[MUSIC] >> Welcome to episode 314 in touch with Iowa's, the show that talks about iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and related technologies. I'm your host Dave Ginsburg and post-Mac stock recovering, and I'm so glad Kelly Gamart was able to join us this week. How you doing, Kelly? >> Yes. I'm doing well little sad. We're not still hanging out in a hotel where the lights are all up, you know, it's great to hang out with you. It was also great to hang out with you. I'm already gentsy. This was a great to see you in person, and we had a great time as well. How you doing, Marty? >> Good. I'm doing well. We sat close to each other through most of the conference and didn't pass any disease back and forth from what I can do. >> No, I don't think so. I don't think so at all. >> We missed Ben. We wanted you to be there. >> I know you couldn't, but we had you there in spirit. Ben Raythik, how are you doing? >> I am doing fantastic. Ready to talk to some Apple? There was some Apple stuff. >> There's a few things. And unfortunately, Jeff Gamart is under the weather. We miss him. Hi, Jeff. I hope you're feeling better. So that's why you're going to miss him this week, unfortunately. But that's okay. We'll be here in spirit. >> We'll manage somehow. >> So there's plenty to talk about, like Ben said. Betas has been very active. And we're going to do a little bit of recap of Max Talk for the folks who are doing that. Unfortunately, just so you know, we did attempt, as I had mentioned last week, that we were going to have an in-person Max Talk episode. But unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, I was not able to pull that off. So you got us here this week just to do a post recap. So we'll have some fun either way here. So, but let's go ahead and get started here. I wanted to talk about beta. This week, 17.6, it was released as we're still on iOS 17. It was released, but both the developers and public beta is now available. We're at the fourth beta for that. And they were released, and the registered developers who have access to it, I mean, I think 17, iOS 17, basically has all the features that's included. I doubt there's too much other major additions. Nothing's been really reported just to be aware that that's probably going to be coming soon for those of us who are smart enough not to put beta on your primary device. So-- I like me. I like you. And then also, just mention Mac OS and OMA 14.6. Beta 4 is also out for Sonoma. Nothing really that that's discovered for that. I think it's going to be some more bug fixes. And we're going to continue on and make sure that stays strong, because that's another reason not to put beta on your primary Mac, either, so important not to do that. But we will talk about the other betas for Vision Pro. The fourth beta of 1.3 is out. I know, Marty, you're on 2.0. You don't mess around. Yeah, yeah, I'm on 2.0. And everybody I know is on 2.0. So I can't speak to 1.3. But there was some sad news last week where they announced that they're not doing a public beta. Interesting. Of 2.0. Oh, wow. That they're going to run it until they're ready to release it. I did not see it. Which I think then jumped a lot more folks on the 2.0, the developer beta. I did not see that. I can see that. Mm-hmm, yeah. Interesting. They're staying away from public beta releases, I think, on this thing. Oh, that's fair. It's really early in the hardware profile. So I can see maybe it being a lot more a much larger magnitude of bug than, oh, it goes back to the springboard, you know, on iOS every so often or something. Like, this could be pretty really, really disruptive. So I could totally see, you know, something where, like, and at the end, if you run into this bug, you have to factory reset and start over again or something. So that's what I had to do going from 1.0 to 2.0 beta at a factory reset holding, yeah. Yeah, for sure. So fourth beta of watch OS 10.6 and TVOS 17.6 is out as well. So, you know, again, nothing to really say much about. But they did get that they did release the public betas, finally, for iOS 18 and iPad OS 18. It looks like the public can now go have at it and start playing around with the stuff that we've been talking about. Again, I continue to stress. Do not put this on your production and important device. Don't be like Ben, then don't be like Marty. Don't do that. Hi, Andrew, in case he's listening. Yeah, so the public beta is out. So it's definitely a good to see that the people can also do that, the public beta of Mac OS Sequoia is also out. And iPhone mirroring is enabled in that version of the public beta, which we had been playing with. And I talked about that a couple weeks ago, and it's pretty awesome. Can't wait to start playing with us some more here. And I loaded it on my-- I did the thing that nobody should do. I loaded it on my production machine in front of me, the public beta. And immediately have fallen in love with this iPhone mirror. It's been amazing. It is so great. I'm all about the reaction. They're still just-- Go ahead. They're just to say, if anybody who is thinking about doing the developer or public beta to use iPhone mirroring, there is one major bug that has not been fixed. It does not recognize the space bar on the MacBook keyboard. That's a bummer. Yeah. But otherwise, as far as viewing my iPhone stuff, well, I'm doing it literally right now to my left. It's got-- it also has some cool wallpapers. I mean, that's about as deep as I've gotten into it on my work machine. It has a selection of wallpapers that are all like-- remember when-- remember when Big Sur came out. Here's the wallpaper from Big Sur. There's some throwback to that. Throwback wallpapers, which are pretty cool. And I'm on the Macintosh one right now. I've got it on all three screens. And it's fun. There's a lot of adjustments within that wallpaper you can play with. Yeah. Yeah. So well, we'll see how that pans out with the Mac OS. And I also wanted to mention a little bit, and we've been talking about this that's coming on TVOS. Amazingly enough, we have something to talk about on TVOS 18. The biggest feature is Insight. And it's probably one of the most exciting ones. You could find out a show information about actors, characters, and even songs played in an Apple TV+ movie or show just with a tap. It'll also show live previews of live broadcasts within the featured preview carousel in the home, in home. Enhanced dialog, so you'll now be able to have-- that's a huge upgrade, being able to deliver more vocal clarity over music, action, and background noise. Moreover, the enabled dialog now will also work with HDMI connected speakers, AirPods, or any Bluetooth speaker. And they even noted that the extended voice isolation accessibility option with additional voice isolation could be for video high-pot playback. And they're going to have smart subtitles where the system automatically enables subtitles when the user represses the mute button. So when you mute, you can skip back and actually see the subtitles. When it's muted, you might-- we do that once in a while. You watch something, you don't want to actually pause it. You want to be able to do your thing and then unmute it. Then that's interesting. For the first time, Apple TV will support a 2,119 aspect ratio in addition to the standard 16-0 by 9. I don't know what that-- I guess that's good for projectors, giving you better resolution. What do you think, Ben? Yeah, that's 21 by 9 is the cinema resolution. Yeah, so the projectors should help that out. And dedicated cameras, so you can have a dedicated-- like, if you want a dedicated iPhone is a camera because that's the big thing now. People want to be able to use-- have a camera and have a FaceTime call with TVOS that's becoming popular and a bunch of news screen savers. So got a little more excitement with Apple TV. I'm looking forward to see where all that goes. And see how much more that can be coming up with here. So a couple of things of notes I want to talk a couple of things on iOS 18, as we're finding out more and more about what's happening in the data that's in the public beta. They've done a lot of revamping of the Settings app, which has been way overdue. It's just over two pages now worth of contact. Much reduced from iOS 17 and earlier. General and search has multiple settings. Previously, we're just in the main Settings page. It's not moved to the general or the application sections. And the headers. It actually has clean headers where you go to that particular section and actually gives you a much more detailed description of this. Ben, have you looked at this at all in the settings? I mean, I'm just not updating my beta device. And I haven't looked at this lately. But yeah, I haven't really had much of that myself. I'm definitely going to check it out. Yeah. So this is something-- how about you, Marty? Did you have you looked at this at all at the Settings? I'm currently buried in a series that is not connected to Apple TV. So I haven't gone back to the TV to look at Insight or the things that are available on Insight. I've seen it in previous times. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. But yeah. And also, I was also mentioning that this is the Settings app on an iPhone that we just described. That gives you a description. So that's good to see, not only on TVOS, but on iOS as well. So a lot of good changes in the Settings app, which I'm happy about. They did do it. It's time. It was very much time. We've been time for a while. For as much time as you have to spend in there, whether you're retrieving information or adjusting things for one reason or another, it really was time. I wish that team all the best. And when they're gone, I really hope they toddle down the hallway and tell the Mac OS people how it's done. Yes. Or just take over their jobs. Literally anything would be better than the nightmare that's there now. So yeah. Yeah, old Control Center would be better. Yes. Yeah. And one of the things that they also changed is the Files app. The Files app has led a lot of-- been having the biggest issue with file downloads, where it keeps the files in iCloud and Apple's intelligently deciding which files can be remained storage in a local cache. So iOS 18 has fixed that. So you now have the options to be able to copy and move and share gives you buttons to do that. Remove the download, download, now, or keep it downloaded. And if you long press on a file or a folder, you can now get to the Keep Download button in the menu. So you now actually do it right from the menu. So for once, you can actually manipulate the Files app. I guess I need to try that, because I'm on the iPad, especially with a couple of them coming handy, because you always had to zig and zag to manage that files and the way it did that. So yeah. Also, they also came up with a iOS 18 added a recovered albums in photos to restore loss or damage photos in videos. Spitzop-- between iOS 18, iPad OS 18 and Mac OS Koya includes the photo apps feature that is designed to help users recover images and videos that were lost or damaged, providing a way to get missing content back. And there's a recovered albums album in the utility section of photos, and it shows up there. If there are pictures of videos, the users, devices, and not part of their photos library. So if you see the recovered album and your photos up, tapping it will provide you an option to either permanently or restore them. So it's given the article here. It's giving some steps on how to go through that. So this is pretty awesome, because I know that's been a challenge for a lot of people with photos. I don't know if any of you guys have tried that yet. I have not, but this is good to hear, I think. Unless anybody has any comments on that? Yay. So got a couple-- of course, with mine here, I had a couple of Vision Pro and Vision OS features. One of these is-- this was a good interest article to saying that two features that are going to be aimed to make your Vision Pro an actually useful computer. They did some big upgrades to the Mac virtual display. And I don't know how much stuff you tried to use now as a virtual display with your Mac party with the Vision Pro. Yeah, there are some-- they seem like little things, but they're big things in the long run. The pass-through to be able to see keyboards was an important upgrade process. So then that works well with your MacBook or it works well with any sort of separated keyboard. I think primarily it's Apple Magic keyboards that will do the pass-through with that. Yeah, the Mac virtual display is pretty amazing. We haven't gotten to the big, big cinematic display yet. That is not rolled out. And they say that won't roll out for a while. It's interesting with these articles. They always show the wide screen version curvature of the display that you can't get yet. So yeah, it's been really good in terms of that with the Mac virtual display. Yep. And as you just mentioned, the resolution-- OK. Yeah, resolution seems to be better. And that's through all of the with the 2.0 beta that's out. The resolution, the eyesight, which is looking at things to trigger actions is better and more accurate. So that's also another welcome piece. Yeah, for sure. You also mentioned the proper keyboard and mouse support. So the Vision Pro has had a more impressive controller for UI, so you can navigate seamlessly with your eyes and hand movements. So have you found that to be useful? Yeah, certainly. Particularly for me late at night, I don't know, my eyes change throughout the day. So whether I have contacts in that are just been in too long because I have dailies that I use. Or if my eyes just get a little different late at night and I have my contacts out and I have the readers in, it just seems a little more problematic. But this has improved it. This allows me to do things with the keyboard that I could do without necessarily having to use eyesight to generate that. Yeah. So more to come with a merciful video and others, so we don't have to dive into that. But yeah, I think that's a good review to see what's coming when it comes to the Vision Pro. There's a lot more exciting things to come here. So lastly, and the topics I wanted to talk about really quick is the easily being able to switch from Google Photos to iCloud Photos with this new tool. Google released this tool that allows you to transfer your photos and videos from Google Photos to iCloud Photos, complete with albums and descriptions. Apple had released an equivalent tool from moving from iCloud Photos to Google Photos three years ago. And this was a reciprocal move by Google. Companies released these tools so it gives a nice data transfer initiative and Google created this tool merely to create copies of your photos and videos for another service. So great to see. I think for those who, I'm pretty much at all, I think all of us here are probably in one ecosystem or another, I mean, I'm photos on Google, I have photos on iCloud, I have photos in Flickr, I have photos everywhere. What do you think about this, Ben? - I mean, it's great. If you're one of those who is switching from Android or has a huge Google Photos library and you want all your stuff in one main place, or if you want all your stuff in multiple places, this is a really great tool. Especially if you use the Apple and Google tools for technical, I can't talk today. Reciply. You know what I mean. - Reciprocal. - Thank conjunction. - Yes, what's Kelly said? - Together. - Yes, good thing Kelly. - If you're someone with a green bubble family, it might be, if you've got green bubble family members, this might also just be a nice way to have better photo sharing with them and being able to sort of transfer some of that stuff in bulk so that you can get loads of photos out there where everyone can see them and enjoy them together. That might also be really nice to have. So I'm glad it's happening and I'm glad to know that they are both sort of the stance that used to be really hard to come by, which is we are very much aware that we are not the only game in town. And we're gonna have an ounce of thought put into what it's like when you have to use one or have to use the other. And windows used to always go around like they were the only game in town and it made it really hard to be a Mac user sometimes. But as those things have gotten better, it's just better all around for everyone. So I'm glad it's worked. I'm glad it's out there. And so I hadn't anything horrifying about it. So I hope it's working well forever. - I might try it just to see how it works. - Yeah, for me, it's, I would love to, I would dream that I could have a world where I could just move into one ecosystem. And this seems like a tool to be able to do that. But I also realize I've got a lot on Google Drive. I have a lot of invested already in that. So this is not gonna, this is a nothing burger for me. This is not going to change the way I manage photos in Apple and the stuff that I had backed up in Google. I'm not gonna pull out a one and just go all over the other one because I've got other things I'm doing in other ecosystems. And as Kelly said, even, you know, relatives, it makes it a lot easier to do some sharing when they're in that system and not in an Apple's ecosystem. - Yeah. So let's move on to the next topic, which is the max doc conference in Expo. We just just were recovered from three full days of festivities at max doc. We had absolute blast Kelly and Marty was there and Jeff, Chuck Joyner, so many others. And it was a three day event. We had workshops on Friday and Marty, you did just an amazing workshop for 90 minutes on leveling up your AI for peak productivity. That was just a great, everybody, I think really enjoyed that and what you did with coming with AI. You really gave a lot of people to think about, you know, with AI and I saw everybody. I was very focused on learning more about this as far as in the workshops. I'm not gonna go over every single thing. Mike Potter did a great thing with the leveling up and getting started with Ecamm Live. And in fact, you know, we've been talking, Ecamm is just, it became a sponsor of the share for max doc, which was amazing. So there was a gal who- - Hi doc. - Yeah, hi doc. And yeah, they had a giveaway that they get a one hour session with doc and a free year of Ecamm Live. So that was great too. So I see more things to come with Ecamm with the workshops. - But then- - And in great coffee mugs. - Yeah, they were. Yeah. - Absolutely great. - They're getting sturdy. - Really good ones. - You could use it as a weapon coffee mugs. - And everybody was using it at the lodge because the coffee cups at the hotel were so tiny. I noticed that some people were bringing it over. I need a bigger, you know, and I noticed the coffee was rushed to open. Because it was a little weak. But a couple other notables are frequent guests. Jill McKinley did a great possession on organizing bliss with Norton with notion. Excuse me, Norton. Go kill me. Yikes. - And being able to do organizing, organizing your life and productivity. So that was a great session. Some guy Dave, oh yeah, that's me. But I did my session on Apple services and discovering values and benefits of Apple One. It went over really well. I think I, in fact, I even got questions from Dave Hamilton of all people. I would never expect that. And he asked about the whole thing about you having your pay account, 'cause the kids are still on the family plan and you don't want to be paying for them anymore. There's ways of changing that. And we might explore that. I mean, it's next time I might have Dave on and talk about that. That was a great session. Everybody really stepped up. We miss you, Jeff. And Jeff did a great session on your smart home strategy. Everybody was really close to looking at that. I think it was a really good session with that. And we wrapped up Saturday with Dave Hamilton doing a streamline to shine, mastering that real-time podcast production. And I learned a whole lot, a lot of cool utilities that, one utility that he's using, I didn't even know about. And 'cause there were some people saying, yeah, I'm probably not gonna say it. Listen to this because I'm not interested. I say, oh, you gotta stay. Take a listen to it. And actually they kind of got interested in looking at what that had to do. Did you guys, I got something out of Dave's presentation as well. So I think that was great. - Well, I'm a little closer to Dave's presentation than a lot of people. - Oh, yeah. Well, all of us as podcasters, yeah, for sure. - Well, 'cause he, I adopted his basically the workflow that he was doing. - Right, right. - When I took over daily observation. So a lot of what he was doing there was stuff that I, that I did for years as part of that show. But I have the thing I didn't get into, like while we were there, like, oh, by the way, I have this side keyboard master keyboard, my Strow macro that transforms my plain text file where I put the timestamps and transmogrifies it into the format so that it spits it all into the right fields and off on it. So it's super cool because I said I was trying to solve a problem and my friend, Dr. Drang, who will never pay for a drink in my presence again as a result of this one tool because it made my life so much better, said, that sounds like a fun problem to solve, do you mind if I take a crack at it? And I said, absolutely not. Here's what it looks like. Here's, here's the page where I put the stuff. Here's what my file looks like. I'll send you one, you can see all the stuff you need to see and he went, oh, that looks cool. Yeah, I could do that. Go like this, go like that. And then now I have one extra macro that I do that spits all those values in automatically and it's super great. - That's great. And, yeah, I'm not gonna go through every single, there were so many presenters. Brian Flanagan, Arthur, he's in our chat. How you doing, Brian? You did an amazing presentation on powering up the game, cutting the cord and catching the action, the Apple ecosystem. And he's a big sports fan. I'm a sports fan as well and I was worried that he was gonna lose the people in the audience since we're all Apple Geeks and may not be sports fans. But I think they got lots of good things out of it because he talked about the streaming services and how the difficulty and challenges of where you have to go to watch the sports that you like and all that stuff. And it was just amazing. And people just got, were really intent to it. And in fact, I helped them out a couple of those and asked to answer a few questions. I think somebody asked about how do you watch horse racing? You didn't know that and I didn't. I knew that 'cause I used to do a horse racing progress years ago. So it was a really good wave going through that stuff. So I guess his presentation, mine were kind of near each other but more I focused on the Apple services. - They were complimenting. - They were complimenting, yeah. - There's some sports you can get on Apple TV, it's through an Apple service. And then he kind of dove into the sports piece of that. I don't watch a ton of sports but the reason I was very attentive in his presentation is because I will get questions about it. So now I have like a basic handle on, you know, oh football, that's over here. You want this, it's over there. You know, I mean, all of it's still kind of an intellectual property disaster. But you know, at least now I have kind of a vague idea like if this is what you're trying to do, this is one possibility for how you can actually get on. - Yeah. And Marty, you were just working hard at MaxDock this year. You had both a workshop and a presentation on Sunday. And you did an amazing talk about guiding others to troubleshooting with ease 'cause we all know we're tech support for our families, right? And helping people along how you troubleshoot, how to have them encourage them to be self-reliant. And I think you did a pretty, really amazing job. What did you think? I think I really thought you did well, Marty. - I had, you know, I had fun with it. - Yeah, so. - And it was probably the fun came out 'cause I in preparing for it was like, this is a problem I don't know how to solve, but I think I want to solve it by the time we get to, or I want to have answers by the time we get to MaxDock. And hopefully there'll be new answers. So I took the typology approach with it and then just had fun with the setup at the beginning before we got to the series. - Yeah, that was fun. So, and this person, Kelly. Oh, Kelly, come on. Yeah, she, I think this was a good, I was very-- - She gets crocheting. - Yeah, she is crocheting right now, yes. I was, at first I was like, what are we doing here? We have a knitting needle and yarn. Okay, her session was entitled, "It pays to level up your brain power." So we had the entire audience was given a small ball of yarn and a knitting needle, and you started teaching people how to do a cross stitch and going through it, and I could not do it. I was, I was, I just-- - But every single person tried. - We did try, and that's-- - There was not one person who just pieced out completely and afterward, more than one person came up to me. This was my favorite phrasing, but more than one person came up to me and said, I will not be defeated by a stick and string, and I'm gonna figure this out. - That's good. - And it just, and I got a few people, like my grandma, my aunt, my mom crocheted when I was young and I would sit with her sometimes, and I got a few people that had different sort of memories of it or, you know, levels of exposure, I guess. And so while people were crocheting, because one of the things, the reason for it was if you have a fidget that can sort of activate your prefrontal cortex on a low level, then it's easier to take in information and stay more engaged and not be quite as distracted. And so while people were trying to do this, I was explaining to them all of that stuff about how it works and why it's a good idea and what it does for your brain and what makes it worth doing. And like, yeah, no taking is important, but if it's something that you don't necessarily need to be writing down a lot of stuff from, but you need to be listening and you need to be engaged, that I think is super helpful. And people were engaged at the time, people were asking questions, people were helping each other, YouTube videos came out immediately of people trying to figure out what is the thing that we're doing right here. And every piece of it was just fantastic. It was, I think for me, the biggest part was that everybody gave it a shot. And almost everybody in that room, you cannot see their comfort zone from sitting at a table with a crochet hook and everybody went for it anyway. And I thought that was really awesome. - Yeah. Just to wrap that up, wrap this up here. Chuck Joyner and Jeff Gammett did an actual tag team event. It was really great, leveling up your tag gear. - Not a cage match, sadly I did take one. They had to take a half point deduction 'cause it was not a cage match. - A cage match. - A cage in the ring. - Leveling up your tag gear, maximizing your apple dollar. But both Chuck and Jeff went through and talked about what to get, what to purchase, how to maximize your apple dollar. It was a really good session and I was glad to do it. And we wrapped up, unfortunately Wally Jurinsky couldn't make it, so Jeff, oh Jeff. Chuck Joyner, MC, the Max Doc Short Film Festival. There was a lot of great creative things that were submitted for that as well. Now, the other best thing before we wrap up our Max Doc discussion is the events happening at night. Mackie Gabb, our friends at Mackie Gabb, Dave Hamilton, Adam Christensen and Kyle Pete did a recorded on Mackie Gabb session and it was a blast watching them do that live. And then we also had a karaoke event that was hosted by Kelly Gomont herself. And we had a lot of great people there and had a lot of fun, a lot of singing, a lot of drunk singing and a lot of good fun singing. And it was a good time. - Bare amount of liquid courage. - Liquid courage was there. But the other great thing was Marty and Eric Bolden and we had like three other people bring their vision pros and put in the demo mode and we had a conference set up. And everybody, they had a good turnout, have people come over there and be able to demo the vision pro and that was amazing. And you did it. I was only expecting you and Eric, but I don't know, we had Adam Christensen was one of them. - We had two other attendees that had theirs as well. So, wow. - Yeah, I was not, we were not attempting to take anything away from Kelly. We thought there would be a couple of people that would come in, wanna do a demo. And it would be quiet enough that we could actually record a show. We never got the show that we did it the next day during the lunch hour. And a lot of people were like, okay, this is great. Now I'm gonna get down the hall to karaoke. But we were really surprised. - There were a lot of people, I saw photos from the room and there were a fair number of people who were so curious, which is awesome. - Yeah. Yeah, and some people who were, have been pretty public doubters about it, came in and put it on and had a good experience with it. So, that was good. - So, all in all, an amazing event. We missed you of those who didn't make it, that are listening, but those who were there and we got to see and meet. And I'm hoping Ben's gonna make it next year that you come out and have a good time. We'll talk about what's gonna be available after the show, a max talk in a little bit here, a little bit here, tell you. But yeah, that was just a great show. So, let's go ahead and move on to some new stories. I have a pretty good amount here, like to get through and talk about a few things that was announced this week. One of the first ones was AstroPad Studio. It gained the support for the Apple Pencil controls. So, everybody knows that the Apple Pencil Pro now has the drawing tools and you can, you get to squeeze for gestures and shortcuts and all that stuff. Well, now the software is actually going to be released and support that. Then you can get a license for that. It's $60 for one year and then they have a lifetime license at $120, what AstroPad Studio is, it's for a drawing software. So, we had Jeff here, he tell us a lot about how great this tool is and being able to get some drawing done. So, just wanted to mention that. That's less anybody who had anything to add on that. AstroPad's great. They've always made some really thoughtful apps, everything that, all the kinds of stuff that they build always sort of seems like it's solving a problem that an actual person had and happened to tell someone at AstroPad about it who thought it would be a fun thing to solve. So, all the stuff I've ever had from them has been great and I always take a good long look at whatever it is that they're currently up to because if it's anywhere near the neighborhood of something that will solve a problem for me, then it's going to do it really well and it'll be a good price and all of that. So, yeah. - I'm curious about it. I rarely use a Apple Pencil. I draw just a little bit better than I crochet or knit and my knitting was critiqued and they said, it was Cindy kept walking and going, yeah, and there's Marty doing his own thing, whatever that is. - Yes. - And my knitting is far better than my singing. So, putting it along the spectrum, I'm kind of the low end of the, but I will get the software just 'cause I've got the pencil, I've got the iPad, I've got the new pencil and I'll play with it. - Why not? - So, and a couple Apple TV plus news, people that were anticipating the C7 season two is finally going to be here, but she got a little bit of weight yet. As this is, we're in July, this is of 2024, there was a teaser for the new season. It was shared on social media, but it's not going to come out until January of 2025. So, people are going to have to wait a little bit longer. - So, but you know what? Apple TV plus has just amazing content. I talk about that in my Mac stack presentation about how the content is just, it's endless and it's just getting better and better with some of the different shows out there. So, speaking of amazing content, Apple was nominated for a whopping 72 nominations for the seven sixth annual Emmy Awards for all of their shows. Notably, the bigger shows, like the morning show, which is like, it's been a while since I've watched a morning show and it's got three seasons that they got a whole long list of awards there. You also had lessons in chemistry. I got a number of award nominations, Slow Horses, which is an amazing show. - Oh, yeah, Gary Oldman and a lot of nominations there. Palm Royale got a lot of nominations. The documentary, Steve Martin was a score to a number of nominations, Masters of the Air and the dramedy physical, as well as Girl State got some nods and there's just a number more. The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy, Silo, even the Hannah, Hannah Wellington's home for Christmas got two nominations, which is amazing. And that was a fun show that she did. - It was lovely. - Yeah, I really enjoyed it. So, Apple continues to just get better and better with their content and obviously the Emmys noticed that and they got amazing about nominations. So, they're probably gonna continue to even better. I'm still watching the show, Persume Dinescent. That's still new. I mean, my God, it's just riveting. I can't wait for every, it really gets released every Wednesday and I just watched the episode yesterday. So, as you record, and that's a great show too. So, it just goes on and on about finding some great shows on Apple TV. Was there anything missed? Were there any shows that you've seen on Apple TV that should have made the list? - What do you think, Khali? - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, I was surprised not to see Manhunt on it because the production quality that was so high that it was like, I can't, how did they, where did they get this scene? You know, how did they set the scene? And it was, I mean, it was interesting compelling story, but that would have been one that I would have hoped to have seen on the list. - No, yeah. - Acapulco is the one I heard. I think that's the one that I think I've described it as, the one I'm gonna go put on a short sleeve white shirt and skinny black tie and start knocking on doors and ask if people have accepted Acapulco into their lives because it's got that Ted Lasso vibe and that it's fundamentally not a mean show. It's not about bad people being bad to other bad people, which is fun to watch in its own way, but it's sort of like the photo negative of something like succession. And it's charming and a lot of nostalgia because it's this guy present day who is telling the story of how he got to be the person that he is and how it all started at this resort in Acapulco in the 80s. And so, and all of the hairspray, hair gel, sequins, shoulder pads that that entails. And it's a delightful story, it's so charming. I've talked about it here before. Mr. Kelly doesn't spend a whole lot of time sitting around and watching TV. He will watch the first episode of "A Lot of Things With Me" and then decide whether or not he wants to continue. And this is one of maybe three times I can think of where he wanted to know what day is it that it comes out to make sure that we could watch it the day it came out. And it's like this and Ted Lasso and what was this? What was the other one? There's like one more where he was like, yeah, I don't hate this and so we can keep on. I won't keep on with you. But it's a very high praise for him to have been like, well, what day does that come out? And what time can we watch it if I stay up a little later on Wednesday so that it's technically midnight. So it comes out Thursday, that kind of thing. So Acapulco just won me over 100% very, very early on. There's a lot of charm and so much charisma in that show and it's just fun to watch. There are three seasons out now. It's half an hour at a time. And if season four is just various groups of characters sitting around for half an hour pondering a menu at a restaurant, I will absolutely watch that and love it just as much as the first three seasons. - Yeah, Kelly, I didn't know I was married to Mr. Kelly 'cause you described my spouse's behavior. Sorry, Ben. - But for me, I know there is a pretty heavy bias against science fiction at the Emmys. But I thought Monarch was not only deserving but the show far surpassed any of the most diverse movies. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So I think everyone I know that watched it said kind of the same thing. Like those Godzilla movies are fun but have you watched Monarch? - Yeah. - No. - Yeah, I don't even like monsters and I heard so much buzz about it from people like y'all that I started watching it and now I'm really into it. I mean, I finished all of them. And then went back and watched all the movies. - There you go. - Yeah. - And then realized you had much rather watched the show. - Yep. - So a couple of HomePod stories. First one, this was interesting. Apple's HomePod is being credited for saving a family in Colorado, alerting them to a house fire that was accidentally set by the family dog. They received a call about a house fire and then shared the details on a video on Facebook. The homeowners were alerted to the fire by their HomePod. This is of course the HomePod mini in the early hours of the morning and they were getting alerts for high temperatures in the house and instead the HomePod mini also had a sound recognition option, which of course we're aware of when we're talking about in the past saying that it was able to detect a sound of a fire alarm and send an alert. It's likely that the HomePod used the sound recognition to detect a fire and then proceed to send alerts to the homeowners to let them know what was going on. It was unclear why the family did not hear the fire alarm that the HomePod must have detected. So this is a good story to hear that they were able to get to the house, get the fire out and when the fire department arrived and there was no entries or very minimal damage. So there you go, HomePod mini to the rescue, right? - Very nice, glad to hear it, yeah. - So my dog is a German Shepherd. It can jump up and reach the stove. The damn thing doesn't have an opposable thumb. So I can't get it to crack eggs. Otherwise that dog's making me breakfast. - Yep. This was an interesting thing. Popular Delta retro game emulator officially comes to the iPad. This is a gaming emulator Delta which had been a big hit among retro game enthusiasts is now officially available to the iPad and it's an upgrade to versions 1.6. Delta been hugely popular since the debut in the App Store and the emulators were constant presence in the top charts because it had all the old stuff from NES and so on Game Boy and other that, those stuff. And with the iPad support, you now can take full advantage of the device's larger display and play in full screen. It did eliminate the need for BIOS files which has now been eliminated. So you're able to play this. Have you tried playing this at all? - Yeah. - Too bad. - I have on the iPhone, I do not have an iPad but it's something I've been asking for a very long while and I'm very glad I have it. - Yeah. And you have tried this before? - Not yet but I'm a sucker for a good emulator so I will check it out. I can't remember the name of the one that I downloaded that I like a lot but yeah, I like to try them all out and see kind of how I feel about them but I'm glad for them because the emulation scene means that a lot of people's hard work and all of the stuff that went into making those games in the first place mean those games are being preserved because people wanna continue to play them in some fashion and there's a lot of technological advancement that has been lost to history because nobody bothered to save it because nobody cared to continue to maintain all that stuff on all those floppy drives from all those years ago is never coming back. So stuff like this also means that there's sort of a sense of history that gets preserved with all of it and I'm glad for that too. - How about too, I'm Marty? - I like to try emulators particularly if it's a game that I played a long time ago to see if I couldn't just play with it again. This article talks a little bit about Apple initially rejecting it in June and then there was concerned about the, I think the open third party marketplaces in Europe and so I don't know if there's a little bit of ping pong going on with this or should I just say pong going on with this because of the EU stuff. I couldn't read deep enough to figure that out but it seemed like the article wanted to talk about how it was pulled for a while and rejected and then it was approved around the EU things. - Yep, also there's another emulator that was released this week because Apple did approve its first retro PC emulator for the iPhone, the iPad and the Vision Pro. It's the PC emulator called UTM SE in the app store. It's for the iPhone, the iPad and the Vision Pro. This Apple allow you users to emulate old versions of Windows OS, Mac OS or Linux and more and fire up classic games, software and games on Apple devices. This is the first of its kind of be allowed in the app store and the UTM SE offers several unique features like VGA's mode support for graphics, terminal mode for text-only OSs and so on and so on. This was pretty amazing. I downloaded it. I thought this was something to be interesting to see where this goes. I mean, you can install Windows XP if you want to, Windows 7, Windows 11 if you want to, and it emulates it. More was more aims for people who want to be able to play these PC games but I can't see why you couldn't install apps and other things to work with it too. What do you think Ben? - I think this is great. First off, I would like to say this was, getting this out was a collaboration of not just UTM but Riley tested of Delta and Alt Store helped them a lot and Apple really worked with them to come to a solution that would be within Apple, within App Store rules. - Yep. So it's without a lot of hard work from a lot of different people, we would not be here. And quite frankly, between this and emulators like Delta, I think without the DMA changes, we would have never been here. - What do you think, Kelly? - Same, I'm still back at, I can run a fully functioning Windows operating system from a computer in my pocket. - I still think that's really impressive. - It is, I started downloading it but still a little bit of work to do, figuring out get the OS on there. - It's a little fiddly. - Yeah. - How about you Marty? - I have a day job. (laughing) Unfortunately, you've just ruined tomorrow's work. That ruined it. Now I got two emulators, I've got a download. Then I have to find the games I want to play. Between you and Jeff Gamet who forced me to spend a lot of money buying home upgrades for my doing a home bridge here at my house. I gotta get to work someday. - You do. (laughing) - You do. Soon, you'll be able to actually control your iPad using Elgato's Stream Deck. iPad users, there's a new accessory coming soon that promises to unlock new possibilities for power users of Apple's tablet. Stream Deck support is coming to iPadOS later this year from Elgato and enabling you to control your iPad in a whole new way and this is how it's going to work. The iPad is one of the most versatile devices Apple sells and thanks to the ecosystem of accessories you can buy, you can use the tablet, you can use the device as a tablet, a laptop, a notebooks to use screen and more. And rather than just launching your new Stream Deck hardware exclusively for iPad, Elgato has created a Stream Deck kit that developers can use to build Stream Deck support into existing iPad apps. And how it will work? - Well, they'll go through and actually you download the connect app and it'll handle the setup process and then the connect app contains the driver that's needed to communicate with the physical Stream Deck devices. Users downloaded into the Apple App Store from the Apple App Store and it's guided to activate the driver once it's on the device. You know, I showed this pre-show and I fell for it on I've got the new Stream Deck here. I'm showing it on camera 'cause of that gosh darn Amazon prime days. Let's see, it was a deal I couldn't mess up. But this is good news. I think this is something stream, Elgato's getting even more and more because Elgato already had the app that you could use on your iPhone that can control it now. But this is even bigger with the iPad. What do you think Ben? - Well, first I'd have to say Dave, I think at this point, the Spanish for the cat owns it. - Yeah, I need an intervention. - Yeah, honestly this is great, especially for people who wanna podcast on the cat. - Yeah, for sure. - But you Marty, what do you think? - You know, I've already got an interface with the iPad. Why do I need an interface on top of an interface? Unless, you know, I can suspend myself from the ceiling like Tom Cruise and run it from a touch pad. I have a Stream Deck. I've got a couple of Stream Decks actually and get templates to build into programs that I'm using here on my Mac Studio. I just, I don't see, I see the iPad as a portable device and not something, and I'm gonna take it with me to work and dragging along another keypad for that purpose. Just, I don't know, it seems like redundancy. - Yeah, how about you Kelly? - I think it depends, but I think there are probably a lot of people who would have a really compelling use case for something like this. If for no other reason than being able to load it up with a set of shortcuts, if it's part of your photography workflow or video production, I can see this making Chuck Joyner really happy when he's doing those in-person interviews at CES or NAB or something, and being able to just buckle this to the side and it hits this and there's a five second delay, you know, when it starts recording or whatever, and being able to have some of that stuff handled by just pushing a physical button, there's never gonna be a substitute for that that's gonna be as good as I pushed the thing and I felt my thumb go in and out and now I know it was pushed. So I can absolutely see a lot of places where this would be, even for a device that is mobile, I think some people's iPads are part of a semi-mobile workflow. Like, you know, you've set up to photograph an event or something like that or, you know, making it a little bit more reliable podcast, an anchor for a live podcast setup or something like that, I think it could be really interesting and this is another one of those moments where I'm really excited for it to get here and get in people's hands so that I can see what everybody goes and does with it. - For sure. - 'Cause it's gonna be awesome to watch, like as a spectator, watching people apply their creativity to something like this is always really fun. - Yeah. So do you think they'll be creating? I mean, I use a service to buy templates for Outlook and for PowerPoint that I use on my Stream Deck and also for Final Cut. So do you think those same services or kinds of services will be providing the interfaces or is you can do a little bit of the own, create your own interface with Stream Deck 2? - Yeah, well, and I think also just sort of the setup because you can hook a button up to a great, a wide variety of things. So people will probably sort of like Max Sparky has the series where people show off their home screens, show off your Stream Deck. The top row is the shortcuts I use to this, that the other thing and then the one over here. And then like the bottom row is automatically upload this file or share this to whatever or hit record, those kinds of things just to file all the automation down to a particular step. So I just kind of want to see people post their setups, people who maybe are using Ecamm to handle a business and being able to make this work that way or something would be super fun. Basically like I'm waiting for Doc Rock to go figure out how he's gonna turn it into something ridiculous and put it on a live stream so I can go heckle him from the back. - And the still picture in the, well, it's a video I guess, but the still picture you see is someone using it to play a game in the article, which is interesting. - I can see that too, yeah. I didn't say that it'll be useful. Some of them might just be fun. - Yeah. So a couple more stories I want to hit before we wrap up here. Google Maps is not gonna have the support for iOS and Apple CarPlay will gain a live sub-adometer feature. Google Maps app for iOS and Apple CarPlay will now have that live sub-adometer. The feature was previously only on the Google Maps. Google Maps for Android, helping stick within the speed limit. And now I'm gonna use our begins navigation. The vehicle speed will be shown in miles kilometers per hour. It is rolling out to iOS users globally, but it's cautions that it's for information use only and drivers should still rely on their vehicle speedometer to confirm the actual speed. I don't know how important this is or not, but I guess notable that they finally added something that's been on Android for a while. Now it'll be on iOS. I don't know if you guys have any comments on that. We can go ahead and move on. - I used a lot of CarPlay 'cause we drove to Mac stock from Ohio and then around and I spent, my brother-in-law spent time in my car with us and he got to see the panel and he got to see how CarPlay was used. And we switched over to Google Maps once and so some of the features there are pretty good. I think he's not gonna go into Google Maps so I switched it back as quickly as I could to Apple Maps. And it was just nice to see him realize how well it could be used in the system. - Sure. - So. - Absolutely. Two more here. This was kind of interesting. There is a device called TinyPod. It will turn your Apple Watch into an iPod. If you have an old Apple Watch and you're not sure what to do with it, a new product called TinyPod might be the answer. Priced at $79, the TinyPod is a silicon case with a built-in scroll wheel that houses the Apple Watch chassis. When the Apple Watch is placed inside this TinyPod, the click wheel on the case is able to be used to scroll through the Apple Watch interface and it features, it works through carefully and canekized components that makes the direct contact with the crown on the Apple Watch. And then the TinyPod website suggest us that a cellular version of the Apple Watch could be placed inside the TinyPod as a miniature phone without the need to carry a phone, but I don't know, the case is kind of lacking here. I thought it'd be interesting to see where this goes. Then is it even usable with this? What do you guys think? - I mean, it's the thought that counts. If you have like an old Apple Watch, and you have children, well, you got yourself a music player. - You do. - I thought it was cute. - Yeah, I thought it was cute. And since I already spent a lot of money in Amazon Prime days already, I almost pushed the button on it until I realized it was $79. - Yeah. - And figured, I really don't need this. - Yeah, so that's, yeah, it's interesting. It's a man, probably. - Yeah, it made me long for an eye, yeah. - Yeah, what it did was... - Ben, you brought this to my attention. I wanted to talk about this real quick here. The Apple Beats has now teamed up with Minecraft to have a special edition solo for headphones. And these are the same Beats solo 4s that were already been out earlier this year. And it's got the pixelated Minecraft touches all over it and the Beats solo 4 also features the Minecraft logo and they branded it. So it's interesting to see Apple decides with the Beats to team up with Minecraft at this. Something you'd buy, Ben? - Possibly. I know my nephew would buy it, but Beats is able to do things that Apple cannot do under its own brand, especially when it comes to partnerships. And the interesting thing about this, is for us, I can tell, this is the first ever product that has been co-branded between divisions of Apple and Microsoft. - It is, very interesting. These flexibilities are coming between these companies. I tell ya. - Anything else to add on this, Kelly or Amarti? - The price is the same, which I think is cool. You don't have to pay, if you want a pair of Beats, you can get the Minecraft ones and they're not a dramatically more, which I thought was kind of nice. It's still a $200 pair of headphones do without information what you will. But I also liked how they went about it because there's still Beats headphones, but they're very Minecraft. Like, they've really managed to make it both, both at the same time and not like, here are some Beats that happen to be a color that you see in Minecraft, or here are some Minecraft headphones with the little tiny Beats on them. Like, it really is a collab between the two and I thought it was cool how they went about it. - Yeah, last word, Amarti? - Oh, I got nothing on this. I have enough headphones. You and me, I've only got two ears and I have multiple sets of headphones that I don't use as much as I should. - I'm the last person in the world who doesn't play Minecraft, I'm not buying a pair, but I'm appreciating them for what they are. - You and me both, you and me both. So let's, before we wrap up here, I wanted to make sure I give a shout out to everybody it's in the chat here at youtube.com/intouchal.us. We've got Brian and Ben, which we both saw at max.doc. Great to see you guys in the chat. Appreciate your support of the show here. And it looks like Brian got a Raspberry Pi. You'll have to talk off after the show about that, Kelly. He mentioned that because of your influence. - Yeah, we talked about it a little at the max. - Yeah, so, but one more thing about max.doc, as I mentioned earlier, max.doc did wrap up, but you still, you aren't going to be able to start then you are able to start purchasing the digital pass. Digital pass is going to give you the opportunity to be able to go ahead and watch all those great presentations that we described earlier. And it is going to be available soon. It should be available in the bottom month from now. We're talking probably around August, I would say. Mike Potter is going to start editing the videos and get everything in place. And it'll be a slow process to get all of them up there. But just go to the link here at the digital pass at max.conference.xpo.com. There's a link in the show notes and you can purchase that digital pass. You also can purchase the previous years passes as well if you wanted to be able to watch some of the great content. So go ahead and check that out. And with that, let's go ahead and wrap up for this week. That's a wrap for this week. Please send your comments, questions, and suggestions to our email address, which is feedback@intouchal.is.com. You can follow us on Macedon at Intouchal.is@techkingout.social. Support the show by me at coffee@intouchal.is.com/coffee. We would really appreciate it. You can become a patron of the show by going to patreon.com/intouchal.is. We have two tiers available to support the show. We'd really appreciate it. Make sure you like, share, and subscribe so you'll notify when we are live streaming, which is Thursday nights, 8 p.m. Easter time, 5 p.m. Pacific on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/intouchal.is. We can watch the current and past live streams as well as listen to past shows. Visit Intouchal iOS Magazine on Flipboard, where many of the topics we discussed are flipped into that magazine. I'll link us in our show notes. You also can subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast, including PocketCats, Overcast, Apple Podcasts, and many others, but just better yet to score our website. Intouchal.is.com, where all the links to all the ways to listen to us are there. Please, and I am Dave Ginsburg. You can find me on Macedon. It's at davidg65andmaston.cloud. Kelly Gamae, it was so great to see you on a couple of days since I saw you in person, and now we saw you today, and you have a great trip. So I'm glad you're on the show. Where can people find you? (upbeat music) - You can find me right here behind the mute button. - I was gonna say it. (laughing) - You can find me on Macedon, where I'm at versus what Macedon.social. You can sometimes find me on Instagram. You can occasionally find me over at the incomparable. As soon as this is over, I'm probably just gonna go get in line for the dead three in the rain because that's the best thing, one of the very best things to have happened this summer if I hadn't gotten a chance to get my stuff. And the rest of the time, you can find me occasionally over on the incomparable network, and on Tuesday nights with Chuck Joyner, where I am doing my best to make sure that he does not stay anywhere near the topic while I'm acting with you. - Thank you, I'll mix it up here. Ben Raythik, thank you for being here. We missed you, Max Talk, but there's next chair. We're gonna get you there, somehow, some way. I'm gonna work on people who find you. - Well, Dave, you can find me at Ben Raythik on your social media choice. You can find my writings at Raythik.tech. Or, well, you can find them there. You can also find it at Raythik.com, which is the main one, on Tuesdays, you can find me on Backforce Live with Chuck Joyner. On Thursdays and Fridays, you can find me at Raythik. Just take network on the big end Mac shows. - Great, thank you, Ben. Last but certainly not least, Marty Gensius, thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you? - This is the best part of my Thursday, and most of my Friday, too. You can find me at Gensius, J-E-N-C-I-U-S at mastodon.social. And also, Mac Voices on Tuesdays with Chuck Joyner, and then three different podcasts that I do, Vision Profiles with Eric Bolton, and Circular Firing Squad, and Tech Savvy Professor or two other. Get all that information at thepodtalk.net. - All right, thank you so much, and thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the show. It was great to give you all the insights about Mac stock and everything else that was going on this week, and then we're gonna be back next week. So until next time, thank you for listening, thank you for watching, and we'll talk again soon. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You
