Tom Anderson (00:07)
This is Basic AF episode ninety-two. Show notes for this and all episodes can be found at basic afshow dot com. Hey, how are you doing? Jeff Battersby, good to see you, sir. It's been a minute.

Jeff Battersby (00:20)
It has been actually a month, Tom. It's been a long time. And now we're beta cucks. wait. Is that is that what this show's about? Yeah, I I did, Tom. No, I don't.

Tom Anderson (00:23)
Since we've actually recorded. Yeah.

We are here we go. What are we? We're thirty seconds in. All right. You missed me, didn't you? I feel like you don't have many friends you can be this way with. It's like

Tom. Yes. So how's life been, sir? Good.

Jeff Battersby (00:39)
could talk to you this way. But I mean good. Actually,

yeah. I'm half a chapter away from finishing a novel. Yeah, it's a lot of work.

Tom Anderson (00:50)
Excellent.

Well, I mean you had a

a slight detour along the way. So yeah, not nothing serious, but you know.

Jeff Battersby (00:55)
Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Speaking

of, last night I went to see play at the theater. I usually do stuff at Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike. Pretty good. Highly recommend if you're in the you know, in the Wapinger's Falls area that you stick your head in and check in check that out. but one of the guys who's a friend of mine, been a friend of mine for a long time,

Tom Anderson (01:17)
Weaponry.

Jeff Battersby (01:26)
We we were all walking up together to the to the car afterwards. And he's going, You're walking really well. Then I am. Yeah. Like noticeable to other people. I mean, I know I'm still messed up. There's still things that are a little goofy, you know, that I'm well aware of every single day. But I'm very grateful to say that I am very much on the men.

Tom Anderson (01:34)
Nice. Good.

Yeah, happy to hear that. Yeah. Yeah, I bet you are, yeah. But well, thank God but well, you wouldn't be any the wiser, but the rest of us would be like, Man, who am I gonna be called a beta cuck by now? So

Jeff Battersby (01:52)
Yeah, me too. I could have been in a I could have been in a pine box, Tom.

Nobody. Who's gonna do that to you, Tom? Yeah.

Tom Anderson (02:10)
So yeah, it's a good thing. Right.

So no, but seriously all all all good stuff.

Jeff Battersby (02:17)
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm I'm very grateful. I really am. I I feel well. I am in really decent shape. You know, hiking kinda. Rocks are hard. but I

Tom Anderson (02:30)
Mm. Well yeah, that's why they're rocks. I'm just kidding. Yeah,

see? All right, people are already tuning out. Let's move on. All right, so

Jeff Battersby (02:37)
Okay, right, let's get out of here. Health, let's talk about old

man health things, Tom. How's your prostate? Okay.

Tom Anderson (02:43)
As geez, as promised by

the folks in Cupertino, the public betas for the new operating systems have in fact arrived in July. They came out this past week. we've got public betas for everything except Vision OS, which has never, as far as I can recall, had a public beta. It just has developer betas. but if you're so inclined, you could get those too, I'm sure. But

Jeff Battersby (02:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I think between

us we have on just about every device, right?

Tom Anderson (03:15)
I think so. Like I well, I don't do home pod stuff in AirPods firmware. I'm like, that's okay. But all right, so yeah, before we dig into it, let's let's kind of take a a roster check or roll call, see what we've got. So what have you installed thus far?

Jeff Battersby (03:24)
Yeah. Yeah. no, I didn't didn't do that.

Sure.

I have installed this on my watch, on my phone, gutsy gutsy, and on my iPad, all of those. I've not put it on any of my Macs, because I do really do important work on those things and I'm not interested in having stuff disappear into the ether. But n honestly, for those three items, watch other than sucky battery life.

it's been pretty solid. I mean there are glitches and that you would expect, but those are those are the three items that I have it on. How about you, Tom?

Tom Anderson (04:12)
Okay, so I have it on my phone, which I actually installed. I had to run over to Northern Virginia this week and I actually installed it the night before 'cause I thought, well, I knew where I was going, so I was like, but let's it'd be a good test 'cause I'll be in the car for an extended period of time. So I wanted to see like CarPlay and Siri and CarPlay and all that. So I did that. I have it on my iPad and I have it on my MacBook Air at work. because you know, we're supposed to be testing those things at work. So I've not put it on any of my Macs at home yet.

Jeff Battersby (04:15)
Uh-huh.

Okay.

Course.

Tom Anderson (04:41)
I'll wait till fall to do that. But

Jeff Battersby (04:43)
Yes.

Yeah yeah. Yeah. Smart move. And let's let's do broad view first impressions. What are your what are your impressions thus far?

Tom Anderson (04:53)
thus far, pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. I think you know the we Apple in the keynote, one of the kind of the pillars they talked about were like performance improvements and refinements and and things like that, and we'll get into those, but I it doesn't seem any worse than Tahoe to be honest, and it's a beta. So I think that's I think that's a good sign.

Jeff Battersby (04:55)
Broad, broad, over everything. Yeah, right? It's the same. Pretty solid.

Yes. and you put out a very nice newsletter this actually when we're recording it would have been this this last week talking about the betas and and putting those on. And some of the things that you mentioned in that newsletter are definitely true. battery life on my watch was horrible. you know, there may be some some little stuff going on under the hood that

that initially makes it so so it sucks, but I would use it for a day. It was like, I'm down to ten percent. Let me plug that in and right now I think I I slept with this on last night. I'm at about eighty five percent, which is which is not too bad. Yeah. That's I have the two, the the second version of the Ultra. Yeah. So

Tom Anderson (06:05)
That's pretty good. Yeah. And which model watch do you have again? Ultra two. Okay. So you're yeah,

I can't put it on mine. I've fallen out of support for so I couldn't do that if I wanted to. But it's funny you said your battery life was so bad, and that's kinda like a twice a week thing for me, just you know, regular wear and tear, I guess, on the battery and everything. And I'll throw it on the charger at eight o'clock at night.

Jeff Battersby (06:16)
Have you really? Well, tell me, tell me.

Tom Anderson (06:33)
to charge up before you go to bed and it'll be like ten percent. I'm like, whoa. So battery just, you know, draining out. But how about for your phone? Battery there.

Jeff Battersby (06:37)
Right. Yeah.

sucky. Super sucky actually compared to what it was. I mean it wasn't it you know, I've got a couple year old phone, so battery life not gonna be great no matter what anyway. I have since I got it only done eighty percent and have bumped that up now, but eighty to eighty five percent charge. So which is, you know the recommended way to go about this.

So i that has limitations as it is, but I definitely am charging this sooner, my phone sooner in the day than I that might have otherwise. I will say the iPad I haven't noticed because 90% of the time, you know, I'm only taking that off the charger for better or for worse for a few minutes. Like depending on what's going on. Maybe I'm watching the World Cup, which will be over by the time you hear this.

But might watch, you know, World Cup or movies while I'm cooking or doing something and obviously doing edits on the novel. So a lot of work that I've been doing doing there. But usually, you know, edits on the novel I do at a chapter or chapter two at a time. So I'm not I'm not really

killing that too much. You know, it's not doing too much battery life. So it's hard for me to tell iPad wise just because of the way the way I use it. But you know, the phone, my watch, off the battery ninety percent of the time. So yeah, I I I've found it to be okay. And you were having sucky battery life on your phone anyway, so

Tom Anderson (08:14)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

That that's partially why I was like, you know what? Can't be much worse. So I was like So and it's w that's what's been so frustrating. It's you sixteen Pro Max and you should be getting good battery life. I mean and it it it was and then iOS twenty six it is just not. and I keep seeing other people having this you know, a similar experience, you know, complaining about it and everything. So I thought, you what, I'm just gonna try it because I would get two hours.

Jeff Battersby (08:36)
Who who cares? Right.

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (09:02)
on screen time on with the phone. And 'cause most of the time at work just sits on my desk and then I'd go home and it'd be like thirty eight percent. I'm like, I haven't used it. and so that was. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jeff Battersby (09:12)
And I presume you're connected to Wi Fi at work, right? Okay. So, you

know, that you're not you know your your phone's not trying to reach out and touch somebody every two seconds to which which would explain. Like, if I take the train from where I live to New York City, by the time I get down to New York City I'm fifty percent and that's doing nothing. And that's because it's always going, Hey, it's Sir Wi Fi Hey, it's your Wi Fi So usually now if I hop on the train, you know,

throwing a podcast and turning on airplane mode. Yeah. 'Cause that drive down is really sucky. You know, it really it sucky the battery life out.

Tom Anderson (09:42)
Airplane mode or something. Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. And

so I I I put it on you know the phone and I don't really have a good read for it yet because you know, when you upgrade and with the new Siri, it's like, hey, we're going to do a bunch of indexing and optimizing for Siri to use and it's going to take a while. But it said it will go faster while it's plugged in. And so I've been trying to kind of move that along and so I've had it on Charger a lot this week. and it is finished that that finished a

Jeff Battersby (10:09)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (10:21)
guess yesterday because yesterday morning it was still it was like a ninety two percent. So it seems to be done now. So so we'll see. Like today I should be able to run it without being on the charger. And like right now I've got 70% left. and it was like I think seventy four when I woke up, which was, you know, seven thirty or something. So seems to be, but who knows? we'll find out. But yeah. Yeah, next beta will probably trash it.

Jeff Battersby (10:39)
Okay.

Hard to tell yet. And it's still early days. Yeah. Battery life doesn't usually get

fixed until you know, right before release date often.

Okay, interesting. So what have you played with thus far?

Tom Anderson (11:03)
Primarily I have used Siri of course and what else?

Jeff Battersby (11:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Tom Anderson (11:16)
To any great extent that's it. I mean that's kind of been my focus is is to look at that 'cause I mean that's the highlight feature besides the parental controls they talked about, and then the performance things. but I like I said, let's let's just yeah.

Jeff Battersby (11:18)
Yeah, that's same.

Well let's just talk about that for a little bit because this is

we d as we said before, there's kind of like a snow leopard update from the old days, which was Apple, thank goodness, has determined that they're gonna do a lot of undercover work Siri and the Siri AI features are upfront for sure. And that stuff's never worked ever. So

Tom Anderson (11:57)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (11:57)
Any improvement there is gonna be amazing. But everything else i is kinda under the covers. And frankly, Siri is under the covers too. You know, it's it's big talk, but the way it it was supposed to work two years ago, was supposed to be able to grab information from your device and you know, be able to contextually figure out what the heck it is you're gonna do and and so

that was a lot of undercover work that Apple just couldn't get their business together on. or maybe their expectations were such that they were different than your average AI. And we all know what I think of AI.

So b all of this is really just improvements to make it so the user experience is better without you having to actually notice the user experience. So there's not a lot to see that's that different, at least that I've noticed. It looks the same, it behaves the same. there are a couple of changes in some of the apps, in terms of what gets displayed. For example, music has been updated a little bit.

And I like the way that that changes has has gone on. But i i really this is all under the cover stuff. so nothing too glitzy other than than Apple intelligence being f foremost or something that's at the front. And then you know, all the other stuff is gonna be underneath. So i I don't expect to see too much in terms of

Tom Anderson (13:53)
Right. And they they added some controls for adjusting or fine tuning liquid glass. So they gave you a slider. So if you want it to be more glass like, you slide it to the left. If you want it to be more really frosted glass like, you slide it to the right. Did you change that at all? I left it in the center. Yeah, I was like, that's good enough. Right. and one of the things that they've done is so people were kind of off put, especially on Mac OS

Jeff Battersby (14:06)
Mm-hmm.

I left it in the center too. I played with it for a little bit. I was like, Yeah, who cares? You know, I don't it honestly

Tom Anderson (14:23)
with the r radius corner radius on the windows. and they've kind of dialed that back so they're not quite as aggressive. I think it looks pretty good. the floating sidebar isn't a floating sidebar anymore. It's just more like the old sidebar used to be. What you think of that depends on whether or not you like the effect that the floating sidebar kinda gave. I could take it or leave it. Doesn't matter to me too much either way.

Jeff Battersby (14:26)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (14:50)
Now something they did add on macOS, which I like quite a bit, and shared that with you in the chat this week, is a kind of a common thing I was running into on the laptop because of the notch is your menu bar items would kind of creep over and kind of disappear and be like, well, where'd it go? And then when you close one, they would kind of slide back down, which wasn't really that elegant to be honest. and so they've added like a little

tool in the menu bar, if the menu bar extends beyond the notch, it gives you this little tool look like a little less than signs to them kind of stuck together. and it's like a toggle. And when you click it, the ones that ex would extend beyond the notch actually show up over on the other side of the notch so you can get to them. And then when you're done, or after a few seconds it'll close and they'll go back and get out of the way. So it's it's much more of an elegant

Jeff Battersby (15:30)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (15:49)
solution 'cause I would lose like our VPN for some reason, like at work. That one was always like at the end or depending on if you're going left to right, it would be the first icon of the menu bar, but it would always get stuck behind the notch. And I like, well, where's the damn VPN? And so I'm really happy to see this. Now flip side of that just Tom, maybe you've got too many things in your menu bar, which may be true. but it it's handy for though for people that do need it. It's

Jeff Battersby (16:12)
Ha ha ha.

Tom Anderson (16:16)
I didn't see anything in the system settings in menu bar where you could like toggle it on or off. I may have just missed it. so it just seems to be there. When you need it

Jeff Battersby (16:22)
interesting.

Well and and

that's something that a lot of people use in third party apps like Bartender to to manage.

Tom Anderson (16:30)
Yeah, 'cause that's what I was curious about,

because on when I plug the laptop into an external display, that little toggle doesn't appear. So it's not like you can say, show me just these four all the time. At least not yet. They may add this, or I maybe I missed it. So if someone n found a way to do that, let us know.

And so it only appears for me so far on the laptop like around the notch. So it doesn't seem to be like the thing with bartender you could say, I just w really want to see mostly these five things to keep it tidy and then I click and see the rest. I haven't seen that. But again, I haven't looked too too hard, so I may have just missed it.

Jeff Battersby (17:00)
Yes.

Yeah. I I noticed the same thing that you were talking about. not because I'm running anything, because I'm not because I'm it's not on my Macs, but I had seen I had seen stuff written about that. And then you sent the screenshot to kind of show that that little bit of magic, which is great. I really like I really like that. And for those of you that that

have been using the current version of Mac OS, you may have noticed that stuff appears in the menu bar now too that would normally be in the dynamic island on your on your phone. So for example, if I'm, you know, w watch the World Cup, which I am, those those the scores will pop up in the in the menu bar as well.

Tom Anderson (18:03)
Yeah, those live activities.

Jeff Battersby (18:03)
So again, that

there's a lot of business taking place in the menu bars. You know, it's a a there's a lot going on that that one needs to be aware of and that might, you know might

Tom Anderson (18:14)
Yeah, and I haven't tried this yet.

I did see for, you know, when you can connect your iPhone on your Mac and do this you bring the and control it, right? iPhone sharing. you can resize that in Golden Gate, but I haven't tried that yet. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (18:23)
yeah.

you can. Interesting.

Yeah, no, I haven't well, 'cause I because I don't have Golden Gate on my Macs. but yeah, I hadn't I wasn't even aware that that was the case. That's kind of a nice feature. I do use that feature often, by the way. and what's really interesting, I don't know if you notice this or not, and again, this is not in in Golden Gate. This is in the current version of Mac OS. Spotlight

will if you find something, for example, Discord or Slack, which I don't have on my Mac, but I do have on my iOS device for work related stuff. it will open up it it will find that app on your on your phone and open it up that way, which is a really nice feature. So I don't have to install something on my on my Mac if I don't want it, like Slack. And have it pop open, you know.

Tom Anderson (19:10)
Mm-hmm.

Uh-huh.

Jeff Battersby (19:24)
or have me have to install that app on my Mac. It it opens it up on my phone and I have access to it on my phone, which is really slick. Love it. It's a nice nice way of handling handling that so you don't have to have every single application installed on every device. You know, one device suffice. Ooh.

Tom Anderson (19:45)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (19:47)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (19:48)
So something I was happy to see when I first got my car, so I drive a Subaru cross tracking. When I first got it and hooked up car play, I was like, wow, cool. I have three rows of app icons, so I don't have to swipe as much and and everything. And they were fairly high definition. I mean, the screen itself isn't like a retina display or anything in the car, but they look nice. and then somewhere along the way, in one of the twenty-six updates, that

Jeff Battersby (19:55)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (20:17)
I'm assuming got broken. and I had just two rows and they were like the jumbo icons and so they were a little bit fuzzy and everything. And I yeah, you get used to it, it's like not that big of a deal. but I was like, Man, I don't know, it looked better the other way. so I thought maybe they just changed it or anything. And I went through all the settings and everything and couldn't get it to resolve. But when I put the public bait on, I was happy to see I've got the three rows back. and they look like they used to. So

Jeff Battersby (20:44)
Yeah.

Tom Anderson (20:46)
That was nice. I again it's a little thing. It's not a big deal, but it's it's an improvement. So I'll take it. the other thing I noticed using maps when I was driving down the road the other day, the navigation announcements or the volume was very low. Like it was like in a quarter mile, turn right onto you know, Route seven. I was like, Okay, great. but I was like, Man, it's not too loud. And so I was at a traffic light and I was checking the

Jeff Battersby (20:54)
Yeah, a hundred percent.

Tom Anderson (21:17)
volume settings and I was on the loudest setting and so I was like, I don't know, let me try the classic, choose another one and then set it back. And it worked. About scared me to death. I was like, whoa. Yeah, okay. so other than that, everything like CarPlay didn't have any connection issues because it's wireless CarPlay. It seemed to be fine. maps worked fine.

Jeff Battersby (21:23)
Loud. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (21:42)
don't and I use messages a good bit too 'cause I'm you know, like I said, I was trying Siri, which we'll talk about Siri a good bit here in a second, but and that all worked. I did get a couple times where when I was in a low signal area, it was like, yeah, no I can't do anything. try again later. I was like, but it wa ev where I had signal I didn't get that. So it definitely seemed to be related to you know having low signal and just not being able to process enough data or something.

Jeff Battersby (22:08)
Gotcha. Yeah. Not not I I haven't found any issues with that on the

In in CarPlay. CarPlay's been pretty solid all the way around. I don't have as big a screen. Yours is oriented like an iPad. And in your Forrester mine is wide. I think the thing that I was really hoping for, which, you know, this is me smoking good things on, you know, whatever days I need to smoke I I had hoped that the on my BMW that I would

Tom Anderson (22:24)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (22:45)
have the option of doing the the CarPlay two or whatever they're calling it that makes it so CarPlay shows up in your car. What's really interesting is if I'm navigating, I get the macOS map on my on my display. You know, it shows up in the middle. it defaults to the the built in BMW one. Otherwise, you know, that's kind of the default. So my feeling was man, it's like

Tom Anderson (23:04)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (23:14)
three quarters of the way there, let's bump it the rest of the way. But I don't think that that's that's a thing that's gonna happen. So and I'm not buying a different car. So Yeah, no. Yeah. Nope. Nope. Nope. And it's on pretty fancy high end cars at the at the moment. So

Tom Anderson (23:25)
Just for that, right? Like to have it but not that much.

Mm.

Yeah, I think they call that CarPlay Ultra, where it takes over like the heads up display in the car and it shows you know your speed and RPMs and all that stuff. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (23:37)
Is that what it is? Ultra

Yeah. Yeah, all

that. Yep. So all right, Tom. All right.

Tom Anderson (23:46)
Alright, Jeff. Well let's get to it. The highlight

of the betas and soon to be final releases of all of these things. The long awaited new series.

Jeff Battersby (24:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. So how much of you use this, Tom?

Tom Anderson (24:05)
I have used it a fair amount. and that's been, of course, intentional, just trying to see what it can do, what it won't do, where it falls apart, things like that. How about you?

Jeff Battersby (24:17)
mostly on my watch. So I

Tom Anderson (24:20)
Okay, good. So I like I

haven't can't put it on mine, so I'll be curious here to see how it is.

Jeff Battersby (24:25)
Yeah, yeah. No,

I and and I will say impressed. there was an article goodness, I probably should have should've added that to the show notes, but there was an article I was going through today about how this is working, particularly on the watch. And y y you know, in the in the past it wasn't great. It really I mean

You know, Siri sucked everywhere, but it sucked really bad on on your watch. And right, or yeah, or I I can show you that on your phone. so one of the things that I did this morning was, you know, asked who was gonna play in today's World Cup game and where it was gonna be, and bang bang, came right back with that information. So

Tom Anderson (24:56)
Sorry, I didn't hear what you said.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (25:18)
didn't talk to me, which I kinda like. It just displayed it on the watch. But it showed that, you know, we've got we've got France and England today. It that it's at five o'clock Eastern time and that it's gonna take place can't remember what stadium it is. I think it's stadium in Florida. but it told me all that information. So it showed me the two teams, plus it showed me in via text, you know, it was text based information what was what was gonna be going on.

so I highly impressed. Suddenly this is useful. You know, this is yeah, n right. And as you said before we started recording, you know, I think we're both sitting here waiting to see if it's Lucy with the football. but we're you know, so far, I stand impressed. I haven't played with it too much on my iPad or on my on my

Tom Anderson (25:53)
Shocking, isn't it?

Jeff Battersby (26:18)
phone. I did try the other day I have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday and I did try to say show me the address of the place that I'm going to on Wednesday and I it's not in the that that address is not in my calendar. So it only brought up the calendar item. It didn't, you know, search through any of my emails as far as I could see and say it's gonna be twenty one read place or whatever it is. so that was kind of interesting to me.

Tom Anderson (26:36)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (26:48)
but yeah, so far, you know, particularly on the watch, I'm super impressed by it.

How about you on the other side?

Tom Anderson (27:00)
So I don't have it on the watch, but I've been using it on iPad and my phone a good bit and a little bit on my Mac at work, which not sure for how much longer because of some w we've gotta decide what we're going to do there just on privacy stuff. Like Apple's whole thing, of course, is this is private, it's on device, it goes to private cloud compute, but

With other vendors, we're able to put these written agreements into place that say, hey, and I don't know if Apple's got those yet. and so until they do, we may have to be like, Yeah. Right. Maybe a little bit of you, maybe some things you could do, maybe some things you can't. So we're we're evaluating all that. But so a couple of examples or things that I've done. so installed it this week and something this week.

Jeff Battersby (27:33)
Gotcha.

Can't use it.

Tom Anderson (27:58)
that happened is I got a notification from my bank potential fraud which is what everyone loves to get from their bank and so got the notification and it was a transaction from Apple for like $150. And I was like, ooh, wonder what I got at Apple for $150. I mean I've got subscriptions and everything, you know, App Store stuff that comes through and Apple Care and all that. And I was like $150?

It's like the only thing I could think of that would have been 150 was like the Apple Care plan for the MacBook Pro that I have. But it's under Apple Care One. I was like, so it wouldn't be that unless they screwed it up. So I go through and I check, you know, all my stuff. Didn't see anything. so I was like, jeez, great. So I said, okay, it's fraud. So right away, great, your card is blocked, go to the bank to get another one. So I did that. and we'll come back to that story 'cause it was kind of funny. But thought, well, let me see what if

series any good for this.

Jeff Battersby (28:58)
so did was Siri able to do anything with the d with that information?

Tom Anderson (29:04)
So it was. So it said, you know, I asked it, Do I have any emails or anything about having a problem with my bank card? And it was like, Yes, actually, you have an email from the bank that fraud was detected and the car's been blocked, but you also have an email from Filterby, which is the company I buy the filters for our H V A C system from, and it said, They had a problem processing your payment and asked you to follow up. I was like, Hmm, okay, that's pretty good.

Jeff Battersby (29:32)
yeah, that actually is useful. So you got two pieces of information.

Tom Anderson (29:37)
Mm. And so that was kind of the first thing

that I tested because there's it just happened to happen right after I'd upgraded and it I wasn't sure if even it was going to work because it had just started that indexing and everything. and so it did. and then there were some other ones I asked that it didn't, which I'm going to at this point attribute to the fact it was still indexing and just didn't have everything. Or beta. Right. and so I thought, okay, well that's that's a pretty decent start.

Jeff Battersby (29:43)
Right.

Uh-huh.

Just ba okay. Or or still kinda in beta, right.

Tom Anderson (30:04)
And then the other day I scheduled service for the car. and so I'm gonna do that on Monday morning. And so I said, I'm not going to say the buzzword so we don't trip people's devices, but I said, Hey, I scheduled service for the car on Monday morning at eight forty five, put that on the calendar and then add a reminder for Sunday evening at or Sunday afternoon at four o'clock so I don't forget. And I did both of those. I was like, okay, that's good. so that was handy.

Jeff Battersby (30:31)
nice.

Tom Anderson (30:36)
and then what one of the things I was most impressed by was when I was coming home on Thursday from the trip over to Northern Virginia. so the the newsletter platform that I use is Beehive, and they had a summer, what they call it, the summer release event, which their dog and pony show for the new stuff that's coming out. And it was Thursday afternoon at 130. And so this was about three o'clock that I was driving home. And so I said, Hey

Jeff Battersby (30:48)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (31:02)
Beehive, the newsletter platform I use, had their summer release event today. What did they announce? And it gave me a nice rundown of everything they had announced. And it just happened. So I was like, okay, that's pretty good. Because I mean, it pretty much had just finished. and so it gave me a list. I I did. Yeah. And so it was like, yeah, they announced a new community thing. They did this and this. Would you like more information on any of those? And so I was like,

Jeff Battersby (31:10)
Yeah.

And you sent that to me, I think. I think you sent me the Yeah.

Tom Anderson (31:28)
Hey, that new community thing, is it on the scale plan or the max plan? Because I've got different plans and you get different features and stuff. Pretty typical. But it was like, so yeah, community is available on scale, max, and enterprise. I was like, okay, good. So it actually knew quite a bit. and I was really impressed by that. and then something off the wall that I tried just to see, I was like, is there a way to build a shortcut? Because like you can build shortcuts through with Siri now in the shortcuts.

Jeff Battersby (31:34)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (31:58)
I saying, there a way to build a shortcut that can check my Beehive account to see if I have any new subscribers? And so I thought about it for a second. and it says, came back and it was like, yes, you can build a shortcut to check your beehive account for new subscribers. And it's like, while there isn't a direct built in action for Beehive in the Shortcuts app, you can accomplish this using the get contents of URL action to connect to the Behive API or using third party automation service like if this, then that.

And it gave me the steps to do it. I didn't actually build it to see if it was right. it was more just would it even know? And it did. and it mentioned go get the API information, get the key, plug it in, do this, do that, parse the data using, you know, get dictionary values, all that sort of thing. So I am going to try this just to see if it works and next episode we'll I'll let you know if it worked or not. But

Jeff Battersby (32:34)
It's amazing.

Yeah.

Okay, very cool. Yeah, that's that's amazing, actually, compared to especially what it was.

Tom Anderson (32:59)
Mm-hmm. And it's so funny, it's like, you know, when you're using these frontier models, so Claude and ChatGPT and everything, you're kind of used to this stuff now, but like like you said, Siri sometimes couldn't even add something to reminders without flaking out, especially on the watch. and things like that. And so but all in all, like I've had to check, I was like, so I've got a couple

Jeff Battersby (33:00)
Which was

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (33:23)
Doctor appointments next week, when are those? And it would say, you go for your wellness check this day, you've got a dentist appointment on that day. hey, what's the latest? I had to check my website. I was like, What's the latest thing on tomfanderson.com? And so when it's like, Tom did a W W D C recap, he posted about the betas, 'cause it was just Thursday I posted that. so all in all, very promising, I think, for for where we are.

Jeff Battersby (33:47)
Yeah, in terms of

well, and and here's the thing. This is what Apple promised a couple of years ago. And and at the time that they promised it it was game changing, I thought, you know. And at that point in time, most of the other L LMs were not at that level either. Like, you know, particularly when it came to personal information. and then obviously

Tom Anderson (33:52)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (34:13)
it failed miserably. That thing never showed up. You know, whatever it was, it never it never never took place. And I think what we're seeing is that Apple without making a lot of noise about it and you know, on on either side, there were, you know, I won't say apologies, but certainly there's gonna be a little money payout, twenty five bucks or something like that. whomever purchased the the

Tom Anderson (34:16)
Ha ha ha.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (34:43)
their device specifically to use Apple intelligence. but the beauty of it was privacy. You know, it's all on device and then private cloud compute and then the ability to know you, which scares me, you know, because y you know, up until this point in time Apple's been pretty decent with personal information, you know, we're

getting into an ad based economy now on maps and stupid stuff like that, which you know, I may have feelings about that. but we'll, you know, we can get to those feelings later. but the fact that it is able to take that personal information and turn it into something useful, you know, as opposed to turning you into a a commodity, which I really still feel is what

Tom Anderson (35:20)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (35:40)
most of the other ones are doing. You know, that's pretty much that's the that's the business model. you know, i I I feel like Apple's really doing something interesting. And you posted in our show notes for ourselves, you know, Apple's really really put this together in such a way that that we've got the ability to control apps.

it as has been said by you and our friend Benjamin Savage the ability to you know create maybe plugins for for Safari or as you said, you know, the the ability for you to be able to shave a shortcut that goes in and looks at what's going on in Beehive.

This actually makes it very useful. And the fact that it's able to look at your personal information without distributing that personal information someplace else and then create something that is very specific to you, that to me makes this a very unique experience. You know, it's a unique tool as opposed to, you know as opposed to what we're used to in things like Claude, which I like.

And Chat GPT, which I'm not so in love with, and maybe I shouldn't be in love with Claude either. I don't know. or any of those. This seems much more personal than any of those things have felt to me. That doesn't mean that they won't feel that way in the future, but at least at the present, it is pretty interesting. Makes it valuable. This this makes me want to use AI. Shocking.

Tom Anderson (37:32)
Isn't it? Yeah, and I'm I'm really excited to see even how much better it gets when the public releases hit in the fall and developers have updated their apps and you can use it with that. So like right now it works with notes and reminders and things like that. but think about, you know, if you're using to doist or things or craft or

Jeff Battersby (37:33)
It it is.

Tom Anderson (38:00)
obsidian, whatever your apps are, your third party apps that you're using. I mean, it could be a recipe app, you know, it doesn't have to be a quote unquote productivity app, anything that you can tie into and then use Siri to float that information when you need it. I mean I think they gave some examples on in the the demonstrations they did with about some dinner party they were planning and recipes and things like that. and so if you're using a you know recipe app or something you could you could say yeah and and you know

Jeff Battersby (38:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (38:29)
Bring up the recipe for whatever and it would, you know, show that to you. So yeah, I th I again we've been waiting. It they kind of had the false start two years ago, and then they kind of burned everything down and started from scratch, using the the Google Gemini models is kind of the foundation, which again to repeat, Apple has said this is not a rebranded Gemini. Like this is not Google Gemini running in.

Jeff Battersby (38:44)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (38:57)
on your Apple devices. This is using their underlying stuff and that Apple's tuned and built and layered things on top of. and then runs on device and then the private cloud compute and then and of course you still have the the extensions are there. So if you wanted to kick things out to say chat GPT, which I think is still the only one I think others are coming, you could do that for things that are beyond series capabilities at that point in time. But overall

Looks promising, Jeff. wasn't sure we'd ever say that. Mm.

Jeff Battersby (39:27)
It really it I for the first time about

Siri especially. No, it does. It looks it looks really promising and interesting, you know. It I n it a personal assistant is what it really seems like. for the first time. That i is as long as, you know, Siri's been around for what, ten, fifteen years now?

Tom Anderson (39:33)
Mm-hmm.

gosh. It was the was it the four four S, five S, one of those. So it's yeah, it's probably close to fifteen. Remember when it came out? It did for the time, it did a lot, right? And Scott Forrestall did the demo and he was like, Yeah, let you know, get order this, reserve this, and it was like, Okay, great. And then it kind of went nowhere after that. It got worse and regressed. but I think yeah, everything so far is seems to be moving the right direction.

Jeff Battersby (39:55)
Yeah.

It was good. Yeah. It was amazing. And then Apple

Fell apart. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (40:20)
Again, it's not gonna be perfect. It's still gonna, you know, have issues, I'm sure, but already way better. Not that the bar was high, but

Jeff Battersby (40:20)
Yeah. A hundred percent.

Yep. Absolutely.

No, the bar wasn't very high at all. so a couple of things to keep in mind. Tom, your experience, my experience with these betas thus far has been I would say great. You know, and and the betas just came out this week.

Tom Anderson (40:37)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah, it's been pretty good.

Jeff Battersby (40:58)
you know, between us we've installed it on i every device other than, like you said, home pods and you know, AirPods, things of that nature.

Tom Anderson (41:06)
Mm-hmm. And

I'll say not perfect, but just to kind of put that out there, is because I've had some apps crash, like I had some UI glitches on the Mac, like BB edit, I opened it, and when I clicked the file menu, the menu would drop down over on control center. So I was like, no, I closed the app and relaunched it and it was fine. So it was kind of one time thing. the email app I use, MimeStream, at work, it's

Jeff Battersby (41:10)
Ye y it has right.

Tom Anderson (41:36)
A little glitchy, so crashes here and there, which rolls right into these kind of do's and don'ts we're gonna talk about. If you decide to go this route, don't expect all the apps to work. And if they don't work, surely let the developer know, give them a heads up, but don't say your stupid app doesn't work on the beta, you need to fix it, because that's one, just being a jerk, don't do that. and two, you should not expect them to you know, their apps today are not built.

Jeff Battersby (41:44)
Yeah.

No.

Tom Anderson (42:04)
to be compatible with these new OSs. That's why we go through this whole process. But let know, I'm sure they'd appreciate the heads up.

Jeff Battersby (42:06)
Correct. Right.

Which is why you don't put this on mission critical computers. So I do not have the betas on this studio Mac, you know, that I'm talking to you on right now. I do not have the betas on my MacBook Air. which by the way, I did end up selling my MacBook Pro. woohoo. but the i we can talk about Paypal and holding on to my money for thirty days, that's another thing. But

Tom Anderson (42:31)
Yay.

Have you hit the payout

yet? Has it been thirty days? Okay.

Jeff Battersby (42:42)
I yeah, it I I got paid out, yeah.

But I got I got that's a conversation for another day. the I d I don't have it on my MacBook air. because I do what to me is important stuff on there and I don't wanna jack up important stuff. iPad, perfectly happy to play with that and have it, you know, blow up. My phone, believe it or not, happy with that too. Have no problem doing it. And honestly, my watch, which has been

Pretty darn solid. no difficulty with doing it on there either, just because unlike Tom, I don't have fifty years worth of rings. I've a fifty year streak or what is it? What's your streak on the on your watch now?

Tom Anderson (43:21)
Ha ha ha.

thirty five hundred something.

Jeff Battersby (43:32)
Yeah, so I I'm not afraid to use my three day streak. Perfectly perfectly fine for me. So yeah, don't don't put this on anything that that is critical to your day to day. you know, if you if you need your computer or your iPad or your phone or your watch for stuff that, you know, can't

Tom Anderson (43:38)
Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (44:00)
Can't be y you don't want the devices bricked for any reason or you don't want to be able not to use an app that you're used to using. Do not, do not, do not put the betas on. that being said, there are things that you can do. So we've talked about this in previous beta is you can file feedback. so when you run across some issue.

you can record that issue and should that's the whole purpose of the public betas and send it back that information back to Apple because they do they pay attention to this stuff. You give them feedback, they look at what the issues are, they prioritize those issues and and try to adjust them. As Tom said, let developers know politely that, you know, their app maybe doesn't work the way it should, but just because your beta testing

doesn't mean that their app currently optimized to run on you know the the current shipping versions of OSs should be working on that. It undoubtedly they're testing their applications on betas as well so that they can work out any kind of bugs, but you know, again, tell nicely.

And then some i in Tes Lite, some app developers might be offering to let you test their apps, new versions of their apps that are designed to actually be using it Golden Gate. So, you know, check in with your favorite app developers and say, Hey, I'm on the beta, I'd like to test your betas as well if that's possible.

Tom Anderson (45:45)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Battersby (45:49)
Anything else, Tommy? I think so. Yeah, yeah, actually back up your devices. Now I'm gonna confess here I did not back up my phone, my watch, or my iPad.

Tom Anderson (45:49)
Is that it? I I think we covered it. I think it right.

All right, look at you living on the edge.

Jeff Battersby (46:00)
Yeah, but you know, but

those devices, you know, if if I had to wipe and start all over again there would be no tears. You know, nothing. Nothing about those.

Tom Anderson (46:08)
Right. And

Apple's got articles on how to do all that. Obviously if you're backing up to iCloud, you could do that. One caveat there is if you go from iOS or whatever version, iPad OS, iOS twenty six to twenty seven, your iCloud backup for twenty seven won't restore it for twenty six. So you'd you'd have a gap there if you decided to

to go back to the kind of production version. s one thing you can do to get around that a little bit if you wanted is you could do a backup using the Finder on your Mac. Again, there's an article for that. We won't walk through it. but if you've got most of your stuff already, like messages, syncing die cloud, your photos, your notes, all your stuff, is not really much to back up anyway. So yeah, that's about it. I think you know, decide if you want to do it. We're only

Jeff Battersby (46:37)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (47:04)
Probably six, seven maybe two months from the release. Probably mid September, right around the iPhone event, whenever that is, then these will be out. So you may just wanna wait.

Jeff Battersby (47:15)
And every one of these betas

is gonna get better as as new ones release. So you know, and Apples

Tom Anderson (47:20)
Yeah. And don't be surprised if

there's one that comes out that is awful. Then they hurry up and put out another one 'cause that usually happens too. which is why we say don't do this if you're not really made for beta life.

Jeff Battersby (47:27)
Yeah. Some

Yeah, beta life can be dangerous.

Tom Anderson (47:35)
Yeah. All right, Jeff, I think that's it.

Jeff Battersby (47:37)
All right. So as usual, shout out to Psychokinetics and Celsius Seven for our show music. Grateful for all of that. Randall Martin design for our show artwork, the brilliant robots that do look like Tom and me. were done by him and Randall's an amazing person and really an amazing artist that really can get to the heart of what it is that you may be trying to promote or

what you may be trying to present as your as your company. So highly recommend that. As always, recommend us to your friends. talk to everybody about the basic AF show. And hey, I I still have some stickers left and some magnets. If anybody were so inclined, send me a message. We'll get it we'll get it hooked up. And if anybody pays attention to Abe Frenes' podcast, he's got one of our stickers sitting up in the background all the time, which is

Tom Anderson (48:36)
Thanks, Abe.

Appreciate that. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (48:37)
Very nice. Yeah, like

that. Tommy, where can we find you?

Tom Anderson (48:43)
let's see. So on threads mostly for any social stuff, website and newsletter are at tomfanderson.com. If you want to join that, send the newsletter out typically a couple times a month. Not too much. Don't wanna get too overbearing with messages and then people are like, you know what, Tom, tired of these. so every couple of months, but all the old ones are up there. don't forget if you've got someone or know of someone who's got a

Jeff Battersby (48:59)
Mm.

Tom Anderson (49:10)
Child heading off to college in the fall. I've got my guide for selecting the best Mac for that particular person. So that's been updated for 2026, went back a little while ago and updated it for the recent price increases, which we didn't talk about here, but Apple increased price because of the shortages on RAM and storage. So did update it for that. one quick note on that, I I mentioned this to you, Jeff, when I did the update. So

Even with the recent two hundred dollar increase that Apple did on the the MacBooks, th the model that I recommend, which is the twenty four gigs of RAM five twelve storage, even with the two hundred dollar increase they just did is still seventy nine dollars less than it was last year. Which still good. So I mean it sucks that they raised the prices because who wouldn't rather save two hundred dollars instead of seventy nine dollars, but it's you know, is what it is. but other than that, that's about it.

Jeff Battersby (49:59)
Amazing.

Right.

All right. Can find me at Reus Point, mostly on threads. kinda stock the other places on occasion. but don't don't really post anything anywhere other than threads and barely post there either. But you can find me occasionally. and that's the place to be.

Tom Anderson (50:32)
All right. Well that should do it. So thank you for joining us for this episode. I appreciate you hanging out with us and we will talk to you again in a couple of weeks. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day or your night.

Jeff Battersby (50:43)
See ya.