iOS Today 704 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.

00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on iOS today. Rosemary Orchard and I, micah Sargent, have a great episode planned for you because we've got iPads Pro and we're talking about them today. On this very episode of iOS Today, get it Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. From people you trust this is TWIT. This is iOS Today, episode 704, recorded Tuesday May 21st 2024, for Thursday May 23rd 2024. Apple's new M4, ipad Pro. Welcome back to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS tvOS, homepodos, watchos, a lot of other VisionOS and, most importantly for this episode, ipados. This is the show where we help you make the most of those wonderful devices you purchase by telling you about cool things you can do with them, like downloading apps and installing stuff and using accessories. I'm one of your hosts, micah Sargent, and hey there, friend.

01:15 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Hi, I'm Rosemary Orchard. I've decided against doing a funny accent at the very last second because I'm not sure I can keep it up, but I do have da-da-da-da-da yeah, shiny new iPad Pro. So we have so much to talk about, Micah, so many good things.

01:28 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We do, indeed, and I love that. There's even a potential possibility that my brain actually thinks about doing an accent before. It just happens, because that's just not the case. They just it just spills out of my mouth. It's a mess, I don't know. There it goes. It's happening again. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. What is happening.

01:49
We're here to talk about the new iPads Pro, and I say that iPads Pro because there are multiple iPad Pros. Ipads Pro, I mean there's the 11-inch and the 13-inch iPad Pro, as well as a new iPad Air. But, rosemary, you and I specifically did purchase the iPad Pro model, and so we're going to talk about that today on the show, because not only did we get that, we also got the accessories that come along with it. Get that, we also got the accessories that come along with it. Apple did announce this device and the iPad Air at its recent event, a special event, which, for us, just meant it was recorded very early in the morning, or rather played back very early in the morning, and it was kind of what people expected for the most part, but there were some hidden things we didn't know about. Now, our last episode of iOS Today covered everything that was announced. This episode is about actually having the hardware in hand.

02:59
I will be doing a more in-depth review of the new iPad Pro. We're planning on shooting that tomorrow, given that I will have been able to have spent a week with the device, but this is a great time to talk about it because, rosemary, you do finally have the device in hand. I would love to hear in hand. I would love to hear for folks who don't know. Um, when we first talked, you said that you were. You had in hand and Apple pencil pro and a uh magic keyboard, and I misinterpreted that, as you also had an iPad pro, but you didn't. What's, what's that all about? Cause we're very us centric on the show, so I just want to have that explained.

03:47 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, as it just so turned out or happened to turn out that when I went to order things, I wasn't 100 percent certain what I wanted from an iPad pro, I knew I was going to get the new one, because thinner and lighter are the two words that will always sell me on a new device, or nearly always, at any rate. I did not do that with the original iPad. I did not get the thinner and lighter iPad 2. That was a mistake, but I wasn't sure what specification I wanted, so I decided to hold off at the time and, as it turned out, the availability for the iPad Pro over here in the UK was very good, so I was able to pop into store and pick this one up. Actually, the day it was released, there was a whole bunch of availability, which I know was not the same everywhere around the world. But, uh, the apple stores near me all seem to have all of the options and uh, once, uh, the release day came around, then, uh, you could order them to to pick up in store, uh as well, which was very nice and simple for folks. So I, yeah, I was able to get the one terabyte version, which is exactly what I wanted once I'd gone back and reviewed my usage, because I think that is something important to consider.

04:55
If you have an iPad already and you are looking at getting the newer, shinier one, do you need a terabyte of storage? Do you need two terabytes of storage, or is 512 okay and you can maybe put some of that extra money towards getting the cellular version, for example? You have to actually look at your usage, and not just your usage on average, but your more extreme usages as well. So, for example, when I'm traveling, I download a whole bunch of extra films and TV shows to my iPad to watch while I'm on the road, because I won't necessarily have internet, and so I wanted to make sure that I was going to have enough space, for I've got like 16, 17 hours of flights each way coming up in a couple of weeks. Micah and yeah needed to make sure I was going to have adequate entertainment with everything that I wanted to download.

05:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That will be the perfect device for it. I love that I have. Now. I get it. Now I understand I am a little jealous because I, at the time that I ordered, I thought, ok, this is, this is somewhat of a redesign, plus the fact that we've got OLED screens I think that people might jump on these so I want to make sure I get one as quick as I can, and after I got the two thumbs up from our CEO, I went in and placed my order quickly, and so at the time this was before it was revealed that the different models had different specs.

06:27
So, depending on the size, I should say, the different storage sizes had different specs. If you got the 256 or 512 iPad Pro, then it was kind of a lower set of specs versus getting the one terabyte or two terabyte. So I ordered the 512 gigabyte model, based solely on just my usage of the device. I have not overfilled an iPad and so 512 was enough for me. And then I came to find out that the storage size made a difference, and so at that point I thought about canceling, but it was pushing out the date a little bit and I wanted to make sure to have it on day one so that I could spend a week with it and do a review. There's maybe, maybe, possibly, some chance that I would return it and go up a storage size just so that I have the best specs possible.

07:27
But at the same time, I don't know that. You know there's been a lot of conversation around this and I don't know that a lot of folks are going to run into any issues. I don't regularly edit video on my iPad Pro. Only I would, if it's like rarely, occasionally, and regularly, or somewhat regularly, and regularly I'm all the way down and rarely do I open up Final Cut Pro on the iPad and cut up video, and so I just don't think that it's necessary for me, no. But for the folks who are planning on using their iPad as an editing device, even if it's just audio that they're editing, or they're going to be doing a lot of multitasking on the device, then it might be a good idea to get that larger storage size for the sake of having the performance. I'm curious when you said you looked at your usage, did you mean storage usage or did you mean performance usage?

08:31 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
It was primarily a storage analysis, because the key differences between the 512 and the one terabyte, aside from the storage space is it goes from 8 gigabytes of RAM to 16 gigabytes of RAM and you get an extra core on the performance cores. That's essentially it as far as the differences go, and a chunk of that RAM and the performance core will actually go towards managing the extra storage that is available to your iPad, so that you're not writing to the actual SSD inside. You're storing things in the RAM until you need to put them on the SSD and so on, and if you've got a terabyte of storage space or two terabytes of storage space, you're more likely to be messing with some really big files versus the smaller devices. So for me, it was primarily about how much storage space do I need with all of the apps, with all the things downloaded in them offline available for use and you know, and all the media and so on where I wanted to be able to like pull it off of my camera and things like that.

09:36
So I wanted to have a bit of buffer space on that as well, and that looked like it was coming out to like 700 or so gigabytes of space with, you know, space for everything that I would want as well, and so I thought well, I could probably squish into 512, but the one terabyte seems like the better option for me, so let's go with that instead.

09:57
So yeah, for me it was primarily based on physical storage, though, of course, something worth noting with the iPad Pros is this is a USB-C port, and that means that you can plug in a hard drive that is connected via USB-C and you can pull files on and put files over onto the drive, which means that, for example, if you've got a lot of media, you're a photographer and you just want to be able to pull things off of your camera very quickly, you can pull things off the camera onto the iPad but then dump them off to a drive while you're busy filling your memory card back up again. So there's definitely plenty of options out there for folks who are looking at this.

10:40 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Nice, all right, so there is that. Let us move along to talk about some of the accessories that come along. Actually, no, I think, before we move on to talk about the accessories, I do want to take a second to mention that a listener wrote in about something regarding the iPad, and if folks are still trying to decide which iPad they want to purchase and what model exactly, then this plays into it, because this is going to be a question about the nanotexture glass. And here's the thing. That is one thing that we forgot to mention. When it comes to storage size, if you want the nanotexture glass, that is only available for the one terabyte or two terabyte model. It is not available for the 256 or 512 models. So this is the question that comes in from Bonnie in Raleigh, north Carolina. Bonnie writes Hi, micah and Rosemary. I heard on MacBreak Weekly that you, micah, talked to Leo out of ordering the nano texture glass screen and I was wondering if you could explain in more detail why you suggested that On Wednesday afternoon when I was going to order. I was going to order with that, but the delivery date was already out about four weeks, so I thought I'd wait until this Wednesday to see what kind of inventory was available at the store. But now I think I should wait and see how it is reviewed. Please elaborate. Love the podcast. Thanks, bonnie and Raleigh.

12:04
Okay, so first and foremost I want to say that the nanotexture glass is a cool feature that Apple added, first and foremost, to the Apple XDR display. That provides a low to no glare environment. The idea of putting not micro but nano textures onto the surface of the glass nano etchings onto the surface of the glass means that when light hits it, it doesn't reflect off in a way that produces a glare or tries to mitigate it to the best of its ability. But if you have a piece of clear glass and or clear to the human eye glass, and you put texture onto the surface of that glass, even if they're at the nano level, there is going to be some reduction in the brightness of the display and for someone who wants that rich, beautiful, glossy look, that's already kind of a step back. So when I was talking to Leo, you know there are multiple reasons for Leo specifically, I think that it is, when you look at it, you could see it as a step down because of the difference between the two displays in terms of the brightness that you're seeing. And then also, most people don't actually need to have that nanotexture glass.

13:39
On MacBreak Weekly, jason Snell said something that I thought was interesting. Jason was, by the way this is as an aside a lot of folks thought that the press who were invited to kind of get a hands-on time with the iPad were in Cupertino or the surrounding area, at the Apple Park Visitor Center and the Steve Jobs Theater. And, as Jason Snell said on Macbook Weekly, no, in fact, this event was held in New York, and that, again, I'm not surprised, because, remember that it was at a different time. It was made for East Coast time as opposed to West Coast time, as it usually is the impression, and in some cases even more than just an impression that the PR people were suggesting that the nanotexture glass was a if-you-know-you-know situation, meaning that if you know, as a person in the field in which you operate, are going to need a nanotexture glass display, then you should get the nanotexture glass display.

15:03
If you don't know if you need one, or if you're pretty sure you don't need one, then there's no reason to get one. It is a very specific thing that is created for the people who know they need it and given that this is Apple's arguably one of its not even arguably, it is one of its highest quality displays in an Apple product, then it is no surprise that some pros who are doing color work, who are doing photography work, who are doing graphic design would want to have that nanotexture display, particularly if they are going to use an iPad Pro as kind of an out-in-the-field device. And Raleigh don't regularly go on like safaris and take photographs and want to edit them right there while you're on safari and the sun is beating down on you. I don't know that it's necessary to get the nanotexture display All that said and this is the last thing I'll say.

16:11
And then I'm curious to hear your thoughts, rosemary, all that said, if you really want it thing I'll say. And then I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Rosemary, all that said, if you really want it, I'm not stopping you, like, just just get it if you want it. I just think that there is some trade off that you're going to experience versus, uh, the glossy, glossy, all right, what were you saying?

16:28 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
yeah. Well, I'd say for folks out there who are looking for uh articles about this, about you know whether or not they should get it just just be a little aware of confirmation bias. It is the new shiny, which means that a lot of people want to talk about it and how amazing it is and why you should definitely get it. And I did spot a review earlier today on iPad Pilot News about somebody who got the new iPad Pro and with the nanotexture and took it up in the cockpit and they're holding both iPads in their lap the previous one and the current one and showing you how much easier it is to see the screen on the new iPad. But both iPads are usable. The nanotexture didn't actually cut the glare, it just made it more readable, and I think that that is the thing to be aware of. Um, now I have a recommendation for folks who don't necessarily want to splash out the hundred dollars, um, but would like to try a similar effect.

17:26
Now, this is not exactly the same, because this is 11.99. Okay, there's, you know, 90 ish dollars difference between these two, but there is an ESR magnetic drawing screen protector. Now, this is magnetic. So I actually have this on my iPad and when I was in the studio last year actually I had one for the previous iPad I had to get a new version for this iPad. But this magnetizes and now I can't get it off on and off of your device. It's much easier to do when you're just looking at your device, but it does just pop on and off. So if I manage to pick that up and actually take that off, then folks can see. But this is just a nice way to get that sort of magnetic sorry magnetic that anti-glare finish which even now I'm looking at it because I think I've got my nails are struggling with the pores there we go. So this is it. It's got these little black bars at the top and the bottom. There's a camera cutout at the top so that you know which way around it goes, and then you can just pop it on your iPad.

18:24
So if you're looking for something that's going to give you more of a sort of paper-like effect for when you're writing and drawing on your iPad, then then I would suggest looking at that ESR option instead, which we can pop a link to in the show notes. It is currently 30% off. I think it's usually $17.99, but ESR tend to have quite a few sales, and that is something that for most folks I'd recommend, because then you still get all of the glossiness, the full blackest black, of the display when that is relevant, you know, like when you're watching films and so on, but then you also have that matte effect as you need it. So unless you're going to be outside using your iPad Pro in the sun most of the time, I suspect most folks probably don't want the nanotexture, but it does come with a cleaning cloth which is like 30 bucks separately from Apple.

19:11
So you know it's kind of only $70 for the nano texture display, but I'm not sure it's worth it. Certainly it wouldn't have been for me, and I do use my iPad outside a fair amount. So I know I live in the UK. We usually have clouds, but I promise you we have plenty of sun as well Whenever I want to sit outside and I would like to be able to see my screen that feels like it's when it's at its sunniest my screen that feels like it's when it's at its sunniest.

19:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So the you know this new device obviously features this dual layer OLED display, and it didn't take very long for me to see the difference between the two I want to share. There's a video and I will post that into the show notes for you, kevin on D19. Oh, maybe not D19. Hold on, it's trying to link to Slack instead of the actual. Okay, now D19.

20:15
And this is a video showing the previous iPad Pro to the current iPad Pro for its screen. And this is something that you can actually see on a video, because it's showing how on the older iPad Pro, on the left in the video there's kind of a gray-blue cast to the entire thing, and on the right it is just a deep, deep black with rich colors. And of course, we know that that is because it is an OLED screen where each of the individual pixels has its own lighting, and so that means that pixels that don't need to be lit up can not be lit up, versus the iPad of yesteryear where they used smaller LEDs as the backlighting for the display. So there is kind of there are a bunch of zones of lighting, and so they can choose to light up parts of it and not parts of it, but that does mean that some of that light is going to bleed into the surrounding area. So on the left, you've got kind of a in comparison, washed out video, whereas on the right, with the new iPad Pro and its beautiful OLED screen, it is not washed out. It is just the parts that need to be lit up are lit up, but the parts that don't are not lit up, and it looks great. So if you I don't know if you've used an iPad Pro up to this point as your kind of primary media device and you have yearned for something that doesn't have as much light bleed, that's another reason that you might want to upgrade to the new OLED iPad Pro.

22:02
So let's talk about accessories now, of course, we have the new Magic Keyboard that has been redesigned, and we also have the Apple Pencil Pro. Have the Apple Pencil Pro? Speaking of the new Magic Keyboard, this is it's going to look similar to the Magic Keyboard of yesteryear in terms of the way that it folds with the what do they call it? A cantilever design, and it folds up, but a lot has changed. For one, there's this interesting kind of metal bar that runs across the back of it, that has the usb-c port on the side of it and a little hinge mechanism right in the middle oh look, I got some gunk on there, um, and then obviously, the camera cut out for the device.

22:51
But this time the uh inside is a metal enclosure with a keyboard that has a function row. We love function rows. So you've got your brightness controls, you've got search, you've got activating Siri, you've got your focus modes, play and pause. All of that stuff is right there in the function mode, plus a nice dedicated lock button. And then below that is the haptic trackpad. And so this actually does have a haptic engine. It has haptics built into it so that when you click it feels like you're clicking. But right now, because there's nothing connected to this, it doesn't have an iPad attached to it. As I'm pressing on it, nothing is happening. I don't feel anything other than just a slight depressing of it. How are you liking or not liking the new Magic Keyboard? What do you think?

23:49 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I am loving the new Magic Keyboard. So one of the things that I did on my previous Magic Keyboard is it's all pretty and colorful. I covered this with I believe this is dbrand skins wraps in their sort of marble paint effect. But I felt like I really had to do it on the inside because, just like you noticed, on the outside of your Magic Keyboard, micah, it got a little grimy and it was one of those things where I just felt like I was cleaning it a little bit more than I felt like I had to be. Now.

24:18
Obviously, you know, the previous one still had the built in with the backlights on the keys, which is very important. But it is like this subtle difference here. You've got the metal bar running through the middle and then you know the fabric of the Magic Keyboard going around the outside on the old one versus the new one, where the hinge is just built into the metal bar, which has got that usb-c port in the side. So you know, the fact that there's a usb-c port in the side is honestly something I kind of forgot about, um until recently, because you can then charge your ipad. This port this port only provides power to pass through to your iPad versus the other port built into your iPad, which also does data. But the function row key, oh my gosh, I absolutely love it Actually having an escape key the brightness buttons, the launchpad and spotlight and Siri and so on.

25:16
This is really great. And, more importantly, you've also got your media controls and your volume controls, which I'm pretty good at. You know, just touching the volume controls and getting it right. But if I'm already typing and I just want to adjust the volume quickly, it's much easier to just reach up with, you know, my third finger, my ring finger on my right hand, and just you know, tap and adjust very quickly. So I am absolutely loving this. This is also lighter and I'll note I do have a dbrand skin on here, so that's adding a tiny bit of extra weight. But the new Magic Keyboard is quite a bit lighter, which is a very nice feature which I greatly appreciate, especially combined with the thinner and lighter iPad Pro, which I'm not sure folks can actually see that it's now narrower than the Apple Pencil. Oh yeah, even though I've only got the 11 inch, it's still narrower than that Apple Pencil.

26:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Hmm, yes, it is a very, very thin device and in fact we were impressed by how it compares in size to almost any Apple product. Apple, of course, said it is the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, specifically, is the thinnest. I think they said the thinnest product Apple has ever made. I think it's better to say the thinnest device that Apple has ever made. Of course, you had the folks who take things very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very literally, who found a number of other things that Apple sells and said that they were thinner than the iPad Pro. Ha ha fun, fun ha ha. But anyway, it's very impressive that the iPad Pro is as thin as it is, both, I think, in the 11-inch size and in the 12.9-inch size. Frankly, they are both little feats of engineering on the resilience of the frame and that you know. That was considered in its approach while making the device thinner. Now we should talk about the new Apple Pencil Pro. This looks a lot like the Apple Pencil that we have had up to this point and works a lot like the Apple Pencil that we've had up to this point, of the kind of newer version of the Apple Pencil not the original, in that it has a built in battery and proper magnets so that you can walk it to the side of the iPad to charge it and also to pair it with an iPad. It also has the little screw-off tip so that you can replace it as needed, and outside of that, there are some interesting updates to this device, including now a built-in as Apple calls it Taptic Engine that will provide haptic feedback depending on what you're doing. This pencil also features a few new tricks. One is called Barrel Roll, which lets you change the way that a brush or other kind of art tool that you're using virtually change the way that it's shaped, based on how you are holding the Apple Pencil, as well as a nice squeeze gesture that joins the double tap gesture of the Apple Pencil so that you can I mean it depends on the app In Apple's built-in apps and its first-party apps, you can use it to kind of summon a little palette that gives you access to your different tools. I'm able to squeeze this and I can feel the little taptic vibration that takes place. That gives me that sense as if I'm sort of pushing an invisible button for the Apple Pencil, and so it's kind of a fun little fidget to have in your hand. However, I don't know how quickly that will drain the battery. So for now I'll walk it back to the top of the iPad.

29:39
There's kind of a bit of a confusing I would argue lineup for Apple Pencil, because you have let's see, you've got the Apple Pencil first generation. First generation, and that is the Apple Pencil where the cap comes off the back and there's a little lightning charger, or rather a lightning plug on the end, so you can plug it into a lightning port and charge it. It used to be that you could just stick it right into the bottom of an iPad and you'd be able to charge it from that. Then there's the Apple Pencil USB-C. This is an Apple Pencil that also has a removable cap on the end of it and charges via USB-C. Then there's the Apple Pencil second generation. That is an Apple Pencil that looks a lot like the one that we were talking about, but doesn't have the other gestures and things or the barrel roll functionality. It simply has the double tap gesture.

30:40
And now the new Apple Pencil Pro.

30:43
So when you scroll down the list you start to see where things change.

30:48
So, for example, I mean this is kind of wild the USB-C Apple Pencil does not have pressure sensitivity, but the Apple Pencil first generation does have pressure sensitivity.

31:03
All three of the newer devices can attach magnetically.

31:07
The Apple Pencil Pro and the Apple Pencil second generation can, of course, charge whenever they are attached to the side, but the Apple Pencil USB-C cannot, nor can the original Apple Pencil, as we've talked about. All three of the new ones support Apple Pencil hover and then it kind of goes down from there. So the USB-C version of the Apple Pencil also doesn't have a little sensor inside to detect that double tap feature or double tap gesture. So when it comes to the Apple Pencil, different Apple Pencils are able to be used on different iPads, and some Apple Pencils don't support some of the newer models of iPad, and so it's very confusing which ones you could use. So I just recommend that before you buy an Apple Pencil, you go look at the Apple Pencil that you're thinking about purchasing and you look in the compatibility section for that Apple Pencil and make sure that it will work with the iPad that you have or the iPad that you're planning to buy. But strictly speaking of the new Apple Pencil Pro, what are your thoughts, rosemary?

32:20 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, I am pretty excited by this, to be honest. So I have been playing with the Apple Pencil a lot. So I am here in Freeform, which is an app that you can get for free from Apple, on my new iPad Pro, and I'm just, you know, going along doodling, doing whatever it is I feel like doing, and I can just, you know, going along doodling, doing whatever it is I feel like doing, and I can squeeze the barrel of the Apple Pencil to, you know, pop it open, select a different tool, pop it open and select the color picker, etc. Now, if I pop into the settings, I can actually play with this a little bit so I can change what some of the actions do. So there is the squeeze action, which is currently set to show the tool palette, but you can actually swap this so you can have it, switch between the current tool and the eraser, the current tool and the last used tool, just show the color palette, show the ink attributes or one of my favorite little things. You can run a shortcut, yeah, you can run a shortcut. So this can be really useful for, like you know saying like I would like to be able to squeeze and pop open a quick note, for example, and you can also adjust your sensitivity here.

33:25
There's also some other things as well where you can try scribble, so I can try writing. So I'll try writing Micah, which I'm writing really badly because I am using my iPad and it's basically vertical because it's on the magic keyboard, and it still figured out that I wrote Micah, which I'm writing really badly because I am using my iPad and it's basically vertical because it's on the magic keyboard, and it still figured out that I wrote Micah. So I'm pretty happy about that. And then I can just scratch out a word to delete it, draw a line over a word to select it, or draw a circle around it to select it. I can just type, insert something somewhere, and there's also joining things together as well, which is quite nice. It's worth playing in the settings for that, but I have been having a little bit of fun Micah, because I'm not sure how well this is going to show up. But good notes.

34:12
It's one of the apps that updated recently with support for the Apple Pencil Procreate in their most recent update said support for the apple pencil percreate in their most recent update said support for the new apple pencil is coming soon. So I'm just going to adjust the width of this a little bit. I'm using the fountain pen tool here, um, but as I, um, you know, adjust, uh, the like the angle that I'm holding the pencil at, you can see it's changing the width of the line. Now I'm having to do doodles because it wasn't showing up in my handwriting because obviously I'm at a very vertical angle here. But I love this.

34:44
It's really nice. It just feels a little bit more, you know, intuitive and like it's real writing. Now I do have the ESR screen protector on here and you know that definitely contributes. And I know apps have been doing things like this style of writing before, but it was kind of a guesstimate based on, like, the speed that you were doing things at and the shape that you'd just drawn and so on, and sometimes, if you were quick, you could spot what they just changed. So, yeah, for me this is a really nice improvement and I would definitely, you know, recommend that people who are interested have a play with one of these, at least in the.

35:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Apple Store.

35:24 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
It's worth going into an Apple Store or somewhere that sells these, that has them out for demo, and actually giving it a try, just because you may find that, while it's really cool that you can squeeze it, you trigger it accidentally all the time and that's not worth having. If you're going to trigger it accidentally all the time and that's not worth having, you know if you're going to trigger it accidentally all the time, so you're going to have to turn that feature off. Basically, then you could probably get away with a cheaper Apple Pencil or you know something else that's got good hand rejection.

35:49 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Absolutely. The Apple Pencil Pro retails at $129. $129. The Magic Keyboard is going to depend on the size of your iPad, but retails for between $299 and $399. $349. And, of course, the iPad Pro starts at $999.

36:17
I am not sure what the current let's see what the current ship date would be for, like a base model, just go 11 inch, let's say silver, and then just do, yeah, 256. Standard, of course, glass, wi-fi alone and no engraving, none of the extra stuff, no Apple Pencil or keyboard and no trade-in, and buy straight out for $9.99,. No AppleCare Plus, although I do recommend that in most cases. Ah, it looks like it is available to pick up in-store today and it also would deliver as early as May 23rd. So there are some models that are just fine doing just fine on stock. So that's good to know. If you are, you know, hankering for an iPad Pro, your model might be in stock at a local Apple store and if not, you might be able to get it delivered to you pretty quickly. All right, I think it is time, unless, rosemary, do you have anything?

37:26 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
else you want to say before we move on. I'm going to say you know, folks don't necessarily run to immediately buy the new iPad Pro. If you're excited by it, give folks a couple of weeks to do returns and Apple a couple of weeks to process those, because at some point they'll start appearing on the Apple refurb store where you can get some good deals and there's some other sales on out there as well. Plus, it gives folks time to buy that nanotechnology glass with the nano etching on it and then discover that maybe it's not for them. So maybe there'll be a whole influx of those available on the refurb store for you to pick up if you really want one. So, yeah, you don't have to run to get it. You will still be able to enjoy it in a couple of weeks or a month or so to when they become available at slightly lower prices.

38:05 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That is a great pro tip. All right, let us head into feedback. We've got one feedback question which comes from James, james writes Rosemary and Micah. I had a niche or niche, as some people say question regarding carplay and standby mode that I was wondering if you or Micah had an answer to. I recently got a MagSafe charging mount for my car that at the time did not have carplay In the horizontal orientation. It was able to show the large button format for a clock, weather, etc. It was great.

38:38
Of course, this is the standby mode, but when I subsequently added CarPlay functionality, the standby mode will not display. Is there any possible workaround that you can think of? Thanks in advance, james Gray. James, so James, basically, is saying hey, before I had carplay in my car, I was just using standby mode with my phone and I liked that. Now that I have carplay that I've added to my vehicle, I connect to my car and my phone together and when that happens it switches to carplay mode, and now I don't see standby on my phone. Can I keep standby on my phone? Um, the quick right. So as far as I well, go ahead. Actually, rosemary, you go first and then we'll see.

39:27 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
We'll see what you have to say well, I mean I, I went a little extra for this episode, micah, and I got a car play display to bring into my house. Uh, because you know, the folks who are watching ios today deserve the best. I'm aware it's not fully in focus, but the point is more that CarPlay is connected, my phone is plugged in. It's plugged in via a cable, but that's fine. But, just like James, I don't have standby mode showing up. But that is because I'm in driving focus. This is something that I found out a little while ago. So once your phone is in driving focus then it won't show up. So at the moment, apparently it's playing some music as well from something else I was experimenting with. But it should, once you turn off your driving focus, then actually pop up with the standby stuff. Now, in my case it's struggling a little bit because it's plugged in physically and screen sharing, but when I played with this earlier it did actually come up for me.

40:23
So the driving focus mode specifically, and sleep focus they are not normal focus modes. They are standard, as in. Apple ships them with your device, but they are limited, they're locked down. So if you go into the settings and you have a look at those which I'm going to do right now. I'm just going to pop open settings and then I can show folks. So under settings, we go to focus.

40:45
If I open, for example, holiday this is one that I've created, okay Then I can see that I've got things like focus filters and a schedule and so on at the bottom. But if I go into driving, I don't have have apps. Apps doesn't show up here at the top in my allow notifications from um and I don't have a schedule. That's not an option. The only thing I can say is turn on automatically.

41:07
Uh, turn on when connected to card, bluetooth or active manually and yes or no to activating this with carplay um, and that is something that makes a difference when it comes to these things, because your phone in other focus modes, for example, you can turn on and off. Your always on display and specifically the driving focus mode is turning that off automatically, meaning that you're not going to be able to turn it on and work around it, which is part of the problem. So I'm just going to disconnect my phone from the cable for a moment, which may be very dangerous for the next episode of iOS Today, because what if that happens? And I'll just report back in a moment if it does indeed show the standby mode again, but it may be that it is entirely. It's because it updated the other day and maybe that this was a bug that they fixed, because you're not supposed to be able to do that.

42:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I'm curious because I understand that if CarPlay is going, you know, then why would you also have that turned on as well? So it would be cool if, as long as you're not in uh driving mode, you were able to access uh access standby as you'd like. Um, and again, as rosemary showed on that screen where she went into the focus mode for driving specifically, there were two options. You would change that, james, to instead of automatically when connected to car Bluetooth. You'd choose manually or you could keep that. I think it says something like automatically when connected to CarPlay. You would turn that off so that driving mode doesn't turn on, so that then you are able to have standby mode, come on, as long as you're MagSafe charging to the back and are in, you know, horizontal mode. Okay, with that, I think I can hear the music.

43:25
It's time for Shortcuts Corner. It's time for Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts request and Rose Marie Orchard, our shortcuts expert, provides a response. Before we get to today's Shortcuts Corner request, now is the time where we tell you that if you have been experimenting with shortcuts and you've run into an issue and you're trying to figure it out and you haven't figured it out and you want to know how to do the thing with shortcuts, you can get help with that. You send us an email, ios today at twittv. When you email us there then rosemary will see that you have a shortcutscuts Corner request and you need help and will do her best to provide it. So all that's to say we are running out of Shortcuts Corner requests. We could use some new ones, and if you've sent in one before that we have yet to answer on the show, feel free to resubmit. I know some of you are very, very kind about making sure that you're not loading down our email inbox, but if you haven't seen your question answered before on the show, go ahead and you have our permission to send it in again and have your shortcuts corner request considered and hopefully answered.

44:34
With that out of the way, sirduck of PNW has written in and says Hi folks, we try to limit the kids' screen time after school so we automate the bedtime routine. Unfortunately, the clever little buggers started getting up really early for their breakfast. They both do virtual school, so I set the downtime, which is a feature of screen time, to end at 10 am to ensure they aren't on devices before school starts, otherwise getting them moving in the morning is difficult. This started being an issue when we transitioned everyone to Mac minis for their school computers. We have to manually disable downtime every day that we start before 10. It's not hard, but it is several clicks and a pin typing in a pin to get there. I don't mind typing in the pin, but is there a way to make a shortcut to toggle downtime, even if it means I still need to enter the pin? And again, that is from SirDuck of P of pnw yeah.

45:41 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
so this is, uh, an interesting challenge because the the problem is specifically coming from the fact that sometimes they start school earlier than 10, uh, which also absolutely amazing. It's been shown, uh, that in various days that kids brains do not work super well in the morning and the whole, like teenagers, having to go to school at like 8 am or even earlier is really terrible for their brains. So I'm glad that you, you let your kids start school at like 10. That's really lovely, um, but yeah, having to start matt, like going to manually turn this off is a little tricky. Now, downtime can sync across devices, which means that you could theoretically disable it using your parental controls from your device to sync over to the others, but you're still going to have to go in and do that somewhere, and so I did a little experimenting and I'm very pleased to report that I have a shortcut. Now I will show this shortcut on my phone, but I will not be able to run it on my phone for one very good reason, because I've specified this is for Mac OS downtime. Now I can create a shortcut that will open the settings area on your iPhone to downtime, or the Mac OS system preferences for screen time settings and then go to the downtime section, depending on which device. But you're specifically asking about the mac, so I thought I would show folks.

47:03
Um, so mac os system preferences has, uh, it's sort of a url scheme. Okay, so a url scheme is where you can open a url and say it starts with http or https, then that'll go through Safari or Firefox or whatever your browser is, and you folks may have seen tell numbers where it's T-E-L, colon, slash, and then a number, and when you tap on that it'll call a number and mail to link. So mail to colon, and then you know it might have iOS today at twittv to send in your request for this sort of thing and that will open your mail app of choice. Um, so system preferences on mac os has a similar sort of thing where it's x-applesystem preferencescom, uh, colon, and then you've got the, the name of the pane. So this in this case happens to be screen time settings extension, and then when you want specifically to go to the downtime area. So if you run this on a mac it will just go straight into the downtime settings, which is a lot faster than having to open, you know, click Apple, open system preferences, wait for it to load, click on screen time, wait for that to load, click on downtime, wait for that to load and then disable it and you know, type in the pin.

48:13
Unfortunately, there is no way to control downtime directly with shortcuts, because Apple figured out that kids are really great at following YouTube tutorials and it turns out that if you give kids control access to, like the ability to create a shortcut that can do something like that, they will find a way to get their parents and guardians and those people who have those pins to, just like you know, run the shortcut and the person won't realize that they're disabling downtime.

48:41
So, yeah, I did have a look to see if you could disable downtime automatically with focus mode, so if you could enable a focus mode and have that turn downtime off.

48:51
But I realized as I was doing that that that's not possible, because then your kids could just enable school focus at like 9 am or 7 am, whenever it is they get up, and then they'd be able to just do whatever they wanted on the Internet.

49:06
So, unfortunately, I think this is the best we are going to be able to do, but there's a whole host of these URLs available and we can pop a link in the show notes to where you can find this for Mac OS so that you can figure out how to find this sort of information, to open a particular system preferences pane, because it is quite useful to be able to just jump to a certain section of them. So what I would do with this is, on the Mac I would actually have it show up in the menu bar, because that's a toggle that you can enable on a Mac in shortcuts and you can, yeah, so in the settings you can turn on pin in menu bar and then it will just be in shortcuts in the menu bar up by the clock so that you can actually go ahead and see that. And then you just click, click and you're done at any point to get to those system preferences and turn off downtime to get started with school.

50:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Very clever. I love the idea of just having it right there in the menu bar. So see, that is what you get when you send in your questions to iostoday at twittv a thorough response. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of iOS Today. We thank you so much for tuning in. If you have regular questions, even outside of shortcuts, you can send those to us iostoday at twittv. Rosemary Orchard, if folks want to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

50:42 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, the best place is over at RosemaryOrchardcom, which has got links to podcasts, books, apps and all of those other things that I am involved in and, of course, for our fabulous Club Twit members. I'm also always keeping an eye on the live chat during the recordings and the iOS Today channel inside the Club Twit Discord after the show. Where can folks find you, Micah?

50:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You can find me at Micah Sargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahuacoffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-Acoffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. If you are listening to this and wish you could be watching it, well, consider tuning or joining, rather, club Twit. Twittv slash Club Twit. When you join the club for $7 a month, you will have the opportunity to actually watch our show, because that is one of several benefits you will get as a member of Club Twit. You also get every single Twit show with no ads, just the content. You can access our members-only feed, like Twit, the Twit plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else.

51:35
Behind the scenes, before the show, after the show, special Club Twit events get published there. Access to hands-on Mac, hands-on tech, hands-on Windows, home theater geeks, ios Today, the Untitled Linux Show in video forms and our members-only Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit. All of that is only available to our club members and we appreciate those of you who are members who will not be hearing this because this doesn't go into the version that goes out to our members, but those of you who are listening and wish you could be watching again twittv slash club twit. Thanks so much for tuning in and we'll catch you again for another episode of iOS Today. Bye-bye.