it said both ways.

Rosemary Orchard (00:19:34):
Katan

Mikah Sargent (00:19:36):
Okay.

Rosemary Orchard (00:19:37):
I I always say Katan. And yeah, I think Katan or Katan, C a t a N, it's one of those games where a lot of people have had a bad experience playing it once when they've played it before. So my friend group and I have instituted a rule of, if you can tell, within like the first five to 10 turns or the first sort of 20 minutes that somebody is definitely going to lose, we scrap the game and we start over because sometimes you can just be dealt a really bad deck of hand cards and, and you can't go from there. But there are a couple of different versions of Ketan available in the App store. There's Katan Universe, which is available for free. And then there's also Kitan for just, I think it was Kaan play and Kaan play hd which are available.

(00:20:21):
And so the Katan Universe is online play only where you can register online and sign up and play against yourself or friends and family. And then the Katan Classic, sorry, is what is called there's QAN Classic, which is for iPhone and qan, classic HD for iPad, each of which are 4 99. And then in-app purchases for expansions are 1 99, 4 99, or 9 99 to unlock them all if you wanted to. But essentially what you want to do in Katan is build a, build a world not dissimilar to Carcassone in some ways, except that these tiles are hexagons. And has my image just changed for 40? Yeah, okay. And some people might know hexagons are the best decons. But your, your aim as you go is to not only you know, do the best thing for you, but also sometimes to deliberately prevent other players from playing things. So you, you will not necessarily want them to be able to do things. And yeah, it's, this can be a really good, fun game. It's often a game that people move to from something like Monopoly, where they've had it with their family and friends and Monopoly over the holidays. And so they try a Katan next. And it's, it's a game that I've personally enjoyed many times. So you'll need to watch out for the Barbarians. But it's, it's good fun either way.

Mikah Sargent (00:21:50):
So yes, Katan, you've definitely got to check that out if you are, if you've played Katan in, in person. I love that you and your friends have that kind of policy in place because I think that you're right, that is what's kind of kept people from wanting to play the game or enjoy the game, rather, that's what's kept people from wanting to enjoy the game. Before we come back with even more board games, you can play on your iPad. I do wanna take a quick break to tell you about our first sponsor of this episode. It is, delete Me. Have you ever searched for your name online? And then looked at just how much information was out there and, you know, found yourself a little upset about how much of your personal information was available to other people? Did it make you feel exposed or unsafe?

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Rosemary Orchard (00:27:23):
Yeah. Yeah. So some of you folks may have heard of the game Exploding Kittens. I should note, there is no cruelty to actual kittens involved in the game exploding kittens. But essentially in the game of exploding kittens, it is a card game where there is a deck of cards where there is one or more exploding kitten. And your aim in your in the game is to not explode. And in fact, to diffuse the kitten, which you could do with catnip belly wraps, kitten therapy, a laser pointer, a number of different things. And so I'm just going through the tutorial in Exploding Kittens at the moment. This app is 1 99 to download. And it will as, as you go through tell you what the different cards do when you tap on them and then you can play a card.

(00:28:07):
So I'm gonna say, okay, let's reverse this and play it backwards. And then I have to draw a card in order to you end my turn and, ooh, I've got blind, I've got the Blind Cat. So you need to get two cats of the same kind to be able to steal a car from another player. But there is the option to play with friends where you can host or join a private game or play with strangers online, or you can play by yourself in a single player match. And then within the settings, you can of course report people if there's anything bad going on. And you can turn on off sound and contact support if you need to. And of course, there are avatars which are a variety of interesting things. I'm gonna pick the pink one. But this app is just 1 99 to download and have fun with. And if you've enjoyed the game Exploding kittens before or you think you might enjoy it, it's a great way to give it a try. And see what, what, what's up? And if you will actually want to play it again perhaps, or just play it by yourself.

Mikah Sargent (00:29:10):
All right. That's exploding Kittens definitely worth checking out. And in the continuation of card games there's one game that I cannot play because if I play this game, I am, I just don't like me. I don't like the person I've become when I play Uno. But if you're okay with the person who, who you've become when you play Uno yes, you can play Uno in the App store, and in fact, I have, I I can't if it was so there, there are two different ways you can play Uno via this, this app, but there's also a little iMessage app that has Uno built into it. And I've played that with family in the past. But again, I, I've banned myself from playing Uno because I get way too competitive with this ridiculous game. But tell us about the, the sort of digital board game version of this, Rosemary.

Rosemary Orchard (00:30:07):
Well, the digital board game version of this is Uno, as you probably know it, it's got the different cards in for the, you know, the wild cards, super card, et cetera. And it does also prompt you to clean up the table to start with. So I'll just pop in my age here because I haven't been signed into this for a little while. And sign in using Game Center, which is an option. You don't have to sign in using Game Center. You can sign in using apple or Facebook to play instead. But you will need to sign in to play UNO mobile. And I'm a pro at uno, so hopefully, or I'm, I'm hoping that I'm a pro at uno. So the, the app is free to download. And then there is I believe it's an in-app purchase option, which I'm just gonna verify to play with friends.

(00:30:50):
So you get 10 games with friends for free. And then after that, there, there is a, a further in-app purchase option which is, there we go. So yeah, I think it's you can, you can buy the sale pack. It looks like it will be 1 99 to unlock a ferret number of games with friends, but I'll just pop this into classic mode. And of course you have to go through and, and do and set this up so you, you need to try and get points to unlock more things with coins, which is not great. But this is the official UNO app, sadly. So I guess I'm playing against Derek, Michael, and and Carlos. Carlos is some is blueberries, so I don't know how well I'm gonna do with this.

(00:31:37):
These are players that I've never played against before. But I guess I'll pop down the nine scenes. It's suggesting that and just hope for the best here. But yeah, it's, it's quite fun because the, the board is very 3d and I'll, I'll just move away from this and exit the game. Sorry folks who are playing against me. I am hopefully going to be able to leave that. There we go. And yes, but it, it's good fun. I've enjoyed playing it before. It works you know, it, it, it worked very well for me as I've played it. And it's one of those ones where the app developer has a couple of other apps available on the app store as well, including skippo, which some of you may have heard of. But then a game that I have really enjoyed for a long time called Phase 10 or Phases 10 for those of you who are German speakers and this is a rummy based card game.

(00:32:30):
Now this is intended to be used in portrait mode which is why it's kind of small if you're watching the video on my iPad. But essentially there are 10 to go through. And you need to you know, complete the challenge for whatever the phase is in order to be able to progress to the next phase. You get points and if you get stuck on a phase, then you have to continue. And if you succeed, you can move to the next level. And yeah, so you pick up cards, you play cards, you describe cards, and you hope that you win at the end of the game. I often don't win out this apparently re at least in recent times, but I've certainly been enjoying it regardless.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:14):
All right. Let's round things out a little bit. Any other special mentions, and then also a way to keep track of your scores in, in, while, while you're gaming. I think this is a really important one. If you're going to be playing particularly in person, you know, passing around the device.

Rosemary Orchard (00:33:36):
Well, it's funny you should say round things out, Mikah. I think you must have looked at the the app that I was gonna mention next, <laugh>. Because the next game I was going to mention some, there are a few different names for very similar games for this, there's reverse I, Othello, and so on this game this app is called Reverse Color. It's entirely free on the app store. And the developer's name is Sonya, I'm just gonna double check what her surname is. Marelli, Sonya Marelli, it's entirely free. There's no in-app purchases and or ads or anything. And essentially what you're aimed to do is the, the board will be filled with tokens at the end of the game. There are black and there are white tokens. It starts with diagonals in the middle of two di two, two black, and two white tokens.

(00:34:21):
And when you put your token down, you must flip the tokens in between. So I'm just gonna pop down a black token here at the bottom, and it's gonna flip the other tokens for me quite nicely between all of the, the others that are around. And I just have to attempt to win. And the player at the end with the most of their color on the board is the winner. And I've been playing this for a little while earlier, so I have officially won that game which I'm quite pleased about. That's possibly the first time I've actually won this. But yeah, it's, it's free to play and fun to play, and it doesn't take very long either. And it's one of these games where the setup and skill level required is not huge, but you can definitely get better over time, fairly easily.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:07):
Awesome. All right. Anymore?

Rosemary Orchard (00:35:12):
Yes. Well, the last, the last app I wanted to mention is an app for keeping score, because sometimes you need to be able to keep score of a game as you play it in person, and it can be a little tricky. But the good news is, is there's an easier way to do that. So I have an app here, it's free to download and play, and it's called Score Anything. Okay? So I have, I can add more players. So I'm gonna set this up, so it's now got three players. And then what I can do is I can actually change this so that I can play give each player a name or give the game a name. So I'll just call this Cascadia for the time being. It's a game I've been playing. It's not one I would necessarily score with this.

(00:35:50):
But then I can do my player setup. So player here, I'm gonna pick a nice green color and give them a name. And I'm gonna say that this is Mikah. Awesome. And then over here, I'm gonna set this player to purple, and I'm gonna call this player Rose. And then I'm gonna put this one here, and I'm gonna put Leo in the studio, and he can be in yellow. And now what I can do on my iPad, on my iPhone, so I've got my iPhone here, and it's flat. And the idea is that you would place this somewhere where people can then see their scores, but I can rotate each individual player so that whatever the orientation is of my device then everybody can see their scores quite nicely. So, you know, if this were on the table, Mikah were over to my right, I worked to my left, and Leo were in front of me where you are sitting as the lovely audience then this would be nice and readable to everybody.

(00:36:41):
And then to increase somebody's score, you simply grab their color and move around until you've added the number of points. So Mikah just got 30 points, look at that. And I could give myself minus five points if I wanted, but in order to do that, I would have to enable negative scores in the game. You can also change your score step if you want to. So if your game has lots of high scoring values, then you might wanna, you might find a little easier to just change it to fives or tens that you can give yourself 35 points, for example. And I mean, I guess Leo is the chief Twitch, so I'm gonna have to give him 40 points so that, you know, he, he wins the game. But there we go. It's, it's very nice and easy to use in the, it just shows people's scores as you go and can be very useful for some games where you need to be able to keep track of things like that very easily. So yeah, it's a nice free little app called Score Anything on the app store.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:35):
Awesome. Yeah, that's well worth getting. It's nice to keep track and I like the sort of organization method for it. All righty, I think it is time to move right along from the first segment of the show to head into the news. But I hope that folks, you out there are excited to play some games on your iPads in some cases even on your iPhones that will, you know, help you kind of both play in person, play online, play with your friends from across the world, all sorts of stuff. It's a, it's a great experience when you don't have the ability to get together in person or in the case where you don't have the ability to get the physical board game, knowing that you could quickly go get one of these apps, download it, and then suddenly you and your friends have something to do after you've gathered to watch a show or whatever it happens to be.

(00:38:31):
Let's look at the news now. And the first story here is a sad one. Leo LaPorte and I both have talked about our appreciation for and use of bridge Devices, B R Y D G E. These are iPad cases slash keyboards that were made by a company called Bridge and Bridge. Was sort of thoughtful about making a case slash keyboard that fit perfectly with the iPad that would connect to the iPad via Bluetooth that would have the features and functionality that you would expect from a, a keyboard that was connected to the iPad. Later they created a special keyboard that actually had a trackpad, which was awesome. But Apple ended up making a trackpad keyboard case of its own. And now the company is, has, has basically ended yeah, the company was not able to pay some of its staff folks who had ordered things from the company.

(00:39:57):
Those orders are unfulfilled and the company has simply folded. Now, this nine to five Mac article does go into some detail about the quote mismanagement of the company and talking about even a hostile work environment as being part of the reason why the company ended up folding. But there's obviously, I think another elephant in the room, which is Apple's own creation of its devices, and then the company's partnership, excuse me, with Logitech that made for third party keyboard options and case options that came from a larger, more well-known company. So kind of a lot of stuff happened all at once that ended up resulting in this, this failing. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, Rosemary.

Rosemary Orchard (00:41:03):
Well, I tried to order the bridge keyboard for my 11 inch IPA Pro back in I guess it was October or so last year. So I was ordering the Bridge Max Plus, which was the one with the extra big track pad on it because I thought, you know, this looks really nice, it's got its own battery life. You could use the battery in the bridge keyboard to recharge your iPad if necessary. It's backlit. And yeah, okay, these things are bigger and heavier. I, I do actually have a bridge here for the 11 inch iPad. W it doesn't have a track pad on it. But, you know, I really enjoyed typing with it and I ordered it and it said that it would ship within sort of five to seven days, and so I figured it would be with me in like a week or two weeks.

(00:41:45):
And 10 days later I didn't even have an email about like an order update or anything. So I contacted them and they told me that there had been a systems failure at their warehouse and that they didn't know when they were going to be able to fill, fulfill my order, and that if I wanted, I could have a refund instead. And I thought, huh, not knowing when you're going to be able to dispatch something when it's surely predominantly like an inventory or something problem that seems problematic. I'll take the refund. Thanks very much. But yeah, it's, it's just one of those things where I feel like I, maybe I had a lucky escape there now because they clearly were having problems then. Which, you know, as if you go through and read this article, which I believe is chase chance, sorry, chance Miller has done a, a great job on he's, he's got a lot of detail in there.

(00:42:37):
You'll see that they definitely were having problems back in November, but unfortunately it's just one of those things over time. You know, they, they did develop a bit of a relationship with Apple, so they knew about new firmware coming through the iPad, which would improve the track pad, but they couldn't talk about it, but they also didn't necessarily know about the new iPad models coming. And that meant that when a new iPad model released, it could be a while before Bridge was available for that. And I know that I wanted to get a bridge keyboard for my iPad mini and I think it was the iPad Mini fifth Gen, not the sixth gen that I was looking at it for. And it was just months and months and months before it was even talked about. And then I think it, I, they definitely did one for the fourth generation iPad Mini, but I'm not sure if they did one for the fifth and the end, but they were, it's of those things where if you really, if you, if you can't release the product fairly quickly after the product comes out, especially with Apple's almost yearly releases for these things, it's gonna be tricky to stay, stay in the game when I can order Apple's Magic keyboard and have that delivered probably before the iPad.

(00:43:41):
So yeah, it's, it's a shame that they have folded and they took Hinge Docs with them. They bought Hinge Docs a while ago. But yeah, it's one of those things where I have heard numerous reports of very delayed orders and customer service problems where just people wouldn't get responses. Not the customer service was bad, but I guess there just weren't enough of them to answer all of the questions that they were getting. And yeah, it's a shame that this has happened.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:11):
All right. I do wanna quickly mention before we take another break and we will be covering, we'll be taking another look at Apple Arcade soon but Apple did put out a press release talking about some new games that have come to Apple Arcade. There's a common theme now where you will see games that existed in the App store before existing in Apple Arcade. And essentially what they do is they just add a plus sign at the end of it. So it's easy for you to recognize games that have existed in the App store before. Now, of course, they're, they're, there are a couple of things to understand about Apple Arcade. One is that it is, it is a subscription service. And so you pay every month maybe as part of a larger plan or just on its own.

(00:45:01):
And in return you get some games that are Apple Arcade exclusives. And what's great about that is Apple Arcade games do not have in-app purchases. So these are games that you can play without a lot of those free to play mechanics that get in the way of I field that can get in the way of enjoyment. So there may be some games that exist that have been free to play mechanic based games in the app store that you could now check out via apple Arcade. So some of the sort of games that have come over to Apple Arcade include Farming Simulator 20 a game called Getting Over It, which is just an odd, odd, odd game. You're essentially this person who gets inside of a, it looks like an Iron Pot, and you have a hammer, and you use the hammer to grab onto things and move yourself, propel yourself through the game.

(00:46:01):
<Laugh>, it's a very goofy looking game, but it's, it's a physics game. And you unfortunately are, it, it's, it's, it's one of those games where frustration is part of the mechanic because you are anytime you don't make it to the next part, then you have to restart that level. And so it, it does have a bit of frustration involved, but if you can make it to the end, then you get to feel pretty good about that. I, oh, Octo dad is another game that a lot of people like the physics based Octo dad game, and that has made its way into Apple Arcade. So if you are an Apple Arcade subscriber, do check out what's come to Apple Arcade. If you are not an Apple Arcade subscriber, this could be the reason that you become one. Yeah. I do wanna mention Apple Arc and Rosemary, I'd love to get your your thoughts on this, but I do wanna mention Apple Arcade as I, as I said, a subscription, it's available for 4 99 per month. If you buy it individually or again as Apple One's own plan that has a lot of stuff built into it. But yeah. Rosemary, any thoughts on this?

Rosemary Orchard (00:47:11):
Well, I did just wanna say for, for folks who haven't necessarily looked into this before, there are a whole bunch of Disney apps as well, available as part of this. And so anybody who has kids who might like Disney Coloring World Plus or a Disney getaway blast which is sort of a bejo type game where you've got you know, gems that you, you pop by grouping them together then, you know, there, there's definitely a lot in there as well. And there's one that I'm really looking forward to trying actually, which is Disney Spells Struck which is Disney and Words With Friends, creating a new sort of Scrabble style game which is a little further as near the top of the list in the Apple arcade article. So it's a shame that Apple don't actually have the links so that you can just link people right to the part of the news bit. But I'm, I'm looking forward to having a go with that and some of the other games maybe we'll have to talk about that in a future episode, Mikah.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:07):
Absolutely. All right let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our sponsor this week. Before we come back with just a coup, a few more news stories, and then we will head into Shortcuts Corner. I wanna tell you about Grammarly Go, which is bringing you this episode of iOS today. Of course, nowadays we're working, we're communicating quicker than ever, and sometimes you have a moment where you can feel a little stuck. Whether you're struggling to write a thank you note or struggling to create a business plan, you can give yourself a helping Hand with Grammarly Go, which is Grammarly's new communication assistant powered by generative ai. You can compose intelligently type of prompt into Grammarly, go to generate high quality writing so you can spend less time on wordsmithing. You can personalize your voice so that it's customized to you.

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You can rewrite your paragraph to sound more exciting. You can make it sound more professional, you can make it sound more inspirational. So Grammarly Go is a great tool when you're, you, you know, you're, you're working on something and you feel stuck. You feel like you need to, to figure out what's what's next. That's where Grammarly Go can be helpful to provide some, some polish to provide some thoughts on how you can kind of rewrite the text to make it more you, but also to, to help clarify things. I think that's what's, what's great about it. So I think you will be amazed at what you can do with Grammarly. Go. Just go to grammarly.com/go to download and learn more about Grammarly Go. That's G R A M M A R L y.com/go. Thank you Grammarly for sponsoring this week's episode of iOS Today.

(00:51:05):
Grammarly go grammarly.com/go. Alright, back from the break. Let's talk about Apple Music Live. Apple Music Live is, as you might imagine, live performances from Apple Music. And it will th this season is going to kick off on May 10th on Apple TV plus, and of course, you'll, you'll find it in the Apple Music app with Ed Sheeran. So this is a live performance series and this is, as I mentioned, the second season of Apple Music Live. It will debut Wednesday, May 10th at noon Pacific on Apple Music. You can go to apple.co/aml Ed Sheeran, that's Apple Music Live Ed Sheeran, and it's also going to be available to stream on Apple TV Plus this is the, the first season of Apple Music Live featured Harry Styles and also Billy Eilish, I guess performed as well. So we've seen some great performances in the past and there's actually an Apple Music Live archive so you can look back on what's been there in the past. So there's Alicia Keys, Wiz Kid, Harry Styles, Billy Eilish someone called Lil Dirk Luke Combs, and the Mary j Blige. So it's great that this is sort of slowly building out a library of content that you can enjoy. And we will next see Ed Sheeran. Tomorrow as we record this episode. This will debut.

(00:52:51):
Alright, moving right along. It is time to talk about a an announcement this morning. Very exciting. Apple will soon be bringing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to the iPad. This has been a longtime wish of iPad users everywhere. I have heard this sort of request desire more than many. I think the only other thing that sort of eclipses this is Xcode on iPad, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative> outside of that, I've heard people say, please, it was specifically with Final Cup Pro. Please bring Final Cup Pro to the iPad. Now, this these apps will not launch until May 23rd. Rosemary Orchard and I are planning on taking the week of May 23rd to try out these apps so that we can talk to you about them the following week. So we'll give you that deep dive into Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro via the iPad on that, hopefully on that, that next Tuesday.

(00:53:59):
And when these launch on May 23rd, it is important to note that these apps will be available with a subscription. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So this is a little interesting, this is a little interesting. Both of them will be available for 4 99 a month or $49 a year. You get one month free to use them. And then from that point, of course you will be, you'll be paying for them But there's already a lot of information about these apps via the, the press release, and I am looking forward to trying these apps app. It'll be interesting to see how they work on a device. I, I can remember Rosemary talking to someone they were kind of asking me, I'm planning on doing this, this, and this, what should I get? And I talked about how in the past when I've done video editing, I have you know, maybe done some stuff for, for cutting the, the clips elsewhere, but in actually sort of exporting the final video.

(00:55:08):
In the past, I would use my iPad over my Intel Mac because the iPad would export the video much quicker. And so I'm looking forward to seeing the performance of Apple silicon on iPad playing a role in being able to quickly move along the timeline, make little cuts add filters and effects, all sorts of stuff. I think this is a very exciting addition to the iPad Pro that takes it to the next step. My one concern is how easy it's going to be to do precision editing like I can with my Mac, by way of my mouse and and keyboard, you know, the, the, they show on the screen. And the reason why I point that out, obviously you can connect a keyboard, you can connect a mouse, but they show on the screen someone using their finger to do some editing. And for me, I think that's a little bit not for me, <laugh>.

Rosemary Orchard (00:56:08):
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. I had to edit some music for a friend this weekend. And I just needed to, to like trim off. There was some awkward silence at the start before the actual music started and then trim out a segment in the middle. And I grabbed my iPad mini an Apple pencil and Phite to do this because Phite is the app that I know that I can just pop in and chop a little bit out here and there, and it works really well. And the Apple Pencil is actually a really great tool for that, because that really is great for Precision. I know I've heard Mike Hurley before talking about how he uses a wack on tablet to do podcast editing because, you know, it's, it's nice and precise and it, it, you know, you, you hold a pencil very differently to how you hold a mouse.

(00:56:47):
And so it doesn't aggravate RSI so much which is quite nice. Or it at least, you know, makes your wrist move differently, which may, may cause RSI problems for some people or not for others. But yeah, I think it's interesting that they've chosen to go with the subscription option. But for anybody who's going, oh no, not another subscription, I, I feel that I should point out Final Cut Pro for Mac is $300. Logic Pro for Mac is $200. So $5 a month suddenly seems like a much better deal for, for this than, than those prices. Now I, I should say that there is a, a student bundle where you can get all of the, the Apples Pro suite at a discount. And I think that's about $239 in total. But you know, I'd, I think a lot of people will bulk at paying $300 for an iPad app just like we mentioned at the start mic or, or you did. You know, some of the game apps can sound a little bit expensive. Wingspan for 9 99 sounds pretty cheap compared to 299 <laugh>. Yeah. Or a hundred ninety nine ninety nine or 299 99 depending on the app. So yeah, I think, I think they, they were smart going with the subscription option, and I will be interested to see if at some point this ends up unlocking the Mac app for those folks who are subscribing as well. Or if not, but either way, I'm looking forward to giving this a good go and trying this out on my iPad.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:11):
Me too. I can't wait and I can't wait to have an episode talking about it as well. And then I, we will quickly mention as Apple typically does in the month of June apple has already announced the watch Face and Apple Watch Band for its pride edition. So each year in June you can check out the, or you, you know, apple releases this band. This is actually coming out a little bit of a ahead of time. Available to pre-order on or available to order on May 23rd will be available in stores on May 24th for $49. It is a classic sport band with, you know, the, the sort of pin closure and it looks like little sprinkles of different colors on the band. It's a white band with a bunch of sprinkles on it, and then it matches a watch face and an iPhone background as well this year. Yeah, the, these bands again are available every year and when you make a purchase of the band, it will also apple will donate some of the proceeds that it gets to lgbtq plus advocacy groups. So that is the pride edition. That'll be coming later this month, you know, for sort of full release in, in June.

Rosemary Orchard (00:59:52):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:53):
Alright, I think it's time I can hear the music. It's Shortcuts Corner.

(01:00:09):
This is the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts corner requests and Rosemary Orchard. These shortcuts expert provides a response. Welcome to Shortcuts Corner. Our first request comes in from Eric. Eric writes, Mikah and Rosemary in settings accessibility. Siri announced notifications on speaker. You are able to have Siri read your notifications through the phone speaker, similar to how notifications are Reddit to you over airplay. I'd like to make this a shortcut to toggle on or off. That way I don't have to go digging around the settings each time. Can you please help?

Rosemary Orchard (01:00:50):
Well so this is something that I looked into for Eric because there is actually a shortcut action for notification announcements where you can turn on and off notification announcements on your on your iPhone or iPad. Using this now, it doesn't work on the Mac, it only works on the oops, sorry. Having a moment there. It only works on the iPhone and iPad. But it will then allow you to either turn on or turn off or toggle. But this is just the general announced notifications and I wasn't sure, and maybe Mikey, you know, this one, if the one under settings and accessibility is actually a different one because as far as I know, the usual announce notifications don't play over the speaker. And I wanted to make sure that we definitely get the right one here because that's

Mikah Sargent (01:01:42):
My understanding as well.

Rosemary Orchard (01:01:45):
Yeah, yeah. So I'm just gonna pop into the settings and the Siri option here. And then I will have a look at announce notifications. And he does have an option for announcing notifications on speaker, but I'm wondering if by having this on and just leaving this setting on for Eric, because obviously you can control, he here's some options. You can say, okay, should announce what it's connected headphones or what should it announce with CarPlay? And should it reply without confirmation? What app should it announce notifications from? But there's another setting for announce notifications, which you can then just turn on and off. So I currently have announced notifications on, and I'm just gonna turn this off using that shortcut that I had. And it's, it's you know, announced notifications in general is off, but announced notifications on speaker is on, ah, so if just toggling announced notifications on and off will do what Eric wants.

(01:02:37):
Yeah. So that you can have notifications on like, as in being announced and not have notifications being announced, and then like the speaker bit just stays enabled, then this will work. So this is a single action shortcut. It, you don't need to do anything complicated with it if you just go into the shortcuts actions. And then sorry, it's not under settings. It's actually categorized as a Siri action where you can, if you search for announce then when the actions pop up and then when they actually process what it's searching for and stop showing completely random search results, then set announce notifications is the name of the action. And so that's the one that you would want there. And so you can have that and you can have it just toggle. But what you can also do, Eric, which may be useful to know, is you can turn your control center into having announced notifications enabled.

(01:03:31):
So I'm just gonna turn this back on in my Siri settings and there we go. Look at this. So in my control center I have the option, oops, which I just have to wait from two announce notifications and I can turn that on and I can turn that off in my control center. And better still, I can see the status of it. So I think this is a, a, a little bit of a a guess. So you'll have to write back and let us know if we get this right, Eric that you just wanna turn on and off announcing notifications and leaving on announce notifications on speaker all the time. And then fingers crossed, that will do the trick for you. And that's all you need.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:07):
That is, yeah, I think that's a great way to do it. The, the sort of bigger effect is on, but the specific one gets toggled off and that's, that sounds like what, what, what what you'd want. That's great. Yeah, fingers crossed. Let us know, obviously Dave has written in apparently Dave, oh, and I, I forgot to mention thank you Matthew Cassan for joining Rosemary Orchard last week for doing the show. I appreciate it. Very grateful to you and you Rosemary for doing the show last week. Thank you both. But Dave has written in hello Rosemary. I wanted to thank both you and Matthew Cassan for taking the time to teach me how to write a shortcut that patches a record in my Airtable database. I struggled with this and had no clue where to begin.

(01:04:54):
Your explanation made perfect sense. I downloaded your sample shortcut from the show notes, and I began copying your actions into my own shortcut. I then configured everything to work with my Airtable. It works perfectly exactly what I wanted. Thank you so much. Last week I purchased the second edition of your book, take Control of Shortcuts. I love it. It will be a big help for me writing new shortcuts and enhancing old shortcuts. You're the best, Dave. We should include in the show notes a link to the book because everybody should, who loves this part of the show, go get Rosemary's book, take Control of Shortcuts. It's incredibly helpful and also inspiring, I think. Do you wanna remind folks who may have watched last week or listened last week, or even folks who may have just tuned in for the first time? What was Dave trying to fix? He said patching a record. What does that mean? Mm-Hmm.

Rosemary Orchard (01:05:44):
<Affirmative>. Yeah. So last week Dave in was explaining he'd gone through the whole process of he could create records in air tables so he could have this fabulous database, which is very friendly and easy to use and bright and colorful already you know have the data and add data to it. But he then wanted to update data. And that was the bit that he was struggling with because, you know, it's a little difficult to just be like, okay, hi, I need this new thing. Here's some data. And then it's a bit difficult to go, I need to update this specific thing right here, please, because the, this specific thing right here means that you need to know the ID of that thing so that you can update it. And that was the bit that was gonna be a bit tricky.

(01:06:25):
And so we were able to give Dave some piece of advice about either using searches through air tables API so that he could find that one specific thing that he wanted, or creating a view in air tables so he could do all of the heavy work in the lovely pretty user interface. And then just taking that so that then he could be like, okay, and now I'm gonna use this and just get the first one from here because there's only ever one of those. And just work with that. And so, yeah, we gave Dave some advice on that. And I also mentioned and Dave has correctly noted he's patching a record because if you patch it, then what you're doing is you've got your record and you're just saying, okay, these bits, I need to update these.

(01:07:04):
But if you post and you're saying, Hey, this whole thing, sweep it away and put up a new one. And so he's patching it cuz he's adding data to it instead of replacing all the data that's there. So I'm really glad that that worked for you, Dave. And I did wanna mention that there is like a, a whole section on Airtable in take control of shortcuts because I love the app. It's very useful, it's a very useful service. And it's a really great way to learn how to use APIs with shortcuts. If you've got a web service that you need to interact with that maybe doesn't have a handy dandy iOS app that you could just use to interact with it, it would be lovely if Airtable had shortcuts actions. But in the meantime, Dave's learned a really useful skill and I'm really happy to hear that that worked. And

Mikah Sargent (01:07:45):
Then last but not least, Jeremy has written it and Jeremy says in episode 652, which was last week, you asked for sleep focus modes. Wait, 6 52 was that last week? Yeah. you asked for sleep focus modes on iPad. Maybe it's because I listened to the show and don't watch it, but that confused me. My iPads and my Mac show that they go into sleep focus mode when my iPhone and or my Apple Watch are put into that mode. I could have sworn that focus mode across devices is normal operation. All right, Jeremy, this is a, this is a great topic because yeah, yeah. It's one where it's, it's one of those things that I'm always asking someone, okay, let's take a look at this setting because it ends up being the problem that they're having. Anyway, go ahead.

Rosemary Orchard (01:08:27):
The thing is, is Jeremy is absolutely right. Sleep focus mode on the iPad exists. The bit the I was asking for, for sleep focus mode on the iPad is specific to shortcuts automations because on the iPhone, which if I just pop open shortcuts and, and oops I'll just switch over so that I can open a new automation here. When I go to create a new personal automation, sleep is one of the sections at the top. It's right with time of day and alarm and sleep is the thing that is triggered by your sleep focus mode. So that means that then when I scroll down and I look at my list of focus modes, sleep isn't in this list of focus mode triggers, but when I go over to my iPad and I look at this time of day and alarm, there's no sleep, well that kind of makes sense because my iPad can't detect when I'm gonna sleep and I'm waking up.

(01:09:18):
It doesn't have the right sensors for that. It doesn't have an Apple Watch connected to it. Okay, fair enough. But then you scroll down, you look at the list of focus modes and sleep isn't here either, which means that when my sleep focus mode enables, I can't use that to trigger a personal automation on my iPad. And that is very frustrating because I would love to be able to use like my end of day going to sleep as a, you know, reset some of these settings. So the sleep focus mode is on my iPad. Sleep focus mode as an automation trigger does not exist on the iPad, and that's what I really want. That was one of my top three wishes for this year. And the shortcuts team have got less than a month to implement it, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I'm sure on it, either they've already done it or maybe it's on the list for next year, but if anyone from the shortcuts team is listening and thanks, maybe I could just sneak that in there. And you do, you'll be my best friend forever and I will buy you chocolate if I ever meet you. Of course I probably won't because Apple employees are notoriously secretive because they don't wanna lose their jobs, but, you know, you get virtual chocolate for me. At any rate, <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:10:19):
<Laugh>. Alright, let's take another quick break before we come back with feedback questions and our app caps. I want to tell you about electric e-bikes who are bringing you this episode of iOS today. Man, electric e-bikes are so cool and look Mother's Day's right around the corner, so don't gift the same thing you do every year. Let's try something else. Instead of brunch at an overpriced restaurant or a box of mediocre chocolates, moms do so much already. So why not give something that lasts way longer than Mother's Day brunch? Her very own electric E-bike, you can transform her day-to-day errands into fun, carefree adventures. And hey, let's be honest, what Mom really needs is a little quality time to herself. Electric E-bikes will take her wherever she wants to go. I got to try out the two models of electric e-bikes electric e-bikes sent to us, and they were both so much fun, so much fun.

(01:11:20):
These very compact e-bikes, they can fold up and then unfold whenever you're ready for them. You have, of course, you know, you can pedal like normal, but they have built-in technology as he bikes do to help speed gel along. So being able to turn that crank and sort of zoom forward was so much fun riding around, pedaling around in the parking lot for the studio, but also in roads nearby, of course in the bike lane. And it's, they're just, I don't know, there's something about wind in your hair feeling that is so nice while keeping it under that speed. That's like, you know, when it gets to motorcycle level <laugh> these are, ah, I just, I had so much fun riding these. So you out there should transform how you get around from quick store trips to outdoor adventures.

(01:12:12):
Electric e-bikes created a mode of transportation that anyone can ride with quality, feature filled models financed as low as $73 per month. Your adventures won't cost a fortune. They include a powerful removable battery, a bright L C D display, seven speed gearing, and five levels of pedal assist to power your ride. Plus, you can lower your gas costs and reduce your carbon footprint by riding around on electric E-bike roam freely and reach up to 28 miles per hour with the twist of a throttle or the next level pedal assist. And what's great is that electric E-bikes are foldable. They ship free and they ship fully assembled. Make it your own. Electric E-Bikes offer a wide range of customizable and adjustable e-bike options to accommodate an array of different lifestyles so you can get it exactly as you need it, including rides from the effortlessly Fun XP lights to a highly capable cargo e-bike, the expedition you saw Leo with that there with some boxes on the back so you can do some transportation.

(01:13:17):
And if you're wondering what, what's the history with electric eBikes, you can join more than 250,000 dedicated writers on the road so far. Celebrate your mom and give her all the freedom that comes with Electric e-Bike. Visit electric e-bikes dot com to learn more and explore the Epic models Electric has to offer. That's L E C T R I C e-bikes dot com, electric E-Bikes. Thank you so much for sponsoring this week's episode of iOS Today. Alright, we are back from the break and we've got some feedback and questions. This comes from Michael J who writes in. Hello Rosemary and Mikah, I love your show. I learned some things and enjoy your on-air comrade ship. Thanks. I do have a question. I'm hoping you can solve the dilemma I have been trying to resolve. I recorded a few minutes of a large beautifully deep sounding Woodstock chime.

(01:14:10):
I have outside my house using voice memos on my iPad Pro. I would like to use this recording to loop it for an hour or so for background music at bedtime. However, I can't find a way to bring this recording over to the iOS music app where I could put the recording in a playlist, loop the play and set a night timer to it. I have a gut feeling if I hooked up my iOS device to my Mac, I may find a way to do this, maybe not. I prefer to leave my aging intel Max out of this process. Thanks for any help you may be able to offer. And yes, keep wearing the hats. And then Michael has put in parentheses, if you do not know of the Seinfeld episode, when George gives the infamous answer to a question, the hats look it up.

(01:14:53):
So yes, you can do that. But anyway, we will keep wearing the hats. Michael basically wants to take a sound exported from voice memos and import it into the music app to be able to play it in the music app as a recording for playback at night. This is interesting because I, I was, I was thinking about how easy this would be to do if you have a Mac. As simple as dragging and dropping the file over into the music app and having it upload as long as you have iTunes match, but to do it without a Mac, do you know how to make this happen without a Mac?

Rosemary Orchard (01:15:40):
Yeah, I mean, if there is any computer in the mix, then using Apple Music or iTunes match is gonna be the easy way because then the file can just be added to your, your Apple Music library and then it will upload it and then redownload it, and then that's it. Of course if you didn't have a cable to plug it in, you could use Airdrop, for example, to mm-hmm. <Affirmative> get the file to

Mikah Sargent (01:16:03):
Even texting the file to yourself, yeah, would

Rosemary Orchard (01:16:05):
Let you do it. But the problem with getting the file into the music app specifically is that you are gonna really, you, you can't do it. <Laugh>, like the music app is essentially it's only Little World and Little Oyster, but I did have an idea that I thought might work for Michael because you know, it, it's worth a try, right? And that's not using my iPhone. This is using my iPad. There's this app called VLC where you can just add things from, for example, your media library and you can open stuff in VLC as well. So if I pop into, for example, the Files app where I happen to have some audio here, then I can share this. And then if I scroll across and then have a little poke around, I will find a VLC media player right here, and then I can open this and then I can just play it.

(01:16:53):
And then I even have the option to repeat repeat once repeat this justice track or repeat everything and so on. And then I can even add a sleep timer so that he can have an hour, which means that you don't even need to mess using the clock with like an alarm because I will note that you can do that. And I'll just set that plane. There we go. It, it's, it, it works. But if we open the clock app, then I will just remind folks how you can do that. So if you create an alarm in the clock app when you tap on sound and then you scroll down you can actually set none and then and, and that's the alarms. But on the timer side of things, when the timer ends, obviously you've got all of the various sounds, but there's also a stop playing option.

(01:17:43):
And so then you can have something stop playing. But the problem with that is this is your timer. And so if you sometimes use your iPad for cooking and sometimes you use your iPad for playing music to help you go to sleep, well, it might be that your roast chicken gets a little overdone or whatever it is because it stopped playing, but there is nothing playing, so you kind of missed your timer finishing. So I'm gonna go with try downloading good old B L C media player video land controller and give that a go, Michael. And fingers crossed that will work for you.

Mikah Sargent (01:18:15):
Yes that is interesting. And again, Michael, just if you just get your Intel Mac involved, you're gonna be, this is gonna be so much simpler and then you can do it how you want to with, with the first process. But I love that Rosemary has the option. If you do set those constraints, that's fantastic. So both ways will work. All righty. I can hear the other music. It's time to head into the app caps. This is the part of the show where we place caps, a top hour heads to honor our app or Gadget Picks of the week. These are the apps or gadgets we're using now or have been using for some time that we want to share with all of you because we think they're great. And so without further aju Rosemary Orchard, tell us about the CAPA top your head and then tell us about your app or Gadget Pick for the week.

Rosemary Orchard (01:19:18):
So my app kept today which I'm just gonna pick up and take off my head for those folks watching the video. Yep. That's got a union flag on it. Because we had a coronation this weekend here in the uk. I didn't wash the coronation or do much other than attempt to enjoy the bank holiday. I had a little bit of a cold, sadly, but I did think I would get in the, in the theme with a hat for today's App Cap. Though that said, my app cap is indeed related to the things that I was doing at the weekend because I was playing a game of wingspan, but I was playing wingspan in person. Now Wingspan and many other board games in person, they come with a little sort of pad of scoring stuff in, in the box, which is really nice, but at some point those are gonna run out or get lost or damaged or something.

(01:19:58):
And, you know, it's quite nice to sometimes just not have to worry about that and instead be able to use an app. So I've been using Wing Score to help me keep track of this. So when I go to add a new game in wining score and the app is free to download I can set the date and time of the game that I'm playing, choose the goal board, which is the, the different kinds of goal boards that there are on wingspan, turn on, on off various expansions. I can play against certain players, I can add players who I've previously or recently played against. So I've, I just add myself here for example, and I can add another player and I'll just add Mikah for example. There we go. So I can play against Mikah today. And then I can tap save and this is our game.

(01:20:42):
And now when we get to the end of the game, then I can fill in the scores and so I can give myself a 50 point bird score and Mikah might have a 48 point bird score, but I maybe didn't do very well on the round bonuses. And so I could perhaps just have four points there, whereas Mikah has managed to max it out at 20 points. Maybe I did quite well on the goal. So I get nine points there and Mikah gets, I dunno, six points. And I could have say 10 eggs, but Mikah's been all out laying eggs all over his birds, so he's got 25 eggs there. I've got five pieces of cash food and maybe 10 tucked carts, whereas Mikah doesn't appear to have either of those, but that's okay because Mikah has still won.

(01:21:24):
And I can finish scoring add a note and then I can also see scores for this group. So I can see that against Mikah and myself. Mikah has won one game and I have won exactly zero games. But if I pop back again into a different one than I can see that apparently I've been playing against Danny and he's won seven games and I've won one. I feel like I need to up my wingspan score here. Maybe I need to get some birds with a wider reach, who knows? But as it is, this is a great little app, it's free to download and you can score a couple of games for free if you want those long-term statistics and so on, and being able to add stuff up over time. Then it is a 5 99 in at purchase to unlock for wing score premium. That's a one-time in at purchase. And yeah, then you can see top score. So apparently the best score in the game so far was 108 points, but Mikah, you were in close second with 99 points. Woo. So that was pretty good going. <Laugh> I'm, I'm very impressed with you. Well done. You played a great, great game of wingspan there. We we skipped the 40, 40 minutes of actual gameplay for you folks at home, <laugh> who are watching the video, but it's all right. I, I promise that's it. Score,

Mikah Sargent (01:22:33):
It's like a cooking show. You put it in the oven and then oh, suddenly it's ready, <laugh>, you pull it out. Alright, the cap top of my head is a yellow sun cap or like beach hat. And it has this sort of moldable ring around the outside, so I can shape it in all sorts of ways depending on where the sun's coming in or not coming in which is kind of delightful. But the app that I wanna talk about today is an app that just launched. It is the latest app from Niantic, and it, and Niantic, of course is the maker of the Pokemon, well, part of the maker of the Pokemon Go Game, as well as other sort of g p s based real world games like that Harry Potter game that was around for a while.

(01:23:22):
And some others that have existed even longer than that. The latest is Paradox and Para is available for free in the app, sort of download. It does have in-app purchases for different like packs and things, but it is essentially a iPhone tomagotchi ar tomagotchi. You have a little creature that's your little friend and you can go places and sort of play with your little parat. You can feed it, you can grow it, you can customize it. And so I hatched my parat from an egg, and then it is, or, and now it is alive, and I am sort of taking care of it. So it says, welcome Para keeper. You're now a member of the Per Keeper society, a global community of para caretakers. So my paradox is very small right now sitting on the desk and ooh, there now there, it's now kind of bigger.

(01:24:28):
So when you first start the game you can see that the AR is trying to display my perdot kind of large, but essentially you can, well come, I want you to come closer, please. You can pet your perdot on the forehead. Oh boy, this is kind of messy, but right now my perdot needs to eat and it also needs to play. So I can go to my backpack and I can get it some food. Oh. No, the food in your bag only lasts for so long each day your food will age and will eventually be removed from your bag. So you want to give your per food. So it's going away to grab that food. And then it will come back and presumably will be, there you go. You can see that it is kind of getting back into a good place in terms of food.

(01:25:23):
There's a sandwich in here, which is, oops, no, I don't wanna give it that. I want to give it a sandwich. So I can feed it a sandwich that goes and grabs that. And down at the bottom, this meter bar is showing how well it's fed. And you want to feed your perdot every day, play with your perdot every day to help it grow and stay happy. And anywhere on the surface you can circle. Whoops. You can circle an, maybe you can circle an area and have them dig into that area. And then when they do, they will, well, it's not working right now but when they do, they will dig up like tennis balls and food and things like that. There's also different goals that you have each day. So play fetch, eat a prickly beat, eat a dandelion.

(01:26:14):
I did feed, so I do reach level three and get some different rewards. You can teach them tricks over time and you can also add some traits. So I can go into the food and here's a special spring onion, which will actually teach them tricks. And the paradox keeps bopping me because it's trying to get my attention. So I'm gonna put that down for now. And obviously I need to go in and play with my paradox. I lo I created it I guess yesterday morning and overnight it has waited for me to hang out with it. So if you're a person who has trouble sort of sticking with a game, then the paradox might not be for you. It is definitely one of those games that a little bit like, what is it?

(01:27:09):
Nintendos oh, what is it called? You, you play a little creature. Yeah, animal Crossing. It's sort of like animal crossing where the, the people or the creatures are aware of the time that's passing. And so you don't want to ignore your little friend as you create your little ar pet. You can walk it around and when you go to different surfaces, it will find different things in different surfaces. So as you're walking around, you can have it dig in those areas and it will discover new items that will help you to train your per to feed your perdot to customize your per this game. I remember when it was announced many moons ago and waiting for it to release. I had pre-ordered it, and so that pre-order was available and I went and grabbed the game as quickly as I could.

(01:28:10):
So yeah, check out Parado again, available for free with in-app purchases. It's worth hopping on kind of soon because if you do, you can get some of this sort of founders stuff that you wouldn't get otherwise. So you get to you, you know, you get like special kit and special pack and a little hat that's part of the, the kickoff of the game. So yeah, you can check that out in the App Store. And with that, we've reached the end of this episode of iOS Today. Please consider tuning in live as we record this show every Tuesday at 9:00 AM Pacific. It's great to watch it. Twit.Tv/Live, that's where you go to watch the show live as we record it. But we think the best way to get the show is by subscribing to or following the show, depending on what service you're using by going to twit tv slash iOS.

(01:28:59):
There you'll find buttons to subscribe to audio or subscribe to video. You can click on those and then choose your provider. Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, YouTube. We try to be in all the places that you are so that you are able to get the show no matter what podcast, application or service you are using. If you would like to send us feedback, questions, shortcuts, corner requests, et cetera, consider emailing us iOS today, twit tv, iOS today, twit Do tv. That is a great way to get in touch and you can also get in touch when you join Club TWiT twit.tv/club twit. Consider joining the club for starting at $7 a month or $84 a year when you join the club. You get every single TWiT show with no ads. Yes, it's none of the ads, just the content is you are supporting the show.

(01:29:53):
You also gain access to the TWiT plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show special events that are published there, and access to the members only Discord server. That is a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club TWiT members and also those of us here at TWiT . And as I mentioned, another great place to leave your feedback, your questions, your app cap suggestions, et cetera. Twit TV slash club twit. Joining the club also gets you access to some exclusive Club TWiT shows. There's Hands on Windows, which is Paul Theros program. That is a shorter format show that walks you through Windows tips and tricks. There's the Untitled Linux Show, which is, as you might imagine, a show all about Linux. There's also my program, hands on Mac, which is a show that's also short format that covers specific tips and tricks regarding not just the Mac but your iPhone, iPad, et cetera.

(01:30:52):
And right now I am going through a, a series about the Finder on the Mac. So if you wanna make sure that you're making the most of the finder on Mac consider tuning in to Hands on Mac as part of your club TWiT subscription, twit.tv/Club twit. There's also Scott Wilkinson's, home Theater Geeks, which recently launched Relaunch, I should say, in the club. So all sorts of great shows there. Now let us move along to ask Rosemary Orchard. If folks wanna follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

Rosemary Orchard (01:31:33):
Well, the best place to go is rosemary orchard.com, which has links to the various things they do around the internet, podcast, books, apps, et cetera. And of course, you can also find me on social media@rosemarysnail.social on Mac. And naturally, I am in the Club TWiT Discord, hanging out in the iOS today channel, sneaking into the Mat Break Weekly channel. Every once in a while. Jason's not kicked me out yet. Neither's Andy <laugh>. So I figure I'm probably, I'm probably good to be in there every once in a while. But yeah yeah, that's where you can find me. And of course, every Tuesday here on iOS today. What about you, Mikah?

Mikah Sargent (01:32:06):
If you're looking to follow me online, I'm at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahua.coffee, that's c h i h huah hua.coffee, where I've got links to many of the places I'm most active online. Thank you all for tuning in this week. I hope you're out there rolling dice and playing board games. And Rosemary and I will see you again next week for another episode of I o s Today. Goodbye.

Rod Pyle (01:32:34):
Hey, I'm Rod Pile, editor in Chief VA Astor magazine, and each week I joined with my co-host to bring you this week in space, the latest and greatest news from the Final Frontier. We talk to NASA chiefs, space scientists, engineers, educators and artists, and sometimes we just shoot the breeze over what's hot and what's not in space books and tv, and we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So whether you're an armchair adventurer or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars Rocket, join us on this weekend space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.