What We Think We Like in the New Apple Operating Systems

Jeff Battersby: 0:00

This sounds so lame, but it's not lame.

Tom Anderson: 0:15

This is Basic AF. I'm your cohost, tom Anderson, and I am joined by the one and only, and also fresh from the Jersey Shore, looking like a bronze to Donis, jeff Batters. Bjb. How you doing, brother? Terrific. How are you, man, doing? OK, i've had another respiratory thing this week, so I do sound a little deeper than usual, i think, but not as bad as the other day. It's the sexy Tom show. Oh God, Go ahead and turn it off now. So I do have cough drops at the ready and the cough button Water.

Tom Anderson: 0:55

If needed water all that usual stuff too. So I want to first say thank you to everyone that's here again for this episode. We do greatly appreciate your support. If you're new, welcome And I'm glad to have you here and hope to earn a prominent position in your podcast app playlist. And if there's anything that, after you listen, if you've got any comments or anything like that, feedback at Basic AF shows how you can get ahold of us, we're always welcome. Welcome to your suggestions, thoughts, questions, if you have any questions, because we do do some technical things on this show, or technical discussions rather, and not too many technical things. We just sit here and run our mouths, but so anyhow.

Jeff Battersby: 1:40

Yeah, And also, you know, subscribe like follow pin, whatever it is that you do on, whatever app you're on, And we really appreciate that And we are seeing more and more downloads as time goes on. So you know the two schmucks that are sitting here talking having fun. And so far we're up to what? now We're almost 900.

Tom Anderson: 2:06

It's getting close. Yeah, we should with with. if we don't screw this show up too badly, we should hit it this month. If we turn off a bunch of folks, we might never hit it, so we'll see, or we might get a bunch of people pissed off listening.

Tom Anderson: 2:18

Yeah, i don't think we'll just as good as it, but if you get a chance, if you do listen in the Apple Podcast app, if you would not mind throw us a rating there that that helps with positioning there And ideally at some point get us into the. You might also like suggestions that they do there. If you want to leave a review, that would be great, And if you leave a nice review, let us know we might be able to send you a sticker or something as a little token of appreciation.

Tom Anderson: 2:47

Yes, we will buy ratings and reviews with stickers. Yeah, we're easy.

Jeff Battersby: 2:53

And you might also like to go on a long walk and not waste your time with us. What better guys to do that with We? also, you put us up on YouTube now, so you can pick us up on YouTube. That's a new place, although if you're listening to us here, you're already listening to us.

Tom Anderson: 3:10

Yeah, i was surprised like I saw like 30% of people listen to, like to listen to their that, listen to podcasts, like to do it on. YouTube. It's really interesting It is, and you know I've then more thought about it. I was like, well, that's not totally surprising because you know I've started listening to like some music playlists on YouTube while I'm at work And you know they're just rolling in the background. And so I think the same thing would apply with the podcast.

Tom Anderson: 3:38

So, we are there if you want to check us out. Basic AF show on YouTube itself. We're also. It's in YouTube music, so you can find it there too. Well, we're singing that. Well, we can go that far. So this week and we'll only talk about this quickly because we've got a lot of other stuff to get to the social media Clone Wars continue. So obviously everybody knows about the drama that's been around Twitter of late with Elon taking over.

Jeff Battersby: 4:12

Can't wait to see that.

Tom Anderson: 4:14

Yeah, the cage match should be interesting And I mean, there's always been drama around Twitter, but this is, you know, with with the owner.

Tom Anderson: 4:22

The new owner, yeah, the recent owner, and some of the things going on there, and so meta has had one of these in the works and this week opened up their threads app, or threads social media service. I should say the threads app is what you use to do it. Right now, you can only use a mobile app. There's no web service or anything just yet. I suspect that's coming And that has taken off pretty quickly. I mean I saw they're up to 75 million users. Yeah, already is probably more than that. That was as of I think maybe yesterday or Friday. As we record this, this is Sunday, so it's taken off. Jeff, i know you and I talked about this while you were on vacation a bit. Yeah, hanging out with Sookie. Yeah, hanging out with the Zocker.

Jeff Battersby: 5:19

Have you spent much time with it yet? You know instant regret. I did. I did sign up. You talked me into a time, as you often do. I'm wearing an Apple watch and now I'm on freaking threads By the way, same name at Reyes Point, which is what I'm also on Instagram which, by the way, i think is why they got so many users so quickly is real easy onboarding If you already had an Instagram account, so you got threads. All the people that you followed on Instagram Immediately you were following on threads. One downside to that, by the way, is you want to get rid of threads. You need to get rid of your Instagram account.

Tom Anderson: 6:03

Yeah, and I saw that they're going to work on that, so you can do one without the other.

Jeff Battersby: 6:09

Yeah, sure, but yeah, i'm on and, to be quite clear, not really on, as I'm not on Facebook. I'm not on Instagram, really. I do have a user account on Instagram that I haven't posted anything to in a good long time. I do not like the Facebook paradigm, so I have largely avoided that. You're going to cough. I'm going to burp all the way through this, by the way.

Tom Anderson: 6:41

Sweet.

Jeff Battersby: 6:42

Yeah well that would be fart too.

Tom Anderson: 6:45

Oh, dude Yeah.

Jeff Battersby: 6:49

Anyway, i don't know. It's one more thing. You know is really what it is. It is one more thing, and I'm kind of enjoying the Musk tailspin over on Twitter. That's been fun to watch. By the way, if anybody hasn't noticed, mr Musk, via Twitter, is suing the law firm that allowed Musk to buy. Yeah, that's a little circular logic. It's a mobius strip of genius. That's what that guy is. He's a mobius strip of genius, anyway, yeah, so that's that's about it. I don't know, man, i'm finding myself now on Twitter watching no context, humans most of the time, which is actually pretty fun, we'll follow if you're interested.

Tom Anderson: 7:41

Yeah, and I think part of the reason that it's had it's gotten so much we'll say hype this week is that you know people have been looking for an alternative And I think you know, i know a big part of the Apple Twitter community jumped over to Mastodon. But let's be honest, that's not for the mass market. You know, i'd been on Mastodon for a few years before you know it became the somewhat thing to do for certain groups And I get it. I mean, you want to go somewhere and if enough of your friends go that you're already talking to, then you kind of can keep things going, but it's not a mass market thing.

Tom Anderson: 8:24

Totally not, and you know, in time we'll tell how this one plays out. And you know everyone's it's new shiny people were feeling good about it. You know it was. I admit it was kind of fun. It was the first week to see the enthusiasm around it. But that's all going to change because you know they don't have suggested for you or recommended for you or ads populating in your timeline yet And we know all that's coming.

Tom Anderson: 8:53

Right, and that's what ruined Instagram for a lot of people is you follow, you know certain people and you don't see them for months Because of the algorithm stuff, and so we know that's going to come and screw it all up, and so I would just encourage people who are on there and super hype about it to kind of you know temper that for a big letdown, I think, But for now you know I am there if you want to give a follow there.

Tom Anderson: 9:20

Tom Anderson is the username there. It's just slightly different than on Twitter, which was Tom, or is still Tom F Anderson over there. And I think that's just about having Tom Anderson is still. every year or two I get someone tagging me in something on Instagram because that's my username there, Thinking that I'm the Tom Anderson from Myspace Yeah, well, that's you man. I wish I had his money, but I'm not Yeah, yeah, so Doing your music on Myspace.

Jeff Battersby: 9:45

No.

Tom Anderson: 9:46

No.

Jeff Battersby: 9:48

I think that I think the big thing, the big difference, That experience for me was very organic and I will say that I still have a very well curated follow list on on Twitter, which on Instagram I don't, because I don't really use Instagram And I I don't know it. That was a very organic experience for me. I started very early. Twitter started, you know, many years ago, before it even worked, you know, back in the fail well days which we're seeing more and more of these days Was that 2008 give or take.

Jeff Battersby: 10:31

Yeah, it had to be somewhere around there. I was on pretty early, i could go look and see. Yeah, you know, i hopped on Twitter and really enjoyed it because I was able to see things that I wanted to see on Twitter. I don't know if that Instagram is going to be that for me. I mean, i'm seeing sorry Instagram. Well, basically is Instagram. Let me just say that if you look at what your feed looks like on threads, what you will notice or at least I have is I'm seeing all the same videos from people that I would see on on Instagram. You know, the same pictures, the same videos, the same. Hey, this is me not seeing much differentiation, at least in my timeline, between the two. Your experience may be different time, because you do do a fair amount of Insta, particularly with your other venture, subi and Ventures. Right, i recommend that follow, by the way. No thanks, yeah, you're welcome. No lies, i'll send you a sticker. You already sent me a t-shirt, tom, and a sticker.

Tom Anderson: 11:34

I was going to send you a basic AF sticker.

Jeff Battersby: 11:36

Oh, I don't have one of those. Oh wait, I have a stack on my desk.

Tom Anderson: 11:42

You can have one more.

Jeff Battersby: 11:45

Anyway, for me I don't know if I'm I'm trying to think of the last time I picked it up in the last four or five days, and it was maybe midweek. I think I signed on Tuesday or whatever day What day was it? What would they think it was last?

Tom Anderson: 12:01

week I think it was Wednesday or Thursday that came out, I can't remember which day it was, to be honest. So, yeah, and I think, at least for right now, I think, oddly enough, that Threads is a better photo sharing platform than Instagram is Because Instagram has become so focused on being a TikTok clone that they're pushing reels so hard and video in general, which you know let's be truthful here That's what most people want that photos don't get the visibility that they used to get, And I think, at least for now, photos and I think the formatting for the photos works a little bit better. On Threads too, Like you can do some widescreen, There's not so much cropping and the quality looks to be a little bit better than you get with the Instagram posts. But again, this thing is going to be very dynamic and it's going to be changing And you know there are features that aren't there yet.

Tom Anderson: 13:01

Like you don't have a way to show just the feed of your followers. It's kind of the 4U page for Twitter, if you will, where you get a whole bunch of stuff. You kind of get that So, like I've seen Paris Hilton deal without that And some other kind of you know, celebrity stuff that I don't really care about. I'm trying to get out in front maybe on some of the algorithm training from my particular feeds, So like when I see the dipshits come in with the political stuff, instant block And that's what I did on Instagram.

Tom Anderson: 13:39

I did the same thing. I just don't want that. Final comment is how bad off are we that we look at a meta product as our saving grace? It's like whoof man. these are bad days, but anyhow, onto better topics.

Jeff Battersby: 13:56

Not me, yo, that's it. That's pretty much it. I don't think I'll be there, But anyway I am there and I can't escape until they let me delete that account. Maybe I should just delete both of them.

Tom Anderson: 14:08

Oh no.

Jeff Battersby: 14:08

Done with it. You know, no Instagram, no threads. Anyway, yes, let's move on to funer things, tom. More fun, let's have more fun.

Tom Anderson: 14:19

Yeah, I agree. So a couple of shows ago we did our WWDC recap show And in that show we focused a lot on the Apple Vision Pro headset, which I think was kind of the big announcement. Anyway, We talked a little bit about the operating systems, but we said we would come back to those at a later date. So we want to do a little bit of that, as we are almost to public beta season.

Tom Anderson: 14:46

I would imagine maybe even this week we could see the first ones of those. It's getting close, Like they usually crank those up in July. So I would say in the next week or two we should start to see that. So I thought it'd be good to kind of revisit that topic, Yeah.

Jeff Battersby: 15:00

I agree with you, tom, and I have not. I haven't put a dev beta on any of my devices, have you? I have not, yeah, and I'm usually second-rounded on public beta.

Jeff Battersby: 15:12

I'm not so so much into the early, early stuff, and I typically pop those on my phone. But what we did want to do is talk about things that we're kind of excited about in each of these new OS releases And there are several things There really are quite a few interesting new features that are going to pop up on each of these. That make for me some interesting options, and so we're going to kick it off with Mac OS, and this is this sounds so lame, but it's not lame We're going to see screensavers similar to those are probably the same as those that are on Apple TV popping up on Mac OS, which I love. I am often mesmerized by those on the, on the.

Tom Anderson: 16:07

TV.

Jeff Battersby: 16:09

And so those are going to be showed up in Mac OS. I'm really excited about that, the ability to do that on my screen And, tom, as you pointed out, animation when transitioning to desktop image. By the way, also, if maybe this is only in iPad OS option, maybe it is, but live photos on lock screens I think, so we'll jump to that when we get there, right.

Tom Anderson: 16:33

Yeah, i think that's going to be nice. As you said on Apple TV, those are excellent. I've got an Apple TV in my office at work for quote testing purposes, you know, with the TV there, because testing out that only fans just blocks are working at college.

Jeff Battersby: 16:53

Whoa, i didn't say that, tom.

Tom Anderson: 16:58

I'll run that through the project committee See if I can get that. Definitely not doing that at work.

Jeff Battersby: 17:04

It's what it says folks Yeah.

Tom Anderson: 17:09

Don't believe a word of it. But but though typically during the day I have the TV on and just those screensavers rotating through. I don't have like an office with a window And, and so it's a nice little bit of you know scenery there in the office, so it is nice to see those. Coming officially to the Mac. There's been that third party screensaver I believe it was called aerials that you could download and it would pull the official Apple videos and you could use that, and so I used that for a while. But you know it'll be nice that Apple's going to have those built in. So that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, i love it. Definitely recommend giving those a shot, especially if you've got an Apple TV, for somehow you've never tried those. Do that as well.

Jeff Battersby: 17:55

Yeah, i can't believe that you haven't. If you're, if you haven't absolutely turned this on, i'm sitting looking at him last night, and sometimes more interesting than what I might be watching on the television.

Jeff Battersby: 18:07

Often more interesting than what's available streaming on the television. Next up some new video conferencing features, and this I really love it. We've all used, i would like to think, zoom or WebEx or God forbid teams Although teams seems to be the next big thing. But the biggest pain in the neck with those is their interfaces for sharing your screen. They're not fun, not easy, and one of the new features for video conferencing that Apple has introduced within the OS itself is the ability to.

Jeff Battersby: 18:52

It's basically part of the sharing feature. You can have an app up and from that app you have the ability of using what Apple calls a screen, a share screen picker, and you have the. That's mouthful, you know what. I might have typed that wrong because I have a screen screen picker in the notes. I might have been at the beach with a gin and tonic in me or something, whatever. It's called screen picker. I think that is what it is. It's a screen picker that allows you, from the app itself, to say share this via Zoom or share this via whatever the application is, which is brilliant to me. Rather than if you use Zoom or use Teams, it jumps up a variety of windows and shows you everything that's possible. Oftentimes it's difficult to select the actual screen that you want to be able to share, especially if you're using dual screens. This feature it appears that whenever screens are on, you click that sharing option and it will pop that up on the screen for you. I really like that. That's a pretty cool feature, i think.

Tom Anderson: 19:57

Yeah, that should be a good one. if we can just get people trained, that it's there. Yeah, discoverability might be a little tricky with that one, but it is nice to have, like you said, because when you do it with Zoom it can be a bit overwhelming because it comes up with a lot to choose from.

Jeff Battersby: 20:14

Yeah, nine times out of 10, how many meetings have you been in? Where somebody goes oh don't, didn't mean to share that and it's got their beach pictures from.

Tom Anderson: 20:24

Or worse 1980.

Jeff Battersby: 20:26

Yeah, Worse does happen, It definitely does. I still remember some this is early in the pandemic some video of a bunch of people in class and some young woman took her laptop with her to the bathroom and put it down on the floor and then realized she had her camera on Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson: 20:48

Co-worker of mine has a story similar to that with not with her, but a person that works at her husband's company did something similar.

Jeff Battersby: 20:58

Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson: 20:59

Yeah, god can't imagine. No, it's like Jesus, i have enough issues, i don't need that.

Jeff Battersby: 21:06

Right. Share that with the universe. So anyway, yeah, so this. At least it won't keep you from walking into the bathroom with your laptop.

Tom Anderson: 21:13

There's no block on that, right. I think it's safe if you just have a no devices in the bathroom rule. The good cause. It's kind of the way I look at it, because then you just don't have to worry about it. Yeah, come on tell me. Yeah, you know.

Jeff Battersby: 21:26

And it's nasty.

Tom Anderson: 21:27

Don't take your stuff into the toilet. Come on, you can put the damn phone down long enough to do your business.

Jeff Battersby: 21:34

Okay.

Tom Anderson: 21:35

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby: 21:35

Anyway, new rules, new rules, the new rules.

Tom Anderson: 21:38

Right Basic AF rules for life. That'll be our book.

Jeff Battersby: 21:42

All right. So what do you got next on the list? Safari password management. All right, man, i still want to see some better version of the key chain application or passwords in system settings. But we've got a couple of things going on here which is separate Safari profile, so a work profile to store work passwords and related a personal profile for all your personal stuff, which I love the idea of that And then also password and pass key sharing.

Jeff Battersby: 22:12

So, with family members. I believe this is the only way that that would work. At least is my recollection. But what a nice feature. Rather than the kids asking what's the Netflix password? again, you know you have the ability to share that stuff and make it easy, so I like both of those.

Jeff Battersby: 22:29

Again, i really, really want to see some type of standalone or easier to access version of the key chain. I do use the key chain often to find old passwords. I'd like some tool that works better. As you know, tom, i know you're fully into one password. I am now fully into the chain. That is the way that I store all my stuff And I would like a better management tool. It does work well, but ask me how many people know how it is that they can find their old passwords? 90% of people have no idea how to do that. So some easier tool, even if it was just a menu extra if that's what they're still calling those menu item I know they used to call menu extras more Right And I'm old and can't change But they something that would allow you to look up those passwords quickly, i think would be genius. But the fact that we have now more features available for creating, storing, using passwords and then sharing those with others. I love that.

Tom Anderson: 23:32

Yeah, definitely a nice addition, a nice addition to that, and that's. That's one of the things I've used one password for and why I've stuck with that. I've got a couple of vaults that I share out with the, with the family, for you know Netflix passwords and you know the streaming services and stuff like that, so but yeah, they keep tacking little bits on and it just seems inevitable that there's an app coming, but I guess there's always. They need something for next year, so it'll get here eventually, i expect, and by the way.

Jeff Battersby: 24:04

There's a feature and I think this will show up in Mac OS. I know it's definitely an iPad and iOS, but you know a lot of times you get authentication via text, but very often there are companies that will only send it to your email address. There is now a feature. I know it's in iOS, in iPad OS. I would like to think it's also going to be in Mac OS.

Tom Anderson: 24:28

Yeah, it should carry over Yeah.

Jeff Battersby: 24:30

Passes, those email. you know, right now, if you get a text message, it'll automatically offer to fill it in on on those devices. Those codes will pass through and you can just tap a little, a little thing that'll, that'll put those pass codes in. That's going to come through now in in mail So you get mailed one of those things You can. you'll have the ability to push that through as well, which I think is brilliant.

Tom Anderson: 24:51

Yeah, that'll be nice. Yeah, because when they added that to messages and and or I should say when they did the messages integration with Safari so they would pick those up and show it to you, i mean, that's been a nice time saver. And I think Android had that before, so I remember when that came out, the the Android people were like it's about time.

Tom Anderson: 25:13

But it was, it was about time, so I'm glad it's here And I think that'll be nice too. I don't have too many of those to just do the email thing. And of course you know as a whole separate conversation about the security of multi-factor via.

Tom Anderson: 25:26

SMS versus authenticator apps and pass keys and all that kind of thing, but that's a that's a whole different show, but I think that Safari password, stuff that we talked about there a minute ago, that should carry over as well, which which is one of the the pluses, right. So you know we're. When we were outlining this show, we thought, well, we could break it down by operating system, but the truth of the matter is the way that Apple's rolling things out is, these things generally will go across the whole ecosystem, so it'll cover Mac OS, ipad OS, ios, to a lesser extent, watch OS, because a lot of it just doesn't apply. But so that's. That's the nice thing. It's like you get, you get a feature and it's across the board so that you can really, if you dig into it and you start to use it, you get the benefit in multiple ways.

Jeff Battersby: 26:12

Yeah, yeah, truly truly the case, and so excited to see that and excited to see again better and better features for password management. There's no reason that Apple can't do that, And clearly they are. they are in, of course, doing it well, at least as far as I'm concerned, which, speaking of integration across multiple devices, a couple of new features coming that again will be across devices which are updates to both PDF editing and the way the notes application works.

Tom Anderson: 26:46

Yeah, this should be great.

Jeff Battersby: 26:48

I really, really am looking forward to this. So collaboration capabilities on PDFs, which hasn't been a feature before, so that's going to be a new thing where you can mark up PDFs together, automatic form filling using your contact information for PDFs and better form features in the. the preview application itself, again, i noticed I used to use PDFPenPro. PDFPenPro got picked up by another company. do not like Adobe Acrobat's interface at all. It's I don't know whose idea of UI that was, but when the revolution comes I think we need to take care of those guys.

Jeff Battersby: 27:33

But the tools that Apple looks like they're adding to to the PDF tools PDF preview application look, it looks pretty brilliant. Likewise, in notes, we use notes you and I do for finals on the on the show notes that we have, we're still using Kraft, although maybe it's time to bounce into into notes for show notes as well. but we're using Kraft for show notes still presently. But number of features being able to link documents together or link notes together. One thing that I had not initially seen in the in the original presentation that Apple did is notes is also going to let you push some in the anything that you've done or anything that you create notes to a new pages document.

Tom Anderson: 28:24

So that looks good.

Jeff Battersby: 28:25

Get some genius idea while you're on the road and typing up, you know the first pages of your presentation or your short novel, or whatever it is. You can push that directly into pages. It will create that new document and pages, which is a nice feature I'd like to see popped over to other things. I often as I've mentioned a bunch of times here I use Highland Pro to do all my writing, and I often, though we'll start with ideas and notes. You know, have something or see something that I, that I want to work with.

Jeff Battersby: 28:55

I would love that to be pushed beyond just just pages, so hopefully there's an API out there that will allow you to do that. But I really like, really like those features. those are some nice things coming to both of those applications that I look forward to get my hands on.

Tom Anderson: 29:12

Yeah, likewise, that's good stuff.

Jeff Battersby: 29:14

Next in line. This wasn't super clear, but there are going to be some better screen sharing options. Screen sharing works reasonably well, whether or not you know this. From the messages app, you have the ability to request to share somebody's screen, or they have the ability to to share theirs worth with you, which really really nice features. It still is a little I don't know hinky. For me, it doesn't always work in the way that I expected to, or the notification that people get at the remote end They don't doesn't always work, but apparently there are going to be some new features coming up that way And I would really really love to see something like this across all platforms. You know, i know that that's probably unlikely, which means I'll still be paying for team viewer to work with clients, which, by the way, ain't cheap.

Tom Anderson: 30:10

You know, that's a.

Jeff Battersby: 30:11

It's a hefty, hefty nut once a year that I pay for team viewer to be able to work with my clients, but I would. I have always liked, and they had this feature. I think I have always liked and they had this in iChat back in the day the ability that you had to be able to share people's screens. Any enhancements to that, particularly across other devices, to me seems like an amazing tool. And, if I'm not wrong, if I I think you also have the ability now to see iOS device screens using this, which you can't really do with other things.

Jeff Battersby: 30:44

I believe that's the case. It's not control. I don't believe there's a control piece of that. But man, so much, so much easier to be able to work with people and walk them through things rather than the. Okay, can you see this? Okay, click that Right. Okay, now that you've clicked that, there should be five options. I'm not seeing it, Okay.

Tom Anderson: 31:07

Look closer, Yeah, And you know, the biggest complaint that I've had with with screen sharing and and I don't do a lot of it like we use Apple remote desktop, which is still limping along after all these years, to, to, to get into our classrooms at the office, It's just that it's so it feels like it's in molasses, Like yeah, a little laggy, And it's like you click something and the menu comes up eventually And it's just, and I don't understand why it's still that way, Because when you and I think it's just the approach they're taking must just be different from how Microsoft does it.

Tom Anderson: 31:45

Microsoft does it because this is one of those things that Microsoft has nailed for years, Like if you use the remote desktop app to get into a PC it's great, like super responsive, and I've never had an issue with it And I don't know if they've got some type of patent around that or what, but but Apple's has never been to that level and maybe they just haven't cared. I mean, it's good enough, you know.

Jeff Battersby: 32:14

I think there's and this may be a complete fabrication on my own part, but my understanding was I think I read somewhere, and this is years ago is that the way that Microsoft remote desktop work it works is you're not seeing a video stream, You're getting screenshots and they're you know they're basically update, update, update, update. Much lower bandwidth and requirement And in my understanding, is that screen sharing on the Mac OS side is a stream. You're getting essentially a video screen to stream.

Tom Anderson: 32:50

Right, because Apple says in the write up for this on the preview page for Sonoma and says the new high performance mode sounds fancy Yeah, which requires them to, i think, uses the advanced media engine in Apple Silicon to enable highly responsive remote access over high bandwidth connections. And there's a one next to that, and let's scroll to the bottom and see what that says Available on Mac computers with Apple Silicon.

Jeff Battersby: 33:17

Yeah, okay, so not not just M twos, it's Apple Silicon, yeah.

Tom Anderson: 33:22

So I can remote into a janky PC and get fantastic performance, but I need Apple Silicon to get something better than what we're getting. Anyhow, on to the next topic.

Jeff Battersby: 33:33

Yes, yes, yes. This is maybe hard to explain on TV, but the feature called visual lookup. So you see a recipe you know, or you see a picture of a very delicious meal on somebody's Instagram since we were talking about those guys This new visual lookup feature will allow you to take that screenshot and say find me a recipe that makes this particular meal, and it will pull that up. Tom's looking like he's never heard of this before. No, no, i have. Yeah.

Tom Anderson: 34:04

Yeah, you got that. look on your face And and and other things like my wife uses that to look at plants and stuff.

Jeff Battersby: 34:11

I do too, and things like Merlin to you know figure out what birds are singing around me, but this is a. I really liked the idea of being able to take pictures and then have it pull up, you know whatever recipes it might be able to find based on what the picture sees Built into the OS. By the way, this is built into the OS, so you don't need another app to be able to find that?

Tom Anderson: 34:36

Is that where they did the demo and the keynote? where they showed like the? I think it was where they showed like the refrigerator or stuff on the counter and they were like you've got the ingredients here or some recipes, i don't recall that particular segment, but I do believe that that's what what was getting pulled up here.

Jeff Battersby: 34:51

So I like that idea. So that's, that's good. Also, as we kind of roll down the line, there are going to be some updates to the dictation feature that will allow you to both type and speak. Not me, not not walking and chewing gum at the same time, but the ability to both speak to your computer. So mostly when I'm speaking, when I'm typing, those would be expletives, So that'll be fun, But the ability to to integrate the two of those. So I want to play with that. Don't know much more, other than than there are some interesting updates to the dictation feature.

Tom Anderson: 35:30

Yeah, and they've been building on that the last couple of releases too. So good to see, and I think that's something I'm looking to to maybe use more. You know, i've got the newsletter that I do and things like that, and all of that stuff flows easier for me verbally than to to write it, so I may just start using dictation to get the first first takes and then I can throw it in Grammarly and make it actually something people understand.

Jeff Battersby: 35:56

Pop it in chat GPT to change it completely.

Tom Anderson: 35:59

I could do that. Yeah, could do that. Yeah, that'd be good. Also, kind of, but not exactly. You mentioned keyboard. There There's some keyboard stuff coming too. They're going to. They say have made auto correct improvements God please, i hope so, And it's not. All of us are thinking that, i'm sure. And they've added inline predictions. So if you start typing something you know, make a recommendation for what it thinks you might mean to say in the rest of the sentence.

Jeff Battersby: 36:32

Let me just say I hate that in Microsoft, like when you're when you're typing an outlook and it maybe you don't use that, look, but on the iOS I do it it will suggest Say have that. And it's like dude.

Tom Anderson: 36:45

Yeah, i've seen it in Gmail because we use that pretty heavily at work. I don't use well, i should say I don't see it a lot because I don't use the Gmail web interface a lot, but sometimes I do And that's been pretty good. So we'll see. I don't know if I'll use it a whole lot, but it's coming If you do that kind of thing, correct?

Jeff Battersby: 37:03

Sorry, that's hard to do me the bitch. Yeah, and so we'll see. We shall see what happens there. And then you also mentioned I thought we're supposed to get the health app. I want to see it in macOS. I don't think it's there yet.

Tom Anderson: 37:17

Yeah, I believe just iPad this year and maybe Mac next year. Okay, But, yeah, that'll be good. I think is we talked about that in our wish list show Something that we'd like to see, because there's a lot of information in there And sometimes the phone screens just it's just cramped, and so it'd be good to see that maybe spread out. So looking forward to giving that a shot.

Jeff Battersby: 37:41

Yeah, and in additions to that, actually, let's just jump to the last thing you put in desktop widgets, widgets from iPhone. Yes, that was you talk to me. Why do you love that?

Tom Anderson: 37:52

So well. For one, I like the idea of having dashboards and that could be a task list, It could be maybe just the music player, whatever it is. And it's funny, though, when we had like the dashboards service or feature, whatever that was called back in the day, remember you can hit the little keyboard shortcut and those little web apps would pop up. I don't recall ever using that a whole lot, but a lot's changed since then. So we've had the iPad come out, we've got the iPhone and we've had widgets on those for some time now, And I've got a screen like on my iPad Pro, that is. You know, I've got tasks up there. I've got a photos thing up there, weather, like the big carrot weather notification. I've started to use it because of summertime.

Tom Anderson: 38:43

Now we're getting you know, rain at weird times of the day and storms and stuff. I've got one on there for the radar And it's just nice to have that glanceable type of information And all that desktop space seems prime for that because it's kind of just dead space.

Jeff Battersby: 39:00

Yeah.

Tom Anderson: 39:01

Especially on large screens. Now, before they put stacks into the OS, you could clean up your freaking desktop. Maybe not so much then, but now it stacks at that whole size, especially on a bigger display. You know I've got a 27 inch display I use here and at the office, so there's a lot of space, and so I'm looking forward to trying that out to see how that goes. I thought the widgets from the phone was kind of clever. So if you've got some stuff there, maybe they, you know, don't necessarily have a true Mac widget. It looks like you just kind of bring your phone nearby and they show up through some continuity type feature there. So you know, i'd like to try that out. And while we're on widgets, interactive widgets are back. We used to have those because I can distinctly remember like having the things widget up. I'd have my task list there, i'd finish something, i would tap it and it would clear it and it would go away.

Tom Anderson: 39:50

When they did the I guess the re-engineering of the widgets framework what is that? Widget kit. Everything's a kit, so I'm going to go with it. That was probably something that they were working on putting back in, and it looks like they've done that, so that'll be nice too, excellent.

Jeff Battersby: 40:09

Excellent, excellent. All right, since you're talking about widgets from iPhone, we'll move on to some of the features that are popping up on iOS. One of the first things that I really like is there are now personalized phone calls, which is to say, rather than you know, your mom using your janky picture from when you were in third grade, is your face. When you turn on the phone, it appears that you've got the ability to push those, similar to the way you know, if you go into messages now and somebody changes whatever their little icon is, it'll say Jeff's got a new icon. Do you want to use that instead? Which my brother seems to do that like every two weeks.

Jeff Battersby: 40:48

I don't know what the deal is with them, but anyway, for when the phone, when you're making a phone call, it's going to pop up something that you've created or give them the option of using a thing that you've created, so kind of like. That looks fun, at least, and I like the fun in my iPhone, my iPhone, so dig that. And also and this is really slick live voicemail, which kind of takes us back to the old days of screening your calls. Jeff, i know you're stringing your call, come on, pick up. We were supposed to go out tonight, right? Weren't we supposed to go out tonight?

Tom Anderson: 41:28

Yeah, now, that was the 90s version of being left on red. That's correct. That's how we did it back in the day.

Jeff Battersby: 41:36

So live voicemail actually will allow you to pick up in the middle of a call. So it could be a junk mail call, but it could be legit. You're looking for a job. Somebody's calling you to say that they'd like to interview you, but it's a number you don't know. You'll be able to see that on the screen. So, I really like that feature.

Tom Anderson: 41:55

Can't wait to see those extended car warranties come up.

Jeff Battersby: 41:57

Right, looks like your warranties wearing out.

Tom Anderson: 42:01

Do you still get a lot of phone calls these days?

Jeff Battersby: 42:05

Real phone calls? Yeah, occasionally depends. The answer is yeah, i do. Okay, i do get phone calls. Yeah, and I make phone calls. You know, i don't leave messages typically if I do not get you, I will not.

Jeff Battersby: 42:22

You know, if I don't, if you don't pick up Tom you never pick up nope, if you don't pick up then, then I don't typically leave a message unless there's some reason to do so. You know, unless you're calling the car shop or something, i need to leave a message. But I do still get a fair number of phone calls that aren't you know, your cars extended warranty or You know?

Tom Anderson: 42:47

the.

Jeff Battersby: 42:47

Hilton Club calling to tell you that you could go on a five week vacation.

Tom Anderson: 42:53

How about you? No, not many like. I was just scrolling through the phone list. Primarily, you know, every once in a while if I'm, you know, out at work, somebody will call. But most of our stuff there is in and our chat app. Everything else is through messages, facetime calls, that kind of thing, but kind of traditional phone calls, not much.

Jeff Battersby: 43:17

Yeah.

Tom Anderson: 43:18

No, okay. Yeah, I was just curious. I do talk on the phone, okay.

Jeff Battersby: 43:22

Happens occasionally. Talked to my mom this morning, but that was on my watch messages Getting a couple of new features which I really like. One is the ability to alert people when you arrive at a location Which you know you can always have people follow you you know that was a feature, But maybe you don't want that all the time.

Jeff Battersby: 43:42

For example, right now My son is touring Thailand. This landed there a couple days ago and he is sharing his location there, which is pretty cool, that's. But that is a persistent Location share. You know he's constantly now sharing his location as he's a tour on Thailand. Maybe you don't need that. you know Your kids are going from here to somebody's house. You want them just to let you know that they arrived there safely. You can have that that be a feature, so it lets everybody know when you've arrived home safely, but is not persistently sharing Location information. So really, really like that feature.

Tom Anderson: 44:25

Yeah, that's nice.

Jeff Battersby: 44:26

It's. These are the kinds of things that you know, the kinds of safety features that that Apple Continues to build into all of their portable devices Maybe not so much iPad, but the watch in the phone That are designed to keep you safe, whether it's the SOS feature that that you have, you know, in the watch, in the event that you, you know, fall down and break your neck, or the phone. These kinds of things I really find useful, without being intrusive. You know, they don't feel intrusive to me. They, they, they feel like Helpers more than than anything else, and I really like that as a yeah, yeah, definitely some nice quality of life improvements there.

Tom Anderson: 45:07

That'll be good like, because I know to this day my mom says hook me up with that location sharing before you leave, okay so I'll do that.

Tom Anderson: 45:16

And she sits and watches us as we go places, you know, not daily on trips, but like we're going to, you know, connecticut or Pennsylvania, whatever stuff like that. But right, because that's a mother's love, it never fades, so that'll be nice. They've got some quick reply stuff, like you can swipe on a message to get to reply right away. Some catch up stuff If you've, if you're in a group chat Or just missed bunch stuff, there's an arrow that'll jump you to where you need to go to kind of catch up with everything. Some Changes to how the app drawer works in messages And that kind of rolls over into the stickers thing, which I don't think Either of us are really in the demographic for that, but it must be popular because they keep adding things to it.

Jeff Battersby: 46:01

Yeah, I know people that use stickers all the time. I just not a not a thing for me.

Tom Anderson: 46:05

Yeah, never got into it, But for those who do, they keep adding to it, so you should like that. You have here Where to go Maps offline. What, yes, offline maps, so offline offline.

Jeff Battersby: 46:22

Yeah, okay, let's let's talk a little bit about that. That's a a new feature and one that's particularly useful for me who does a lot of hiking. You know, if you've got no, no internet connection, you've got no ability to See where the heck you are in the universe. I actually had this years ago.

Jeff Battersby: 46:40

Had this happen to me, i was in Georgia teaching a class, actually in Georgia, where I had a weekend off and so was hiking, if I remember correctly, somewhere near the beginning of the Appalachian Trail, and Got a little turned around and turned right when I should have turned left on my return back to my car and Was stuck in the weeds, had no internet connection so I couldn't see where the trail was on the map or any that kind of stuff.

Jeff Battersby: 47:07

Now you'll be able to have a downloaded map It may not have GPS location, although, depending on what devices you're using, that might be possible as well and Can use that then to figure out you know Where you are and work your way back. As luck would have it, i ran across a road and was able to hitch a ride from people And get back to where I was, but and I would have been SOL I was like out in the middle of nowhere and Dumb me not enough water and all that kind of stuff. So You know, could have been, could have been a bad story, but the ability to have maps on your download actual offline maps Makes a huge lot of sense to me. I currently use things like for hiking. Now There's all trails app that allows you to do the same thing But not having to pay that sub and getting the things that I need makes me very happy.

Tom Anderson: 48:01

Yeah, and speaking of, while we're on that topic, you had that down below for watch OS for the hiking features, and I know we touched on that briefly in that episode a couple shows ago. So the hiking features, i think for watch OS, that sounds like something that will be really good for you.

Jeff Battersby: 48:19

Oh, hundred percent those. I am super looking forward to those features. I I hike. I want to say almost every weekend I'm doing some kind of hike nice in this time of year anyway.

Jeff Battersby: 48:30

Other times here maybe not as much, or when it's a hundred degrees out and humid, but yeah, i, that is something that I use all the time and one of the things that's a pain in the neck. By the way, if you track a hike using all trails app, it turns off your exercise Tracking it. It's really weird. So the ability to have that kind of I know it seems like a bug to me right Is we're responding to Tom's face when, when I said that that look of, but yeah, those things, for whatever reason, one turns the other off. So you know tracking your steps, your distance or any of that stuff. It's either coming through one app or the other.

Jeff Battersby: 49:13

The fact that I could have those trails and that kind of information on my watch or on my phone and I do use both when I hike because My phone is my camera in my pocket Yeah, um, i, that's a. That's a pretty, a pretty slick feature. A couple of other things that we want to look at mental health tracking features, which I really like, and, tied to that, journaling Still interested to see how that's gonna work out. I used to journal a ton, obviously right, nearly every day in some fashion or form. But I like the addition of you know how are you feeling, where's your head at, and those things already do kind of exist in in watchOS.

Tom Anderson: 49:58

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby: 49:59

So like like those, like those features coming up in in iOS music sharing and carplay, by the way, is another feature You know, and, tom, you have a kid stay off my lawn kind of attitude.

Tom Anderson: 50:15

Lighthearted.

Jeff Battersby: 50:19

But and and then Back to the health thing, some custom workout and meditation schedules that you can set up using Fitness Plus.

Tom Anderson: 50:27

Yeah, you're still using that a good bit.

Jeff Battersby: 50:29

Not as much, since it's warmer out, you know, rather not being the basement, doing that when I could be breathing outside a bike and do that kind of stuff. So limited, but. But the answer is yes, and I'm paying attention.

Tom Anderson: 50:43

Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff And I think you know we we've talked about it before some of the kind of you know they've built this nice foundation of health features And a lot of it tied with the watch, but now they can start to add on to it and I think you know you mentioned they're like you know, how are you feeling today? And then, you know, maybe surface some trends that you could look at to say, okay, well, today I didn't, didn't feel the best mentally, it's kind of a down day And it's like well, you have a chaplain, you know exercise, but once in the last two weeks maybe ought to pick that up or something like that, and that that's kind of my thing.

Tom Anderson: 51:23

So, yeah, that's, that's all good stuff. So I think any of that kind of thing that they can can build on like I'm a big fan of that stuff And that's why I've, you know, been such a fan of the watch for so long. All for that I think that's good.

Tom Anderson: 51:36

Standby is Coming to iPhone, and that's the feature where, when you have your iPhone charging whether that's with a lightning cable or a MagSafe charger And it's in the, you know, kind of on its side, horizontally You kind of get a heads-up display of sorts Maybe that's not the best phrase for it, but Almost like a dashboard, i guess of information on the screen. Now, if you've got anything But I think it's the iPhone 14 Pro is the only one with the always-on display at this point. So if you have any other phone, you've got to tap it to get that information to come on. If you've got the Pro with the always-on display, it's always there, and so that's, that's kind of nice.

Tom Anderson: 52:15

So if you've got one of those MagSafe charger stands, maybe you've got it, you know, bedside, or if it's in the, even in the kitchen or something, and it looks like that'll integrate with live activities notifications And things like that. And I saw In a in an article about that that it looks like with MagSafe, because they can identify the MagSafe charger, you can set up kind of custom views for different rooms. Interesting, which I thought was neat. I'd like to try that.

Jeff Battersby: 52:44

I do have some MagSafe charger, so well, give that a shot, buy some more.

Tom Anderson: 52:47

MagSafe Yeah, and I'm sure that's what they're thinking. But so that looks pretty good. I do think that is. I think we're gonna see that in other places Down the road. Like there was a story this past week that Apple's working on a display That when the either the computer's offer in sleep mode or something, the display could be something like that, have a standby mode on the display to Show some stuff. So almost like a smart home screen, i think like that. So that looks pretty good over on the iPad real quick. So we're getting close. Burn in time burn in time Yep, we've got stage manager improvements. Everyone got really excited last year when they announced stage manager.

Tom Anderson: 53:29

Everybody got disappointed last year when they released stage manager Didn't quite live up to expectations. It was kind of rigid with the window sizing And just did some weird things. But to their credit, it looks like they have been listening carefully to the feedback and are making some changes And it sounds like there's some more flexibility in the window sizing options and everything, because I'm still very intrigued by that With the 12.9 inch iPad Pro. You know I may not use it a lot in that configuration, but if I haven't hooked up to the external display then it becomes a bit more interesting.

Tom Anderson: 54:08

So I do want to play with it again And I think, as long as they continue to work on it, you know that's a good thing.

Jeff Battersby: 54:14

Yeah, a couple of other things before we wind up. If FaceTime using your phone or iPad on Apple TV which I love, that idea much easier, you know, to be sitting on the couch and be able to talk to grandma and grandpa at a distance on a big screen, which seems really slick to me, so that's going to be a really good thing. I think The other thing is and I just noticed this and we can discuss it at some later date but the ability to use an external camera for FaceTime, which, on your iPad, requires a connection to another device. But you have the ability to use an external camera on that. So that should be interesting And just going to throw this one in there.

Jeff Battersby: 55:01

In WatchOS, a follow up to Med Reminder. Typically you get that message that says you know it's time to take your medication And I will find sometimes that I have to remind myself oh, i'm going to take those you know, because I'm doing something at the point in time when I normally take meds during the day. So there's a follow up reminder coming through with.

Tom Anderson: 55:20

WatchOS, which is good. I think that's probably something they should have had.

Jeff Battersby: 55:25

But yeah, yeah, no, it's coming. Simple feature. Yeah, tell me, i think that's us.

Tom Anderson: 55:30

That's it, brother.

Jeff Battersby: 55:32

Oh yeah, one last thing. Yes, back to back requests on Siri.

Tom Anderson: 55:37

Oh Lord.

Jeff Battersby: 55:38

Yeah right, we'll see how well it works. The back request doesn't work so well sometimes, but the ability to say you know two things at once, which Siri scolds you now when you try to do that.

Tom Anderson: 55:51

Right, and they've reduced the command by 50% that you use to invoke Siri too, so you don't have to use the hey any longer, which I think he's curious to see if you still can or if it's just I think you can use both, okay. So I don't know. I think it was MKBHD the other day that tweeted it's almost funny how bad Siri still is. Yeah, right, they're remarkable, or something like that. It is remarkable, it is Yeah, and. But anyway, you know, whatever, we'll see how it goes. I don't have much hope for that one, but nor do I Yep. All right, good to end on a high note. Yes.

Jeff Battersby: 56:27

Yeah, on a getting high note. Yeah, yeah, we have successfully wasted another hour of your time, pretty much.

Tom Anderson: 56:34

We have Yeah.

Jeff Battersby: 56:35

If you've stuck around this long, we appreciate it And hope that you'll stick around again. Tom, good as always to see you. Hope you're in better voice And thanks for noticing my tan.

Tom Anderson: 56:46

Yeah, you do look good, brother. You should go out about town tonight, maybe you enjoy your dinner.

Jeff Battersby: 56:52

You did that last night.

Tom Anderson: 56:53

Oh, okay, didn't want to cook, all right. So if you've got any questions, comments, concerns or rude comments, send them to Feedback at Basic, preferably rude comments.

Tom Anderson: 57:03

Yeah, we're that kind of crew Feedback at basicafshowcom. You can find all episodes at basicafshowcom. If you like these sort of topics and Apple stuff in general, i'd love for you to sign up for my newsletter. You can get to it at tomfandersoncom. You can subscribe there. We'll put some stuff in the show notes for this show, a few links and everything like that. Jeff, what else we got as we wrap up?

Jeff Battersby: 57:29

As a reminder, theme music by Psychokinetics Celcius 7, one of the front people Is that the way to say it these days For Psychokinetics has a new album out as Celcius 7. So go check Celcius 7 out And, as always, our beautiful, gorgeous, lovely art by Randall Martin Design, which we would highly recommend that you give Randall a shout if you have any design needs. He does a lot of different stuff and able to do it in fast fashion with your help.

Tom Anderson: 58:03

Yep, He's fantastic designers I highly recommend. So that'll do it. Thank you everyone for being here. Hope you have a good rest of your day, rest of your night, Jeff. Take us out, See ya.