iOS Today 708 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, talk about the additional features you can expect in iOS and iPadOS 18. Stay tuned. Podcasts you love From people you trust this is Twit.

00:23
This is iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard and Micah Sargent, episode 708, recorded Tuesday June 11th 2024, for Thursday June 20th 2024. Ios 18, additional features. Welcome back to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, ipados, tvos, watchos, homepodos, visionos, home and Audio and all of the other things that Apple has on offer. This is the show where we try to help you make the most of your devices, make sure you're using them to the best that they can be used, tell you about settings and features and apps and everything you should check out. I am one of your hosts, micah Sargent.

01:04 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
And I am Rosemary Orsha and ready to listen in Micah Nice.

01:10 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So this is the kind of part two of the WWDC coverage. Apple had its worldwide developer conference at our developers Conference at the beginning of June, and we are getting near the end of June as this episode is being published. So I will briefly remind you that WWDC is the conference that takes place each year where Apple announces upcoming changes to its various platforms that's Vision, os, ios, those things that I listed at the beginning of the show and during that time Apple not only announces the changes and the features that are coming to the platform, but also talks about new ways that developers the folks who make the apps for these devices are able to do. They help the developers figure out how to leverage the new changes with special things called APIs. So there were a bunch of kind of prime core features that Apple announced. And then there's the rest of it, and this episode is kind of about the rest of it. And this episode is kind of about the rest of it, and I think that the big thing that we're including in the rest of it is something that Apple announced at the very end of the keynote, because it's something that is not yet available for us as folks who are using the beta to make use of.

02:42
Just yet Apple, of course, kind of in terms of the big tech companies, seemed to be last to the generative AI craze, this newer technology that takes a bunch of understanding of the world by way of text and, in some cases, audio video, of the world by way of text and, in some cases, audio video and images, and you ask it things or you tell it things or you want it to do things, and then it kind of creates from that. It has been described in various ways as fancy, autocorrect. It has been described as loads of different things, but when it comes to packing it into a device, this is something we've seen from Microsoft by way of its CoPilot Plus PCs, and now via Apple by way of what's called Apple Intelligence. So Apple introduced Apple Intelligence, which is Apple's take on the generative AI craze that, as you might imagine, has a focus on privacy and security and also has a steadfast take on how these things should be done.

03:59
So much of the processing that we would do now if I were to go to something like ChatGPT the site and type in a query and say give me a recipe using asparagus, orange juice, a bowl of rice and a quail egg, and then it would try to figure out a recipe for me that is going to go to the OpenAI server somewhere. It's going to process that and then it's going to send me back an answer. Apple is trying to do as much of this as possible without ever contacting the server. So if I were to ask that on the phone, first it would try to figure out if it can do it on the phone and do it there locally, and then, if it can't, then it goes to the server and if it can't do it with an Apple's kind of bubble, then right now what it'll do, or what it will do, is it will suggest that it asks chat GPT. So there's a lot going on here, but at the very kind of basis of it is Apple trying to do as much of the generative AI processing as possible without ever needing to leave your device. That is something that when Apple announced this addition, it left it until the end, but what we came to find out is that it was woven throughout many of the new features that are coming.

05:33
So you will have heard Rosemary and I talking in the last episode about mail, about messages, about photos, and there's a lot of stuff in those apps that is actually using this new Apple intelligence system at its heart, particularly with Siri. So in mail, being able to respond with a specific message, to have it generate specific messages that have a kind of particular theme, to say, oh, I want to make this more formal, I want to make this less formal, to be able to talk to Siri and say I want to set up an appointment tomorrow with my doctor, and it has more knowledge of my calendar, about how long it takes to get to the appointment with my doctor, about what else I might have going on, what reminders are in the way. More contextual awareness is kind of at the heart of Apple intelligence, and I think that that's kind of what sets it apart. Rosemary, I was curious to hear from you what stood out to you with Apple intelligence and maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you are excited about when it comes to Apple Intelligence.

06:49 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, I'm going to start with what I'm excited about, because the fact that they are doing this all local, on device, and you know they're not going to be sending things off device unless they have to, and then they're not going to be sending things to a third party service again without asking you first, that to me is very exciting, because there are naturally a number of privacy concerns with regards to AI and, for example, at work in my day job. I'm not allowed to use a bunch of AI things to do my job, because guess what, if it takes all of my work and then somehow something goes wrong somewhere, security wise, and that gets leaked, we've got a huge problem. So I can't just throw everything in there. I don't want all of my personal emails and photos and, you know, messages and so on being leaked in some way. So by doing everything on device, this is what we've come to expect from Apple. This is why when you get a new iPhone, it has to go and re-index all of your photos to recognize everything, because that sort of thing is on device. So that is what I'm very excited about and you know it's interesting where they've decided. You know the delineation is so if you're on the iPhone 15 Pro and and pro max, you're gonna get this, but you need an a17 pro chip in your device or one of the m series chips. So there'll be a lot more ipads and max that'll get access to this, but fewer iphones. And it was barely mentioned at all for vision os and it wasn't mentioned for the apple Watch, though the Apple Watch is probably going to lean on a phone to do this, but I find it interesting where they've delineated that. But I also think that that is a very good idea.

08:33
This stuff uses a huge amount of processing power. I was at Computex in Taiwan last week and one of the questions asked to Dr Lisa Zhu, who is CEO of AMD, was was what are you doing about green things? You know how are you trying to reduce energy usage? Because this stuff does use a huge amount of battery. Imagine if you picked up your iphone and you asked for that recipe with the asparagus and the quail's egg and you went from 100 battery to 80 battery. Like you're not going to be a happy camper.

09:05
So I I think that this is, you know, smart, that the pro devices tend to end up with the better battery life, as do the ipads and the macs. So I think that's a very smart way to to split it up, and they're also looking at putting it into. You know the right sort of things as well. You know, like, when you ask it for flight information, pulling in information that you know, people forwarded you via email and sent you via text and their current geographic location to know that, yes, they are on that flight, or you know they were at least at the airport at the right time, so that must be their flight and then showing you that data. I think that's very smart, but then, no, they don't need to use AI to calculate where that plane is. They can just look that up through flight stats. So I think that you know it's going to be a nice combination and, in particular, the addition to the journal app and the enhancements there with the Apple intelligence is going to be a really nice combination for everybody.

10:01 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Absolutely so.

10:02
It's broken up into a few categories. First is Apple's new writing tools, which I briefly mentioned. You know, making something more friendly, more professional, more concise. Doing a summary of some text, proofreading some text, figuring out the key points, creating a table or a list out of something. Being able to prioritize your notifications so making sure that the people that you talk to most frequently, that you want to hear from, show up above everything else. And then things that are kind of more immediate, so that your Instacart order is at the door, versus, you know, notifications that can wait A response from someone on X, that is just somebody saying that you're wrong about something. I could probably wait.

10:45
Getting priority messages in mail. So, again, this is where we talked about mail before and I wasn't able to really go into detail Getting summaries of mail conversations, but also sorting out mail according to what's most important. Being able to within the Notes of the Phone app we talked about audio recording and transcription for phone calls. This is also possible in the notes app. So if you are a student and you're in a lecture, you can record the conversation and have that lecture be part of it and then get a summary of the lecture, have the full transcription of the lecture. Setting up a new focus mode you know we're familiar with do not disturb and sleep and work and driving. There's a new focus mode we're familiar with do not disturb and sleep and work and driving. There's a new focus mode called reduce interruptions, which uses Apple intelligence to only pop up important notifications based on what it believes are the most important.

11:36
And then also things like smart reply in mail, which they showed something very cool. It's a problem that I run into all the time. I send a message that has six questions in it throughout the message and the person responds, and they maybe reply to three of them. I need an answer for all six. So smart reply gives you the ability to not only see the get like a summary of what has been said, but also to make sure that you hit all of those questions. So, will your partner be joining? Will you be driving or taking an Uber? You can select those, and then Smart Reply is going to go ahead and draft that message for you. Those are the writing tools that have been added to Apple Intelligence.

12:20
There are also new tools for image generation, including a kind of they call it image playground, and in it. It gives you some kind of built-in topics that you can work with and then you can also customize them. So, for example, if you're talking to one of your friends and your friend is one of those people which is fine by me who believe in aliens, that aliens have touched down on earth and that they're here, you could send them a photo of an alien walking around eating some ice cream. That's just an example, but what Apple Intelligence does is it is contextually aware, so it knows your friend and your friend's contact photo. It can take your friend's contact photo. It can take the conversation that you're having and then it can take any additional prompts that you provide and create unique images there. So you could have, instead of just a photo of an alien eating some ice cream, you could have a photo of an alien eating some ice cream with your friend walking arm in arm with that alien.

13:29
There's a special app called the Image Playground app and, I think most importantly, there's a new feature called Genmoji, and these are emoji that you can create like bespoke emoji. So if you're having a conversation with someone again about uh, quail, eggs and asparagus, what if there was an emoji of a um, of a mix between a quail and an asparagus and asparagus quail, then you could create a gen emoji for that. I don't know what that would look like, but I don't have to worry about it because it could do it itself. Um, it's also coming to. I mentioned those memory movies which I don't have to worry about it because it can do it itself. It's also coming to. I mentioned those memory movies which I think are very cool.

14:08
The idea that in photos I can say you know the time when Rosemary came to visit and please set it to an exciting song. It will pull up those images, it will put together a memory, a video, and you know the images move along and there's that music playing in the background. And then it's also applied to photos in terms of the search. So I remember a time when I was on the beach and there was a seal, a baby seal, there, and I can't remember what year that was, so I can't find it. I can type in baby seal on the beach a few years ago and it will search through my photos and find those photos and I'm able to get it where I might not have been able to otherwise. And then also the ability to clean up in your photos app. So if you're taking a photo and you look and you can see that there's somebody who decided to relieve himself at the beach within your photo in the corner, then you can say obviously I don't want that. You can clean that up, have that removed from the photograph.

15:15
Those are just some of the image features that are available. There's also a feature in the Notes app called Image Wand, which lets you sketch something out and then circle it with the Image Wand and say bippity, boppity, boo and turn it into something else. So I could sketch an image of a house that's on fire and then circle it and it would turn into an illustration of a house that's on fire, for example. And of course, as we mentioned, siri getting all better as well, and integration with, first and foremost, chatgpt from OpenAI is going to be the first integration, but Apple has already said that there's possibility for other large language models that are online getting integrations at some point, so you can access it for free without creating an account. But if you are a subscriber, you can also connect your account to get access to those paid features and still use it at the system level. That is Apple Intelligence. Now let's talk about, as Rosemary is showing us, the Notes app. I believe is what you have pulled up.

16:27 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, I have the Notes app right here, micah, and I'm using the new iPad Pro with the M4 chip and I have the Apple Pencil Pro here. But what I'm about to show folks is going to be available if you are using an iPad with an Apple Pencil, because we already have handwriting and handwriting recognition. So if I wrote something down, then it would be able to just insert it for me as text, and I've now got it a little bit stuck. There we go. So, oh no, it's just having a moment, because I'm running a beta.

17:00
This is what you expect, but I've written some things here and if I tap and hold on uh one of the words, for example, you can see that it's actually selecting it as a word. Um, and this is really nice, because what I can actually do is I can select this whole section here and then I can say copy as text, and then I will even be able to uh paste that as text. How can you decide what is important? Well, that's a good question. In a beta, everything's important, and if you're filing feedback, remember more details. Pictures and screenshots and videos are always going to be helpful if you are sending something in because it doesn't work or it doesn't work as you expect, but what I'm loving here in the Apple Notes app in particular.

17:46
So obviously I've got my pencil and I can draw things. But if I tap on the three dots one of Micah's favorite buttons, because there's always more to see under those three dots then you'll see I have a setting here called auto-refine handwriting and it's turned on. And so if I write something like iOS today is very cool and I'm not writing very well here because I'm scribbling, it's behind my microphone and so on, but it's tidied it up a little bit for me. It figured out what I meant by cool. But if I select this section here, then I can tap on it and then if I tap on the little arrow, I've even got the option to straighten, which just it moves it around a little bit. It was uh, barely uh perceptible there. But if I write something like mica is great over here and I'm deliberately doing this all at many angles, uh, then when I select that and then I tap for the option to straighten that up, it's moved it a bit more.

18:48
It's obviously it's not perfect and I am writing at a very bad angle, but you know it's doing what it can and, considering the fact that I wrote across two different lines there, it's managed to get the is and great to be in line with each other and is actually lines up with the M at the start of the mica, or the majority of the M at the start of the mica, so I feel like that's pretty cool. And the fact that you can then copy this as text and then you'll be able to paste it in and insert it anywhere else, as well as all of the other features that are available in notes and this will work in free form as well it's just really great. And I really love the fact that the recording and so on is going to be in here too. There's the ability to add attachments.

19:32
The record audio is actually there right now, so if I were to do that, then I could just tap on that recording and then you know I've got all of that information so that I can add that later. And there we go. There's my seven second recording so that I can play that back Now. Not all of the features that were shown off yesterday or in the WWDC keynote are here yet, but we will get to play with these more as time goes on, and some of these will not even introduce until after September because Apple is working on them, but they're not going to release them until they are ready to go.

20:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, another place where we've seen the introduction of the Apple Pencil as kind of a major input tool is the Calculator app, particularly on the iPad. First of all, calculator on iPad, but with that comes a new feature called math notes, and math notes is kind of a scribbly scrap paper sort of feature that gives you the ability to kind of write out your thoughts, create variables, do graphing. There's all sorts of stuff that you can do with it. But they showed on stage at WWDC someone who was playing table tennis and figuring out or I guess maybe it was ping pong, I don't know if those technically count as the same thing, but anyway playing some sort of table-based swatting game and they were trying to figure out the angle and the height of the tallest serve and all this other stuff. And they were able to create a graph doing that, able to set variables, so X equals 4.6, y equals 3.2. And then you could do X plus Y equals and all of that stuff can be updated, so then you could change the variable X to the variable Y.

21:30
They showed a really cool thing where somebody was trying to figure out the costs of a trip with friends. So five friends are going on a trip and they know that food for the trip is going to cost this much, travel is going to cost this much, lodging is going to cost this much and I don't know restaurants reservations are going to cost this much. And then you put the amount that it costs and then they added all four of them together, the total cost there, and then they took that total and divided it by the five people going on the trip to get the cost that everybody would need to pay for the whole trip. But then if any of those costs changed, they could update those variables and the rest of it would update live.

22:19
Very cool, and it reminded me of the Solver app S-O-U-L-V-E-R that I have used for quite a while. That does kind of like back of the napkin calculations. Yeah, there it is Solver 3, m, c and E, and so you can see E equals MC squared and also did try to do that calculation, you know, by. Yeah.

23:00 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I haven't quite figured out the exact syntax here, but I just wrote m equals six, uh, and c equals seven. And if I were to erase this, e equals mc, then I could just write mc equals uh, and then it'll put down 42 for me and I really love this uh feature, the way it works. You know, if you, you know, obviously, if you're actually taking a math class, uh, then you should probably be trying to figure this out in your head and or, you know, with working, and not have it solved for you. But it did correctly solve six times seven.

23:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And notice as well that it looked at the way that you wrote the characters that you had and created characters 294 based on how it would guess that you would write those letters. So it's trying to do it in your handwriting, which I think is very cool. It doesn't have a four to go off of, but it's kind of looking at what you have written and using that as a means to figure out how you might write those. We will see the addition of that in the Notes app as well. That's not ready yet, but they showed how you could take text from something else, paste it in and then have those handwritten notes appear in an estimation of your handwriting. It's also going to be able to let you kind of select text and move it around and have that text appear in different places. It's very cool what it's able to do. So if you're watching the video, then you're seeing there was a part where someone had written cinnamon but they misspelled it and so they tapped on it and autocorrected it and it actually wrote out Cinnamon correctly using an estimation of your own handwriting. That is going to be super cool and I can't wait to see that feature make its way into Notes.

24:56
I want to mention quickly Maps. It was kind of wild because we just talked on the show not too long ago Apple awarding, uh, all trails with an I think it was the app store awards for one of the best apps on the app store. And then topographic maps and trail networks make their way to the maps app. So one of my complaints about all trails was how stinking expensive it was. Look, I'm a person who loves to pay for apps, but that app was just a little bit outside of my budget because I didn't go hiking enough to justify it. So now that it's made its way into the Maps app itself, topographic maps and also hiking trails means that I don't need to worry about third-party apps to do that. So I'm pretty excited about this. It says maps now feature topographic maps with detailed trail networks and hikes, including all 63 US national parks. So you can save those maps to your device to access offline and get turn-by-turn voice guidance, or you can create your own hikes so you can customize them and figure out the trails.

26:09
This is great because I get lost. I've gotten lost plenty of times going hiking. I thought I was supposed to take this trailhead and then it ended up extending the hike by two miles and finally finding my way back. So I was really pumped to see the updates to Maps. There's also a new app entirely, and that is the Passwords app. It is kind of passwords taken out of Safari on the Mac or taken out of the settings on your iPhone and made into its own app. That exists independently. It is familiar to anyone who uses a password manager, whichever one that might be, and it has your passwords, your verification codes, it has the security alerts that you're used to, but it just gives you one place to kind of keep track of all of that stuff and it syncs across all devices, including Windows, by way of the iCloud for Windows app. So if you have stored your passwords using Apple's system and your passcodes using Apple's system, this is just a continuation of that, rosemary. What else should we cover in this? The part two of our iOS 18 coverage.

27:33 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, something I think is going to be great for a lot of the listeners and viewers of this show is the new addition to SharePlay. So there's a couple of new additions. There's shared playback control on HomePods pods. So if you've got a home pod and you're you've got some friends over and people want to queue up their own music, then that can be a share play session, much like the car play one, and that's great.

27:57
But what I'm really excited by is share play for screens, including device control within facetime.

28:05
So this means, for example, if my mom calls and says hey, I'm having an issue and my ipad is not doing this thing that I expect you know like I've lost I keep losing safari taps.

28:16
What's going on now? I have explained to her before how you can merge your safari windows back together, um, and she doesn't know how to do it. So if I told her what button to press, she'd be fine with it, but if it was my grandmother and I had to explain that to her, she's going to get a little bit stuck. So what I could do now within a FaceTime video call is I could use SharePlay to control her iPad or her iPhone and do it for her, and I think that this is a really lovely improvement. Apple had this inside of Apple support for a very long time, but obviously they weren't ready to share it with everybody, but now we're getting screen sharing with control support for the iPhone and iPad through FaceTime and SharePlay, and that is very exciting and, especially with the additions coming to AirPods, that is going to be a very cool combination, I believe.

29:10 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I'm pumped, honestly, about that. I can't wait for that to be updated to make it possible for me to help somebody out with their iPad. I think that'll be great. Outside of that, there are some changes coming to the Wallet app I mentioned tap to cash so you basically decide that you want to pay somebody and you and the other person can bring your phones close together and, using Apple Cash, you can transfer money to the other person. This is probably going to join.

29:47
I've seen many a street vendor who uses like Venmo with a little QR code and Square Cash with a little QR code. This is going to be a lot like that, I would imagine, where vendors will just say here's my iPhone, just tap against me and to pay for whatever it is that you want. And then rewards and installments are also coming into Apple Pay so you can see your rewards and points balances whenever a person one of these groups takes advantage of it, of course, but also installment financing options that are available will be there as well. This requires that the financial companies add this, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen. And then, something that was really exciting to me was new event guides for tickets.

30:35
So at participating locations when you get a ticket to that event. We've already got them in our wallet and it's the case that if I'm within a certain distance of that, it pops up on my Apple Watch. I can tap it and then easily scan to get into the event. But there's going to be more added including, for example, when a parking lot is open, when the gates open, the temperature around the area, a map of the stadium. All of that information, I think will be very helpful to make sure that you're able to get in and get around inside of the stadium or event center or whatever it happens to be Very cool stuff. Do you want to tell us a little bit about Journal?

31:20 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, so Journal is going to be getting some updates where it's specifically adding, for example, the search feature. Yeah, search is coming to Journal, so you're going to be able to search through your previous journal entries to find that one where you talked about, you know, meeting Micah when you flew over to San Francisco and did iOS Today together and I think that that is. You know. That's a feature that maybe should have been there from the beginning. But there are also going to be widgets for writing prompts and streaks and you will get streaks so that you can see that you've journaled every day and it can also be recorded. The time spent journaling can be recorded as mindfulness minutes and you can log your state of mind directly within the journal app. So that's going to tie straight into the health app, which is a very nice bonus.

32:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There are also some additions to the Apple TV app, including I thought this was funny, we've seen it with Amazon technology called X-Ray, where when you're watching something and you pause, then you can figure out who's on screen at that given moment and occasionally some more information, like the producer of the show or what have you. Apple has a feature that's called Insight. So whenever you're watching Apple original content currently it's only for Apple original content right now and you pause, you can see who's on screen at the moment. But you can also and I think this is the big one figure out what music is playing. There are times where I want to know what the music is, but the problem is somebody's talking over the music, and so Shazam just doesn't quite pick up on it and has trouble figuring out what the music is. So they're just I want this song and I wish I could have it, and this is going to help with that. And then also enhanced dialogue, so you will be able to hear what is being said on, not just on, iphones and iPads. So if you're playing it there with the built-in speakers or wired headphones, airpods or other Bluetooth connected speakers and headphones, all of that is coming to your iPhone and iPad. It already is available for people who use HomePods on Apple TV enhanced dialogue so it'll be great to see that come to more places.

33:39
And then I mentioned the updates in privacy and security, but there are some updates to the Home app. There's now a sort of page that is specific to granting controls to guests, so when you invite a guest into your home, you can give them a specific schedule so you can say this is when you're allowed to access these different devices, and you're allowed to access these different devices and you're allowed to say more about that as well. And then, last but not least, is something that I didn't realize was available at first, and that's something called Emergency SOS Live video, so I thought this was kind of cool. You can share streaming video and also media during emergency calls. So there are emergency dispatchers who have the ability to and the option to, send you a request to share live video or photos over a connection so that they can help you if you are in need. That could give the emergency responders more context of where you are and what's going on.

34:54
There are a lot of tiny features that Rosemary and I will be discovering over time as we continue to look through this. Of course, there's still WatchOS and VisionOS that we didn't have time to talk about today, and also, of course, macos, which we don't usually cover on this show. So lots of new features, the WWDC that were announced at WWDC. All right, I think, rosemary, if you're ready, we can move to Shortcuts Corner. It's time for Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you typically write in with your shortcuts requests and Rosemary Orchard, our shortcuts expert, provides a response. Today, though, rosemary is going to talk about some interesting additions, and I kind of started with a spoiler there in the before times, so Rosemary is going to give us the lowdown on audio and home and so much more here in Shortcuts Corner. Rosemary, take it away.

35:56 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah. So I'm going to start actually by cheating a little bit and going back to AirPods, and I tease this a little bit in the main show. But there are a couple of very cool new features coming to the AirPods which are, you know, actually really nice for automation as well, because AirPods can tell when you move your head. This is how spatial audio works, you know. So if you move your head around, then the audio can move with you or not move with you, depending on what you've got it set up to do. But because they can figure that out, apple realized that they can also realize when you are nodding or shaking your head. And that means that, for example, if you are in a lift or walking down the street and your phone rings and it says, hey, mike is calling, would you like to answer, you can nod your head for yes or shake your head for no, and you don't have to do the thing where you're talking out loud to yourself, sounding like a crazy person, just to say no. I didn't want to answer the phone to Micah right now because my hands are full and I'm running, but I will deal with it later. You can just shake and keep going and do whatever it is you need to do, but this will also work in general for yes-no responses, including for doing things like automation props, which are very nice. So I'm very excited by that and, you know, tying into that a little bit is voice isolation, which is now going to be on airpods pro specifically. So that's what I'm holding here. They're in an esr case. For anybody curious, it's got little magnets on the back to hold on to a MagSafe charging stand. But voice isolation is coming to AirPods Pro so it will filter out the background noise and wind to so the other person can hear what you're saying, and it will be doing that with the AirPods, so it's not going to be reliant on the phone or the iPad or the Apple Watch to do that, which is really nice. It's also going to tie into game mode, which I think is something we're going to have to come back and talk about at a later date, because game mode on iPhone is going to be exciting for folks who like to game, but Micah and I will need some time to play with that to fully understand it before we can talk about it.

38:02
So I did already mention in the main show the SharePlay options that are coming to AirPods and Micah mentioned, guest mode is coming to the Home app. So what you will be able to do in the Home app and I can pop up the Home app on my iPad to sort of show folks is you can tap plus, you can add people and then you can actually add people as guests. Now this isn't actually available yet on my device, at least with my home app, but that will be available and then those folks will have access to control locks and garage doors and security. For a limited amount of time, you will also be able to view the history of what a guest has done and what home devices were accessed and when, and so that is nice. But what I think is going to be really great is we already got HomeKey with HomeKit. So HomeKey is where your iPhone or your Apple Watch can unlock a door by being near it and you just bring your phone or your Apple Watch near to the lock and, ta-da, it unlocks. But that only works if you can, you know, lift up your hand with an Apple Watch on it, or you can get your phone out of your pocket to bring it to the lock to confirm it. So they are now going to be doing unlocked, hands-free access when you are within six feet of the door, which let's just say for those people who come home. They've got their hands full of shopping bags. Because, if you're like me, if you can take it all in one go from the car, why would you go back and go twice back and forth to the car just so that you've got a hand free to open the door properly, when you can just use your elbow? No, it's fine, but now I don't have to worry about getting my phone out either, so that is going to be really great for anybody like me and anybody else.

39:53
There's also a new little feature coming to the Home app, because a lot of folks have robot vacuums. They love their robot vacuums. I have a great robot vacuum. It's got a mop on it. It has its own garage. It lives in my kitchen. When it finishes vacuuming and mopping, it goes back, it empties its own dirt bin, it cleans its own mop heads.

40:13
Well, guess what? The Home app is adding support for robot vacuum cleaners, and so they are going to be able to show up in there and just think about that. It means that when everybody leaves home, you can have the robot vacuum run Like. That is the perfect time to run the robot vacuum when everybody's just left home, so you've just done a quick sweep, you know that there's nothing on the floor, you know no pets have had any accidents, and now the robot vacuum can run and you're also going to be able to add your utility providers.

40:43
It's starting with Pacific Gas and Electric in California, but you will be able to connect your utility accounts to the home app to track your energy usage, and this is really tying into all of that green effort that Apple is making to try and make things carbon neutral and eco friendly and eco efficient.

41:00
So you can bring that in, and I think that this will be genuinely really great once we get it everywhere. I already have access to all of my home energy usage directly locally. I don't need to go through their website to get it, but I can't see that in the home app yet, and so I think, especially once we get support for doing things like energy monitoring through the matter standard support for doing things like energy monitoring through the matter standard then this is going to really tie in well together because you'll be able to say see exactly which devices in your home are using the most electricity, how much that's costing you and if maybe there's a better way to do that uh, to charge those things or to connect everything up I am excited about that as well.

41:45 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I was able to, in the beta, connect to my PG&E account. I don't think it has all of the features yet, as it does say that's not coming until later, but it was cool that I was able to do that and I'll be keeping an eye on those features, specifically Folks. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode. As I mentioned, rosemary and I will be spending a lot of time over the coming months, frankly talking more about all of these features. As these features change, as more get added, as bugs work their way out of the system, as the public beta ships, there's so much to cover. We're all very excited about what's next in iOS and iPadOS 18. So please be sure to stay up to date by following and subscribing to the show. You can always get in touch with us for your Shortcuts, corner requests and other feedback. We are taking those questions again. Ios today at twittv. Ios today at twittv is how you get in touch with us.

42:47
I should mention that if you are listening to this in the public feed and you'd like to watch the show, you should join Club Twit at twittv. Slash club twit. For $7 a month, you can join the club and get the video version of this show, plus so much more. You get access to all of our shows ad free. You gain access to the Twit Plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show. After the show, special Club Twit events get published there. You gain access to the members only Discord a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit.

43:18
Here next week I will be doing Micah's Crafting Corner on Wednesday. I'm doing it every third Wednesday of the month at 6 pm, I believe yeah, pacific time and so I'd love it if you joined me for that. And, of course, you gain access to the video versions of our Club Twitch shows, including this iOS today. So consider joining Twitter. Tv slash Club Twit, 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?

43:49 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, the best place is rosemaryorchardcom, which has links to the podcast, apps, books and so on that I am involved in. And, of course, you can also find me in the Club Twit Discord, where there is a channel forum channel specifically for iOS Today, where you can submit topic suggestions for future shows and ask questions to all the other fellow listeners. And, of course, you know that's a great place to hang out during the live show recordings as well, in the live show channel. What about you, micah? Where can folks find you?

44:18 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I can be found 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. Thank you so much for tuning in this week to another episode of iOS Today. We will see you again very soon. Bye-bye.