iOS Today 664 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, talk about health apps and features for your iPhone, your iPad, and more stay tuned

Narrator (00:00:14):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

(00:00:22):
This is iOS today with Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent, episode 664 recorded Tuesday, August 1st, 2023, iOS health apps and features. This episode of iOS Today is brought to you by discourse. The online home for your community discourse makes it easy to have meaningful conversations and collaborate anytime anywhere. Visit discourse.org/twit to get one month free on all self-serve plans and buy Brooklinen shop in-store or online@brooklinen.com today to give yourself the cooling sleep you deserve. This summer use promo code iOS for $20 off your online purchase of $100 or more, plus free shipping on brooklinen.com. Welcome back to iOS. Today, the show we talk all things iOS and iPad, oss and watch OSS and tv, OSS and HomePod oss and all of the OSS that Apple puts out into the world. Yes, we talk about them on this show because our goal here is to help you make the most of those Apple devices. You own your iPads and your iPhones and your Apple watches. You know, you, you invest in these products and we wanna make sure that you are finding the best apps for them, that you are finding all the features that you can possibly use, that you are aware of the settings that you can change. That is our goal here on iOS today. I am one of your hosts, Mikah, Sergeant,

Rosemary Orchard (00:01:58):
And I am Rosemary Orchard. I'm very happy to be here and talking about health things again, Mikah, because, you know, we do this on a semi-regular basis because, you know, staying happy and healthy is quite important to us. But also just because Apple keeps changing stuff, and it's really exciting that the health app this year in September is coming to the iPad, which is something it's not been on before. So you're gonna be able to actually view all your health data on a bigger screen, on a better screen, maybe even. And you know, feel, felt like a good time to check in on what's going on in the world of smart health.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:30):
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this has been, I think, a long time coming. I'm happy to finally see it here. It is something that I've wanted for a while because I am I'm pretty, you know, into checking my, my health information and keeping track of my health information and trying to make sure that, you know, I I just have some semblance of understanding of what might be going on. So coming to iPad, yes there are also some new features that are going to be introduced in iOS 17. Ipad OSS 17. And while most folks are not going to see these new features until sometime probably next month maybe in October I did want to go ahead and talk about them because of course, we talked about the public beta being available. So there are a number of folks who have been trying out this software, testing it to make sure it is ready to rock when the next iPhone launches sometime in September or October.

(00:03:36):
So one of the new features that we, we talked a little bit about last time is the ability to track your sort of mental wellbeing. There's a new category in iOS that will help you to track your mental wellbeing. And this, of course, is a category that has several new features in it. But some of the, the features that are in it are, or rather the data that's in it is data that has existed elsewhere. So, sleep, for example, is a, as much of a physical health as it is a mental health tracking metric and state of mind and time in daylight are two new features in mental wellbeing. Exercise minutes, of course, are features that have long existed but are considered part, again, of your mental wellbeing. So you can see that for some reason at 8:44 AM my Apple Watch tracked one minute of exercise that was probably when I was running very quickly up and down the stairs, <laugh> to prepare myself for today's show.

(00:04:43):
But that is a feature that's long been there. But time and Daylight is one of the new features that has come. And Time in Daylight is a feature that when Apple talked about it on stage at ww d c they sort of put it forward as a feature that was kinda a package mostly meant for kids. They talk about vision, health in particular. And with children, there are things that we can do for our kids that we might not be able to do for ourselves, depending on our age to help decrease the risk of myopia. Meaning that it helps to improve our farsighted vision. And so one of those things that we know is not looking at stuff too closely in front of our eyes. If we have it very close in front of our eyes, then we are potentially sort of not working out the proper muscles and overworking other muscles.

(00:05:49):
And that can lead to again, myopia. Another thing is going outside and being outside in daylight for a certain period of time. And there are multiple reasons for this. It has to do with daylight, yes, but it also has to do with the fact that when we are outside versus inside, our vision is sort of working in the background to look at things that are very far away and things that are near. Whereas when you are inside, your vision typically doesn't go very far, particularly if you live in California or some other place where real estate is incredibly expensive, <laugh>. So my little box of an office, my vision is not doing a whole lot of work when it's getting to the end of the room in this space. So that plus the fact that sunlight also is going to help your body with the production of vitamin D all come together to make it a a benefit to you and your mental health.

(00:06:50):
So 20 minutes outdoors every day is what is recommended. If you can do more, that's better. And basically with the introduction of this feature for tracking, it will use your Apple Watch which has an ambient light sensor built into it. And essentially, when it detects sunlight, then it will track that metric and use that as a way to determine if you've been in daylight. The other feature is state of mind, and we did talk about this with state of mind. You have kind of two different metrics here. Two different measurements here, rather. One is mood, and the other is emotion. And these are kind of standardized terms. I talked about this too in at least the United States for psychological just terminology. And a mood is something that kind of encapsulates your day. It's a way to describe how you felt over the course of a day, whereas an emotion is something that you, that you're feeling in a specific moment.

(00:08:03):
So this state of mind log will let you track both kinds. You tap log, and then you can choose log in emotion, how you feel right now, or log a mood, how you felt overall today and when you go through it. So let's just go with how you feel right now at 9:21 AM you have a, a slider. I'm feeling very unpleasant. I'm feeling unpleasant. I'm feeling slightly unpleasant, neutral, slightly pleasant. Pleasant or very pleasant. So I'll put slightly pleasant, and then it will say, okay, well what best describes how you're feeling right now? And you could choose from the options that are presented to you, or you can choose, show more to see some of the negative ones because maybe you're feeling a little anxious at the same time that you're feeling excited because anxious and excited are not too far from one another.

(00:08:52):
But you're also feeling passionate about what you're talking about in the moment, and you are feeling relieved that the, the, there's no strangeness with the audio board going on, and that everything is working as it's supposed to be, that it's asking what's having the biggest impact on you in this moment? Well, I'm definitely going to say work because that's what I'm doing right now. And you can even put in additional context. So I'll say, I o ss today, and then afterwards you can tap done, and now this is logged. And in the moment obviously it is something that is not incredibly important other than it is making you more mindful of how you're feeling at any given time. But what's great is that then you can look back and you can see how you've been tracking your mood and your emotions over the course of however long you've been doing this.

(00:09:45):
And you can set up reminders for it as well. And when that all comes together, it gives you an idea of how, maybe it's a specific time of day where your mood or not mood, but rather your emotions shift. And you are feeling in this moment every day at, you know, 4:00 PM suddenly you are feeling very unpleasant. And it turns out every day at 4:00 PM is when the doorbell rings and your dogs try to go after who's at the door. I, I'm trying to think of something that would happen, kind of a recurring thing that could happen that would cause no, I, I've got a better one. Your, your, every day at 4:00 PM you get a slack message that says let's schedule a meeting. We need to get together for this. And in your head, you're going, this could have been an email.

(00:10:37):
So your, your mood drops <laugh>. The point is, you can kind of become aware of, oh, right, that stinking slack message is what's causing this issue. And then maybe there's a way that you're able to handle that. Maybe you do convince them that it could have just been an email. And then the last thing I'll mention here with state of mind is that it also comes with the standardized mental health questionnaires for anxiety and depression. These will be, you'll be prompted to fill these out if you, you know opt in every once in a while. But you can also just go in at any time. So maybe, you know, whenever you first set this up, you want to go in first and foremost and fill these out. And if you have ever been screened for anxiety or depression, they'll be familiar to you.

(00:11:20):
If you haven't they're very easy questions to answer. Well easy in terms of, it's not, you know, you're, you're not filling in the blank or anything like that. It's like in the past several days, how often have you had trouble sitting still, such that other people would pick up on the fact that you are having trouble sitting still? Or in the past several days how often have you felt down, depressed or hopeless? Those kinds of things that are. And then you've got an option of no days or hardly any days, then several days, most days or all the days. And then you choose from there, and then at the end you get a score. And that score represents how, how much at risk you are for depression or anxiety. So these kind of come together to provide a better understanding of how you're, you're doing.

(00:12:12):
And I think this is great, not only in the short term as this feature exists right now, but I think in the long term, as Apple continues to pay attention to health information and health tracking, and will, I'm sure at some point start to pick out those trends for us. We've already seen Apple do health trend stuff. I'm looking forward to them going, Hey you on the days where you only exercise for 10 minutes, or you don't go outside for 20 minutes those days you are reporting that your mood is lower than it is on the days whenever you do do this. And then you go, oh, this actually does have an impact. It's real. And it helps you overall. So very much looking forward to these new features that are coming. But even though those, those features aren't coming until iOS 17, the health app already has quite a few great features. And Rosemary is hoping you could kick things off on what features you want to talk about today.

Rosemary Orchard (00:13:22):
Well, I mean, I don't think there's any one particular feature that I want to talk about because it really depends on you and your health needs in this moment. And future health needs be they temporary or permanent. Because for example, if you have a flu or you you have a cold or some kind of virus or something, and you're not very well, then one of the things that you may wanna do is do something like track your temperature for a while. Now, most people won't check their temperature every single day unless they're doing it, for example, to see whether or not they are ovulating for fertility purposes. But if you wanna track your temperature, this is something you can do in the health app. Now, it's important to note that you don't actually have to buy a physical gadget to be able to log data into the health app.

(00:14:04):
There is a way to just add data in the health app, like as a manual data point. And also, I'll show you a, a UFO later, a way to do this with shortcuts as well, which can be really handy if you've got, say, for example, a great scale that you're really happy with. You know, it's super accurate, but it's not a smart scale, so it doesn't sync that data to health. Or you've got a blood pressure cuff or a blood glucose monitor or something and it doesn't sink that data. You can still get that data in there. And yeah, so for folks who are curious who are watching the video and were like, what is this white thing that she's waving around? This is a whitings thermo smart temporal thermometer. And the way that you use it is you, you turn it on and then you run it over your forehead.

(00:14:47):
So it lights up to start with, and then you run it over your forehead, which is probably gonna get makeup over it and all over meat, and then it buzzes and it tells you what your current temperature is. So let's say mine's 38.2. I feel like that is probably a bit high because I'm sitting here under some lights right now. I swear it was not that warm, but I tested it earlier. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But this data will now sync via so this is actually connected to the wifi, so this will just sink into my health kit via the app on my phone. And that's it. Very simple. And it can be very useful to be aware that there are gadgets that you can buy that will sync with the health app. You don't have to buy those gadgets. You can just buy the dumb version and log your data, whatever it needs to be.

(00:15:28):
So for example, you can buy I was looking at this on Amazon the other day, Mikah, a smart measure measuring tape, like specifically intended for measuring parts of your body, which if you're looking to try and lose weight and you're going to the gym, for example, maybe a better way to measure your success rather than weight, because muscle weighs more than fat. So if you are gaining a lot of muscle, then you may not see weight loss, but you would see a difference in the size of your body. But you don't have to buy the smart version. You can just use the, the, the dumb version off the shelf that you've got at home and then add that data in manually in the health app. And this is one of the things that I, I really do like about the health app.

(00:16:07):
Like if the data goes into the health app, we know it's safe, it's secure, it's encrypted on our iPhones with the secure enclave, but we also can just add our own data in there as well, which can be very useful. And of course, don't forget if you have data in there. For example, if you've been having some weird notifications from your Apple watch about your, your heart health and then you do a couple of ECGs and things are coming back, maybe not quite normal and you go see a doctor, you're able to share that information with them as well. 'cause You can of course, tap on it and show the person your iPhone or as of September, October and iPad screen. But you can also, for the ECGs, at least print those as a P D F so that you can actually, you know, print it onto physical paper or email it to them or something so that you can actually share that data.

(00:16:57):
And data sharing is now a feature that's built into the health app, so that, for example, if you have a friend or family member who needs to take medication on a regular basis, but may not always remember to then you can actually keep an eye on them through the health app. So if they haven't taken it, then you can send them a gentle reminder to say, Hey I noticed that you didn't log the fact that you took your medications this morning. Can you go ahead and do that for me when you've taken them? Or whatever it is that works for your friend or family member. Obviously, different things work for different people. So I really encourage folks to dive into the health app. Just open up the health app on your phone at least for the moment as of October, or those of you who are brave enough to be running the beta then you can try it on the iPad as well and just open that browse tab.

(00:17:43):
And in the browse tab you will find a whole bunch of things. You know, there's sleep, there's symptoms. So for example, if you frequently find that you have changes in your sleep then you can actually log changes to your sleep. And on any page it's just the add button, data button in the top right. And then it should just be the ability to add information. So in this particular case I'm waving my phone at the camera because for some reason my phone is not wanting to show up on screen today. It's, it turns invisible when I do that. But for sleep changes, I get the ability to log that sleep changes were present or not present, and then it automatically inputs the current start the current date and time as the start and end for that.

(00:18:25):
So, for example, if I noticed that I was unusually s sleepy at this point in the day, then I could log that as sleep changes being present. And this, this goes through for anything. So if you just tap on one of those items, for example, mobility then you can, or mental health which mic has already shown you, or medications, then you can actually you know, just go ahead and log something as taken when appropriate. And if you set up cycle tracking, so cycle tracking is something that you want to have enabled in health, then you can log that data in there as well, which is very useful, especially as it turns out that some of those apps were attempting to sell all of that data, which very personal information don't really want my health data sold randomly to the highest slash lowest bidder on the internet. Dunno about you, Mikah, but that feels very icky.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:14):
<Laugh>. Yeah, not, not ideal <laugh>. So we, we have a lot more to talk about here, and I, I want to get to that. But we do need to take a quick break and I am excited for this new sponsor here on iOS today. The new sponsor is Discourse. We're bringing you this episode of iOS today for more than a decade. Discourse has made it their mission to make the internet a better place for online communities. You know, they harness the power of discussion, real time chat, and also ai. And with all of that discourse makes it easy to have meaningful conversations and collaborate with your community wherever you happen to be at any time that you wanna chat with, with folks. And if you out there would like to create a community, well, it's very easy if you visit discourse.org/twit, you can get one month free on all self-serve plans.

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(00:22:25):
So here I am in the health app, and down at the bottom there are three options. There's summary on the far left, sharing in the middle, and browse on the far right. Now you can access the page that I'm going to show you from a couple of these if not all three of these pages, but the other ones have my private health data on them. So I'm doing it from the browse page. Up in the top right corner of the browse page, you will see a little avatar that represents you. And if you tap on that up will come a bunch of different options, including features, privacy, and then of course your own medical ID and health details. What I think everyone should should click on or tap on is health checklist. When you tap on health checklist, it is going to give you the information that you need inform to make sure you're using as many of the kind of provided and active health and safety features that iOS or in, in the New World iPad OSS offers.

(00:23:30):
So medical id, which will give first responders information in an emergency. It has, you know, information about whether you're an organ donor who your emergency contacts are, if you have any drug allergies, that kind of stuff. Emergency s o s, which we've talked about long several, many <laugh> many, many, many times. Which will of course contact emergency services and also let your emergency contacts know that there's something going on. Crash detection if you do have that feature available, then crash detection, it'll talk about that and show you how to set it up if you don't. And what I love too is that it also has a little bit of information about the devices on which it is running. So in this case, it is running on my iPhone and Apple Watch which are both being used for crash detection, fall detection which is just an Apple Watch feature.

(00:24:27):
And you'll notice that it even has the type of fall detection turned on that I have, which is I only want you to do fall detection during workouts. They, that's actually a recommended setting for folks below a certain age or mobility group. And then after that, then they suggest turning it on else elsewhere low heart rate notifications. So if my heart rate were to fall below 40 beats per minute then I'll get a notification if it's that, if at that speed for at least 10 minutes high heart rate notifications, if it's at 120 beats per minute for more than 10 minutes while I'm inactive, then it will send that. And then of course, irregular rhythm notifications are on as well. And so are the E C G app. So that's the electrocardiogram app of the Apple Watch, cardio fitness notifications, blood oxygen measurements, walking, steadiness notifications, headphone notifications, noise notifications.

(00:25:30):
The only thing that I have turned off is AFib history, and that is because AFib history is for folks who have been diagnosed with AFib atrial fibrillation. If you do not have atrial fibrillation, you would not have this feature turned on. Instead, you would have irregular heartbeat notifications turned on. So you don't get to have both irregular rhythm and AFib turned on at the same time because AFib is an irregular rhythm, and therefore, once you've been diagnosed, you would track when you've been in periods of AFib instead of tracking whether or not you are having irregular rhythms. So everyone should go to that health checklist. That way you can tap through and set everything up if you don't have it all set up and learn about some of the features. Maybe there are some features that you do or don't want. All of that is there and well worth checking out. All right, Rosemary, back to you.

Rosemary Orchard (00:26:28):
Well, I did wanna just give two other recommendations for devices that you can use that will connect to Apple's Health Kit. And so if you're ever wondering, if you're looking at, say, like a smart device somewhere and you're wondering if it connects to Apple Healthcare and you can't immediately see it on the box, don't rule it out. That doesn't mean it doesn't. What I would always do, if you're looking at something like, I had this the other day, my parents were asking me, Hey, does this Blood oxygen monitor that we've got, like sync the data into that health thingy that you always talk about? You know, my parents definitely pay attention to what I'm talking about, but they also know that if it goes into the health app, it's nice and safe. So they remembered that and I was able to look at the app on the app store and find out that in the privacy section it showed that it had access or wanted access to Apple Health Data, which means that there's a fairly good chance it's not a hundred percent guaranteed, but there's a fairly good chance that it's going to sink data both to it and get data from it.

(00:27:25):
So for example my Hydrate Spark Tumblr that I've got here, which just lit up a nice rainbow to remind me that I should have a drink will actually sink my my water intake into the health app. And that is listed in the app store under the, under the permissions that it wants access to the health data on your phone. So that's, I mean, this, this is not one of the recommendations that I've written down, but I have to say the Hydrate Spark stuff has been working very well for me. I've really been enjoying it. But the, the two products that I wanted to recommend because they've been great both for me and for family members, is the Why Things Sleep Analyzer. And also an on run RSS seven automatic wrist blood pressure monitor. So if you find that you don't sleep very well, maybe with an Apple Watch on or you don't have an Apple Watch or you just forget to put it on, sometimes go to sleep, but you really would like some more sleep data and you don't wanna necessarily invest in like a whole mattress or a bed to do sleep tracking, which obviously eight sleep our response to here on twit.

(00:28:29):
And you know, if you wanna go all in on sleep data like Mikah does, then that's great. You should definitely do that if you're looking just to get a bit more data to get yourself started. The Why Things Sleep Analyzer, it's a little sort of inflatable pressure pad essentially, and it goes between your mattress and the base. And so you won't feel it, you know princess and the p trust me, I I, I always find the peace <laugh>. I, I, I have not found peace with this. It, when it does, when you plug it in, like inflate itself, kind of like a blood pressure cuff but then it tracks your sleep data for you and oh my gosh, I have to say super great data. I really love comparing the data between this, my Apple Watch and my ura because, you know, I'll forget to wear my Apple Watch or my ura, I have to leave them on charge overnight sometimes, and this is just, it's always in bed, so it's always gonna get that data for me.

(00:29:17):
And so yeah, this is a nice option. It's 99 95 on why things or in the Apple Store but it's worth looking out for and sometimes goes on sale for prime day. And the other one I mentioned is the Omron R seven wrist blood pressure monitor. Now, I don't have that here with me, unfortunately, but it is, it, it kind of looks like if you imagine like a 90 style pager stuck your wrist <laugh>, it kind of looks like that only you don't have to wear it all the time. And so you pop it on your wrist and you, you can press the buttons and off it goes, it will do a blood pressure mon blood pressure reading and log that data into health kit. And this has been really useful.

(00:29:58):
Now, I am aware that wrist blood pressure versus upper arm blood pressure can vary. The most important thing when you are doing anything like this is consistency. It's the same as weighing yourself, right? If you weigh yourself as soon as you've got up and gone to the bathroom every morning before you put your clothes on, then you don't have to account for the fact that one day you are wearing hiking boots and heavy jeans that were soaked in water and the next day you were wearing a bikini or whatever floats your boat. So yeah it's consistency. So by consistently using the same machine and you know, measuring your data in the same way you will get results that can mean something, even if they are not necessarily exactly the same as what a doctor or a hospital would find. You know, if there's a, a variation in the data that you're collecting and it is unusual, then consult a medical professional. And this is honestly what a lot of this stuff is all about. It's about being aware of what your normals are so that when things aren't normal, you know about it.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:57):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's perfectly put. That is perfectly put. The device that I wanted to talk about is the cardia Alive. Well, it's, okay, so it's called the Alive Core Cardia Mobile. It is made by the company Cardiac. Although <laugh>, it's kind of confusing because then they also have the thing that says cardio by a live core. The point is, it's this tiny little device that is also an electrocardiogram measurer. And like Rosemary was talking about where she has at least three devices that are tracking her sleep, I find it's good to have a few devices to use to kind of compare but also a in, I won't say this is the truth in every case, but in many cases, a purpose-built device is going to be more accurate, more direct, more focused, and hopefully better at being able to track a specific metric.

(00:32:01):
And so this little device is for tracking or for doing E C G measurements. Now this has two settings or two options for tracking. There's the standard tracking, which is where, and let me there is the single lead E K G tracking, which is where you put a finger from your left hand and a finger from your right hand on these front two pads. And then there's an entire six lead E kg E K G measurement, which is where you do the same on the front where one finger, the left, one finger on the right, but the back goes on like your knee or some other spot. And or your, your ankle is also another spot that you can put it. And so it will be able to do that full six lead E K G.

(00:32:51):
But let me show you so this is the single lead E K G tracker. I am placing the E K G device on my desk, and then I'm taking a finger from my left hand and a finger from my right hand, and I'm placing them on the two pads and watch what happens. You will see if you're watching the left hand and right hand, little dots light up and it initializes, and then you're meant to sit very still because of course this is tracking electrical measurements, right? And if you move your arms a lot, then it will it will pick up the electrical signals that your brain, your nervous system rather, is sending into your muscles and it will kind of get in the way of the heart. The, you know, the electronics of the heart. So I'm trying to sit very still and, okay, so it shows a normal sinus rhythm.

(00:33:49):
And that information is something that you can kind of gather at any time. You'll notice that my heart rate is rather high at the moment despite the fact that I'm just sitting still. But that is the the cardio a live core device. And I found, I've found, I've used the six lead E K G in the past for tracking. I got this after I was having some, some heart issues that ended up being a, a diet problem a problem with some of the stuff that I was eating. And so I kind of needed to keep track of, of what my heart was doing and why. And this was helpful in, in doing that. So that's the, a live core cardio mobile. The version that I have with the six lead E K G is $129.

(00:34:40):
It was not inexpensive, but if you have a flexible saving account through your work or some other means, and you, these often can be purchased with your F S A, so that could be something that you consider doing. There are two other options. The $79 cardio mobile, which does two lead, and then the $99 cardio mobile card, which is just a single lead as well. I said two lead, I think. But it's just a, the, the 79 and the 99 are single lead options. And that card version is just really nice for slipping into, you know, a bag or something. So if you, this is particularly helpful for folks with with AFib or some other irregular rhythm that they need to keep track of. Yeah, that's, that's gonna do it for me. Rosemary, I think you've got one other device you wanted to mention.

Rosemary Orchard (00:35:40):
Yeah, I do because a lot of folks who watch iOS today, either themselves or have have friends and family members who find that an Apple watch is pretty pricey. Now, there are of course options to buy things like from the Apple Refurb store, which I would always recommend folks check out. If you scroll down to the bottom of the Apple store page, then there's a refurbished section. And of course there's the Apple Watch se, but even that, you know, there we're still talking a couple of hundred dollars here. That's kind of pricey. So a lot of folks have asked me previously if I could recommend an alternative to an Apple Watch that's kind of like a smartwatch, but they mostly just want it for like fitness tracking. And so I have been for the last couple of months testing the me Smartband seven.

(00:36:23):
Now this it kind of looks a little bit like a Fitbit, but it's not owned by Fitbit, so you don't have, you know, the data going there. This is just a smart and health tracker and it retails for $46. So it can do heart rate tracking it has breathe options in it, so it can sort of tap your wrist to help you breathe in time. It's a little difficult to shelf the screen here. It will do blood oxygen monitoring, heart rate monitoring. It can control playback on your phone and also help you take pictures and so on. And it's, it's got a whole bunch of other options built in there as well, like workout tracking, things like that. Stress management and alarms, events and so on. Now, this isn't perfect it is $46.

(00:37:11):
So you, you, you, you aren't expecting something that's the same quality as the Apple Watch, for example. There's the option to turn on reminders for calendar events one minute before, which seems great until you realize you can't filter your calendars. And my dad puts everything that he's doing in his calendar and that's shared with me. So I was getting a reminder of one minute before every single time that he had something in his calendar until I disabled that feature, which is very frustrating for me, <laugh>. So you want, you wanna go through and play with things, but it will even do things like show up notifications that you get on your watch when they come through. And so yeah, this is definitely something that is worth checking out. So Xiaomi are a well-known Chinese brand who make a lot of smart home and smart tech products.

(00:37:53):
They have their own line of Android phones as well which I have tried pairing this with Android phones. And yeah, it seems to work just great with them as well and sync data to the Google Health equivalent, but it does sleep monitoring, it tracks 110 sports, it's water resistant battery life, it says 14 days. I found realistically, once you've turned on the features that you want, it's gonna be more like a five days to a week, but that's still pretty good going. And it's got a little magnetic charger on the back as well. So yeah, if you are looking for something to help you track your, your health and fitness and exercise and things like that and you wanna get started with, you know, like one device, this sinks to health kit. And yeah, $46, it's like, it looks really big on my wrist, but then the Apple Watch Ultra looks really big as well.

(00:38:44):
And it's honestly just the way that the cases work for this, you can also get like little clips to put it in to like, clip it to like a t-shirt or something if like wearing a wristband is not gonna work for whatever you're doing, obviously it's not gonna be able to use the sensors in the back to track stuff if it's clipped in like that. But yeah, there's, there's options for this. So worth considering. The Xiaomi Smart Band seven, this is the seven. There's also a seven Pro and an eight. I just picked the seven because it's seemed like a cheap good one that's widely available. And I'm pleased to report that if you just want a fitness tracking band, this is a good enough smart watch to do that.

Mikah Sargent (00:39:20):
Awesome, awesome. Well, folks, there are loads of, of things that you can track in Apple's Health app and then apps that integrate with Apple Health to make it easier to kind of, not only keep your data, but sync your data and synthesize your data and understand your data. And it is only bound to get better from here. So we will of course be keeping an eye on that, but we would love to hear if there are gadgets that you have that integrate with Apple Health that you love. Let us know iOS today at TWI tv apps that you use with health integrations. Let us know again, iOS today at twit tv. 'cause These were just a few of the, the things that were available and the different products, gadgets features that we wanted to talk about, particularly as we look forward to iOS 17 and more.

(00:40:19):
Before we continue with the news, I do wanna take a quick break to tell you about our second sponsor today. It's Brooklinen who are bringing you this episode of iOS today and who continue to bring me a great night's sleep. You know, you don't need to take a, take a vacation to a far away locale in an expensive hotel in order to have that luxury of, of, of a, a sort of, you know, incredible comfortable cooling night's sleep because Brook Linen is here to keep you cozy or cool all summer long with their award-winning sheets and home essentials. I got the classic Per Kale sheets because I am a very warm sleeper. They are very careful and selective in their process of choosing the type of of material that they use for these sheets. And, you know, it's kind of wild how the conversation around sheets so often centers around thread count because Brooklyn will tell you it's not about that.

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In fact, it is about the long strand fibers that Brooklinen uses and they make these really high quality sheets that for me, help me to sleep even cooler than I already was, and that's everything I could possibly want. Brooklinen is the perfect way to build your own indoor oasis to escape the heat. The options are endless. So, you know, it's, it's easy to kind of get overwhelmed. You can do yourself the favor of simplifying that shopping by just bundling your bed, your bath, or perhaps both. You can save time and up to 25% when you bundle your new favorite home essentials. You're curious about the company. Brooklyn was founded by husband and wife, duo Rich and Vicki in 2014. And what they were after was this idea of providing customers with hotel quality, luxury bedding, and they do it in a way that is not breaking my bank, which <laugh>, that's everything I could ask more.

(00:42:32):
Honestly. I get to have this really nice bedding and it doesn't have to break the bank. Now there's no such thing as perfect sleep, although I do try to come close. There is the ideal fabric for every kind of sleeper You can cool off as I do with Lyn's Crisp Classic Per Kale Weave, or try their best selling buttery, smooth Lux Satine sheets. I know Leo is very happy with his Satine sheets, and Brooklinen uses only the highest quality materials for all of their products, such as, as I mentioned earlier, long staple cotton. So everything they create is built to last. See with that, again, that long staple, you are getting resilient sheets as well. So as often as I have to wash these, 'cause I'm using them regularly, I don't worry about it because they are built to last and Brooklyn and they're the Internet's favorite sheets wire cutter, which is my go-to for figuring out what product I should buy.

(00:43:28):
And good housekeeping, both agree Brooklinen has best in class betting. So if you need more evidence than their 100,005 star customer reviews, you know that experts from Good Housekeeping and wire Cutter have done the research. So shop in store or online@brooklinen.com today to give yourself the cooling sleep you deserve this summer. Use the promo code iOS for $20 off your online purchase of $100 or more, plus free shipping on brook linen.com. That's bbr, O K L I N e n.com. And use the promo code iOS for $20 off plus free shipping. Thank you Brooklyn, for sponsoring this week's episode of iOS Today. And thank you for a great night's sleep. Alright folks, we are back from the break. We talked about iOS health apps and features, and now it's time to talk about the news. The first bit of news that I wanted to talk about.

(00:44:27):
Apple has announced a new kind of working group or an alliance, as they call it that is called the All <laugh>, the Alliance to Foster Global Collaboration for Universal Scene Description. That's A O U S D. Now, we have heard about U SS D Z or U S D Z before it is a sort of file format that lets you create kind of three D objects that are easily shareable, easily kind of readable, and can be opened on different machines and different software, et cetera, et cetera. So, Pixar, Adobe, apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia, or Nvidia, depending on who you ask together with the J D F, the Joint Development Foundation, which is an affiliate of the Linux Foundation, have all come together to announce the A O U S D. And they, their goal is to essentially kind of standardize and improve upon the U ss D tech that was created by Pixar.

(00:45:41):
So U S D stands for Universal Seen Description. And again, the idea is that there are lots of different lots of different formats out there, lots of different software out there, lots of different tools, and all of it kind of has to attempt to work together through translation layers and all this other stuff. And they wanna say, look, why don't we all get together and focus on as much as we can a single kind of standard, and then that standard can go forward as the means that we all do that. I will read a little quote from here. It says, universal scene description was invented at Pixar and is the technological foundation of our state-of-the-art animation pipeline. That of course is s not of course, but that is from Steve May, who's the Chief Technology Officer at Pixar and also a chairperson of A O U SS D ous.

(00:46:40):
And then open U S D is based on years of research and application of Pixar filmmaking. We open sourced the project in 2016, and the influence of open U s D now expands beyond film visual effects and animation and into other industries that increasingly rely on three D data for media interchange. What does all of that mean? It means that Pixar's, you know, created this idea a while back, and as time has gone on, more and more folks, even those outside of those sort of traditional industries of animation are using U S D or Open u ss d technology. So yeah, thi this is not a surprise to me. I imagine not a surprise to you either. Rosemary, given we have now seen Apple's headset and the company of course has long now offered augmented reality experiences and many of the event invites that folks get when they have those little built-in Easter eggs that offer an augmented reality experience for those event invites or event announcements, they, the, the, the root of that is a U S D file. And so Apple of course has worked with other companies as well. Ikea that app has U Ss D files for each of the, the different sort of furniture that it, it shows in augmented space. So, yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> not a, not a surprise,

Rosemary Orchard (00:48:06):
No, not a surprise. And it's good to see that they are attempting to unify the standards. I'm sure many of the folks listening to or watching the show will be familiar with X K C D, the online comic of there are 14 competing standards. I'll create one unifying standard and we'll, we'll, we'll have that. The, the third frame is there are now 15 competing standards, hopefully, however, because they're basing this on things that already exist and they are Apple and Pixar, pretty big names, IKEA is also pretty big as well. Then then this'll work out and then we won't have competing standards. We'll just have a standard.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:39):
Yes, indeed, that is the hope. I did want to mention parents out there, you are not alone. If you have been having issues with screen time on iOS, iPad, oss it is not just you, it is not just your device. It is a problem that Apple is actively working on. There have been reports that settings for screen time parental controls aren't sticking and that kids are being able to bypass not through any like special means. It's not like they've learned the code or something, it's just that the settings aren't saving and properly you know, staying in place. And so if you've seen that and maybe you thought your kid was doing some weird thing they learned on Reddit or what have you not the case, instead this does appear to be a bug that is happening.

(00:49:38):
And so Apple has said, look, we know that's going on and we are quote or rather they say they're working quote to improve the situation. So a fix should be on its way. And as soon as that happens, well then we'll, we'll talk about that too. Up next, I just wanted to quickly mention that apple is rolling out the second to public beta. So if you are on the public beta train, hoo you as I want to say then be sure to stay up to date. Of course, any new public beta is going to come with fixes for issues in the last version of the beta, but it will also come with its own host of, of errors that you can check out and test out and make sure that everything's good to go by the time this software ships.

(00:50:31):
Hopefully next month, if not next month, then sometime in early October. So yes be sure to get those downloads in, get your feedback in, and make sure that those Apple developers are aware of, of what changes you'd like to see. And the last thing here Google is creating its own find my device network like find my on on iOS. So Apple announced, find my and it is the network of, of phones and iPads and Macs and everything working together to be able to track an item including air tags. Well, Google has its own version called Find My Device. And so it's a network that is working with a bunch of different Google devices out there. But Apple and Google have kind of gotten together to work on a standard once again this time for item tracking alerts so that if an unknown tracker is present on your person, you can be notified about that.

(00:51:41):
And the way that it has worked up to this point is you had to have a on, on Android at least is if you wanted to know about a tracker, an air tag tracker, that's not yours being on your person, you would have to get the Android or the app in the Google Play Store from Apple that will look around for unknown trackers. But with the standard in place, it essentially can work almost the same between iOS and Android. So on iOS it automatically happens in the background and will alert you if there's a tracker on your person. With the updates to Android. Now Android will alert you, but Apple has not locked in yet their side of things, so that if an Android tracker is on your person, it will automatically notify you. And so Google is delaying the launch of its Find My Device Network and its new trackers until Apple gets this software in place.

(00:52:51):
So it'll be interesting to see, it's kind of a waiting game right now, how long it will take Apple to Apple get this this, these, these new features in place, this new standard in place so that Google is able to release its own trackers which is necessary. And so that is something that I'm kind of watching very closely to see what how long it's going to take Google to, to, to do that. Alright that is the news. Let us move along to feedback and questions. In feedback and questions. Jim has written in to say, hi, Mikah and Rosemary, love your show. Hi Jim. Perhaps this is something you've previously covered and I missed it at one time. If you found a pay walled Wall Street Journal article in Safari, you could tap the share icon and select Open in news.

(00:53:53):
Apparently Apple removed that option from iOS probably at the request of the journal and others who thought that discouraged subscribing from their own website. I have found some W S J links on iOS that don't even allow the Open in Safari option. On the other hand, I have found at least certain W S J articles on a Mac where the share icon does include the option share in news. When I open this article on my Mac, the share icon does include open in news. However, when I try to open the article on iOS, the share icon does not include the option to open in Safari or to open in news. Instead, it offers a ton of options many of which are irrelevant including open infidelity, Twitter, LinkedIn, Lyft, just to name a few. I'm wondering if a shortcut could be created that would convert links to articles on Wall Streete journal, like wsj.com to those articles on Apple News. I've had to resort to copying the headline of the WSJ article and then pasting it into the search field on Apple News. It works, but it's very tedious. Thank you. Best regards, Jim. So I don't know about you, Rosemary, but this sounds to me like a context error. It sounds like Jim is maybe not being precise about from where Well they're share I think Jim getting the share sheet.

Rosemary Orchard (00:55:12):
Yeah, so I had a look at this and I had a play around and I did manage to replicate the same issue that Jim's saying, which is sometimes there's an opening news option, sometimes there isn't. And essentially what happens is any website, so Twitter is a great example of this can have a deep link. Okay, so a deep link means that it would open then in that app on your phone. And so it'll pop up depending on your preferences and settings, it might just have like a banner at the top, which has got like the app on it or something, and like a little open button. And that's obviously what the Wall Street Journal would prefer. They want you to subscribe directly to them, give them all the money every month instead of taking a share of what they get from Apple's News program.

(00:55:52):
And so they've probably deliberately removed the deep links for news in those articles that they personally think are gonna be like super interesting to people and they want them only to be visible on the website for whatever reason. I don't claim to understand people's thought processes. I just kind of understand the tech behind it. So one of the things that I found that I was able to do is, there's two options in your share sheet, right? When you go to share things. There's people, well there's three sections. There's people at the top, unless you have the disabled in your settings. Then there's the Colorful app icons as a horizontal row, and then there's the gray and white list, which has things like open in news, add to home screen, print, et cetera. Now Open in News is in that, that last list and it's there some of the time, but as Jim found, not all the time, however, I found on those ones where isn't there all the time, if I scroll across the colorful app icon list and I find news and you can edit this list, if you scroll right to the end of it and then tap on the triple dot there then you can edit this so you can pull the news app further forward, which means that it will consider the news app to be more relevant for links and for things from the Wall Street Journal.

(00:57:05):
Then I found that if I tap on the colorful app icon, it still seems to work for me. However I don't have a Wall Street Journal subscription and the link that Jim sent as a demo wasn't working for me, so I can't a hundred percent guarantee it, but it does seem like tapping on the colorful app icon from the share sheet worked. And this is weird, I don't understand the logic behind this, but it does seem to work. I dunno, how interesting. Can you try it, Mikah? Because also I'm in the uk so we don't get the same Wall Street Journal that you get <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:35):
Yeah, that is that, that's something that I will try, although now I need the link to the article. So while we are, are testing that, I would say too, that it, this could be a, this could also be a matter of and now I can't think of the words that I'm looking for. This could be a matter of the, of the Wall Street Journal content management system. Either, you know, the, what, what I'm, I can imagine in the background they've got, you know, apple News, a p i and all this other magic that's happening and some articles are getting automatically linked to their Apple News counterpart, which is what you were kind of talking about there, where it's got that deep link versus some that might not be. Okay, I have the link here. Let me see about opening it or sending it to myself on the iPhone and we'll see if we can't.

Rosemary Orchard (00:58:34):
One thing I'll mention while you're doing that, Mikah, is apple News on the Mac is not quite the same as Apple News on iPhone and iPad. Now, apple News on the Mac is much closer to Apple News on the iPhone and iPad than say, safari on the Mac is, or mail. Mail on the Mac and mail on the iPad are two completely different apps that happen to share the same name in Icon. And Safari is much the same. I mean, there, there's deep down there's a lot of commonality, they've got a lot of stuff syncing, but they're not the same app. News is much closer to being the same. But at the same time, macOS is different to iOS. So the way that the the share sheet options show up on iOS and MEC will vary. And so you may find that sometimes this works on your iPad and it doesn't work on your Mac or vice versa. And there's not a lot that can be done about that other than make sure that you're keeping up to date with things. Because yeah, the, the operating systems do work slightly differently, unfortunately, which makes it a little tricky to yeah, to get everything working perfectly in sync.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:35):
I'm scrolling and I don't see news. Oh, there's,

Rosemary Orchard (00:59:38):
Let's try, it's right, right below Trissy

Mikah Sargent (00:59:41):
And let's see. So I was able to get that

Rosemary Orchard (00:59:48):
Working, so I found a workaround.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:50):
Yay. Awesome.

Rosemary Orchard (00:59:51):
Which, which seems to work. Yeah. The other option that I considered, which was kind of like my last resort was you could create a shortcut that when you say like open, like so you call it like open in news, like and then like a little hack, like brackets hack or something because this, this would be a hack when you would share it so that it would copy the name of the article and then open news for you so you could just paste it in. And that, that was kind be my, my hacky workaround because the news app doesn't have shortcut support. But this does seem to work. So fingers crossed this will solve the problem for you, Jim.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:28):
Yeah, so it's, yeah, it just was buried for some reason, but yeah, if you go and find it, then you can get it. Yeah,

Rosemary Orchard (01:00:33):
I have a feeling this is due to the way that like Apple and the Wall Street Journal like negotiated whatever they were doing where they were like, fine, we'll hide the open in news thing, but there still needs to be an option to open it in the news. So we're gonna leave it there. It's just not gonna be as obvious for people. So, yeah. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:00:50):
That's wild, huh? All right. The next bit of of feedback comes from Steven. Steven wrote, writes In, we Travel and we would like to keep a record of hotels, restaurants, and sites. We want to be able to create location tags on a map, be able to name the tag and add a bit of text. And when we open the map, we would see the world with our tags and be able to zoom in to see detail. We'd like the app to sync across our iOS devices, our phones, and our iPads. Maps Plus doesn't sync City maps to go supposedly syncs, but it doesn't work. And we're happy to pay for subscriptions to apps that we like. It keeps them around. Thanks, Steven. So it looks like Rosemary and I both have a suggestion. The suggestion I will give to you is an app or a rather a service called Polar Steps.

(01:01:33):
The reason I'm suggesting this is because this is what Leo LaPorte uses for every trip that he takes. Polar Steps is exactly this. It's this idea that you use a map to kind of keep track of the places that you've been. It lets, it automatically will create little stories for you. And then what is also cool about Polar Steps is that afterward, if you'd like, you can create a travel book. You can basically buy a travel book from Polar Steps and they'll send it to you printed. So you track your trip, you take photos and have them get posted along the way. There's a link that people can see and go to so that it's live updated. So Leo, on their last trip shared a link with us and we were able to kind of see where he was on the vacation or on the, the Journey rather.

(01:02:27):
And so yes, it's great for like sharing with your family while you're out but then also when you get back and then at the end, the idea that you get to turn it into a book and it has like the altitude you were at, the weather that day what date it was a little information about the place that you went, and then the photos that you took while you were there. So it's a very popular app, more than 5 million folks using Polar Steps. And it is again, available in the app store and syncs between devices, but it's also a website as well. That is my recommendation. And then Rosemary, what is yours?

Rosemary Orchard (01:03:07):
So my recommendation isn't quite as Travel Journal based as polar Steps is, this is really down to its stick a pen on a map, add some colorful flags to it and you can optionally share lists with other people. And it works on iPhone and it works on iPad, and it works on Android, and it works on the web. And the service is called Masra, M A P S T R. So it's a free app to download and, and use. There is an optional premium subscription that you can sign up for, but you can stick pins on any location. Stick your tags on those pins. You can rename those pins, you can share a list with friends, you can share a bigger list with friends you know, you, you've got all of the options. And then it also hooks into things like contact details of locations, opening hours, websites, et cetera.

(01:03:57):
And it's also available on the Apple Watch. And what I really like about this is when you tag a place you can actually have maps give you the option or maps, gives you the option to have it pop up as a notification on your device when you're going past somewhere that's tagged. So this, this is great if you like, tag a whole bunch of restaurants that are recommended in a city. And then you, you, you know, you have it pop up and then you're wandering around and you're like, I'm hungry, huh? Oh, well, this restaurant's really close by. It just pinged me to say, well, this is here, go for it. Or of course you can just use u p s and open up maps and see, see what's there. But I found it especially useful when I'm sightseeing because, you know, you, you bookmark a bunch of places on a map, you look stuff up online, and then when you're there on the ground, you kind of get focused on like, I'm going over here to see this thing, and you forget there's other stuff on the way.

(01:04:45):
And travel's all about the journey and the experience. So this is a very useful way to be able to keep track of that. I have to say one tip that I'll give you whatever app or service it is that you end up using for this I end up having a do not return tag. This is for hotels that perform significantly under expectations. Restaurants where you spent three hours waiting for service and you still didn't get food. And when you eventually got food, the ice cream was boiling hot and the lasagna was frozen. Whatever it is, you know, I I have a do not return tag, which obviously I then, you know, that's not one that I would actively friend share with friends, but it is a reminder to me that, Hey, this place that I thought was really cool, I've tagged it as a, like a thing not to go back to because I didn't enjoy it. So there we go. That's that's my recommendation map extra.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:36):
All right. Now before we head into the app caps, here is a little message from our sponsor.

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Mikah Sargent (01:06:44):
And now it is time for the app caps play that funky music. This, of course, is the part of the show where we wear caps or other items atop our heads to honor our app and or gadget picks of the week. These are the apps or gadgets we are using now or have been using for some time that we think are great and want to share with all of you. So without further a Rosemary Orchard, tell us about the cap at top of your head and then tell us about your app, our gadget pick of the week.

Rosemary Orchard (01:07:29):
Well, the cap at the top of my head, it's a hat. It is a plastic hat from my selection of cowboy party hats that I purchased this week. It is a lovely yes, neon yellow zebra stripe. Yes, I, I I believe I got all of the neons in zebra, stripe and leopard print. There's a few still to go folks that you haven't seen yet, even if you think you have before. It also has the advantage of making my hair static, like I've been using a Vander Graft generator <laugh>, so that's super cool. But that's fine. And even though my iPhone is not playing ball this week and my iPad won't play ball either to share the screen, I can still tell you about my app cap because I had I was a Becker years ago on Kickstarter for the KeySmart.

(01:08:11):
And the idea was that instead of having this huge bundle of keys, you'd stack all your keys together in this nice little, little vertical thing. And then you just pop out the one that it is that you wanted to use. Great, loved it. Back to got couple use it. And I still use one of the original ones actually on the keys to my parents' house. But the pick that I have this week is because ages ago KeySmart launched the KeySmart Pro, which had tile tracking technology bill in, and then Apple came out with like a air tags and fine mine own. I was like, eh, that, that, that's it. I'm not bothering with tile anymore. Bye bye tile. And now there is the KeySmart I pro. So this comes in choice of rose gold or black. And, and that's it for your color options.

(01:08:52):
And this is a rechargeable key tidy with find my tracking built in. So it says, find my tracking without the, you know, like immediate proximity, like, point your iPhone over here. No, it's a bit more to the left. It's a, you can make it ring and it's in this map location. But I have to say, I find that the, the map location plus the ringing works really well for me. And the KeySmart Pro is just a nice way to store your keys. Now, I haven't put my keys on here yet 'cause I'm actually gonna put my parents' keys on here because my keys are like fob and sort of tag based, so they don't quite work with this. But the, I love this. It's got a little light built in on the end. So if I press a button, then I, I can get a light and that's a great one for like your door key, so that like when, when you're coming back and like there's awkward lighting or the bulb in your porch or hallway has gone out, or it's just not lighting things up properly, you can shine this so you can actually see where you're pointing the key to you know, connect it.

(01:09:47):
My only quibble slash complaint about this is the recharge mechanism. So the recharge mechanism works, just to be clear. It's fine. But if I take off the little gummy, which is there to help stop any water or muck and fluff getting in, folks might see if they've got an eagle eye. Yeah, that's micro U S B, not U S B C. Oh no, I really wish this were U usc. Yeah, but the thing is, is it is exactly the same as their key Smartt Pro, which has got tile technology built in. It's just got a different chipboard inside. So I understand why it's micro U S b. I hope that they launch a U S B C one sometimes soon. This, I have to say this, this rose gold color, it's kind of a champagney rose gold. It's not super pink. I really like it.

(01:10:29):
It's nice. And I've had a KeySmart Pro before and I had it in like the original white, which did end up marking. And then I got another one later which had this kind of finish on and it didn't mark. So I love it. It's got like a built in loop with a bottle opener on one end. And then while I was there with mc KeySmart store, they also recommended unfortunately I just dropped the smaller one on the floor. Key angler, A key angler like you, you connect it to your, your KeySmart and then you can just like hook this onto like a loop in your bag or like a pocket in your bag or your belt loop or something to, so that your keys don't wander off. So yeah, this is the key Smartt I pro rather than key smartt pro.

(01:11:13):
And I have to say I'm really enjoying it. I can't wait to put my parents' keys on it so that I will actually know where they are in the, for the time that I actually take them outta my car to use them. And then don't put them back. And yeah, then it, it gets messy very, very fast. So yeah, you can put quite a few keys on there. It's got a little loop so that you can attach it to like a, a lanyard or a car key or both. And there's a whole bunch of accessories that you can get for as well. So worth checking out just to see what, what this is. And if you do need a key tracker, well one with a built-in torch and tracking seems like a pretty good idea to me.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:49):
I agree. All right. The cap at the top of my head is a pilot's cap, like an old school pilot's cap. It's actually surprisingly warm, and so I can't wait to take it off. <Laugh> it's a dark leather cap and it's got straps and whatnot. It's also hard to hear with it but the app that I wanna talk about today is a new app that just came to Apple Arcade, which of course requires a 4 99 per month subscription. Or you can get a month free if you buy a new device of certain kinds, or you can get it as part of a larger Apple subscription. There are many ways you can get Apple Arcade but if you like Animal Crossing you might wanna check out Hello Kitty Island Adventure. It is, oh look, it's two of me.

(01:12:39):
I don't want that. There we go. So hello Kitty Island Adventure. I mean, even the artwork looks pretty. Hello Kitty e if you will. But I will tap play here and you can see it says Furniture is functional. Use a mirror to change your clothes or sleep in a bed to affect the time of day. This is supposed to be a life sim in Apple Arcade and of course involving Hello Kitty. I have to be honest, I didn't realize that the Cat's name was fully Hello Kitty. I thought that you were saying hello to the cat's name. That was Kitty. So that's a new thing I've just learned. Are you ready for a vacation at Big Adventures Park? Yes. Or I can't wait. I'm gonna choose. I can't wait. I'm feeling very enthusiastic. It says we should be arriving soon, so if you wanna freshen up a bit, now is the time.

(01:13:33):
So now I create my little creature. I've got the choice between a bird, a cat, or a dog. I'm sure you can guess which one I'm going to choose indeed a dog. And then I can choose a different type of dog. So there are all sorts here. And I think I'm gonna choose a little dog. You can choose the dog's eyes and oh, my, there are some kind of angry dogs here. I don't want an angry dog. I think I want this dog. Oh, someone's telling me that the cat's name is Kitty White. So that's interesting. And then I'm gonna do a little, a tiny little tongue there. And then I can change the, oh, the, the sort of pattern of the dog and I will choose a triangular pattern. And then last but not least, you can choose the colors.

(01:14:35):
Well, that's the only one that features green, so I'm going to choose that one. And then Kitty White says, you look great. We still have some time. Why don't you meet some of the others joining us on our trip? And I can see a penguin. That's so cool. And so you press down to move and you tap to jump. Oh. So there's a little joystick oh my, it lets me jump on a, a plane that's not safe. So I can move around and see some of the other people on the or not people, but creatures. I wanna talk to the penguin, obviously. Greetings and salutations says tuxedo Sam tuxedo Sam at your service. And I can say, nice to meet you, or an honor and a pleasure, <inaudible>, which is of course what I'm going to say.

(01:15:22):
Making a new friend is always delightful and quite inspiring. You see, I'm both a designer and collector of bow ties, so if you need help putting together an outfit on this trip, please don't hesitate to ask. Nothing makes me happier than helping my friends look their best. If you'll excuse me, I feel inspiration about to strike. And so tuxedo Sam sits back down and I guess thinks about the inspiration that they're going to have. And then of course there's a little frog, and so I'll talk to the Little Frog. Hi, are you having a fun flight? It's been great. Or I'm a little bored. I'm gonna say it's been great. This is actually my first time on an airplane. I thought I would be nervous, but it's not so bad with my friends around. Anyhow, it was nice meeting you. I'll see you around the island.

(01:16:07):
I will have you note that Carpi did not tell me their name, <laugh>, but instead just said Hello. I will leave it at that. This kind of gives you an idea of, of how the game works, but it is essentially as I mentioned, a way to oops to play kind of an R p g, that's a bit of a life sim as well. And so it's a very kind of simple game to play both on your iPhone or your iPad and be able to kind of create a little area that you can. Are you sure you wanna quit to the main menu? Yes, I am sure. And you, again, if you've ever played Animal Crossing, I think that you will find some familiarity here in Hello Kitty Island Adventure. I wanted to note this game was important enough that Apple actually announced it in its newsroom.

(01:17:06):
So there's an actual article, join Hello Kitty and Friends on a Charming Island Adventure on Apple Arcade. And so they felt this was worth discussing on the Apple Newsroom page. So yeah, consider checking it out. Let me know what you think about it. That is Hello Kitty Island Adventure as part of Apple Arcade. Folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of iOS Today. All that's left is to tell you if you have questions, feedback concerns, comments, et cetera, send those to iOS today at twit tv, iOS today at twit tv. We love to hear from you. If you want to tune, tune in Live to watch us record the show starting around 9:00 AM Pacific each week, well tune in every Tuesday at twit tv slash live where you can watch the show in YouTube, live, Twitch, et cetera.

(01:17:56):
Or consider subscribing to the show or following the show by going to twit tv slash iOS. There you will find the website where you can click to subscribe to audio or subscribe to video. Those formats are both available across a number of podcast apps and other methods. So if you're just a plaino r s s, well we've got that too. Please do consider telling your friends about the show if they are coming to you asking questions about iOS or iPad, oss or one of the other oss, well, you know, you've got a friend in us and we would be happy to help you help your friend. So tell them about the show so that they can ask us for help with their issues. I want to mention Club Twit which you can join by going to twit tv slash club twit starting at $7 a month or $84 a year, you out there can join the club.

(01:18:51):
When you do, you get a lot of great stuff. First, you get every single twit show with no ads because you, in effect are sponsoring or or supporting the shows. So you get all of the content none of the ads. You also get access to the Twit plus bonus fee that has extra stuff you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show. After the show special Club TWIT events get published in the club. It's a great thing to be able to you know, be a part of and, and get to go through a backlog of so much great stuff. Plus you get to join the Club Twit Discord. It is a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club TWIT members and those of us here at twit my co-host Rosemary Orchard, is an incredibly active member of the Club Twit Discord and would love to see you there on top of all of that.

(01:19:38):
Again, starting at $7 a month or $84 a year. And by the way, I'm saying starting at, not because it's a tiered system, but because we give you the ability to pay more if you'd like, because we've heard from some folks who said, you're, you keep adding things and I'm only paying $7 a month. I wanna give you more. So you can tiering the club. Also, ga gets you access to Special Club twit shows that are only available to members of the club. There is the Untitled Linux Show, a show all about Linux. There is hands On Windows, which is a short format show from Paul Thora that covers Windows tips and tricks. There's Hands on Mac, which is my show. That's also a short format show covering apple Tips and tricks, Mac, iOS, et cetera and access to Home Theater Geeks.

(01:20:23):
The show from Scott Wilkinson that covers all things Home theater. Soon there will also be a show in the Club from Jason Howell that covers all things ai. Looking forward to learning more about that and seeing that show or hearing that show very soon. So that is also available in the club. Again, these are club twit exclusives, so you gotta join the club if you wanna hear these great shows and check them out each week. Please join the club. We'll see you in the Club. Twit Discord, I can't wait. TWIT TV slash club twit, 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 (01:20:59):
The best place to go is rosemary orchard.com, which has links to the things that I do around the internet, podcast, books, apps, all those things. And of course you can also find me on various social media sites linked from my website. I'm most active at Rosemary at Snail It Social on Mastodon or in the Club Twit Discord. And as always, don't forget, you can get in touch with the show at iOS today at twit tv, which is the best place to send those emails. 'cause Otherwise I kind of have to do some fancy automation stuff. And yeah, just send it into iOS today at twit tv or contact the iOS today. Handle on the Twit Mastodon server. If you are if you fancy Tutino at us, that's an option as well. What about you, Mikah?

Mikah Sargent (01:21:38):
Indeed. you can find me at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network or head to Chihuahua Coffee, that's C H I H U A h, OA Coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. So we, I'd love to have you head there and follow me on different social media networks. So just check out the podcasts. I do. It's all there on that site. Folks, thank you so much for tuning in this week. I hope we helped you get excited about some different health apps and features that are out there. Can't wait to hear which health apps and features you are using which ones we inspired you to check out and everything in between Rosemary, and I'll be back next week with another great episode of iOS Today. Until then, though, it is time to say goodbye. Goodbye friends.

Jonathan Bennett (01:22:25):
Hey, we should talk Linux. It's the operating system that runs the internet, but your game console, cell phones, and maybe even the machine on your desk, and you already knew all that. What you may not know is that Twit now is a show dedicated to it, the Untitled Linux Show. Whether you're a Linux Pro, a burgeoning CISs man, or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the Club Twit Discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Linux skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the Club twit exclusive Untitled Linux Show. Wait, you're not a Club Twit member yet? We'll go to twit tv slash club twit and sign up. Hope to see you there.