[music] Welcome to episode 317 of Intouched iOS, the show that talks about iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and related technologies. I'm your host Dave Ginsburg, and I've got a guest here this week. Mr. Guy Searlesback. How you doing, Guy? Hey, floating, floating. Yeah, I'm doing fine. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Dave. Great to always have you, and also great to have for him in a different location. Marty Gensius is here. How you doing, Marty? Yeah, I hope I can stay the whole time, and it's not because I don't want to be here. It's just I'm wondering how well this little device that's repeating the Internet at a higher rate for me and a higher cost will last, how long it'll last. So it's good to be here. My relatives are like probably playing "Pictionary" or something right now. So you'll be here the whole time then. Yeah, I will be here for that. It's been that. Also great to be here. It's the A/A safe house. [laughter] And also glad he's back. Ben Raythik. How you doing, Ben? I am fantastic, Dave. Ready to talk? A little bit of Apple Intelligent. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about this week, but last but certainly not least, Jeff Cameron is here, how you doing, Jeff? Glad you're here. I'm doing all right, and I'm feeling better than I was last week. That is a good thing. We are very glad about that. So, like I said, yes, thank you for being here. And like we said, there's a lot to talk about this week. We're going to actually, as we record this the quarter year, the quarter of the three earnings for Apple was just announced, not even two hours ago here. And we're going to talk about that. Lots of updates, including iOS 17.6 is where, and a number of betas will hit that a bit. And I had decided also, since Marty is the VisionPro expert, we're going to have a VisionPro this week segment each week, got some topics for that. And plenty of news as well. So, let's go on with the topics and the topic of the day. And the week here is Apple's results. The quarterly record all time high. It was all time high in services. They announced that for this third quarter of 2024, $85.8 billion, it's a record for the fiscal third quarter, which is traditionally the company's quiet quarter. Services revenue reached an all-time revenue high of $24.2 billion. So, as far as the percentages goes, iPhone was down about 1%, iPad was spiked up to 24%, hmm, I wonder why, as well as a major new product release, after major new product releases, of course, and the Mac revenue ticked up about 2%. You look at the total revenue here, compared to the last third quarter, it's way up. And we thank Jason Stalin, his team, that's six colors using his amazing charts that he has here, that was in the show notes here. But you really look closely to the quarterly revenue by category. iPhone dipped down to 46%. It was about 50%, and it was pretty much consistent of all of Apple's business. Well, services is now at a 28% number here. That's just incredible when it comes to that. So, we start with that, services. Why is the service going increasing? Well, I mean, I think it's obvious because Apple TV Plus really is a driver of a lot of that. Ben, we were talking about pre-show. What do you think about this with the services? I think this is pretty much inevitable. Well, number one, devices right now are so good that things that were not too long ago, a two or three year cycle, are now significantly longer. Not only that, but Apple, we are increasingly reliant on these services. Apple TV Plus, Apple, God, the cloud storage, my brain is not working. Yeah, iCloud, my brain is not working tonight. Yep, and the other Apple music are increasingly important in someone's repertoire. And honestly, we're seeing more and more people moving to Apple. Seems to seems to be the case. Apple CFO, Luca, Master, I also said that he's seen continued growth and level gaming that the customers have with its ecosystem. He also said that Apple doing a very good job improving the quality of its services, improving the amount of content available and Apple plans to continue to add new Apple TV Plus and Apple Arcade content. Really, is Apple Arcade really a big driver of Apple services? You kind of have that one. Not if you've read certain articles this week. Yes, between me, Todd, touch on. What's your thoughts, Guy, on this with the services? Well, services has been going up every quarter. I can't think of a single quarter since the release of Apple Plus Plus, where they include everything that services hasn't increased. So it's not a huge surprise. I mean, it's outstripped the Mac. It's starting to get into iPhone territory. And these things kind of feed on one another. People see how good the phones are. They see how good iPads are. Some people see how good iPads are. They see how good the Mac is and the Mac OS and it just feeds into all of the services. And then the services kind of feed back into itself. So it's like a snake eating itself, but except instead of getting smaller, it keeps getting bigger. So it's, I don't really know where that analogy goes. Yeah, yeah, kind of a weird, weird growing snake. But I mean, odd analogies aside, this is just the continuation of Apple's dominance, not just in hardware, but in software as well, which if you'd said something about that 20 years ago, people would have laughed in your face. And now here we are, the iPhone has, well, the iPod and then the iPhone has fed into Apple's resurgence and it hasn't stopped since 2001. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. So unless the EU can somehow manage to outlaw Apple making money, I can't see where it's going to end. Apple would have to have like one hell of a stumbling block in order to stop this train. Yep. How about you, Jeff? Yeah, Apple just, there's so much momentum there. Of course, the numbers just keep going up. When I was looking at Jason's charts, one thing that I thought was interesting is that when you look at the percentages, iPhone is down. When you look at how much revenue iPhone's bringing in, it's pretty much the same year over year. And so really what's making iPhone sales look like they're down is the fact that service sales are up. And so Apple's just making more money and a larger percentage compared to the previous year is going into services. And so this is a problem that I see with when people read numbers, not just for Apple, but for a lot of companies that have multiple revenue sectors, where if overall revenue grows. And when part of it is staying at a solid level, people interpret that as, oh, sales are down in that area. That's bad. No, they're not down. People are buying iPhones. People are buying a lot more services right now than they used to. So, yeah, that that inverted, self-growing, edible snake that that guy has, it's not going to get any smaller, not for a while. Marty, how about you? Well, once again, as everybody predicted, Apple fails another quarter. They keep making the money, despite all the predictions, I'm trying to figure out what's the driver in this. And one of the things that I would consider is the privacy and the security aspects have become more important in the public's eye, particularly with some of the problems that we've had with privacy and security that they're beginning to see Apple as a secure platform. And really the most secure platform. And so I think what's happening is we're getting people driven to Apple for that type of security. And besides the products, I mean, they're enjoying the products, but I think the services iCloud and things like that is being driven by Apple's emphasis on security and privacy. Yeah. So, definitely, definitely interesting. I'm going to go over every single thing here. And we'd like to say we mentioned the iPad sales, 24%. It's up to some $7.2 billion. That's obviously because of all the new iPads that came out, took some of my money in and then valued as well here. So, that's no surprise there. And then the big discussion now is how the iPhone did. Tim Cook did say that the company's very excited about Apple Intelligence and the level of value that Apple will provide to their users. And it's going to be another reason for a compelling upgrade since, you know, kind of hinting about iPhone 16 that's probably going to be coming out. Again, I mentioned Apple Intelligence. They can't see what kind of amazing things that developers are going to be doing with Apple Intelligence. And I also know that they're going to be putting a lot more money into this and push hard to try to get this released in the fall and stay on track because that's the goal here. We'll talk about beta in just a minute here as far as so people being able to do Apple Intelligence. Other products or revenue on the Mac was up slightly 7.7 billion and the home accessories and wearables was actually fell 2%, 2%, 8.1 billion. So, overall, I think pretty good performance for the most part. You never can expect this kind of a profit here when it comes to the third quarter because the third quarter tends to be lower. Then now we're going to be going into the fourth quarter here soon and then you know now that those numbers are probably going to be more with the... It's hard to argue with success. You really can't, you really can't, so anybody else want to add any final words on that before we move on? There's not so much else we can go on this and plenty of other things to talk about. So let's go ahead and talk about, I'm going to go into beta, but first I want to talk a little bit about new updates. Apple did release iOS 17.6 as well as iPadOS 17.6 and you definitely want to go out and install 17.6 right away because there's about 30 different vulnerabilities that are out there in security for this and people get concerned about why you've got to keep installing these well, then this is the why. There's a number of different vulnerabilities in security. It does talk about it. I've got links in the show notes as far as what the specifics are in vulnerability. Just go out and install it. Most of you are smart enough not to be running beta, I hope. So yeah, I'm like unlike Ben. I don't like Marty, probably. So yeah, please go check that out. A couple of other things notable that what was added to Apple continues to expand the emergency SOS via satellite expansion, if you recall. That's available for the iPhone 14 and later where you can contact emergency services if there's no Wi-Fi or cellular signal. Next, the most recent country that was opened up for this was in Japan. That's a pretty big country. That's great to see that they're adding that. So that continues on to be something that Apple's really getting strong with this. So it's a good thing to see here. I'll talk a little more about updates here as well. VisionOS is now at 1.3. Mac OS is at 14.6, TVOS and watch, there's at 17.6 and watch OS is at 10.6. It's obviously going to be the latest updates. They did add the catch up feature. That would mean you can catch up on sports specifically on TVOS. A couple of notable things as far as Mac goes and the M3 MacBook Pro now is going to be able to drive multiple displays that didn't before. It does, with what's on Apple in 14 and in clamshell mode. So that's a good thing to see as well. So a lot of updates there this week when it comes to that. So now let's move on to beta. Now beta, iOS 18.1, beta 1 was released and it added the Apple intelligence feature. Now, of course, everybody knows that you have to have an iPhone 15 Pro or hired to be able to utilize this feature on the iPhone. Is there a higher phone than the 15 Pro right now? There is not. So do you have to have the latest iPhone? It's not a dream that up. Oh, I don't. I don't spend much time in Colorado, do you? Yeah. That's right. So basically they released the first beta's of 18.1 on iPad, iOS and Mac OS, the coin is now at 15.1. These new betas will be tested alongside the iOS 18 and iPad OS 18 and Mac, Sequoia 15's beta. So developers can choose op in which new betas they want to do. If they want to work with Apple intelligence or stay on the standard iOS 18 beta track. So you have two choices. This is rather unique. I don't recall Apple ever doing this in the beta world here to having simultaneous different tests going on. But the thing is majority of the devices that are out there, of course, are not going to be able to utilize this iOS 18.1. So if you do recall, like I said, we talked about all the devices that will be supported at launch. Like I said, all of the iPhones would be 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. And then they're saying the full iPhone 16 lineup is expected to also support AI as well. A number of Macs mostly in the M series, pretty much all of them. The same thing with the iPads, all the M series iPads are going to, Apple intelligence will be supported. So it's a pretty strong thing. We're probably like you guys are joking about the iPhone at the 15th, the only one. That makes sense. I mean, it's a slower processor as you go lower even on the 14th. So it's interesting. What do you think Ben and I hear what where Apple's going with this on beta? And you've got installed so you probably can tell us how it's been. Yes. First for the most thing, for the most part, beta 18.4. IOS 18.1 beta one seems for the most part to be basically beta four, but with limited Apple intelligence. So wow, he's gone. I'm here. I have cats. Listen, I grew up in the 70s. You can't do that to me. But anyway, so many stroke titles now. Now that I've been completely distracted by my feline. Apple intelligence. Apple intelligence. What are you going to be getting with Apple intelligence? Number one, it does have the new Apple intelligence look, which having the board of the screen be all sorts of colorful instead of a nice little ball right in the middle of your screen is rather nice. Apple writing tools works. It seems to be a little bit more contextualization with with Siri. That said, if you are if you are hoping Siri 2.0 is here, it's not. It is the same old Siri that will you will tell it to do one thing and it will do something completely else. Yep. Have you had a chance to try it almighty? Not really, but I use so many other writing tools that I can't tell if this is coming from Apple or if it's coming from other writing tools I have embedded. And so I just opened up my iPad, which I had running and just to see if something would happen different as I played with it. And I just haven't spent enough time with to find the tools. There are times that I'm working on my phone and I'm getting more corrective writing or more options. And as I said, I can't tell if it's a tool that I have in there or if this is some of the new beta stuff coming through. But it's not the new Siri yet. So, as Bennett said. Yep. You have any thoughts on this stuff? Well, you and I are neither one of our going to be able to try this right now. I really want to be excited about this. But with the way Siri has been managed over. Yeah. Well, it's life since Apple purchased the product. Apple is really going to have to prove to me that what they're doing with AI is solid. And right now, I'm just not feeling it. And not because I have played with AI, the AI features in the beta, but because Apple has set me up to be disappointed. Yeah. So we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. I know that they say fool me once, fool me twice, worry about fool me 10 times. Mm hmm. Yep. So we'll go notably what things will not be in as not in the beta just yet is the image playground. That's both the standalone app and the functionality back and built into apps like notes and messages is not there. Gmoji. I need the image wand. Priority notifications at the top of the stack. The mail categories that all these are, these are all things that were announced at WDC. It actually is active, the cleanup tool that removes unwanted objects with a tap is not just yet. And like Jeff said, Siri functionality, like on screen awareness, personal context and the ability to take more actions in and across apps, not yet available. And the chat GPT integration has not been implemented in additional languages. Right now it's just US, US English and additional platforms on there as well. So this like like anything with beta, this is just this is this is just the beginning. Go ahead Marty. I find out I find these articles a little bit frustrating because it's like Apple intelligence is here. Oh, I don't let me tell you stuff. You're not going to get it. That's why I put this in here. There's two there's two articles. What's there? What's not? Yeah. So, yeah, it is it is. It's beta. Hey, we're gonna start testing it and then that's where it's going to go here. So a couple other notable things here on the Mac side of things, the Apple intelligence may not work when Mac OS 15.1 beta is running on an external drive. That's interesting. I mean, some people want to do that. So they can do do a dual boot that they can boot, you know, from a from an external drive as opposed to installing it on their core machine. So that that's kind of disappointing because somebody wants to do it that way. So it is what it is. And Safari does get Apple intelligence upgrade in 18.1 with a new summarize feature. And also it summarizes in the and an improved reader mode summarizing the articles and it'll scan the contents of the page and then it'll show it like like Ben mentioned the purple apple intelligence glow. So, so you are able to do that. Did you try that in the Safari then? I have not yet because I didn't know that was a feature, but I'm going to now. Yeah. And also also Apple did is is providing detailed privacy reports on user requests. So that they did they did bring begin a preview of that with being able to what the company is calling a new AI based features. For instance, users can now ask the system to rephrase and a text and summarize messages or emails. But this features works both on device and on and online language models. However, to ensure users privacy. Apple's created a PCC, which is the private compute module within its own with its own chips to process requests online with end-to-end encryption. So not even the company has access to the data. So once the once the processing is complete, all the data is permanently wiped. So that's good to know as we know, Apple very strong with privacy when it comes to that. So very, very cool thing here. One other thing I'll mention the feature that they talked about the ability to be able to do call recording and transcribing of a phone call. Apple 18.1 does now have that in on the developer beta. So it does allow you to do that. So when you start recording the button, it's going to make sure everyone on the calls notified that the call is being recorded through an audible message. And there is no confirmation dialogue. So if a person wanted to be recorded, they would have to hang up. So once the call is in progress, the audio is recorded and saved in the notes app. Recorded phone calls can then be opened from notes and then you can re-listen to the call. This is pretty amazing. I've been waiting for something like this. I mean, I wouldn't have too many reasons to record. Since most of the time, I'm not on the phone, but this is a good feature. Did you know about that one, Ben? I did. It's up in the left hand corner. And I have to say, Marty might be using that right now from a CIA safe house. Yeah, I'm thinking this is a feature because if there are people on the call that I don't want, all I have to do is tell them, well, I'm going to start recording it. The only way you can do to get out of it is to drop off the call. So, right. Yeah, so good to see some features in here. So, and then, like I said, in parallel, we're also, we're at iOS 18, beta four, still running. Not much else to say about that. We've been talking about that quite a bit here. And the public beta is at beta two on the public side. Oh, there are a couple of things I wanted to mention here. There are some new features in the AirPods with this update, including that we talked about this before, the head gestures where you can shake your head left to right to decline a call or without using a voice command or your hands. See, there is a solution with that. The voice isolation, where you can cut down log back on sounds when you're on a phone call, allowing the person that you're speaking to, if you can hear them more clearly. And better adaptive audio controls to adjust audio active noise cancellation. And the sound you hear is in response of ambient noise in your environment. And then personalized spatial audio for gaming voice quality in games. There's a number of others. And this is pretty much going to be on the most of these features are going to be the AirPods Pro 2 with the personalized spatial audio. So something look forward to with AirPods. Anyone want to make a comment on that at all? That sounds like a good upgrade. I wish they would come to a piece of Apple hardware. That was not the AirPods Pro 2. Yeah, like Beats. I know you're a big Beats fan. Yeah. Well, was anybody kind of surprised that Apple intelligence came out at all at this point in the beta cycle? Very surprised because this is not normal. I've never seen them do in parallel. Like, you know, in previous years, you got 18.1 18. So you got to simultaneous developer base going on right now. Well, you know, because they're saying they were saying when all this was being talked about at WWDC that these were, you know, Apple intelligence wasn't going to be out until. Later on, after, you know, the other OS updates came out. And when I saw a couple of days ago, it says, oh, well, we got the first beta for Apple intelligence. It's like, damn it. I just did a podcast saying that, you know, we're going to have to wait. So, you know, once again, Apple screws the little guy and, you know, I sound like an idiot for other reasons than what's obvious. But it is, it really, really did surprise me. I have other than an M1 iPad in my Mac Mini. I don't think I have anything else that could run it, but, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to run betas at this point, regardless. But the fact that they've got it out so quickly kind of tells me that they're forging all these agreements with other companies to get Apple intelligence moving. I still kind of maintained that they've got something else cooking in the background that's totally Apple and that this is a stopgap measure until they can get out their own large language, artificial intelligence, whatever you want to call it, that is going to be Apple branded as compared to partnering up with all these other companies. I think this was, more or less, I think this was kind of a panic move on Apple's part that they felt they had to get something out there that had AI in it, and this was their response. And to show how earlier this is compared to normal betas, the earliest build you will see released as a dead body place is a G build. This is a P as in Papa build. Yeah, I swear it scares me every time you disappear. For those people listening to Ben's cat is going in the screen and he disappears. And not just like we can't see Ben because the cats there. Yeah, just in front of the screen and disappears and takes Ben with it. A little piece and a little piece of me died. Yes, and she is also trying to write in the chat. You remember the episode of the original Star Trek series, The Tholian Web? That's kind of where Ben is right now. Yes. Facing in and out of existence. Right. Like that. And if we don't get to the right point at the right time to do the right energy discharge, Ben will be lost into the mirror universe. Yeah, well, at least he at least he can breathe wherever it is he is. Yeah, at least there's that. There is air. Where do you guys find where do you find place in your head for this kind of stuff? I don't remember. It's all I have up there. Don't take it away from me. Hi, Jack. Hi, Jack the show. That's what we've done. Alright, so let's go ahead and move on here. Let's go on to Vision Pro for this week. As I mentioned, Apple did release Vision OS 1.3. I know you're running 2.0 so there's probably not much you can add to this. But have you heard anything from others who are running 1.3? No, I know there are developers that are still working on things from a 1.3 standpoint. They're trying to clean up what they have in terms of their apps. And so this is I think going to be it for 1.1. And so I think they're glad to see that. It's come to the point that this is I think they called it sort of a master or I forget the term that they used with it when I saw it in other articles. But I think that's it's it's the torch will be passed to 2.0. Yeah, I would just like just all the rest of the betas that are out there. Yeah, and I also heard that they're not going to be doing betas for the general public on 2.0 that you have to be a developer to grab the betas. So this will be what the public will work with until 2.0 comes out. Yeah, makes sense, especially something this news, this device. Couple other stories I found relates to vision pro apple vision pro can now be controlled with brain computer interface. It cannot can now can be controlled with a with only thoughts thanks to an integration with the neuro technology startup synchronous brain computer interface BCI. The company announced that Apple vision pros has successfully used by a patient through a direct brain control facilitated by their brain computer and interface technologies. It was a man who's a 64 year old man who's suffering from amotrophic lateral sclerosis LS and demonstrated the this integration with this technology. Mark controlled this cursor on the vision pro to play solitary and watch Apple TV and send text messages without using his hands, which he can no longer move to his condition. Vision pros reliance on hand gestures would otherwise pose a barrier for users like Mark who lost his upper limb functionality. This is pretty impressive. I don't know if you've had the chance to look at this yet Marty as far as this is something of a future for for the vision pro. Yeah, I mean it's an alternative use. I think of this when I read this article, I thought of Steven Hawkins and the devices he used in order to kind of do the work that he did. And you know, I don't necessarily think this was Apple's goal, but it's been repurposed for a community that it can really benefit can benefit from it. And as the eyesight coordination gets a lot better with the device that it has it has with different betas, I think it's just going to be it's going to be kind of a remarkable experience. And this person has a neurodegenerative disorder. And but also I think has big impact for with the right program for people who have various vision issues going on with them. And so I think it's exciting. It's kind of being repurposed as a tool for folks as that need types of accommodations. Yeah, Marty, I think that you nailed a lot of this, but I have a feeling that you might be off on one of your points, which is that you don't think Apple was anticipating this. I think this is part of what Apple was thinking about from the very beginning. I think they were considering Apple Vision Pro as as a totally new platform. Of course, we knew that part. But not just for people that are fully motor capable. I think they really were looking at this as the beginning of a way to allow full computing experiences for people that have neurological and other motor control issues. Well, even with the hand control issues, there are articles have been popping up about how when when Vision Pro scans your hands, it scans 21 different points on your hands. So it's looking at different joints, essentially front and back. And in doing so, it's gathering a lot of data that could be useful. If I imagine, and I have some friends who have not necessarily motor control issues, but their hands are kind of stuck. Arthritis and such. Yeah. And the article, there's another article that talked about how Apple has just patented the ability for people to use and create their own gestures. So if, if, you know, my hands are fully functional and fully mobile and the device is only set up to do that, then it's not going to help those folks who don't have that cut those kind of digital digit kind of issues. But if those folks can make their own hand gestures based on the shape of their hands or the directions of the hands, then it opens it up to a lot more to. So it's, you're probably on target. I know I know you're always on target, Jeff. You are far too generous. I actually used the Vision Pro for the very first time when we were all at Magstock. All right. And I, I have to say, even with only having one eye, I was, I was blown away at how well it looked and how good it looked, even from my perspective. One of the things that, that I've been hoping for, or at least trying to find out more information on, is something for people with molecular vision. And this goes a long way with the proper programming. And of course, it's just to flip and big right now. But with the proper programming, people with various site issues, including molecular vision, would be able to use this to make up for the deficiencies that they have. Like, I can see nothing on this side. But if I'm wearing a pair of glasses that has a camera there, and both sides of those cameras are being, are, you know, being projected upon the left side of the glass, then all of a sudden, everything that I couldn't see over here is now there. And that would be, that would be amazing. I would love to see that. And, you know, and there's nothing like that right now. The problem being, you know, granted, it is somewhat of a limited market. It's not like, okay, everybody with one eye, raise your hand and we're going to get your glasses. That's going to cost two, three, four thousand dollars. So, you know, but it's, it's something that as time goes on and developers get their hands on these on this type of technology that the future looks really, really bright for people that have vision problems and have problems with their arms, problems with their legs that, you know, computing was more or less. You know, no way for them to be involved in the same kind of way that the five of us are. So I'm looking forward to the future and seeing what not just what Apple does with this but what third party developers do with it. Yeah. So, that's great. So that's some of the things we found this week on Apple on Vision Pro. And let's not go ahead and move on to the news for this week. There are a number of new stories. Google Maps and Waze haven't been updated with new iPhone and CarPlay features. Google has announced that both Waze and Google Maps, rolling out for the iPhone and CarPlay that aims to keep them safer and more informed on the go. First up, the changes to maps aims to make it easier to report incidents and helpful and helpful information like nearby construction and lane closures objects and police presence. The reports come from the maps and Waze communities and users will now be, will now see which app is the report came from. There are larger report reporting icons that are designed to be easier to tap quickly to sharing updates and other drivers can also confirm the incident with a quick tap. Meanwhile, Google Maps has gained a new destination guidance to make it less confusing when users don't know where to enter or park when they arrive somewhere, especially when it's nighttime. When driving into a place maps in the new destination guidance will automatically light up your building and its entrance as you approach it. In addition, it shows to other nearby park lads. So I'm going to go on here and talk to some of the things that Waze is doing as well. But I think this is great to see that Google is really enhancing it for CarPlay and that's the biggest thing for us who have a CarPlay or cars that it's important. What do you think? You know, I saw an article and I cannot remember where I saw it where they were talking about the future of CarPlay and one of the things they were talking about was cars that didn't have side view mirrors that there were basically just cameras there. And that those cameras are projected forward on your windshield at such a level that it's not going to obstruct everything else that you're seeing. And I was kind of like, yeah, that would be fantastic. I would love to see that. The question is, is any car manufacturer willing to take a chance on it? And if it was just in CarPlay, it would never get off the ground. Nobody would take a chance on it. It's got to be universal across at least the two big car infotainment platforms, not even counting whatever stupid crap GM was planning to do with the future. That's based on Android Auto. Yeah, well, based on is and we'll see what they actually do with it. But even if it's based on Android Auto, it's like you're trying to reinvent reinvent the wheel. Why? Just so that you can get more data. You know, I don't understand GM's thinking on that. But regardless, there are so many antiquated bits and pieces of cars that can just go away. People put their minds to it and, you know, it's like rearview mirrors. Who needs rearview mirrors? Who needs side mirrors? Who needs this? Who needs that? We can just project all this on a virtual panel on your windshield. Who needs to have everything that you see in your dashboard down below that you have to look through your steering wheel in order to see it or integrate with it? This can all be done and talking, getting back to the Vision Pro, moving stuff around and doing stuff with hand gestures instead of, you know, physically having to hit buttons and all the rest of it. CarPlay and Android Auto really, really excite me. And I'm super looking forward to everything that's coming up with it, not just maps and ways and all the rest of that, just everything that is capable from within these platforms. How about you, Jeff? Soapbox. I like Guy's vision on this. And... There was a game. There's no sarcasm in that, seriously. That I realize now that you bring that up, I get why you would think that. And what I see happening with Guy's CarPlay and Android Auto Future, where more and more of the driving experience is being integrated in, is not an either or, but both to be used in the way you want. And by that I mean, like Guy said, who needs a rear view mirror, who needs side view mirrors? Well, according to the United States government, everyone. And so features like that, I don't see going away because it's easier to just leave them, but then add in the other things. So they could add the cameras in to go along with the side view mirrors, give you that heads up information display, and you can have that whole experience. And with the way cars are being designed, it feels like we're going farther and farther down a path of limited visibility through traditional means. Meaning that's a fancy way of saying, I can look up the window and see all the stuff outside my car. The sight lines in modern cars, if they're getting worse and worse all the time, you need a camera just to be able to back up. And not because you don't know how to back up, but because you can't see out the back of your car, even with a window now. And, and, and let's be honest, the cameras are safer than turning this. So, yeah, giving us the best of all the worlds. I am for that. And if it makes driving a safer experience all the way around, so much the better, because. Yeah, just don't drive it for a really bad drivers out there. Oh, there is, for sure. Marty, go ahead. Yeah, I, I've been, my wife is on vacation and I'm driving her around the country. So while she's on vacation, I've got a new day job, which is driving her around the country. And, you know, you're talking about these changes with Google Maps in particular. I decided I was going to, I mean, I tried Google Maps a long time ago when I was with CarPlay. When I had a pixel phone and I was playing with it. And I thought I was pretty impressed with it then. But this time, I'm not letting the S lady drive me around, or, or Apple Maps drive me around the United States. I'm using Google and finding it a pretty interesting interface. And the things that you describe in terms of acknowledging accidents, data input, the kinds of things that you see in ways. You're beginning to see in Google, and definitely the destination thing is a whole much simpler input and process with this new version of Google Maps in CarPlay. So it's been fun. And when I get other relatives in the car, they're fascinated by it too. Yep. And you got any last minute comments before we move on here? Yep. These are definitely great additions to Google Maps in its sister product ways. But I think you're really going to see these two programs unlocked this fall when they get full zero to 2.0 integration. I'm jumping in because we've already hijacked this show from you. What I would like to see is Google Maps and Apple Maps both improved to the point where I don't need to have both. And where we are right now, when I went to find a place, and I've had this discussion with a lot of friends. And so I know I'm not the only person that does this. You need to find the place, you put it into Google Maps. You need to get to the place, take what you found in Google Maps and put it into Apple Maps. And then you get the best of both worlds. And it would be great to not have to use that sort of process to get where you want to go. But that's kind of where we are right now. Speaking of CarPlay, Apple CarPlay contributes to a higher vehicle satisfaction in an elated survey. A new survey released by JD Power, which is a pretty big survey company, shows that US consumers continue to prefer vehicles with support for CarPlay. The market research firm, Annual US Automotive Performance Execution and Layout, a study found overall satisfaction with in-vehicle infotainment systems to an average of 805 on a 1000 points scale. However, satisfaction was high among owners who use Android Auto, which is 832, and even higher for those who use CarPlay 840. The study is based on a response from about 99,000 owners of new 24 model year vehicles in the US that were surveyed over the 90 days of ownership. And it was conducted from July 2023 through May of 2024. CarPlay is routinely fared well in vehicle satisfaction studies since launching in 2014. So, the latest one is no surprise. However, it comes after GM, of course, come to virtually decided to stop offering CarPlay and Android Auto is new electric vehicles in favor of its own software system. Lecture of vehicle maker Rivian is also preferring its own software over CarPlay as well. And the study reinforces that these automakers are betting against a consumer preference and it remains to see if they'll ever reverse course. We know that the next generation of CarPlay with the Apple announced in 2022 is yet to come become available in any vehicles. But Apple's website says the role is going to be beginning this year in 2024. Next generation CarPlay will be more deeply integrated across multiple screens in a vehicle offering a built-in FM radio app and climate controls and more. How the customer's eye is customized, customizable, allowing automakers to tailor the design of the system uniquely to match their vehicles. Are we all surprised about this? We're all talking about here. We love CarPlay. You know, you say that you want to run a car without CarPlay. So, unfortunately, you did when you went to Macstock. Yes, I did. And we heard about it. We heard about it many times. It was a subject of conversation. The fact that car makers want to somewhat customize CarPlay as far as environmental controls and other types of controls beyond the infotainment system that you have in most cars is not a surprise. And as long as they leave the infotainment part alone, which, of course, is the kickback to where Apple makes most of its money through services, I don't feel that they're going to fuss that much. If they want to put another screen a little bit lower down and use the power of whatever processor is coming up in the iPhone 17 or 18, yeah, why not? You want to have environmental controls that you can customize exactly for where you expect them to be. You want to have your speedometer and your tachometer and other types of engine monitoring systems that a lot of people like, you know, and put them wherever you want them, then great. So, if the car maker can customize it and the customers can customize it, then I don't really see a problem with it. The only part when it becomes the problem is when car makers kind of try to dictate not just to their customers, but to Apple and Google on where the platform should go into the future. Yeah, don't do that. What about you, Marty? I would rely more and more on CarPlay if I had the opportunity to rely on it. For me, it really is when I'm on these kind of long driving trips. I know Guy does a lot more driving on a daily basis than I do, or I'd assume he does, so it doesn't come into play for me only if I am taking the advantage of trips. And when I do long trips, it's often to places I've already been to so I can probably go without it if I needed to go without it. Yep, how about you, Jeff? First, I am not surprised at all that consumers have higher satisfaction with their cars when CarPlay is an option. That I mean, this is no surprise. GM, Rivian, Tesla, take note, you are screwing your customers, and eventually it's going to hurt you on some level. It already is for Tesla, I guess. So, yeah, just give people the fact that we don't have CarPlay 2 on any cars yet. Of course, we don't. And that's because the lead time for new car production designs, this is a multi-year thing. So when Apple announced the new CarPlay, they were in a position where they had to do it because it was going to be revealed by car companies through leaks, if nothing else, before Apple could control the message. So they did that, and then we have to wait two, three, four years before we see any of this actually showing up in production cars. So, yeah, no surprise there at all. You know, unlike iPhones, I only purchase cars like every five or six years. So, you know, I recently got a car, so then you'd live with all the good stuff that comes out for about five or six years before you have an opportunity to upgrade. Same here. Well, that's the beauty of CarPlay. You can get a whole new experience just with the next time you buy a phone. Yep. It's not dependent on, you know, I mean, and this was the problem in the past for auto manufacturers. They would come up with some ridiculous way to get music or tapes or CDs or whatever. And then a ridiculous way to interface with your environmental systems and say, good enough. And what are they going to do? It's built in. Well, now it doesn't have to be built in. It can be part of whatever Apple and the automobile manufacturers and individuals who own iPhones and cars can decide for themselves. And, you know, it's like freedom, baby. Yeah, let's go. You know, when you say that, I mean, my car came with some Subaru based on star system. And I think I've had to use it once in the three years that I've had this car. So, you know, they occasionally in emails, you know, you haven't your contract on this is run out. And do I really need it now, particularly with the device that I can carry in my pocket that does all the stuff that you wanted to do. So, then you get the found word on this topic. Yeah, I mean, we're at a point where if a car does not have car play, it's awful is for me. And same. Yeah, I don't think this is going to kick back too much to Tesla and Rivian as much as it would other manufacturers. But GM is going to be feeling it real damn soon. Yeah, unless they change their minds. They won't. I'd be surprised. So, let's see where we at here. I lost my notes here. Ohio. Let me get back here. Yes. Ohio. Thank you. Quick quick quick stories here. iPhone driver's licenses are now available in Ohio. In Ohio. That should make you happy Marty. You now can get your driver's license, just like all the other states that have it not in this the fifth state, which includes Arizona, Maryland, Colorado in Georgia. And it's been like 2021 since Apple started started this whole up and states are way behind. So, yeah, I'm really, I'm really surprised Ohio's on this list, considering what we've been subjecting the United States to recently. I just, I, that comes as a shocker. Cause when I saw it happening in other states, I was like, I don't ever happen here and after a long time. So cool. Now you can do it. Yeah. And you think that states would be more on board with this because essentially, if you get pulled over by the police, now you have to hand them your unlocked phone in order for them to see your driver's license. That's not how it works at all. Really tell me. Tell me. Excite me. Okay, your phone never leaves your hand. Your phone is never unlocked. They have to have a reader thing with them, which is basically like little camera hanging on their chest or whatever. And then you hold up your phone and it reads a code off the screen. And then, and then all the data exchange happens on the, on the police side where that code then goes back to the state's computer system. And says, all right, here's the data on this person. So there, there's, there's no handing off of anything physical in the process at all. And we can try to explain why other states haven't picked it up, but you haven't picked it up yet. Well, I think a lot of it has to do with states not wanting to spend the money to modernize our systems. Which they're going to have to especially with reality. Yes, that's true. In Colorado, we were one of the first states that that rolled this out. So I've had my digital ID for years. I was able to use it for the first time ever. Earlier this month, when I went to the airport to, to go through TSA to get on my flight to go to max stock. And, and it took years, even though all the technology was already in place at Denver International Airport to accept digital ID and TSA said they were accepting it. No, they just finally started a couple months ago. And do you still carry your physical license? Well, I have to, because the way it works is each municipality or, or county has to add support for scanning the digital ID codes. So in Colorado, that means Colorado State Patrol, they, they've been able to do the digital ID scan since the rollout happened. And then we have five cities in all of Colorado that can actually scan a digital ID. And if you go into places that are required to accept digital ID as valid identification, like if you go into a liquor store and you show your digital ID, even though they're required to accept that as a valid ID, they won't. You're like, I don't know what that is. I need to see a real ID. And, and you're told when, when you go through the process to add your, your ID to the whole digital wallet thing. It brings up a whole thing saying, you need to keep carrying your physical ID. You can't stop doing that. So the, the promise of what this can be is not aligning with the reality of what is actually happening. So you're not saying it's fully realized. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was kind of hoping Jeff had a more dramatic story. You know, as soon as I'd like to have been someone over ice voice. Yeah, he's been pulled over in a, often by the police, probably. And that's why I could tell you stories. And quick change pants. But Marty, the fact that, that I do get contacted by the police on a fairly consistent basis accounts for why I don't have tattoos. And that, that's a whole story. And I'll share that sometime. Let's go. Let's go to the last two stories here. Oh, my gosh. Let's go to go there. Were you? Oh, I wasn't. So last two stories here, Apple fixes iCloud private relay after an extended outage. The outage happened the last week. It, it began an early morning on. I was on the Thursday last weekend as we recorded in July. And the last until about 10 59 Eastern time. Saturday, this issue disrupted web browsing. And for some users, I was over 48 hours, which is. And usually a long period for an Apple service outage. The problem was confirmed by Apple through its systems status webpage, where it noted that the service might have been slower on available. If you don't know the cloud private relay is a feature available to iCloud plus subscribers designed to enhance privacy by encrypting browsing data and routing it through two separate relay servers. The service is operated with Apple by the other one by third party set up, ensure that neither Apple or the Internet service providers, nor the websites can visit can access users true browsing information. The service dual relay mechanism helped maintain a high level of privacy separating the user's IP address from the DNS queries, which further obscures the user's online activity users who had iCloud private relay disabled to mitigate the browsing issues can go ahead and re-enable it now because that's what you had to do pretty much disable it. But yeah, I'm unusual for Apple to have to have something like this happen. So then finally, this last story here, Apple agrees to follow President Biden's AI safety guidelines. Apple has committed a set of voluntary safety safeguards established by the president administration joined by other tech giants and a move to ensure responsible AI development. This was on via Bloomberg here. Apple is now part of a group of influential technology companies agreeing to the Biden administration's voluntary safety guards of this. And the White House had denounced this last year and part of an executive order to guide the development of AI systems. Although these guidelines are not legally binding, they signify a collective effort by the tech industry to self-regulate and mitigate any potential risks associated by AI technologies. And Apple's participation in the initiative coincides with its plans to introduce its own cohesive AI system and deep integration with OpenAI's chat GPT. Well, it's not available yet as we talked earlier, but Ben, what do you think about this? I mean, I think it's great that companies are sending on to this, especially Apple. For sure. Guy, you're smiling. What do you think? I'm so many thoughts are running through my head. You're still thinking of the tattoos, aren't you? Yeah, I did still there. It's still there. The fact that they're relying on these companies to self-regulate and the history of companies that self-regulate is kind of going back and forth. Ping ponging back and forth, and it does not fill me with a great deal of confidence. But I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens. We will see. Marty, you being a chat GPT subscriber, or what do you think this is going to do for this? I don't know what the impact is going to be. I like the fact that this discussion has been elevated to sort of a national presidential conversation. That we have people in higher office that are trying to engage in addressing this. I know one of the AI groups that I'm writing standards for looked and had looked heavily at what is coming out of the White House in terms of expectations for AI, and so part of that, putting that together was looking to make sure what we were putting together at least had some consistency with what we thought might wind out being national policy. Jeff, the final word. Of course, Apple has said, "Yeah, we're on board with this, and these other companies have said the same. They don't want to have any more federal regulations dictating how they're doing what they're doing." That is absolutely necessary. The best way to push that off to a future date, or hopefully never have it happen at all, is to voluntary agree to these guidelines that have come out of the White House and your lack of faith in these companies' ability to do the right thing is totally justified. We'll see how long it takes for various companies that have signed on to fail to comply with these requests. What I'm hoping is that when it all starts to fall apart at some point, it's not Apple that's leading the fall apart bit because I would like to think that they would operate at a higher standard for our personal privacy. But we're talking about corporations, and they are not our friends, so we will see. I'm sure Apple will lead it, and I'm also sure Apple will get blamed for it. If something goes wrong, we will see. We will see the great talks that I've had, including myself and Jeff Gamet and Marty, and so many others. The content should be available as Mike Potter mentioned last week on the show. He is working hard to get all those recordings in place and hopefully by the end of August, it's going to have some start seeing some of the content, but why not just go and sign up for it right now? You can sign up and get discounts on previous year's events too, there's a lot of good content from previous years, so go ahead and subscribe for the digital password this year, you're going to see some great content, so please support max luck and that will be great as well as you'll get to enjoy some of the content. With that, let's go ahead and wrap up for this week. Please send your comments, questions and suggestions to our email address which is feedback@intouchableiOS.com. You can follow us on Massadon which is @intouchableiOS at techhangout.social. Support the show by buying me a coffee at intouchableiOS.com/coffee, we would really appreciate it. 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Just go to our website, intouchableiOS.com, where all the links and all the ways listed to us are on that website. I am Dave Ginsberg, you can find me on Massadon at DaveG65@massadon.cloud. Guys, sir, it's always a blast and pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you. I had a really, really good time. You can find me over on the MyMac.com podcast. We're coming up on our 700-show, which oddly enough is numbered 9.30 or 9.85. It's all new math. I don't quite get it. But, yeah. So, Gaz and I's...Gaz and my 700-show, English is hard. We'll be in just a couple of weeks, and we really, really look forward to everyone who has been with us all throughout this crazy journey that we've been doing. You can find me on most of the socials as either Mac Parrot or Vert Shark, because I'm schizophrenic in that way too. And we have a Google voice number that you can call, and you might get what we like to call a "woo tea." "woo tea." And that number that you can call us on is 703-828-4677. Call us, Collect. Call us, Direct. But call us today, yeah. Thanks, fire. Alright, I'm gonna mix it up here. Ben Raythik, thanks so much for being here. I'll work on people to find you. Well, Dave, you can find me at Ben Raythig on your social media choice. On Tuesdays, you can find me on this little show called "Mac Voices Live" for Chuck Joiner. On Thursday and Friday, shall we say, late mornings, early evenings, you can find me on the Brittish Tech Network, on the big and Mac shows. And of course, Thursday night, you can find me here on Intouchify OS. Thank you so much, Ben. In the Jeff game, it's always a pleasure to have you here on the show, where can people find you? It's always a treat to get to be eight-year old money. Wow, Guy is crazy how you can do that right over the internet. Crazy. Crazy. Alright, so when I'm not being forced choked by Guy, I'm posting on social media, Jay Gamnet on all the different platforms. Most of my stuff right now is going unmasked on Instagram. Then for shows, Tuesdays, Chuck Joiner's Mac Voices Live. Here with you on Thursday, Centouchify OS. Then on the Brittish Tech Network, as Ben just mentioned, the big show on Thursdays, the match on Fridays. Then Brian Chapman and I, we do the context machine, and Petrus Brenda Moore and I do retro rewatch. And we are working our way through Stargate SG-1 that she has seen many times, and I have not seen at all. So I'm going into these as a first-time viewer, and we're having a lot of fun with that. Check it out. And last but certainly not least, coming to us from the road, Marty Jensen, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me here. Guy, congratulations on your almost 700th show. Thank you. You can now find me here on Thursday nights in touch with iOS. Also on Tuesdays with Mac Voices, and then three podcasts, Circular Firing Squad, the Tech Savvy Professor, and also Vision Profiles. And that's with Eric Bolton, we talk about the Vision Pro headset, and it's sort of weekly news, information, apps, and we have developers on to talk about what they're developing. This week we started a connection with Chuck Joyner of Mac Voices, and we're doing sort of a simul broadcast of a show called, it'll come out once a month, or around that, called Vision Pro Focus. And it's more of, I call it a magazine show, where Joe, where Eric and Chuck and myself talk about some aspect of the Vision Pro, and this episode that just came out was about the social aspect of it, and how people can use it for social connecting. So we're having some fun with that, and just appreciate being here on the show. Thanks, thanks for being here, yeah, and I watched that first episode, you guys did great, that's amazing, you're gonna get some nice viewers and listeners for that too, so great, congrats on that. And thank you for listening and watching and being part of the show, we really appreciate it, it's always a blast being here, and we'll be back again next week, but until then, thanks for listening, thanks for watching, and talk again soon. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
