iOS Today 657, 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, WWDC'S keynote has taken place. And that means the software is here and we are going to talk about it. We being Rosemary Orchard and me, Micah Sergeant, stay tuned for a jam packed episode of iOS Today,

Speaker 2 (00:00:21):
Podcasts you love

Rosemary Orchard (00:00:22):
From people you trust.

Speaker 2 (00:00:25):
This is TWiT

Mikah Sargent (00:00:31):
This is iOS today with Rosemary Orchard and Micah Sergeant, episode 657 recorded Tuesday, June 6th, 2023, WWDC, iOS and iPad OS 17. This episode of iOS Today is brought to you by Electric E-Bikes. Skip the plate out gifts this Father's Day and give the gift of adventure with electric e-bikes. Visit electric e-bikes dot com to learn more and explore the epic models electric has to offer. And by HelloFresh America's number one meal kit. Get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. Go to hellofresh.com/ios 16 and use code iOS 16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping. And by fast mail, reclaim your privacy boost productivity and make email yours with fast mail. Try it now free for 30 days@fastmail.com slash twi. Ooh, welcome back to iOS.

(00:01:41):
Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, iPad os, tv, os watch os, home Pod os. Did I mention all of the other oss <laugh>? There are lots. Oh, did I say watch us? I don't know. Look apple makes some awesome devices that we have, that we use, that you have, that you use. And on those devices you run operating systems. Yes, and we talk about them here on i o s today. WWDC Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is underway this week and the keynote has happened, which means that we know about the new versions of Apple's operating systems. So I am pumped today to be talking about them. I am one of your hosts, Micah, Sergeant,

Rosemary Orchard (00:02:30):
And I am Rosemary Orchard. I'm very excited to be talking about all this stuff. It was a great keynote yesterday Micah, and you know, I dunno if we're gonna be able to fit it all in. We don't have two and a half hours plus five hours for analysis here,

Mikah Sargent (00:02:42):
<Laugh>. Unfortunately we do not. And in fact, that is going to be you know, sort of one of these, one of these things we have to, to figure out together is how much we're going to be able to get through. I think first and foremost, we should talk about iOS and iPad os and then we will see where we are and what we can cover after that. Because we also at some point probably next week want to get to the Apple Design Awards those took place yesterday and Apple has named some winners of the Apple Design Awards. So we Rosemary Orchard and myself always talk about those. So yeah, there's just so much to cover. We don't have all of the time in the world. So let's kick things off first and foremost by talking about iOS. Rosemary, what is the number for this next version of iOS?

Rosemary Orchard (00:03:35):
Oh, I don't know, Micah. We're currently on 16, so does that make it 9,000? Over 9,000? It's, it's over

Mikah Sargent (00:03:42):
Thousand

Rosemary Orchard (00:03:42):
17 <laugh>. Yes, I was 17. Absolut iOS and iPad OS 17 is the one we're going to.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:49):
Yes. Yeah. And so I was able to attend the event yesterday in person to watch them kind of go through things. And for anybody who was out there in the world you and I saw very similar things, you know, in some cases, perhaps more than I do because I was so involved in what was going on yesterday that I have not had that opportunity to dig into. Excuse me, incredibly deeply. But what's great is that Rosemary and I can come together and share about these operating systems and the features and the experiences there. Apple kicked off the iOS section talking about a new well, well actually talking about not a new app, but talking about apps that have existed for a long time, communication apps and loads of new features that are coming to those communication apps. So let's talk about phone first and foremost because there are some new experiences within phone.

Rosemary Orchard (00:04:55):
Yeah, there are. And first of all, the one that I think a lot of people are really going to enjoy is the fact that you can now get live voicemail transcriptions. So for a while we've been able to, if you run a supported carrier, get transcriptions of voicemails, but now you can actually get live transcripts of the message as somebody is leaving it. And that seems pretty darn handy for, you know, the, the time where you can't answer the phone. But if, if it is really important, then they leave a message, it would be nice to know what's being said so that you can then, you know, duck out of a meeting or whatever and go, oh, no, I really need to go deal with those very friendly looking raccoons in the basement. At least that was the example that they put in the keynote yesterday. So yeah, it's, it's really nice and ties in with the unknown callers as well, so that if you've got unknown callers or silence unknown callers, sorry, it's the name of the setting, if that's turned on, then you know, you can actually take advantage of the fact that even though you are not gonna hear the phone ring, you're still gonna be able to see what's going on if they leave a message. And it's actually important.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:58):
And here's one of those moments where it is handy to have been on boots on the ground at wwdc because I've, I learned a little bit about this feature. It is a very clever bit of software hacking <laugh>, so to speak, because essentially what's going to happen on your phone is that it's almost faking voicemail. What happens when the call is placed is that on device, your phone is going to pick up the call and when it picks up the call, it will then play that voicemail message. You will get to see what the message is, and then if you choose to answer it, then you're essentially just going, okay, let me tune into this call now that is taking place. If you choose not to answer it, if you decline, or if you just ignore it until it goes away, then iOS will take that voicemail and we'll then forward it to your voicemail inbox.

(00:06:55):
So it's a little bit of clever stuff going on behind the scenes to make this feature possible. And that way it can kind of be separated from the carrier side of thing. Things that it can actually just kind of happen locally on device. And then of course, it's also privacy maintaining in doing that live transcription. Another feature that I'm super excited about with phone, and this is actually kind of a, a feature that's going to make its way into all sorts of systems within these platforms, is a new customization feature. This is a feature that are called contact posters. And so you can make a contact poster for yourself. It has some typography at the top with your name, and then there's a photo option. It can be black and white photo of you. It can be your emoji, it can be whatever.

(00:07:48):
And you have just whatever you want set up to be your contact photo. And then there are a bunch of settings for, for the sake of making sure that this is not abused. So you set it so that it's only your people that you have saved as your contacts, for example, that can show up with a contact photo for you. And then there's also some special inbuilt technology that will automatically blur sensitive images. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because right after this feature was announced and we're, you know, we're sitting in these seats outside watching the event and someone in my general area mentioned something about, well, that's, that's gonna be abused pretty quickly. And there was a concern that somebody would use this feature to, to create a contact photo that was lewd and was not good.

(00:08:48):
And so Apple did consider that and has sort of built in some ways to make sure that that's not an issue. But I really like this because when I think about contacts and contact sharing, I really do like to try to get a photo for every person. And so the idea that they can make it themselves now and that it can be this sort of full, full featured face on my phone that pops up and I can go, oh, now I don't suddenly have to sort of look really close and see who's calling. I can just see, oh, that is my mom, for example that pops up. So I thought that was a really great feature. And there were, there were a few other things within sort of the communication section that I thought were interesting. Rosemary, did you see that they have redesigned the interface for accessing iMessage apps and everything every utility that's involved?

Rosemary Orchard (00:09:44):
I did see that Micah, and not only did I see that I actually have it here on my iPad, oh, because, you know, I, there's kind of a, a requirement for me, I guess to go ahead and test all these features. So I'll just pop up my iPad and you can see that I was messaging Micah earlier and if I tap on a plus, so where you would previously have had, you know, sort of an array of app icons underneath the message bar you'll now see that there is a a single plus. And then there's a number of features there including obviously being able to take photos from your camera photos sending audio and your location, which has had a bit of an improvement. But not only that there is also some new stickers and some other features as well, some of which only available on iPhone such as check in. But this is pretty nice and it's also quite cool to be able to just send any emoji as a sticker if you would like to do so. So there we go. Micah, have a purple heart.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:42):
Aw, how nice. And I, yes, I love that. Now basically before you could tap and hold on a message or double tap on a message and put thumbs up, thumbs down, and a few other little reactions. Now you can essentially use any emoji to react as a sticker, but it still gives you that opportunity to kind of react in whatever way. Just if, if anyone's familiar with Slack or Discord, it works a lot like that. Now, I wanna give special attention to check-in because I actually think this is a fantastic feature that has been added to iOS. My partner and I, we mostly because I have this anxiety, I've talked about it before on the show where, when Leo and I used to do the show together and Leo, you know, would arrive at some time after 9:00 AM and I would always be worried that as he was making his way here, he drove off into a ditch somewhere and was not going to make it.

(00:11:38):
So everyone in my life, whenever they're traveling in my brain, it's going, are they in a ditch? Are they in a ditch? Are they in a ditch? And so I like in maps, we've talked about it before, the share eta feature, where in maps you can share with another person. It tells them when you're meant to arrive. And then if that time changes because you took a stop or did something else or your route changed, then it will update that person. But with share e t a, it is a very location focused feature. So the person with whom I've shared my ETA can kind of see my progress along the route. And in that way it limits who you would be willing to sort of share that information with. What I like is that with check in, it works a little differently.

(00:12:29):
This I think opens up the opportunity for folks to safely share their journeys without that kind of block that friction that comes from, do I really want this person to have my live location at this moment? Is that something that I'm concerned about? With Check checkin, you basically say, I'm about to go to a place, right? And they will then get a notification when you reach your destination if you are making your way there. And for some reason you stop making progress because you're, let's say you're going from the Twitch Studios over to the Starbucks that's nearby. So the wonderful technical director on the show Kevin is making his way over to Starbucks, but on his way, a a a a great white shark appears for some reason in the the, the parking lot on his way there.

(00:13:27):
And so he stops, obviously, he's gotta check out why this great white, white shark is randomly in the middle of the parking lot. It would then let me know because he shared his check-in with me that for some reason he stopped making progress. This gives me the opportunity to check in with him and make sure that everything's okay. He sends the photo of the shark, I go, oh, well he's a shark guy, obviously he's gotta check out the shark. Maybe I'll go too. But if the shark bit, Kevin, which we know sharks don't attack very easily, they're not, they're not aggressive creatures mostly. Then for some reason the shark bit Kevin, and he was unable to respond at that point. Then it will share Kevin's location, the battery level of his phone, and also the current cell service status of the phone. So that way I would be able to find Kevin, save him from this shark that has bitten off his leg and be able to get him over to the Starbucks and, you know, to the, the emergency room afterward.

(00:14:23):
So all of that is to say, what I love about this feature is, you know, maybe Kevin would not wanna share his exact location with me with that ETA feature, but something where in the normal scheme of things, it's not, I don't won't have that location information. It's only in the case of an emergency would I have it. I know I would be willing to then tell more people about where I'm going. And then that just makes people, I think, safer overall. So a really cool feature. Rosemary, you have some more that you wanna talk about when it comes to messages, phone and FaceTime?

Rosemary Orchard (00:14:57):
Yeah, so I wanted to mention about specifically the stickers and how the stickers have been improved for iOS 17. So we previously had stickers. They've been around for a while. Don't worry, they're not going away if you do like using them, but if you've wanted to be able to use things like emojis as stickers before, then you can. And now you can also create your own stickers. So if I tap on the Plus and go to stickers, it'll pop up this few. And as you can see, I've got a really adorable cat here, her name's Gracie. But what I can do is I can tap on any picture and it will pop in and attempt to figure out who the focus or what the focus in this photo is. And in this case, we've got a lovely picture of Ruby, who's an adorable kitty cat.

(00:15:41):
And then it will use that same technology that it uses to help you lift the subject outta a photo and let you add that as a sticker. And then you can actually go ahead and you can add effects. So you can add like a sort of white outline to it. You can turn it into a comic effect. It doesn't show up too well. You're on Ruby. There we go. Puffy effect. It works quite well. And then there's also shiny for a lovely sort of holographic, but not only that, there's also the ability to do live stickers. So this is a live photo that was taken of me wearing a ridiculous costume. I was trying some flying ch peas at the weekend and I forgot my, my clothes and they wouldn't let me use that as an excuse for not doing it <laugh>.

(00:16:23):
So yeah, so I, it's a live photo that was taken and it just has automatically picked me out. And so I can use that as a sticker now. I'll add a lovely little shiny effect to it, and then I can just send that over to Micah using that just as a sticker by just placing it on that message. And then if Micah were running iOS 17, then he would hopefully see a little animated version of that coming in on his end. But this is really nice. And stickers and in general, sort of iMessage apps while they didn't necessarily, aside from stickers, get a lot of talk time, the fact that things like location sharing and so on shows up directly in line in messages now is just gonna be really useful and powerful for folks. So I can see a lot more people wanting to use this and take advantage of that.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:11):
That is awesome. I will report that I am not able to see any of those stickers, unfortunately. It was funny yesterday I was walking out of the Apple Podcast's studio at wwdc, and I got this message and it said in parentheses testing stickers. And I immediately turned to Jason Snell of Mack Brick Weekly and Dan Moore and my co-host on Clockwise and occasionally a guest on Mac Break Weekly <laugh>. And I said, Rosemary's got the bait is installed. They said, of course she does <laugh>. So I was a little bummed, I wasn't able to see the stickers that you sent me. But yeah,

Rosemary Orchard (00:17:50):
Still, well, I wanted to send the explanation of testing stickers in case you were getting you know, like the, the tap back effects on Android when they go through, you know, yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:17:59):
It just says like, yeah, Mike and

Rosemary Orchard (00:18:00):
Sergeant, like this message first me Orchard, like this message.

Mikah Sargent (00:18:04):
So that was, that was fun. Let me quickly talk about FaceTime. So with FaceTime there are a few options. One, now you can leave a message whenever you're using FaceTime. So if you place a call with FaceTime, what happens is if the person doesn't answer ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, and then it just cancels the call is over. Or if someone obviously hits the button to cancel it, then it also ends. Now if, if the person doesn't answer whatever, then you can leave a message and say, Hey, I was FaceTiming you to talk about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It also is going to include some fun little reactions that you can do. So if you throw up two thumbs while you're doing a FaceTime call or you do certain gestures, there are all sorts of different gestures that you can kind of find based on hearts, confetti, fireworks, and some more.

(00:19:04):
Then those hand gestures will make these kind of animated effects where there's confetti in front of you. So they're very layered, which is pretty neat or fireworks that kind of burst behind you. And those all kind of work together no matter where you're doing these, these FaceTime calls. So that is available on, on FaceTime anywhere on, on any device. I think we should take our first break because there's so much more to talk about. But I do want to take a moment to tell you about Electric e-Bikes who are bringing you this episode of iOS today. If you're struggling with, what am I gonna get dad for Father's Day, well, don't settle for the tie. Instead, give him the gift of a fun, powerful and easy way to get outside and explore with his own electric e-bike. I mean, yeah, you could stick with that pocket knife, the beer themed apparel or the bar set, but why not switch it up with a gift that he'll want to use every chance he gets?

(00:20:09):
And I'm telling you, I know when I got on that electric e-bike, I wanted to use it every chance I got. Cause it's so much fun. The wind in your hair. You can see Leo if you're watching but if you're listening, I'll describe Leo's on the cargo e-bike. I believe it's called the Expedition Model. And he actually has some boxes on the back of it because it's got this nice cargo rack that you can put attachments on. So there's an option for some child seats in this case, he's just got boxes strapped to the back. But these electric e-bikes, they've got lots of torque. They're a lot of fun. They fold up. They're very compact. So you can go ahead and, you know, take them where you, where you're planning on biking and they're just helpful for things like hills, but also I just think they're kind of exhilarating even if you're not going on hills.

(00:21:00):
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(00:21:49):
It's got lights for the front and back that light up that are battery powered as well. And then Leo and I went on a little trip around the TWIT studios and had fun riding on our bikes. You can roam freely and reach up to 28 miles per hour with the twist of a throttle or the next level pedal assist. That's what's cool is that there are two options. You've got the throttle on the handle, but you can also, whenever you're pedaling it will just add to that experience there. Electric e-Bikes, as I mentioned, foldable, they ship free, fully assembled. So if you kinda have that concern of, oh, well I'm gonna get this for dad, but then he's gonna have to get it all set up. Well, no, dad doesn't wanna have to do the thing he always has to do, which is get the bike or the toys set up for whomever.

(00:22:37):
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(00:23:41):
Rosemary's already testing and I forgot to mention the developer betas hit right after the event. I think it was a couple of hours, maybe even less after wwd c's main keynote ended. And then the public betas are going to be shipping next month. So that will be the opportunity for the general public outside of the developer community to get the opportunity to test iOS 17 iPad, all of the, the oss. So if this stuff is very exciting, you're wanting to get give it a go and help Apple make sure that it's, you know, bug free and a good experience, well, that will be coming your way soon. Let's move on to talk about a feature that I, I really thought of you. I thought of Matthew Castelli. I thought of Mike as Sergeant. I thought of a few people who like to control their homes and have thought about having some sort of panel where they could do all of that. Apple announced standby for iPhone. What is standby?

Rosemary Orchard (00:24:44):
So this is a really cool new feature, which anybody who has as I happen to have one here, a max safe charging stand is really gonna appreciate. Now, unfortunately due to a bug in the beta, I have had to restore my iPhone. So I don't actually have it running iOS 17 right now, but what you can do essentially is dock your phone on this landscape on automatic safe charging stand in landscape. And then when you do so and it's in landscape, then it will show you a dashboard. But this is not just a dashboard. If you kind of think of widgets and the Apple watch and the watch faces and then imagine that they had a little baby together, this is what standby mode looks like. And so you have different screens, which can show you different kinds of information at different times of day.

(00:25:33):
Notifications come in and they come in in a, I've got a, a few screenshots hopefully that I might be able to show off from yesterday when I was testing this where a friend of mine was convenient enough to or it's smart enough to send me a message at just the right time. And there it is. So I'll just pop that up on my iPad for Fox. So when notifications come in, you'll, they'll sort of appear on screen as a full screen, and then you've got you know, sort of overviews. This is a, a sleep face that I set up so that this is where my phone can be on the dock before I go to bed and sleep mode enables, which obviously dims everything down. But it's just a really nice idea to have, you know, a device that you've probably got, you know, within site all the time that hasn't always on display actually taking advantage of that.

(00:26:22):
And so if it's on a MagSafe charging stand, then it's gonna be able to do that. And it's even going to remember based on different charging stands like what display it was showing. Now in my experiments earlier, I've got a, a couple of MagSafe charging stands dotted around the house. It wasn't necessarily remembering things for me, and I don't quite know how it does this if it's actually using like something MagSafe related with MagSafe IDs or if it's using like your geographic location. I filed a bug report on that, but then I, I had to restore my iPhone anyway, so I'll be finding out once the finishes restoring, and then I install the beta again later today <laugh> to see if I can figure out what's going on there. But it's just a really lovely idea to have that information that you want and need right at hand, you know, in your face without being too in your face.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:09):
<Laugh>, yes, I, I I was very excited about this because this was also Apple's opportunity to sort of show off the new kind of glancing interface and interactive widget experience this just being able to do more with our devices, right? I think that's what makes this particularly exciting. And speaking of interactive widgets that is sort of part of this experience now is when I look at my phone that is, you know, running iOS 16, I've got different widgets on my screen, both iPhone and iPad, and those widgets are essentially nothing more than links to apps, right? I, there, there's the option to, for, for developers to be able to do a little bit more. So for example, this is the fantastic how widget, and on the left it's showing my calendar by the days, and on the right it's showing my actual events and there's a little plus icon in the bottom right corner.

(00:28:19):
When I tap on that, all it does is launch fantastical to a specific page. And what you can do with fantastical is choose what that little action button does. And essentially what the developer is doing is linking to a specific dialogue or, or page or setting within the app. So depending on what app you have there you would have that the, the, you know, a specific option. So it could, for example, if you tap on an email, it could launch that, that page and, and show that email. But outside of that, it's not very interactive. What's coming in iOS 17 is the ability to take things further where I don't need to necessarily launch an app to be able to interact with something. So Apple showed the home app is one way to make use of this that I could have on my home screen or on a second screen wherever little tiles for my different lights and be able to just tap on it and it wouldn't launch the home app. Instead, it would just, right there, go ahead and turn on or off the lights, or if I have reminders to be able to just tap right there without needing to go into the app to make it happen. That I think is magnificent. That is, is the experience that I really want. And if we go to Rosemary, it looks like Rosemary's showing us some magical stuff here on iPad.

Rosemary Orchard (00:29:51):
Yeah, so all of the features that came into iPhone and iOS are also coming to the iPad which includes those interactive widgets. So I have a task list in my reminders called IRS today. And there's a couple of tasks on there, so I need to say, hi Micah. And I've done that, and now I can just check that off and it, it updates straight away. It sends it off to the app, which immediately changes the count of things that are due and then slowly makes the chill task disappear. And then there's some other the home app has finally got a widget. It didn't have a widget before, and I can use that to turn on and off lights, which there's worn behind my head if you're watching the video. And as I tap the, the widget, it turns on and off, which is pretty cool.

(00:30:38):
So, you know, this is, this is a really good thing that a lot of people have been asking for a number of times. I've seen app developers have to respond to users of, sorry, no, I can't make my widget interactive because that's an iOS thing. Like, I can't do that. And people are like, well, you're at widget's, rubbish. Then it's like, it's not the developer's fault, it was a widget kit limitation, and now it's gonna be a combination of widget kit and how much time does the developer have to implement all of the new things that we got at WWDC that may mean that widgets aren't necessarily interactive as soon as iOS 17 comes out in September. But as it is, it's gonna be pretty nice and I'm looking forward to all sorts of things like task managers and so on updating so that you can check things off without having to open the app. And I dunno, maybe from Fantastic Health, if the calendar event is like the next one and it's got location when I tap on it, it'll be able to navigate me to that in maps or something. That would be pretty cool if you could do that, but I guess we'll have to see what happens.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:36):
Apple has also decided to update airdrop a little bit. So we are used to using airdrop. You know, I go into photos, I select multiple photos, I tap the share sheet icon and then up pops the share sheet where I can then choose to airdrop it which will sort of link two devices together, temporarily let you send over files, photos, whatever. Airdrop is sort of, it's being rethought or, or I guess maybe it's, it's having an add-on. And I think that this is smart. I was talking to Jason Snell about this, and he mentioned how he feels like a lot of folks average everyday folks don't necessarily sort of groc airdrop and understand what it is, how it works, what you're doing because of the way that it exists, kind of hidden behind these different options.

(00:32:40):
But being able to simply bring two phones near each other and say, you know, now I wanna, I, what I'm trying to do is share something that that makes a lot of sense for a lot of people because it is this sort of physical gesture. It is, okay, I've selected these things and now I wanna pass it off to this other person. So you will now be able to use this nearby interaction to transfer stuff over airdrop. And there were two features that came along with this that both got reactions as I was watching the keynote live. One was a feature called Name Drop, which got a huge chuckle because it's just a great clever name for a feature. And with it, it is I think folks will be familiar in the early days of iOS. I can remember an app that tried to do this, and I think it maybe have even been called Bump, but essentially mm-hmm <affirmative>, you and another person can share your contact details very easily using this name Drop feature.

(00:33:46):
So right now what I end up doing when I'm trying to get someone's phone number, you know, a new friend or whatever is I launch the Messages app, I tap new message, and then I hand over my phone and say text yourself essentially. And so then they send a text that says, you know, this is my care, or whatever, and then we have that interaction, and then I save the phone number that way. It used to be that you would hand it over and you'd just do the phone call, but with this you can choose to share certain information, leave certain information behind, and then also share your contact poster, which we talked about before all using this name drop feature. So I choose, you know, with any particular person, I wanna share my name, I wanna share my phone number and my email, but I don't wanna share my Android phone number, or I don't wanna share this, or I don't wanna share that.

(00:34:39):
That can all be left off you simply put your phone near the other person's, you name drop it over, and then they can swap with you at the same time. The other feature that got a, an actual kind of woo moment was a new feature called airdrop. Well, actually it doesn't, it doesn't quite have a, a name, but it is a feature of airdrop where, and this happens a lot I at home and here in the studio am spoiled with excellent wifi, right? So I can, from my phone share something to my Mac, I can share something to another phone people who are over with guests, I can share stuff to them so easily, so quickly. But a lot of people don't have these, you know, gigabit or more internet connections and when you're out and about the cellular connections.

(00:35:32):
And so, given that it can be kind of troublesome to try and share an airdrop and have the whole thing transfer over, if you are trying to share 30 images with someone, or a big video file with someone, if the person doesn't wanna sit there with their phone open and make sure that airdrop is actually going to transfer over you, I, I've seen a lot of failures of, of transferring the airdrop in the way that it's set up now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> in coming later this year, airdrop is going to let you send files over the internet. So you'll start the airdrop session locally, but then if you move out of the distance of the device, it will continue to send securely and in full quality over the internet, even if you leave that range, as long as you and your recipient are signed into iCloud. So it's essentially using iCloud on the backend, and it will swap from trying to show the files directly to just going up into the cloud and letting them get it that way. So I thought that was a very clever sort of, you wouldn't think about it front of mind, I think. And so the fact that they're making that happen I think is great.

Rosemary Orchard (00:36:45):
Yeah, I, this'll be especially handy for those times where, you know, you've taken a bunch of pictures of folks and you've gotta run. So you, you need to leave, which means you can't hang around to let airdrop transfer finish. You can start and then you'll be able to let it finish. You know, over the internet, I'm hoping that it's gonna have kind of like a pause and resume if your signal drops or something. Because usually if you, you have to run off somewhere then you know your signal's gonna get weaker or disappear at some point before it reconnects. But fingers crossed this will work great, and I'm certainly looking forward to giving it a try.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:17):
A few other quick things autocorrect has been updated. They are using a new transformer model for it that is supposed to result in improvements in what we can expect. It also means that it pays more attention to you specifically and your habits. And if you want to ducking, say something a certain way, you'll be able to it'll actually listen to you whenever you make that change. So what, what it means sort of in practice, and it was funny, I was talking to Kevin before the show about this is most people are probably not going to notice that autocorrect has changed because we as humans tend to sort of accept when things are working and it just kind of rolls past us. But when something is not working, that's whenever we pay attention to it.

(00:38:11):
So in theory, if this is going to improve, you may not notice unless you're paying close attention, but what it'll result in is less times whenever you're trying to type something out and it keeps autocorrecting it to something else instead. Apple also improved also using a transformer model this time for voice recognition, it is improving dictation on across the system so that it is better at translating what you've said into text and the the, the predictions are going to be more in line as opposed to the way now where you can kind of tap above and, and try to figure that out. You just use the space bar and that'll help you finish words or, or specific sentences. So I like those kind of tiny changes that are taking place there. Also, I was very excited to hear that they are changing the way that, hey, S I r I works, where right now we say hey, and then the name in iOS 17 and forward you will just say Siri.

(00:39:24):
And so that will activate it. And then what I was pumped to see is that you will be able to do back to back commands to the virtual assistant. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, this is something that has kept me from wanting to use s I r I for so long because it was annoying to me that I had to say, Hey, you turn on my lights, and then, Hey, you set my lights to direct sunlight and hey, you set my lights to 60% brightness. The idea that I can just say the name turn on my lights, then set them to direct sunlight and change them to 60%, that is a pretty cool feature. Any other small things in I, when, if you have comments on that as well. But any other small things in iOS that you wanna mention before we move on to talk about iPad os?

Rosemary Orchard (00:40:19):
Well so I'm showing this on my iPad, but this is the same on the iPhone as well. I checked it before I had to restore it which is, you can actually say for the Siri option, what it should listen to. So either you can turn it off so it's not gonna listen at all. You can have it go listen just for, hey, S I R I or it can listen for Siri, or hey, theory that we go <laugh> that's spaced out hopefully enough that I'm not triggering everybody's home pods and I certainly didn't trigger my iPads, so fingers crossed for you all who are listening. But yeah, that's a really nice feature that, you know, will, will definitely benefit, especially with some of those improvements that they're looking at in CarPlay which will be coming along later this year so that we can you know, benefit from not just, you know, all of, all of the the improvements there, but also just the fact that Siri is gonna be a little more responsive. You know, cuz don't you just ducking hate it once. Siri just isn't listening to you.

Mikah Sargent (00:41:21):
No, I do, I do. Yes, there's, there's really quite a bit of, of, you know, that's a fun thing about this is that there are always these smaller features. We didn't really and well, we can probably talk a little bit about it in iPad os but there's a new app that's coming later this year called Journal that will give you prompts for things that you might want to journal about and help you sort of practice gratitude, which I know makes a lot of people roll their eyes that sort of phrase. But it is sort of scientifically backed psychological understanding that by sort of looking at and acknowledging and being reminded of the things in our life that we are grateful for that in, in doing so it can help with improving our mental health overall. And can also help you kind of slow down time when things feel like they're kind of slipping away from you, realizing the things that you've experienced and having that moment might might help you, you know stop that existential crisis you're having.

(00:42:30):
There's, there's so much freeform is getting a bunch of new drawing tools, which is very exciting. I'm looking forward to checking that out. Now photos will recognize pets and that got a huge cheer at WWDC Everyone in the cr I've, there were some people who stood up at that <laugh>. You'll be able to share air tags and other find my network accessories with up to five other people. I wanna make it clear it is not tied to families. You can share it with up to five other people. So if you and someone else, you know, maybe someone borrows your vehicle and you have an air tag in your vehicle, then you could temporarily share that air tag with them, so then they're not getting that notification that there's an air tag you don't know following along with you.

(00:43:14):
Pdfs are getting improvements for being able to interact with them, but also autofill on forms. There's gonna be an activity history in home, so you can see kind of different things that are happening in your home. And there's also going to be, I was excited to hear about this crossword puzzles coming to the news app. So if you're an Apple News Plus subscriber, there will be some crossword puzzles there, which means that I will probably be opening the news app a lot more than I have been thus far. Let's take a quick break and then we will talk some more about iPad OS and maybe cover a few more features that are exciting. And I know for Shortcuts Corner today Rosemary's got some stuff to talk about, but I do want to pause to take a moment to tell you about HelloFresh.

(00:44:03):
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(00:44:57):
Hellofresh Market has new snacks, meals, and more to add on to your weekly order, like their fun Sam Mores bundle for the kids. You can make entertaining easy with a selection of crowd pleasing eats like their Braw bar with caramelized onions, deese slaw, and pineapple relish, or a snack board with pretzel bites, spiced bar nuts and hot honey peach jam. If you need dinner ready, like now, well look for the quick and easy recipes on the Hello Fresh menu, including fast and fresh options Ready in just 15 minutes or less. Hellofresh is more convenient than grocery shopping, but did you know it's actually cheaper too? It's also 25% less expensive than takeout. Save money, save time, save stress, get Hello Fresh, no matter your lifestyle. You'll always find delicious recipes on the HelloFresh menu. You can take a bite outta something new with 40 recipes to choose from weekly.

(00:45:53):
You can even swap proteins and sides to make a recipe just how you like it. They send these beautiful recipe cards and they've got the sort of what you aspire to create at the end. You know, this, just keep in mind it's a professionally shot photograph. So if yours doesn't look exactly like this, don't hold it against yourself. You're doing great, honey. You're doing great, sweetie. Over here you've got all of the ingredients that you can expect, so then you can double check and the bag that everything is there as you want it. And then on the back is all of the information for making every step of the process. What I like is that they also have these little moments where for example, swap in chicken or organic chicken for pork, if you'd like, cook three to five minutes per side.

(00:46:36):
So if you want a different protein, then you could do that and they tell you how you can make that change. That is what I like about HelloFresh is the customization options. And as you are going through, as you're trying new recipes you get the idea kind of how things come together, and then you get the opportunity to kind of play around, experiment with what you wanna create. I know I like to add a few more spices to mine. So I have have done that too. My hello Fresh recipe, since it feels like jazz, I'm just sort of bopping along, creating, and I, oh, I, I bet I could just throw in a little bit of extra fresh cumin, for example, that I just ground. It's so much fun. It's very easy. And for me, I have to tell you and I know a lot of techy folks are this way, I don't want to have to think about what it is I'm going to eat next, ed.

(00:47:28):
So HelloFresh in the fridge is so nice because then I can just go, okay, it's already figured out. And then I get to make food, which I really enjoy doing, and it's, it's so easy, fun and in, in some cases incredibly quick with those quick and easy meals. Hellofresh is America's number one meal kit. Go to hellofresh.com/ios 16. I know we've moved on to 17, but there's a reason why it's iOS 16. And use the code iOS 16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping. That is why hellofresh.com/ios 16 and use the code iOS 16 to get 16 free meals and free shipping. That tells me that there's no reason you should not be going there right now. You get 16 free meals. Think about that. That's so nice that I don't have to think about what I'm going to make next because for the next 16 meals, HelloFresh and iOS today has you covered head there, hellofresh.com/ios 16 with the code iOS 16. Alright, Rosemary Orchard, we've got enough time to cover a little bit of iPad os before we head into Shortcuts Corner. So and, and of course the news tell us and in fact, you know what I'm gonna do this, your name some of your, your favorite other features that have come out across iPad os Watch, os, TV os, and else where, yeah, we'll go with elsewhere.

Rosemary Orchard (00:49:01):
Well, I'll start with iPad OS because there's a feature that I know a lot of folks have been looking for, and they're gonna be pleased to see that it's here. Customizable home screens. Woo. So we've got these on the iPhone, but they're, they weren't on the iPad and now they are. And so you're gonna be able to customize home screens with adding widgets doing the different text options and so on. So if I tap on the time, for example, I can change it to use a segmented that's not quite segmented but it's sort of a split digit font. There's widgets over on the left. And also not only that, but they've updated all of the different home screens. So for example if you want a really gorgeous picture of a Saturn as your lock screen wallpaper, then you can do that and you can add that and set these as wallpaper pairs and they tie into focus modes.

(00:49:55):
Then it will you know just work just like the iPhone, which is great. And I'm really looking forward to that. So that's, that's a big one. And honestly, all of the other features that came as part of iOS 17 as well. Another big one that we keep getting asked about health, the health app has arrived finally on iPad, which is great. Because, you know, one of the, the things that you know, messes with me in my mental, in my brain and also with my shortcuts that I create is that I'll create a shortcut for somebody and they'll try it out and it won't work on their iPad because they don't have the health app on their iPad. And that's a problem. So you know, now the, the health app's there and that's, that's really, really handy. Speaking of the health app, the medications feature got a really great improvement, which was the repeated reminders. So now if you don't take a medication and you've got a medication reminder set up in the health app, you can get repeated notifications, what to say that you need to take it. Are they trying to

Mikah Sargent (00:51:01):
Assure a lot? Do what's,

Rosemary Orchard (00:51:04):
I mean, I dunno, it's not quite that naggy. No. and I, I've only tried it once so far today. And yeah, I'm, I'm on the fence about how useful that's gonna be. It still has a lot of things lacking, but Watch os as well has just come with a whole complete new redesign. So if I try and show off the, the new watch os 10, unfortunately I can't because my Apple Watch is disconnected from my iPhone cause it's still restoring and one of them is ahead of the other one, which is never, never a good sign. But there are some really great new features in predominantly based around interaction. So the way that you interact with your Apple Watch has now changed with instead of swiping up to go to the control center, instead you swipe up and you get a sort of widget stack and overlay.

(00:51:52):
And there'll be tips and other things. And this, for any folks who've used or tried the Siri Watch Face before is kind of like the bottom part of the Siri watch face gets put down underneath the bottom swipe you still got notifications underneath the top swipe, and then you'll be interacting to go to the control center using the button on the side to open it and close it. And then the, the Crown will still take you to Annapolis. As it did previously. There's also some new watch faces including this really lovely I can't remember what this one is called but it's using it's the palette face and it's using, it's got different color schemes and as the seconds move around, if anybody is watching the video closely, you can see that the, there's like two segments of color and this moves around and it kind of like fills your whole screen and wipes it out. And as, as it goes. And it's just really lovely and it, it, there's even a rainbow option for this. So yeah, I'm, I'm really enjoying it. And yeah, they also added Snoopy to the watch as well. They did

Mikah Sargent (00:52:47):
And it was so cute. Oh, so cute. I will quickly mention something that I was excited to see. We will, of course, we've got loads more to talk about and we'll talk about it over the coming several months before this stuff actually finally rolls out. And as the public betas come out, we'll, you know, recover it again and, and talk about what may change in the public beta. That's the good thing about this is that it's a, a whole set of, of topics that kind of goes on <laugh>, but I am very excited about TV o s 17, bringing FaceTime to Apple tv. The past two, three Christmases and Thanksgivings I had the, my family all lives in Missouri and so communicating with them has either involved this MacBook Air or an iPad that is sort of precariously placed and I'm trying to sort of position it and they only have iPhones on their end, so they're trying to sort of pass the phone around and then you get kind of dizzy.

(00:53:55):
It's been a nightmare. So seeing it come to seeing FaceTime come to TV os and the brilliance of the way that they've figured this out using continuity camera so that your iPhone can serve as the camera for your FaceTime experience is going to be fantastic. I can't wait for the very involved support call where I help them get it set up, but once it's set up, I am looking forward to being able to FaceTime chat with them in a way that is comfortable for everybody involved and doesn't need to, doesn't have to require people moving. You know, a phone around. And there is, I I wanted to mention to go along with this, a WWDC session that is coming on Thursday called Integrate with motorized iPhone stands using Dock Kit. So Apple is releasing the, well, I, I don't even, I don't think it's out yet, but I think the dock kit is new, but regardless of whether Dock Kit is new, what is new is this ability to integrate with motorized stands. So you can almost imagine connecting your phone to a stand that it very least can pivot left and right, and then being able to place that device in front of your television. And as you get up and move around, it can follow along with you. That is exciting. And I'm looking forward to seeing almost certainly bekin release a motorist that can

Rosemary Orchard (00:55:29):
Actually already have a product for this. And I can't remember what it's called, but they actually have like a, it's a max safe like video, like camera mount for your phone, but it only works in like one or two apps. And so I'm wondering if this was kind of like the impetus behind it.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:45):
Ah,

Rosemary Orchard (00:55:46):
Okay. Because the products has existed for a while. But yeah, it'll be really interesting to find out what happens there.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:52):
Good find, good find Kevin. So that I am looking forward to to seeing, and y we there's gonna be lots of coverage of the Vision Pro. So you know, and this, this show's primarily talking about operating systems. But I did one more quick mention and then Rosemary, if you have a few little tidbits and bites that you wanna share other outside of that apple talked about home and audio together and some of the features coming to AirPods, including some volume modes or a volume mode, a personalized volume mode that kind of pays attention to how you listen to music and content and then changes the audio based on what you're listening to. And then on excuse me, on the noise cancellation side of things, this sort of adaptive mode where it can switch between transparency and and blocking out audio noise cancellation depending on where you are, what the environment is.

(00:56:55):
So as you're walking along, if suddenly you hear construction near you, then it can block that out. But then you are trying to have a you or you hear somebody who's like calling your name, then it can sort of change to transparency. And then even cooler is that it can be smart about if you're having a conversation with someone and it will sort of duck the audio in the background of the conversation that you're having. So it becomes a lot more aware with personalized volume, conversation awareness and automatic switching. And then, oh, I forgot. You can also mute and unmute a call which is a nice feature that hasn't been possible. It used to be, you know, you'd tap the thing and it would hang up the call, so being able to actually mute or unmute is nice. And then the auto switching, I turned off on everything because it was not good <laugh>. But I am looking forward to seeing how that has improved in the next version. Any last things you want to mention before we move on?

Rosemary Orchard (00:57:55):
Not in particular, aside from the fact that home kit is gonna get logging, so you're gonna be able to actually see the history of who unlocked a door and things like that. It's only gonna be for certain things security related ones such as, you know, locks and so on. But that is probably gonna be very useful to a lot of folks who would like to know why is this door unlocked, who unlocked it? They'll now be able to check that in the home app once they get iOS 17 and iPad OS 17.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:22):
In, there was this interesting article in ior. I have not seen this anywhere else, but so I I kind of, I I don't know, Rosemary. There were claims that apple made the developer beta available to folks who aren't developers and I, I more spoke to a few people who were able to access the iOS 17 developer beta without having any sort of developer account. And I have not been able to confirm that independently. It did show up for me, but that's because I am a registered developer. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it could be, it could be that if you went in your phone and you opened up settings and you tapped on general and then you chose software update, and then you went into a little tab that appears called beta updates, it could be that you are seeing the ability to download the beta immor, of course is warning, Hey, you don't want to download this. It's going to be buggy. Yeah. Rosemary, you just had to restore your phone this morning. Yeah. Yeah, that's troublesome. And I'm also seeing knocks Harrington in the chat confirming that they too did experience this, so, hey. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if there are some folks who have have seen this, I'm, now I want to see, I'm gonna have to ask some folks here if they are also able to update to the beta. Yeah, that is troublesome for sure.

Rosemary Orchard (00:59:57):
Yeah. Yeah. So if, if you're there and you're not a developer and you're going, oh yeah, I can get the developer beta pause, take a deep breath. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> wait until next month. I literally installed the beta last night, had to completely and utterly wipe my iPhone this morning, and then reinstall iOS 16 which my iPhone is still restoring. It's still got another 40 gigabytes of data to go before I can then install iOS 17 again. And fingers crossed, that book that I encountered will not be there. But yeah, like thi this is very much intended for you are you know, writing apps and things to work with iOS. Let the developers break it for a month before you join the public beta, and you'll have a much better time of it, I promise.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:41):
Especially because the other

Rosemary Orchard (01:00:42):
Problem and also shortcuts on iPhone just crashes on launch, so there's not even, it's not even worth it.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:47):
And, and that's, I I, I'm concerned that folks will do this and Apple will stop sort of signing it or will figure out a way to sort of disable, and then it's gonna cause a whole headache trying to get it back to what you want before. And if people didn't back up their devices before they decided to update to th this is a nightmare, if this is a case that a lot of people are seeing this yeah, that is fascinating to me. Yeah.

Rosemary Orchard (01:01:10):
Also, scooter X has just made a very good point in the chat room. A lot of banking apps will absolutely freak out if you are on a beta and they will just crash on launch. And so you wouldn't be able to access online banking if they use their apps to send you, for example, two-factor authentication code or something. So yeah, I, I highly recommend not installing the beta at this point in time. And when you do secondary device such as your iPad or something rather than your iPhone, if you use your iPhone more than your iPad or vice versa, rather than jumping in headfirst, as exciting as it sounds you know, you've gotta have vision, but maybe hold off for a bit.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:47):
Yes. all let us actually, let's take another quick break and then we will come back for Shortcuts Corner and our app caps. I wanna take a moment to tell you about goodness gracious, love this sponsor. It's Fast Mail. You should be making email work for you, and you can do that with Fast Mail. Let's let you customize your workflow with colors, with custom swipes, with night mode, and so much more. I'm impressed with the additional features that Fast Mail has added over time. It that investing in an email provider is so worth it because you get a tool that is purpose built to help you make your best experience when it comes to email to have your best experience when it comes to email. Fast Mail now has quick settings. So in this Quick Settings menu, you can easily choose a new theme for your email, switch between Light Mode and Dark Mode, change your text size all without leaving the Fast mail screen.

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Rosemary Orchard (01:06:26):
Well there's a number of things I'm excited about. And of course, first of all is that shortcuts did actually get mentioned a couple of times in the keynote though it didn't appear to get any big features. But then you kind of look around in iOS and iPad os, which is what I'm gonna show off here. And you'll realize that shortcuts is sneaking into more and more places. So when you open a search you would previously get, you know, very serious suggestions and so on as well. But if I type for example, Micah then this has been updated a little bit to give me these are called app shortcuts. And so the fact that I've got FaceTime icon, I have a messages icon, I have a phone icon in with Micah's contact which is, these are actual app shortcuts.

(01:07:12):
And these will be expanding throughout the os as as everything goes. So now in my series suggestions, I can see that these are updated a little bit and they've changed that ui. And this is because shortcuts is kind of integrating everywhere now inside of shortcuts itself. While shortcuts has theoretically at least got a complete redesign and overhaul I'm, I'm not really seeing any significant changes here. The next action suggestions have changed a bit. There are, however, some new actions or rather shortcuts in the shortcuts from my app section. So the books app has got some new redesigned options, as does the clocks the clock app and so on. The Files app has a lovely scan document example. And music recognition has snuck in here as well, despite the fact that I don't have Shazam installed on this device.

(01:08:08):
But the phone is also here, but I have a feeling that that's because this is a beta and the often sneaks into shortcuts. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> in the first iPad OS beta and then gets pulled out again. But the, the, the thing that I'm sure a lot of folks have been looking for is automation related. Now, I sh as I mentioned before, the shortcuts app on I iPhone on iOS crashes on launch at the moment in this current beta, I'm just gonna see if I can make this app full screen. There we go. And so I haven't been able to check any of the triggers on there for new triggers, but it turns out that there are some new triggers and there's some improvements to existing automation triggers in iPad os. So for example if we have a look in the triggers, then we can see transactions.

(01:08:57):
So when you use Apple Wallet to do things, for example, if I use it for public transport and I can even choose to limit it to just one card and then I am also able to say, Hey, I would like this to run immediately. Now run immediately is what used to be called asked before running. And that was on by default. And, and now it says run after confirmation or run immediately. So we've got transactions. So there's public transport, payment access, e-money, and identity transactions. And you can filter that for different cards if you or sorry, you, you filter that for a particular card. And then it shows you various automations that you might want. Now what is different here is that it gives me a shortcut. So I can actually just choose to run a specific shortcut instead of doing what I had to do previously, which was create an automation and use the run shortcut action.

(01:09:53):
And that is a really nice improvement. And then also inside of this I can see that I can change my automation from run immediately to run after confirmation or don't run, which disables it. So that, that's a really nice trigger and option and improvement. But some of these other ones have also popped in. So on iPad we've got triggers for display and stage manager. So you've got when displays connect or disconnect and when Stage Manager is turned on or turned off. So I can imagine, for example, connecting a display would enable stage manager and then some of the other ones that we have had before, which maybe you couldn't necessarily do all that much with Bluetooth, for example, if you have a car that doesn't have CarPlay but it's got Bluetooth then previously you kind of had to hope that the Do Not Disturb or driving feature would you know, magically enable itself automatically.

(01:10:47):
And use your driving focus mode as a proxy to say, Hey, I've connected to my car. Well good news folks, you can now say when Bluetooth is connected, I want this automation to run immediately. And that's it. That's all, that's all you need to do. And that's, that's a really nice option. That's an upgrade there. And it's the same with wifi. And wifi even has an option for connection interruption. So if you disconnect from the, and then reconnect within three minutes, it wouldn't run it again. Oh, that's cool. Email and messages also now have run immediately Options. And so do location some locations may do. Now I'm actually not gonna let Shortcut access my location cause I have Felix's go show everything. If I do that, and I haven't had time to figure out how to spoof my location yet with iOS 17.

(01:11:38):
But some of the location options looked like they were able to run a little bit more immediately for you as well. So that is just like, you know, some of the, the really cool improvements. And also there's the fact that App Shortcuts have actually an app tens have really been kind of amped up and they've made the point of giving you you know, this whole section as an app in the shortcuts app. And then these things also all appear in the settings app sorry, in spotlight. So whenever you're searching for things and you can turn on and off whether or not an app appears in Spotlight, but by default it will appear in Spotlight. And I believe I haven't changed reminders, it will also appear in Siri as well. And so those, those app shortcuts, which are just magic shortcuts that come with the app for free, everybody can use them, don't need to configure them or set them up. They're just there and they work are there for everybody. And it's really exciting. I'm really sad that the shortcuts app just crashes on iPhone because I have a feeling there's even more stuff in there, which I would really love to see. But at the same time I'll just have to be patient and see what happens.

Mikah Sargent (01:12:51):
Yeah, I <laugh> and this is part of the reason why I have not done that upgrade to IO or upgrade. I not even really that I'm not installed the, the beta is there, but I I think I've, I think I've got an iPad I can do that on. So I'll be checking that out there. Alright, with that, I think it's time for some more music. It's time for App Caps.

(01:13:18):
This is the part of the show where we place caps to top our heads to honor our app or Gadget Picks of the week. These are the apps and gadgets we are using now or maybe have been using for some time that we are choosing to share with all of you because we think they're great and we want you to know about them. So we dawn Caps and honor those apps and gadgets. Rosemary Orchard, tell us about the cap on your head and then tell us about your app or Gadget Pick of the week. <Laugh>.

Rosemary Orchard (01:13:51):
Well, the hat at the top of my head was an emergency hat purchase when I visited New York last year. I've sworn I've been wearing outside a lot recently cuz it's actually been sunny here in the uk. Yay. It is just a green sort of large sun hat. It's got quite a f fluffy brim, so I'm gonna attempt to bend it up and it'll probably stay up and look pretty dorky. But you know what it means that you'll kind of be able to see my face. I say kind of because my app pick of the week is an iPad app. So that's gonna take up most of the screen if you are watching the video version. And this is the witness. So the Witness is not a new game. It's been around for a while. And I'm choosing to play it using an Xbox controller.

(01:14:32):
I've connected via Bluetooth to my iPad, but it does have touchscreen controls. But the Witness is an open world puzzle solving game. So I have already completed the first, well, I've, I've completed quite a bit, but I've left some of these areas open so that I can go back and co and you know, enjoy this with you folks. And so I'm just gonna move I put myself up here so that I could shelf some of the landscape and I've now got myself stuck because I can't actually navigate and talk at the same time. But there are essentially places that you need to go and you wanna like, find puzzles and then solve them. Now puzzles usually tend to be fairly obvious. I say fairly as in there are various different clues to help you solve things.

(01:15:19):
But essentially most of the time what you're gonna need to do is take a little cursor that's on screen and you know, tap on a dot and then solve your puzzle somehow. Now how you solve it depends on the puzzle. There are different kinds of clues and you will learn to do different things in different areas as you go. But once you've done that, then you get to enter another area and explore. And so I'm gonna have a look and I can see there's a cable there, so it's probably worth following that cable to see where it goes. I can see some screens on the wall, but they're not turned on yet. And there's some screens here. Oh, that one almost kind of melted. That's not good. And let's just go here cause there appears to be a cable running here and, oh, look, I've got a series of puzzles to solve and okay, well, the one on the door was symmetrical.

(01:16:08):
When I tapped on this. I got like one sort of I, I tapped and I selected one dot, but then both two things moved in com in conjunction with each other at the same time. So yep, it looks like I'm learning to use symmetry to solve it, but this is a really fun game. I've really been enjoying it. It's not you know, new in the sense of it's a brand new recently released game or anything, but it is new to me. And if you've played it before then you may be aware that it is available on other platforms as well. The advantage if you have not played it before of buying it on iOS is that it's actually cheaper on this platform. It is 9 99 here. If you were buying it on PlayStation or Xbox, it would be about $30.

(01:16:54):
So you can definitely save some money by buying it on iOS and why not? It is a fun game. It works on iPhone and iPad. It doesn't work sadly on Apple tv, which would be a great place to play it, especially as I'm using an MFI controller. But that said, you can always plug your iPad into the TV and dock it essentially to take advantage of that big screen if you've got one in your living room. And if not, well, you know, the iPad's a pretty fun way of playing the game as well. There we go. I think I've just solved another one. Bingo. so now I've got 1 0 2 more of these to go, but that's okay. I suspect I'll be able to finish those off later. So that is the witness. If you like puzzle solving games then you should check it out. It's great fun.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:38):
That looks like so much fun. I'm definitely getting that. So for me, the cap, I'm wearing the top of my head. It's kind of hard to see in the lighting, but it's the WWDC 2023 logo here in the middle of the hats. These were hats for attendees of WWDC and then around it, I've got some lapel pins. I've got one that is an old school Mac with the hello written across it, the Mac that actually had the hello written across it that had everybody screaming in the audience way back when. The rainbow pin, which is reminiscent of the rainbow structure in Apple Park. This says WWDC and I can't, I don't remember what the text below it says. But it's got some different icons on it. And then right here is a little emoji that has eyes and then there are these sort of fingers over the face and the, the person's peeking through.

(01:18:38):
We talked about it before the show about sort of what that means, and I thought maybe that's just a supposed to represent anticipation. It's like, I can't look, but I have to look, but I can't look, but I have to look. So this was fun to sort of dawn or not only Don Hat, but also place some pins to decorate this hat. So yes, very special episode and very cool that I shouldn't say a cool hat because it is black, so it does absorb <laugh> a lot of heat. But in any case, a a, a pretty nifty hat. The app that I wanna talk about is a relatively new app. It's called Web Roulette. And this is kind of a way to the, the hns back to the days of using an app or rather sort of browsing the web like you're flipping through channels, right?

(01:19:28):
So what you do is in the top left corner of the app or the kind of settings and you set up the different URLs that you want to switch between and below, there are some suggestions for sites that you might want to visit. So you can just tap the Plus to add those. You can add your own by hitting the plus button in the top right corner and then add that url. And then what you do is you swipe through and it just takes you to one of these random, to one of these sites randomly. So it's the sites that you want to see. But it is a random kind of look at it. It's the idea here is that you are again, it's like when you used to sort of channel surf until you found something that you, or even radio surf to try to find something that you wanted to listen to.

(01:20:17):
So this, I can kind of quickly look through what I want to, what I might want to read. I come across something that I can go down that rabbit hole if I'd like. And you only get to do so many swipes before you then have to shake your phone to kind of reset the reset the actual system so I can shake again and shake one more time. And then I am able to view oh, this was the, the Lego site. So these shakes will take me to random webpages across the internet rather than the ones that are just what I have actually listed in my set of, of sites. So if you kind of want to just, if you're bored <laugh> and you want to have a way to kind of find some new stuff to read or you know, you want to visit your favorite sites and obviously give them your views, so that helps support them.

(01:21:16):
I think this is a fun way to do it. It's web roulette. It's available completely for free in the App store. Super quick, download the file. You know, it's on a huge file and it's just a, a different way to look at websites instead of maybe, you know, RSS or whatever other way you might go about finding content maybe on, on Twitter or elsewhere. So I've found it fun as a way to visit some sites that maybe I haven't visited in a long time, and be able to, to read through what is what's out there. So yes, that is Web Roulette available for free in the App Store. And that brings us to the end of this episode of iOS Today. Folks, there again, so much to cover in iOS, iPad, os, and on and on and on.

(01:22:04):
Watch os all of the operating systems because WWDC just took place yesterday. We will be covering loads more Rosemary, I believe we will not have you the next two weeks. But I'm excited to say that Christopher Lolly, who was also with me at WWDC will be joining us the next two weeks to cover all sorts of, of stuff related to WWDC and the Apple Design Awards. So he's very much looking forward to that. I will miss you. Our listeners will miss you. And we look forward to your return after that. If you have questions out there folks, feedback shortcuts, corner requests, anything like that, please email us iOS today@twit.tv. We record this show every Tuesday about 9:00 AM Pacific. So consider tuning in live to watch it by going to twit.tv/live.

(01:22:58):
Then you can watch the live stream on various streaming platforms. But the best way to get the show is by subscribing not only the sake of getting the show when it's available, but also because it helps us when we can show that you out there are watching the show that is very helpful to us. So please consider subscribing. You can go to Twitter tv slash iOS, subscribe to audio, subscribe to video. We try to make the audio just as accessible as the video. The video is a great way to watch though, cuz you get to see a bunch of stuff. But we do our best to describe it. So tell your friends, send your friends this episode. If they are bugging you going, what's new in iOS, what do I need to know? Send them this episode, please send them the link.

(01:23:43):
They can listen, they can watch, you know, we're on YouTube as well, and that way they get an idea of what they can expect and they also get our shenanigans along with that. Please also consider joining club Twitter at twit tv slash club twit when you join the club. Starting at $7 a month, $84 a year. You get a lot of great stuff. First, you get access to every single Twitch show with no ads. It's all the shows just the content because you are the supporter. You also get 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 outtakes, all sorts of fun stuff, including Club Twit events. So it is you know, no matter when you join, you're going to suddenly have a back catalog of so much fun stuff that you get to watch that's there in the Twit plus bonus feed.

(01:24:31):
You can also join the Club Twit Discord. Many folks have heard it of Discord at this point. It's a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club TWIT members and many of us here at twit and all of that. Again, twit.tv/club twit, $7 a month, $84 a year. And you will also along with that, get access to some Club twit exclusive shows. You can check out hands-on Windows, which is Paul Thots program all about Windows. It's a shorter format show, so it's just, you know, covering specific tips and topics. That's a great way to sort of, again, you get this whole library of stuff where you can scroll through, find what you wanna listen to and learn about, and it's all right there. You will also get the Untitled Linux Show if Linux is your thing. There's a show all about Linux hosted by Jonathan Bennett which is so much fun for Linux nerds out there.

(01:25:23):
And then there's also Hands on Mac, which is my show that is also a shorter format show covering tips and tricks, not just for the Mac, but also iPhone, iPad. And as all of this beta stuff is rolling out, this is now the time to get to kind of get an exclusive first look at some of these features and how they work and what we know about them. So consider joining for that as well as Scott Wilkinson's relaunched Home Theater Geeks program. So Scott, every Thursday has a new topic about home theater. So much fun, all only available to club members. So twit TV slash twit to sign up. I said starting at $7 a month, that's not because it's sort of a tiered thing where if you pay $10 and you get acc no, no, no, no, no. Folks said, Hey, we'd like to give you more money because you keep adding new stuff that we love and value.

(01:26:15):
So is there a way we can do that? So we just said the cost starts at seven. If you wanna put in a number that's more than that, you can. And so that's available to you now. Please join the club that helps us keep doing what we do here, and we want to keep doing what we do here and bringing you this every week. And special shout out to some of the folks I talked to yesterday at WWDC who said, I watched your show and I love what you and Rosemary are doing. I really, we, this is why we do what we do because there are folks out there who v you know, find value in what we are able to bring to the table. So thank you for those kind notes. Rosemary Orchard folks wanna follow you online and check out all your great work. Where should they go to do so?

Rosemary Orchard (01:26:56):
Well, the best places, Rosemary orchard.com, which has links to social media around the internet and of course podcasts, apps and books that I am part of. Of course, I'm also in the Club Tour Discord hanging out in iOS today channel. And other than that, you can find me on Macedon at rosemary@snailit.social. And if you do happen to see me over the next couple of weeks at Glastonbury do come and say hi. And yeah, it would be lovely to meet you, but if not, then I'll be back in a couple of weeks. And Micah, where can folks find you?

Mikah Sargent (01:27:29):
You can find me online at Micah Sergeant on many a social network or head to chihuahua.coffee, c h i h hu a h a.coffee, where I've got links to many of the places I'm most active online. If you're watching, then you're seeing this great site called Bento. And Bento is a, it's Bento Me is a place to kind of set up a nice set of links. So not a sponsor. I just think that the service is really great and then it, ugh, it's got all my links on it. You, you'll be able to find me wherever I exist online. So not, not in person just online <laugh>. So consider heading there. And thank you all so much for tuning in this week. Thank you for taking the time to join us. We appreciate you. We appreciate bringing this show to you. And I and Christopher Lawley will be here next week for the next episode of iOS Today. Until then though, we say goodbye and thank you for tuning in.

Scott Wilkinson (01:28:23):
Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here in Case you hadn't heard, home Theater Geeks is Back. Each week I bring you the latest audio, video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system product reviews and more you can enjoy home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club Twi, which costs seven bucks a month. Or you can subscribe to Home Theater Geeks by itself for only 2 99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of home theater Geek.