iOS Today 718 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 what we think you can likely expect at the upcoming iPhone event. Stay tuned Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. This is iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard and Micah Sargent, Episode 718, recorded Tuesday September 3rd 2024, for Thursday September 5th 2024. What to expect at Apple's iPhone event. Hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, ipados, tvos, homepodos, watchos, visionos and all the other OSs that Apple has on offer. This is the show where we talk about Apple's devices and the accessories, the apps, the settings that you should be aware of to help you make the most of those devices. I am one of your hosts of this show. My name is Micah Sargent.

01:15 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
And I am another host of the show, rosemary Orchard. I'm very excited to be here, as always, micah, especially because we're going to get to do the commentary together for Apple's event next week, which is super exciting.

01:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, that is a great reminder to tell everyone out there tune in on Monday. Right, it is Monday, isn't it?

01:36 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, it is.

01:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I suddenly got very concerned that I was wrong about that. Yes, so Monday, september 9th, just a little bit before 10 am Pacific time, you can head to twittv. And well, actually, twittv slash live will show you all of the different places that we are live online, and you can tune in everywhere but YouTube, of course to watch us cover the Apple event live. Very pleased to say that, yes, rosemary Orchard will be joining me for that, so both of us will be covering that event live. Very pleased to say that, yes, rosemary Orchard will be joining me for that, so both of us will be covering that event live for Twit, and we are looking forward to it.

02:14
But before we get to that event, we do want to talk about kind of what we think is likely to be announced at this event, and I think that starts with talking about the Apple Watch, because it's not just the iPhone. That is typical of a September event. It is often the case that Apple also updates the Apple Watch. So, rosemary, can you tell us a couple of rumors about the Apple Watch that we think may very well come true?

02:51 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, the first thing to note is that this Apple event is happening on a Monday, which is something the church might grow up, because usually we find that it always happens to interfere with our recording of iOS Today. And there's a very good reason for that. Apple events are usually on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, historically speaking, at least in recent years, but Monday is the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch. Now, if folks remember, when it came to the iPhone X, we stopped doing numbers, at least for a little while, and we went with the Roman numeral X, which represents 10. And so there are definitely some rumors that the new Apple Watch is going to be an Apple Watch 10, with an X instead of a 10, as in 1-0. So that is one of the new rumors. And, of course, as always, there's a rumor that there's going to be a new Apple Watch Ultra.

03:38
I'm kind of on the fence about getting an Apple Watch Ultra myself, micah. I did have the original one and it's good, but I'm going to have to wait and see, because if the new Apple Watch Ultra is a little bit thinner and perhaps less the size of my wrist and for context, this is a smaller Apple Watch on my wrist if you're watching the video, it's basically the size of my wrist, so the Ultra is off the sides. Then that's going to be something that's going to make it very interesting. Or just a small Apple Watch Ultra, apple Watch Ultra Mini, chrome X, blah, blah, blah. There'll be about 16 suffixes on that.

04:15
But yeah, apparently it's going to have a thinner body and it's going to come with larger screen sizes. So they're suggesting that the Series 10 is going to be in 45 and 49 millimeter sizes. Now, I'm not sure about that, because originally I had the 38 millimeter Apple Watch, which is already ballooned to a 41 millimeter Apple Watch. And I say ballooned. Three millimeters does not sound like a lot, but when you have a small wrist, it really does make a difference, and especially for children and women.

04:47
You know there's there's. You know a lot of us have got smaller wrists, and you know there are plenty of people, regardless of gender, that have smaller wrists for various reasons. And so I personally think that if there is no small apple watch or you have to get the apple watch se, that may be a mistake, but I don't know, I guess we're gonna have to wait and see. I mean, it could potentially finally modify how the bands attach to the apple watch as well. But I don't know, I guess we're going to have to wait and see. I mean it could potentially finally modify how the bands attach to the Apple Watch as well, but I don't know. What do you think, micah?

05:10 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, that one concerns me. So this would be in theory, which could mean that it might not be. It might sort of bifurcate the market, right? Because here's what happens whenever Apple makes a change like this you struggle to find old versions that work with the devices that you have, and you know there's talk that even in this new format, that older bands would be compatible with the, or rather that new Apple Watch models would not be compatible with the older bands and vice versa.

06:04
So you can imagine that if you decided to go this route, you know, up to this point, apple has always made it so that for the Apple Watch band that I bought with my first Apple Watch, the Series Zero, as was coined by Serenity Caldwell, it worked just fine with. I could slide it onto the Apple Watch that I'm wearing right now, because I always had the larger size of Apple Watch, and so those lugs have always stayed the same. The problem with the cutouts on the Apple Watch is that, yes, that cutout is, as the word suggests, a cutout portion of the actual device, and so there's opportunity to put more in that space if it's not cut out, like being able to have more battery, for example, or whatever it happens to be, I don't know. No, I do know how I feel about a magnet attachment system, which is that magnets are cool, magnets are great, but magnets, by design, are able to be attached and detached, and I worry what that means in terms of having, you know, magnetic attachments on my Apple Watch that right now I can yank on it and that thing's not coming loose. So we'll see.

07:27
I could see Apple, after you know, 10 years of doing Apple Watches, being able to, or, you know, finally making a change here. Sure, why not? But it does make me a little nervous it does. Some of the big features that we still don't have yet are likely to not be part of the Apple Watch for some time.

07:59
You know, we've long heard rumors of better health tracking, when it comes to blood pressure, for example, being able to detect blood pressure using the Apple Watch and then also being able to detect blood glucose. These features are a little more pie in the sky and, given that that's the case, there's still a lot more research that needs to be done to make the models accurate enough to be able to do anything that's helpful at all when it comes to blood glucose measurements and blood pressure measurements. That said, I am supremely curious what Apple is going to do in terms of the uh, the blood oxygen level reader, that is in the Apple watch. Will they still include the hardware that makes that possible and just leave it disabled because of the um, the ongoing uh lawsuit with with what is it Massimo? Or will they just not include it in this model? That's kind of interesting If a newer Apple Watch will have fewer sensors than an older model Apple Watch.

09:19 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, it is going to be interesting to see. You know what happens there, micah, and honestly, you know. Going back to what you were saying about the Apple Watch straps, I personally feel that there's other options they can do to increase battery life and give themselves more space by using, like, an OLED screen or an updated OLED screen to improve power efficiency and a new logic board design, rather than changing all those watch straps, because, of course, with Apple focusing on eco-friendly, it's not eco-friendly to make everyone throw away all of their watch straps to buy new ones. So, fingers crossed that won't happen.

09:51
But yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with those sensors, because obviously Apple is not going to want to run afoul of any pending lawsuits or ongoing trial cases. But at the same time, as far as I'm aware, that is only currently relevant within the united states, or potentially united states and canada. It's not the same within europe. So are ones in europe going to ship with blood, with blood oxygen, or are they not? I guess we're going to find out and I suspect if they just get rid of it completely, then that is going to be something that users don't like and may actually prevent people from upgrading or dissuade them from upgrading.

10:30 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I am very curious to see. I'm looking forward to Monday and learning what's going on there. There were a few people in the chat who expressed the desire for new AirPods Pro or just new AirPods in general, so I did want to mention there are some rumors regarding AirPods. Airpods 4 will reportedly launch next week. Airpods 4 will be one of the most affordable options and then they'll have so there are gonna be two versions basically of the standard AirPods 4. One pair that is less expensive and then one pair that is more expensive that has a few more features.

11:18
The standard AirPods 4 will replace the current AirPods 2 model that Apple still sells and then the pricier AirPods 4 model will reportedly replace the AirPods 3 model that Apple has for sale. Those will both look identical. According to Mark Gurman and that you know, they will kind of be somewhere between AirPods 3 and AirPods Pro, where AirPods 3 have that longer stem and AirPods 4 have the shorter stem, apparently. Uh, these new AirPods that will come in two versions will have, um, will have more, will be a blend in between.

12:12
Now, interestingly, the AirPods 4 that are more pricey are supposed to have active noise cancellation, which is a feature that was only exclusive to the AirPods Pro and, of course, airpods Max I don't really include those in this group and so that's a possibility that you wouldn't have to necessarily buy the most expensive pair of AirPods to be able to have that active noise cancellation and then maybe MagSafe charging and, of course, usb-c charging. As for AirPods Pro, I don't know what they would be doing to differentiate between the standard AirPods that are rumored to be announced and then what will make the Pro Pro. So that'll be fascinating to see again how Apple differentiates between the two, because, yeah, like it sounds like every model of AirPods, or every regardless of which AirPods you get you're going to get a lot of the features that used to be exclusive to just the Pro.

13:25 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yes, I suspect the difference between the AirPods for the AirPods Pro 3 will be the continued existence of, you know, that rubbery part that sort of inserts a bit further into your ear and forms a better seal and that, of course, will improve noise cancelling just by itself, because it's literally blocking out the sounds that would otherwise enter your ear. And, of course, if airpods continue to not have that, then you're relying on just the shape of them fitting into your ear. Of course, the other difference between the airpods and airpods pro is just the shape of the the airpods. Some people find that airpods fit really well in their ear and sit and stay, and other people find that they won't stay at all and that they move and they just come flying out of their ear, um. So yeah, it'll, it'll be interesting, but at the very least everything should be upgrading, I would expect, to usbc um, because I have a feeling that usbc is going to be everywhere across apple's product lineup in the not too distant future I would agree with that for sure.

14:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So let's talk about the big thing, which is that, of course, this is rumored to be. Given the history, given the precedent Apple's iPhone event this is always the time when almost always the time when Apple announces new iPhones, and so the iPhone 16 is set to come out, and, of course, we're hearing about larger screen sizes for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, at 6.3 and 6.9 inches respectively, nine inches respectively. We're also hearing that every iPhone will get the action button, that button that, up to this point, for most of the phones that Apple has offered, was a switch that let you turn on or off kind of mute the notifications on your device. Mute the notifications on your device and, of course, improvements to the built-in processor. But we're hearing that the Pro models might also feature another new button, that there may be an action button, a volume up and down button, a side button, as we've always had, but now a capture button. What is a capture button, and are you excited about it? I'm sure you are.

15:56 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, so a capture button appears to be based on the rumors and we only have rumors to go on. At this point Apple has not said a thing. Apple has not commented and won't say anything until the iphone event on monday, if this capture button or whatever it is, is actually present on the device. But it appears to be a dedicated camera button. So those folks who have the iphone 16, 15 pro models not 16 pro I haven't gone time traveling yet will have this additional button above the volume up button, which replaces the mute switch. So you can obviously use it to control mute, or you can use it to control focus modes and things like that, or be nerdy like me and use it to run a shortcut and change what you have available at different times. But the advantage of a capture button is it would be a dedicated button, theoretically for the camera. Now, personally, if it's only for the camera, I'm going to get a little bit annoyed because I would really like to just have all the buttons, please, and be able to customize what my buttons do. I can't tell you how much, because I've been really messing with. I've got the band case here on my iPhone, so that's got an additional action button underneath the power button, but I can't tell you how often it is that I press volume up instead of the iPhone action button, or the Siri button instead of the band case action button. That's a little easier because they're a bit further away from each other to differentiate, and that button is a little more pronounced because it's Bluetooth. But it's so easy to press the wrong button. And the other thing that we're hearing is this one may be capacitive, which means that you have to touch the side of the phone to trigger it. So that's going to mean that you're going to have to have like a cutout in the side of your case, like you did previously for the mute switch. So I'm intrigued.

17:42
I'm hoping that Apple will give us options and maybe they'll limit it to a particular kind of shortcuts, actions that developers can create for like hey, I would like to create a new note, because for me, capture it's more than capturing pictures. It's about capturing thoughts and ideas, data, et cetera. So being able to pop open a new draft in Drafts or a note in Notes or something and immediately jot my ideas down without having to set that up as the only thing available from the Action button, that could be good. So I don't know. I'm cautiously excited, I feel like, because they've done so much on the action button that if they do add another button, then that's going to be available to everybody to customize as they see fit. But at the same time, you know, sometimes Apple makes what I consider to be a stumble. So I guess we'll have to find out. What do you think, micah?

18:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I, if it's capacitive. I do worry about needing to have that cut out on the side of the device for sure. I worry about what that means in terms of Apple's own cases and how they will look, how other cases will look and work. I love the idea of just like a you know, a digital camera where barely pressing the button will typically trigger autofocus Many of us have learned that by now and then pressing it all the way will actually take the photograph. That I love because that's something that I think a lot of people know and so you know, seeing rumors that suggest that that could be what the capture button does, I think is pretty smart and will possibly make people even more enamored of this device as their phone right, and so in that way, I think it's a pretty clever means of doing things. So, yeah, I like that aspect of it. I do worry about how it will impact kind of external factors like third-party case manufacturers and things.

19:58 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
So we saw when Peak Design released their new cases for the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max that they chose to use a cutout around the action button because that's what they'd always done with the mute button and that from their perspective seemed to be a sensible hedge about, just in case the action button thing doesn't happen.

20:16
And unfortunately they got bit and they ended up having to replace all of the cases. So they shipped some people 3d printed um button covers that could go in to, you know, cover the button to make it accessible because you just couldn't really get to the button inside of the cutout um, and you know 10 out of 10 to peak design for the way they handled this situation. But you know we're going to have the same sort of problem with this capacitive button. For people and also capacitive buttons, they tend to just be an area along a flat metal bezel that you can't really feel the difference between. That's not very accessible. So I don't know how well this, how well that will, would work and I guess we're going to have to wait and see and find out.

20:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, absolutely Any other rumors that kind of stuck out to you as being important in terms of you know, people kind of seeing a difference, I guess, between what exists now and what the next models could look like.

21:21 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah. So one rumor that I have seen which appears to have disappeared again, which is making me slightly relieved is the idea that all of the iPhones might go eSIM only everywhere. So they're already eSIM only within the United States. So you don't buy an iPhone with a SIM card slot anymore, you just buy an iPhone and you put an eSIM only everywhere. So they're already eSIM only within the United States. So you don't buy an iPhone with a SIM card slot anymore, you just buy an iPhone and you put an eSIM on it, and that seems like a great idea, with the problem that a lot of countries around the world don't seem to have a lot of cell providers with eSIM.

21:48
Here in the UK, one of our major providers, vodafone, is not on the list as a UK eSIM provider. Vodafone is on the list for Spain and potentially a few other countries that I may have overlooked, but they are not on the list as a UK eSIM provider, and in fact, the vast majority of our mobile phone networks here in the UK are not available on eSIM. So I would like to see more eSIM roll out around the world, and I would love Apple to push that for us, but I also don't think that this is the year that they're going to be able to push only eSIM everywhere for us just yet. That would be exciting, but I think it's a little premature. I don't know if the network infrastructure is up to that everywhere. You know, the United States and Canada have both got decent lists of providers that are available eSIM only, but most other countries have got a few and that's about it. So I guess we're just going to have to wait and see what happens there.

22:44
But at least it looks like there will be improved thermal controls or improved thermals on the new iPhone, which is good, because I can tell you from running iOS 18.1, which, as of just as we were done recording last week released the beta is available now within the EU and elsewhere, so that everybody who wants to try the developer beta of iOS 18.1 can.

23:09
The thermals are pretty spicy. My phone often runs very warm and I have seen a lot of hey, your iPhone is too warm to be taking pictures right now. Do you want to be doing that recently? Which is, you know, it's an okay thing to have as a problem, but it's not the best problem to have, and I do expect that when I'm running a beta. But if we are going to be running Apple Intelligence on our devices and I would expect Apple intelligence to be on available on all devices released this year at least then we are going to need improved thermals and battery life for this, because otherwise, you know, getting to 10 o'clock in the morning and realizing you need to put your iPhone back on charge.

23:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's not a great experience that people will be happy with.

23:52
I agree wholeheartedly.

23:54
Yeah, there's obviously a lot that we're going to have to wait to see what Apple officially announces, what we can expect in terms of, you know, battery life, which is typically Apple just always aims for what they call all day battery life potential Wi-Fi 7 and the speeds we might see from that, and I think that that pretty much is the extent of what can be expected.

24:35
It sounds a little underwhelming given that you know, it's not an entire redesign, it's not a complete list of brand new hardware features, but that's because, as people have pointed out, before these things get to a mature level and at that point there's not a whole lot that can be done to really make it stand out and seem so much different from what we have already. I don't think there are any rumors this time around that really stand out in terms of like stuff that's going to wow us that we wouldn't expect. There's not enough time, arguably, to fit in much outside of the typical expectation that we have of Apple Watch, iphone and, occasionally, apple's accessories like the AirPods. So tune in Monday to watch us watch the event and talk about what Apple announces for the new iPhone and other accessories.

25:49 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we'll even see a new iPad, micah, we haven't talked about that, but there may be a new iPad, or maybe they'll hold that until October, november time.

25:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, well, that will be interesting. We'll see if they can squeeze that in for sure, all right, moving along to the feedback segment, we have a bit of feedback that comes in from Steve. Steve writes in and says we have a bit of feedback that comes in from Steve. Steve writes in and says Hi, rosemary and Micah. Hello, from Southwest Florida. My 90-year-old father is having issues with iMessage on his iPad. His account is set up through an email address. As he doesn't have a smartphone, his iMessage was working fine until a couple of days ago. He's in Wisconsin, so it is remote help for me. I figured out that he was locked out of his Apple account and we got that fixed. However, his iMessages that he sends are sent as text messages and don't go out. When I message him, I get an unable to deliver error. He's able to use other apps without an issue. He's on a good Wi-Fi connection, thoughts, and this again is Steve from marco island, florida, all right. So I'm curious uh, rosemary, if you want to kick it off?

26:59 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
um, we can, we can I suspect that what happened is, uh, maybe an ios update installed, potentially, um, and I had a little bit of an issue, uh, whilst or after installing an ios update a little while ago, where my phone lost connectivity while it was updating and then it took a really long time to repopulate iMessage settings within the Settings app. So, if you go into the Settings app and I'm not going to do this because it will show up all my phone numbers and email addresses that I have set up for iMessage and I'd rather not do that but if you go into Settings and then Mess, then messages, because this will just be on ios 17, if you're on ios 18, it's settings, apps, messages then you can see iMessage. First of all, that needs to be toggled on, and then there should be send and receive and you can receive iMessages to and reply from, and there could be one or more email addresses there, and then, on top of that, there will be start new conversations from, and you should select one of those, as the places start new conversations from, and my suspicion is that something went a little hinky, potentially during a restart, device ran out of battery or something loss of connectivity, and therefore you just need to go into Settings and Messages and make sure iMessage is turned on and set the send and receive. Now, if iMessage is turned on, then have you tried turning off and turning it back on again? That is definitely something I would do, and what I would do specifically is turn iMessage off, restart the device completely, turn it off and turn it back on again and then turn iMessage back on, because that will often kick things back into gear.

28:37
And also, you know, if you just want to try toggling iMessage off and then back on again, turn it off and wait a minute or so and then turn it back on again. Just, you know, give it time to actually be properly turned off and then go from there, rather than just toggling it off and then immediately back on which. I was about to touch on my device and I realized that that might break something very important, so I'm not going to do that. But that is definitely something that you should suggest to Matt so that hopefully, fingers crossed, that can work. And if that doesn't work, hold out for iOS 18, which should be out next week, because FaceTime will have screen sharing and device control built in, so that you'll actually be able to see exactly what's on his device and then maybe even fix it yourself through that.

29:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There you go. I think that you know that covers it it is. It is troublesome to try and do things from a distance and you know to be able to provide that care. But, steve, thank you for writing in with that and I believe I can hear the music. It's time for Shortcuts Corner. It's time for shortcuts corner, the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts requests and rosemary orchard, our shortcuts expert, provides a response.

30:08
This first shortcut corner request comes in from Matt. Matt writes Hi, rosemary and Micah, I have been listening to iOS today for years and I am glad to say that it is still a staple of my weekly tech podcasts. My request relates to sidecar between my MacBook Pro and my iPad Pro. I have an Apple script cool that starts sidecar from my Mac without going into Control Center directly. It may be unnecessary, but I can run it as a shortcut and reduce my number of clicks. My question is how, if it's possible, to run this from my iPad so that I can initiate the Sidecar session from the iPad rather than from the Mac. Thank you for any help and insight you can provide. Best, matt.

30:50
And Matt has attached a pet tax payment of the cardigan corgi called Ice. So we will take a little look at a photo of a corgi named Ice. And this corgi is what kind of looks like a bunny rabbit, to be honest Beautiful long ears, but is white, with these ice blue eyes which probably is where that comes from and sort of gray, black and white fur, and is adorable. Hello, ice. All right, let us head to Rosemary's response.

31:33 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
So this is an interesting one, micah, because I'll start by switching to my iPad, because Sidecar is something that's only available on the iPad, so I could show off my iPhone, but that seems like a not great idea. So instead, I'm here on my iPad and if I just type Sidecar in the shortcuts actions, in the shortcuts actions, womp, womp, womp there are no actions. However, there is a mention, a wonderful mention, from Matt, who I accidentally used Matt's name in the feedback section before. It should have been Steve, but Matt has mentioned there's an Apple script, apple script. You say hmm, well, if you can run an Apple scriptScript Mac, then you can actually do this from your iPhone or your iPad, rather. So what you can do and what you should do is start with save your AppleScript somewhere Okay, and I'm going to make up a place where I'm going to assume that you're going to save this for the time being, and then what we need to do is we need to run a script over SSH, okay, and this is an action that is built into shortcuts. Okay, and I know it sounds kind of scary, but what we're basically going to be doing is we are going to be talking to your Mac from the iPad and saying, hey, run that Apple script, and that's what we're going to do.

32:47
So, to start with, you're going to need to open on your Mac, you're going to need your Mac to help you set this up, because otherwise you're not going to have all of the information that you need. And so what you need to do on your Mac under the sharing menu, under system settings, is you'll need to make sure that you've got remote application scripting enabled, remote login there may be some other things as well, but you should be able to find that out and I'll put a link in the show notes on that. And then you need to put in your host. So right at the bottom of the sharing screen, it will say something like local host name, and in my case it's going to be Mac-Studio, and the M and the S are capitalized and that's very important local, okay. And then I will pop in my username and type in my password as well.

33:35
And then what I need to do in the script area is very, very simple. Are you ready for this, folks, because this is going to be really tricky, but if you can spell, you can do it. O-s-a script. All is one word, no spaces, followed by a space, and then it'll be the path to your script. So if you put it on, if you put it right in the directory for your user right at the top, then it'll be slash users. Oops, I've put two slashes in there Slash users, slash rosemary. Slash start, underscore, sidecar, dot, scpt. And that's it. That's all you need to do.

34:18
And then when you run this which I will not do right now because that will definitely break a whole bunch of things if I try and SSH into my Mac and change all my screen settings, and that will not be good for Ecamm.

34:29
But if I do this then this will run that Apple script that you've written, and that's it. And so I am going to pop a link to the Reddit post that I used as my reference for this into the show notes so that everybody can see exactly what that person is doing, and there's also a sample of the Apple script to control the Mac in there as well. Now I suspect, matt, your Apple script is going to be a little bit smarter than this person's because system settings has changed a bit over time, but this is what you should need to get that done. And so, yes, you can do it, believe it or not, and I'm really pleased to be able to say that you can, because sometimes people ask Shortcuts Corner questions and I don't want to include them in Shortcuts Corner because the answer is sorry, you can't do that and that's never fun.

35:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
All right, yeah, I love it whenever there's an actual answer that we can have the next bit of feedback or the next bit of Shortcuts.

35:29 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Corner is not a request or a question from someone, but is instead I'm very excited a demonstration of, well, something I will let Rosemary tell us about it well, there is a fabulous thing on the iPhone called the action button, and I'm just going to change my action button back to its previous settings because I have been playing with the new one. I'm just going to show folks what that usually looks like if you try to show a like a menu of things, because the problem with the iPhone action button if you do show a menu, which I can now pop up, and there we go, if I press, and you have to press and hold the action button for a little bit, but it pops up and it's just kind of a shortcuts menu. Now, I do have a prettier menu here because I have got the icon of shortcuts, but even though when I add these to my home screen, for example, they've got pretty icons, they've just got shortcuts icons here and that's not great. So instead, what I am going to do instead is I'm going to change this to one made with a new app that should be coming out on Friday asterisk app review pending and then you can really customize your iPhone action button menu or indeed any menu that you present through shortcuts, without having to go ahead and do lots of wonky bits of code and so on. So that app is called MenuBox and the details are available at menuboxapp.

36:55
But what you can do inside of MenuBox is you can create menu sets, and these are great. You can make them really pretty, you can add icons and so on. So if I were to create a new menu set so I'll call this Sample Menu then I can save that and now I can add a new menu item so I can choose what kind of icon I would like. So I can say I don't want an icon on this menu item, or I would like to use a SF symbol. That's Apple's default symbol selections. I can use an emoji or I can use an image. But if I say an image, then I've actually got options. Got options. So I can say, hey, I want to use a system icon and that will pop up things like using the apple news icon, the calculator icon, whatever it is that you might like. Or I can actually say, oh, no, you know what. I would like to search for app icons so I could search for another app which is available and that would be notomate, ta-da. And now I can add up notomate in there and uh, there we go. And so now I can choose and I'm going to say hey, I would like to just round off the corners on that one a little bit, and I will call this notomate.

38:04
And what I really love about this is you can make this very nerdy and very funky, and so you can have lots of pieces of data. You can pass four extra pieces of data through, you can enable and disable menu items or menu entries, and you can even add subtext so I can add little hello world underneath the automate option there. And then what you do over in shortcuts, which I will just pop up here, is you run a shortcut which looks a little bit like this so you load whatever your menu is and then you use the choose from list action and then you can just use a simple series of if actions to check hey, was the title this? Now for those people thinking oh, but what if I want to rename it? That's annoying. Well, actually, you can also get the IDs for all of your entries as well, and those won't change, even I want to rename it. That's annoying. Well, actually, you can also get the ids for all of your entries as well, and those won't change, even if you do rename it.

38:57
But I've chosen to stick with the titles here and so then when I run this it comes up and it runs into a little issue because iOS 18.1 betas is my life at the moment.

39:09
But when I run this or ran this just now, it came up with the beautiful new menu and this is an app that will be available to download for free on Friday. There will be an in-app purchase to unlock all of the features, but it will be free to download and this is the last project that Alex Hay had that he was working on, that was completely unreleased before he died. So we're really excited to be able to just be polishing off the last little bits there and pushing it out the door on Friday, fingers crossed, you know, pending app review. App review sometimes everything goes perfectly and sometimes things go a little bit slowly and especially because the new iPhone release is coming out on Monday, I suspect app review may be getting busy, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. And fingers crossed. But that's available over at menu box dot app and more details will be available there soon.

39:58 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Awesome folks. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of IOS Today. We thank you so much for tuning in. Of course, you can head to twittv slash club twit to join the club for $7 a month. When you join the club, you gain access to some pretty awesome benefits, including every single Twitch show ad free it's just the content, none of the ads, because you, in effect, are supporting the show. Also, gain access to the Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit. 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. There's a lot of great stuff and we do appreciate you for joining the Club. Twittv slash Club Twit. We love to have you. 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?

41:05 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, the best place to go is rosemaryorchardcom, where you can find links to books, apps, podcasts and so on, including various social media sites. Or you can find me hanging out in the Club Twit Discord, where people like to chat while we're live recording the show, and be clubbed with Discord, where people like to chat while we're live recording the show and I'm guessing they'll be really chatting on Monday while we are talking about the live stream, as it happens. But also there's great places there to provide feedback and ask more questions of us. Micah, where can folks find you?

41:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
If you're looking for me online, 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 we've got links to the places where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. I want to thank you so much for being here, Tune in on Thursdays to watch Tech News Weekly as well and check out this show in its published form, as well as Hands on Mac its published form, as well as Hands on Mac, which will also get published at that time. Thank you for your support, Thank you for being a subscriber, and we will see you again next time. Bye-bye.