[MUSIC] >> Welcome to episode 312 of Intouchful iOS, the show of the TalkSpot iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and related technologies for Host Dave Ginsburg, and Jill McKinley is back on the show. How are you doing, Jill? >> I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here and see all of you. >> Yeah, I'm going to be seeing you in two weeks. >> Two weeks. Two weeks from as we record, it's going to be great to see you. Also, here's Ben Rasek. Are you doing better? >> I am doing fantastic. Ready to talk to Mac, especially some beta 2 of iOS 18. >> Yeah, I got a lot of stuff in the notes for talking about that. I can find all kinds of things that's been talked about. Marty Jensy, is this here? Are you doing Marty? >> I'm doing good. This Thursday nights are great for me because it's the end of my work week. It's a great pleasure to be with this group, talking about something I love about. >> Absolutely. Last but certainly not least, Jeff Gammett is here. How are you doing, Jeff? >> Well, so just sucks. Kidding, I'm doing well. I'm happy to be here with all of you. For everyone that is going to be at Mac's stock in a couple of weeks, I'm so excited to see everyone. Me too, it's going to be a lot of fun. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Meanwhile, as Ben mentioned, there is so much stuff that was talked about this past week. Beta, we're just talking about some of the stuff we're going to be looking forward to in iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and such, and a number of other stories, and Jeff and I are going to have a good conversation here about the message contact key verification, which you and I both discovered here, and we're going to get a little insights on that, and all the stuff we usually talk about, and anything else we might even come up with here. But like I said, let's go right into the topics of beta this week. iOS 18, beta 2 was dropped this week, and also they're still beta testing iOS 17.6. That's the production version of iOS, and the ones that most of you should be on not beta. But there is a lot of things that have been changed. AI is still not going to be on here just yet, and then we'll hit on that a little bit, and I think AI is going to be down the road here a bit. What's your first impressions on this, Ben, that you're running it? It still can be a little bit unstable, especially with the 140 gigabyte metadata file. I had to delete to get my hard drive back. Thank you, clean my Mac. But yeah, if you're having that on the other betas, versions of the beta, you're out of luck right now. But iPhone mirroring is one of the biggest updates to the ecosystem I have seen. In fact, I'm using it right now. Yeah, I couldn't get it to work on my Mac, but I might need to reconfigure my beta Mac just to get that up and running, because I was saying I couldn't find it. So we'll hit on that in just a minute here, but why aren't you running beta, too? I know. I'm running the beta and had the same problem that Ben had, and again-- System data. Yeah, just clearing all that stuff out, being able to then get back and using my device. You know, the thing about the beta updates, that if you read the articles and the ones that you've posted, they tell you about all the wonderful things that are coming to the beta. They don't tell you what this beta 2 version really has on it. And since I've got a developer account, I can go and see what the notes are that our developers-- and I don't understand half of them, but it's not all the new and exciting things that the articles talk about happening. There are little changes, fixes, some new things that they launch on it, but the articles kind of oversell it. You know, they passed the announcement that the beta came out. There isn't a lot in the articles that say what actually is happening now because of the beta. So it's the little misleading, yeah. Go for it, yeah. My hypothesis, as someone who used to cover all of this regularly, a lot of the people that are writing about the updates do not have developer accounts. So they're just writing based on press releases and flashy comments. And I'm not saying that in a mean way. It's just you work with the resources that are available to you. And you can tell who has a developer account as a blogger and actually goes and reads what's in the update notes from there. So that's why we're seeing these articles. I don't want to call them Fluff articles because they are at least letting people know that the update is out. But they're not providing that deep, meaningful information like you were looking for. Yeah, Jill, have you dabbled in a beta? Or did you already been avoiding it? I am planning on doing it like July 14th. I've been tied up a little bit since then, but I plan on it. But I'm keeping tabs on it. I mean, this is really the primary reason why I moved to Mac. I get updates on my Windows machine and it's like, "Oh, look, we move this to yellow and I waited 11 years for this to be moved." So this is exciting to me. I am all over the betas and what they're doing. But so far, the things I'm most interested in, which is, of course, AI has not yet been released. And that's the part I really want to see the most. Yeah, I think that's going to be down the road. It might even be 2025 before we have all of the features. But yeah, we just talked about iPhone mirroring. So yeah, I'm really anxious to get that to work at working. I may have to erase my Mac that my Mac native has to bait on it and just get a refresh. I haven't done that in a while on that one. And for some reason, I got assigned into the same account, but this doesn't want to find it with my beta iPhone. So the other thing I was going to talk about, and you brought that up, Ben, when we a number of times here, is the system data bug that was, like, probably was perplexed. I'm going to, we got the article here in the show notes from 9 to 5 Mac here. It says, so the iOS system data bug is stealing your iPhone storage. Yeah, no kidding. I went to go try to do with my beta to update. Oh, sorry, you have no space. Like, what are you talking about? My iPhone's got 128 gigs of space. And sure enough, 104 of that was the system data. And interestingly enough, and they just updated this article within the last couple of days, and this has been going all over on Reddit and the community forums on Apple, I did the first thing. The first step was try powering it off. That's what I did. I powered it off, and then I went back, and then all of a sudden, poof, I've got space left. That's the most interesting bug I've seen all the years I've been doing beta testing. Did you experience the same thing, Ben? I went through the entire checklist, had no effect. I eventually went in to find my Mac, looked at the large files. Sure enough, there was 140-some-odd gigabyte metadata file. I deleted it like an idiot. Fortunately, nothing, it hasn't had any operational effect on the Mac. But if you're on iOS or iPadOS, you, of course, do not have access to those files. Yeah. Because you have the iPad I have. That's probably really keeping me off the beta is trying to spend time to make room for the files I can't think about. Yeah. Yeah. This is why I routinely say that I am an idiot. Do not do this. Don't do it on your primary mission critical device. That's why I'm not doing that anymore. I have the luxury of having this iPhone 13 I've been using, the 19 from 13 Pro. And like I said, wow, where's the space? And same thing's happening on my iPad Pro 12.9 2018 model, all the space is gone again. And I only tried the power on off and at least the iPhone got freed up so I'm going to spend some time looking at the iPad too to see why this is. But also talking about clearing your IMS history. So these are actually, we talked about these things. It's actually something you probably should consider doing anyway because a lot of times this stuff does take up a lot of space and makes things go somewhat slower, especially if you have an older device. Doing your Safari cache was another suggestion. And there was some date trick that some of the Reddit user had suggested that seemed to work reliably by purging the iOS system data. So but I said step one was just do a simple power down. I didn't do a hard reset. I just just did the power down and then powered it back up and it seemed to clear it up, which is very, very strange. Did you? Go ahead. Dave, it's temporary. No, I know. And yeah. I'm saying it out loud just for the people that don't know. Yeah. Doing the power cycle thing, it cleared part of that system data off of my iPad and but it very quickly came back. These other suggestions are offering, which it's good just in general. But if you clear out Safari cache and your IMS history and all of that, excuse me. You get some space back, but this is a bug and for sure, bug just consumes the available storage. So it will balloon up to fill that space that you just cleared out. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. How are you Martin? Did you experience this on your iPhone? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. And the powering off and powering on you resolve the problem for me. I also had been receiving some of the same bug on my desktop, which I had not upgraded. So I don't know where that came from, but a lot of that got dumped into my desktop. Also use clean my Mac and that took care of all the issues with it. On the on the on the Mac, I'm waiting for iOS 18 beta three, so we'll have new things to complain about. It's right. Yeah. For sure. I'll fix this for three. Yeah. My thought too was three that I would join in. Yeah. I mean, that's generally what what people end up doing is just waiting a bit and to let a couple of betas come out and try it. The RS the RCS toggle has on and that was enabled in beta two as they announced this during a WDC this new RCS messaging protocol that will replace SMS and MMS but our C S is still not functional just yet. It's just a toggle. It shows it up for the US and iPhone users that have a carrier that's supporting it, which would be T mobile Verizon and AT&T. Have you looked at that all the men with that because they're I know they were looking at that. I have looked at it. Here's the interesting thing on it with a brand new contract contract contact. I am able to send RCS messages for existing contacts, especially with those of those that I know are on Samsung's. It still says SMS. Okay. So there has been talk that maybe it only works with those using the Google messaging app for our C S, but I can't confirm that. Yeah. I don't think there's also article article here talking about the the US carriers are now starting to enable RCS for a fry phone on beta two. So something to take a look at to see if that that happens and if it becomes if it works for you. So other things that we've already been taught had been talked about is the home screen. The app store icon and the home screen have now a dark mode. We talked about all that. So they're going to be some new change. I'm not going to review that, but it is what we've talked about a couple of times now. Yeah, it's exciting just for that to be able to have some more custom customizations and colors. I know it's been a long time coming and I'm so glad we will have this on there in as well as widgets goes, you know, the new connected card wallet widget app does not appear. It says functional yet, but that's a that's going to be available and integrate with the wallet app to display total card balance and transition transaction histories in the United States. And actually it's actually working with the discover card this time looks like. So and we talked about the other stuff, the control center and the EU app. Of course, EU apps ecosystem changes, all kinds of discussions about that. So it's it's definitely a lot of changes and we'll keep talking about this here. So a couple other notable things I cut my eye to is iCloud iCloud's keeping keeps the downloaded option included in iOS 18 and I'm Mac OS as Sequoia. Apple has added a new keep downloaded option. And when you're browsing items in iCloud, allowing you users to designate which files and folders should remain permanently available on their local device. That's a long time coming. I think that's a nice and you want to keep a specific folder that's there and this is this is something that's very makes a little more efficient because, you know, a lot of times are going into files into iCloud just trying to find stuff and you want to have a folder that's that sets permanent, you might be something that you're working with all the time. Whether it's iOS or iPadOS, for that matter, you know, if you guys use this at all, I mean, as far as a files goes, you find that to be frustrating when you don't have a way to pin this, like you're going to be able to here on beta. Yeah, absolutely. I sat in the dark during our tornado warning for three and a half hours wanting to have my files that I couldn't get access to because they're all iCloud. So, yes. How about you, Marty? I found this on Sequoia as I loaded the beta on there. And after loading the beta, all the files that I had on my desktop got changed to un-downloaded folders, or I should say all the folders on my desktop. So I had to re-download those folders that I wanted. So I don't know if it's part of the beta upgrade that forced that, but it was just a little glitch that I saw in the process. Mm-hmm. Yep. So, yeah, it's something that's really interesting to see where that goes. I think it's definitely going to be a nice advantage of being able to browse your iCloud. The other thing I want to talk about is AirPods. They are bringing five of these new features to the AirPods. The first one was head gestures, where you can add allow users to control AirPods hands-free without even saying a word. You can nod your head or up and down or shake it left and right in order to answer or decline a call, which I think is pretty cool. S-lady's interactions will also allow you to answer or dismiss calls, interact with messages, manage notifications without even speaking. It does have voice isolation that's going to be available here. So it gives you the voice to be clear when you're speaking to somebody. That's huge because we always complain like we try to use our AirPods especially when we're on Zoom or want to use it for that. I know this is going to be a great thing on iOS. I wish they would get that in Mac OS too because a lot of times this mic doesn't sound very good, I think Jeff and the many you can test that with AirPods, right? So they also added personalized spatial audio for gaming, so what it's going to do is dynamic head tracking will be available for the gaming across the AirPods, 3rd Gen and the Pro and the Macs and the Pro 2, of course, and when you're using AirPods throwout, gamers will now have the best wireless audio latency that's ever delivered for mobile gaming. It will also enjoy improved voice quality included 16-bit and 48 kilohertz audio when chatting with teammates. So 3rd Hanson that with gaming, that looks like some serious stuff Apple doing with gaming here now. And the granular adaptive audio control in the second gen AirPods Pro and what that'll do is adjust sounds and active noise cancellation response to changes in your environment. And now the adaptive audio is just an all or nothing setting and the iOS 18 is going to change it to a customized audio adaptive audio, which is nice. Any comments on that? I noticed that there was also a firmware upgrade for the iPods and so I played around with that today trying to see if I could generate them and I'm still on the old version of the firmware. I haven't checked it in a while, but I have kept my iPods plugged in, which it says it needs to be plugged in for the firmware to update. Again, I haven't seen the I haven't had the chance to experience these yet on the beta. So I don't know if they are actually out or what portion of them are out from the five things that are they're talking about in the article. Yeah, it's still pretty new. So it's definitely going to be different and we'll find out as things go here. That's why it's beta and then not everything is going to be ready for you right off the bat here. Talk about the podcast app a little app a little bit. They're not going to show chapter segments when you're scrubbing in iOS 18. That's awesome. Ben is cheering here that you'll now show chapter segments of a podcast when you scrub through a current play playing episode making easier to browse through the audio content. I was always in nuisance. It was spotted actually by a Reddit what Reddit or they called him and navigating the timeline across the chapter segments showed the chapter name above the line. So this is exciting. I mean, everybody has a love hate relationship with Apple podcast, but I think this looks like they're doing some more enhancements. You got excited about that, Ben? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it makes stuff either defined, especially somehow that things get reset. It's just one of those things that I think's been available in other apps for a while. And they're finally making the Apple podcast app more feature felt. Yeah. That's really important. They're finally doing that. You guys used to podcast that, but all you did is anything that that excites you. I'm glad to see they're doing it. I remember when they think they disallowed other podcast apps from being in the store because they already have one and it's perfect and it wasn't perfect. And I'm glad to see them really upping the game because I might go back if it gets there. But right now I'm using overcast. But if it keeps going in the direction it is. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's it's definitely going to be something to contend with it because I guess that some people are not too overly excited about Apple podcast when some are so this is a thank you. This is good. Let me go ahead. I can't say overly excited about Apple podcast. It is the podcast client that I use the most even though I've played around and with overcast and all the other podcast apps that are out there because I'm curious. This is advancing sort of at the speed that works for me. So they added in transcription, which I thought was incredible and and very good from an educational standpoint, I get requests for transcriptions of my podcasts because institutions can't put them on unless they have accessibility features. So the transcription pieces is really good. And now this scrubbing, yeah, I like I like that idea. It's not as advanced as some of the other podcast apps, but it's moving along at my speed. So I haven't, you know, I go and have a make an attempt at some other podcast clients, particularly when I'm traveling or going in the car with, you know, on long car trips. But I come back to the Apple podcast app because of my familiarity with it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Let's talk a little bit about the journal app. Anybody here use the Apple's journal app at all? Have they tried it? You know, maybe if it was on a platform where it made sense for journaling, sure. But no, tell us what you're doing. And that's a good question. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Oh, no, I do use it. I'm trying to because I just found journaling, so cumbersome and somehow having it on my iPhone where it says, Hey, you were at this restaurant last week or you did this or you did that and reminding me, I like it. I am excited to see more features come because I think that's, you know, it's just a very thin journal app, but I like where it's going again and I'm hoping it gets more features. It looks like it's going to, including expanding the rich text formatting, which is nice. You'll be able to do some more or rich text. I need. I want to try it more. I mean, I'm a big Apple notes user and I'm so I'm sure all of us here are or some of us, most of us does audio transcripts. So you can actually, you can actually view transcripts of a recorded audio, right? Or from within journaling and so if you record, record something, the search and sort tools are going to be available as well, more and more in advance for photos, videos, music and podcasts, activity, places and then only text, then widgets for your home screen and the lock screen, including audio recordings of photos, which is nice. So yeah, they've done some good enhancements on this tool. And like I said, not all of us use it and I don't think it's got a lot of traction. You don't see here a lot of people talk about, like, just like Jeff's experience, he doesn't think it's something that's going to be fit in his journaling means. So. Yeah. And I get that that I'm just a little prima Donna. Yeah. But you're not wrong, the iPad's a perfect place for another place is a perfect place for it and it just needs to be other places. Yeah. For me, journaling, even with the automated parts that come with this app, it's something where I want to have my full keyboard. Right. So. Right. I can like really write and that's not, excuse me, that's not how the iPhone journaling app is really set up. Right. Yep. Yeah, I have a big, I have big fat fingers and I need a big fat keyboard. And so journaling on an iPhone, even on an iPad, I think, will all with the keyboard more so. But I just can't do it on iOS. Yeah. As I said, interesting line, it hasn't come, they haven't brought it to the iPad just yet, which I'm surprised that I think it might, might need to happen. I'm not surprised. I mean, we still don't have the classical music app integrated about that. Well, it's, I mean, it's on an iPhone and iPad now, but it's still not on Mac. Oh, that's right. That's right. And that's where my DAC is, where I want to have the best audio quality at anyhow. There you go. Yeah. I'm just kind of ranty. Sorry about that. Yeah. Apple's doctor enough taking the platform or something that makes the most sense and forgetting about it. Yeah. That's so Apple. Yeah. I have a diary app and I know it's stealing my data left and right, you know, because it does the same thing. Because though you were here, you were there and I'm moving out of that and moving into this one because I feel like Apple's not stealing my data, but it was nice because I went to some field in the middle of nowhere and it says, do you want to recollect about your time in this field? And I was like, yes, I do. That's awesome. Because it knew where I was and it knew more about me. So, and I think AI, I'm hoping it's going to even make it better. So that's, that's not a feature that's actually people actually spying on you. Right. Hey, following you around, yeah, be glad it wasn't the field where you were bearing the body. Well, it totally was. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, and a bird watched afterwards. So it's fine. Okay. Well, yes. For the right prize, we will not tell the cops. The interesting thing that was caught here is iOS 18 past the passwords app can't import passwords, but Mac OS can. So the new password app does come with every password ever saved in Safari, but only Mac, the only Mac OS, so clear conversion can import new ones from a third party app. Apple made a point of saying that it's spent 25 years working on securing passwords for users, but still users of its new passwords app may be surprised of this result. And passwords do not open without any password for passwords that that doesn't not does not open without any passwords. It instead has everything ever saved in Safari, which can be hundreds, not thousands of login passwords. It contains Wi-Fi login passwords, which you can go back for years, places by the routers and then you don't even have any of that in years. So it's kind of a shame. So that this kind of tells me that this is a bit of a work of progress. So what do you think on this, Jeff? This is something that's totally a work in progress. And that's a way that this is not an app that is targeting replacing tools like one password, this is Apple doing one of the things that they do really well, which is give people a better tool. But if they need more than what that tool does, that's a third party opportunity. And we've seen that with all kinds of tools across Mac OS and iOS. So the fact that that right now we have this limited password import support, it's only on one platform and there's other limitations, people are encountering, it's okay. And as this matures, sure, some people are going to move to this in lieu of paying for a subscription for one password or one of the other password managers, it's okay. Yeah. Apple also, this was found too that iOS 18 will actually warn you when you're using a slow iPhone charger. It does include a couple notable changes in the iPhone battery health and charging settings and added more charging limit settings for iOS 15 users along with information about when you're using a little slow charger in the settings app, and on FiOS 18, that iPhone 15 users will see several options. That sets a charging limit to the charging section of the battery menu previously, Apple let you set it to 80% charging limits. But Apple now has added more granular options to set it to 85, 90, 95% at your choice now. But it also includes a new feature that I'll tell you if you're using a slow charger to recharge your iPhone, the settings app and choose the battery menu and look at the battery level graph, it'll actually actively charge with a slow charger. But now it's going to give you a warning that it's going to be really slow. That's kind of cool. But what do you think of this? I love it. It helps people, not only save their battery life, but tailor it to their own requirements. I mean, if there's someone that is out in the field for longer, you know, you might have to go up to 90, 95% charge. If you're someone who, you know, doesn't use the whole battery in the day, 80% might be fine. It just, like I said, it tailors to the user. Yep. How about you, Jeff? What Ben said. Yeah. Giving people that control is good. So the thing with giving you the warning when you're using a slow charger, that's great. And while I'm saying it's great, I'm also thinking shame on you, Apple. You should have included this feature in iOS already when you switched the lightning port to a USB-C port because most people don't know if they have a high speed or a slow speed charger, and then they complain when it doesn't seem like their phone is charging. And it was. It's just that they didn't have a high speed charger. So this should have been a thing that was there already, but overall, good. Okay. How about you, Marty? I'm on an annual upgrade with my iPhone, so I abuse the hell out of the battery. I have MagSafe chargers all over the house at my office. The only place I don't have one is my car, but I have a USB. So mine is always tight. The tank is always topped off on mine, which is, okay, lecture me on battery health, but it's going to be somebody else's problem, 365 days from now. And so yeah, I don't think too much about battery. It's only when I go to conferences, Mac stock, you might see that I have a MagSafe pack on the back of it because I'll probably be using using it more in those kind of situations, but generally I don't think or worry about power much. Do you, do you, Jill, think about power? Well, I'm traveling for sure because I got frustrated because I need my phone to be fully charged because I'm going to be out all day long. I'm not going to have access to anything and I need you to go all the way to the top. You know, I need you to go higher. So I'm excited about that, but I don't need the low power anymore because the last time I was on this podcast, you talked about a sale on some really great high power chargers and I replaced all my chargers. Nice. They're being passed. But yes, I do. I am excited about this because I do need my battery at times, not all the time charged up. Excellent. All right. Let's move to the next topic here. And Jeff and I were talking about this the other day about this contact key verification. What that is, it's a secure feature in iMessage that allows users to verify the identity of the person they're messaging with. Essentially, it adds an extra layer of encryption on top of the existing iMessage encryption. Think of it like a digital handshake. You can contact and exchange unique codes to confirm you're really talking to each other. And it's not an imposter. And Jeff, what sure could you do to take a look at this because I completely forgot about this. I didn't talk about too much, but I checked out on Google, didn't look on YouTube. There's a lot of people did some videos on them, but yeah, this is a pretty nifty feature. It's a cool feature and the way I keyed in on it is absolutely horrible because Apple failed in this respect. What happened was I was in a conversation with someone and they had sent me a couple screenshots and I didn't want to scroll through my entire list of messages to go back and find them. So I tapped on the info thing for the conversation with that person so I could see the group of all the images they had ever sent me. And I scored a little too far and I see the thing about doing the contact key verification for that person. I forgot all about this thing and so that's what sent me down that path, which is ultimately why I reached out to you because I figured you would be game to walk through the whole thing with me and that was awesome. Marty, have you tried this feature at all and have you got anybody in your message context like this using this? No, you don't know, not that I'm aware of. I mean, this is this show is the first opportunity I've heard to hear about this. So yeah, this is going to be this is going to be what I'm going to play with next. So what we have to do to get it to work right initially after I enabled it was power cycle my phone. Yep. Same here. But when I turned it on on my phone, it was it was instantly active on all my devices, including my iPad mini that's running iOS 18 beta or iPad OS 18 beta and and the only true problem I had with it was a user error and but I mean, it was easy to set up. It was easy to do when Dave and I did it. So the way it works is once you've turned it on, go back into the conversation with that person and they need to have it turned on as well. They need to be in the conversation. They need to be looking at the info section for the conversation just like you. Then you can tap thing for verify contact key and it and then there'll be this code that appears. And so now the other person can verify, yes, this is the code that I'm seeing and then you can tap the little button that says it's been verified. Now what I would recommend that you do if you want to be super safe and secure with this so you really know it's that person, either be on the phone with them while you do this or be in person and do it while you're together. And that way you're eliminating the possibility that someone else has taken the phone and they're just telling you they're that person and somebody verified them. And now this rogue government from somewhere in the world is ruining your life. Yeah. And you've just taught me how to handle all my illegal activities to make sure that it's only. I'm not talking to the cops. I've got your back. Have you tried this? Have you seen this still at all? No. But I've been reading about it. Yeah, you should be a web security person for a company. And so I was reading up about this because I think Apple is consistently ahead of the game on trying to keep people away from impersonating, spoofing. And so I'm glad to see it and I'm glad it worked for you guys. I'm getting a lot of us will be setting this up with each other at max stock just because we're all together. Yeah. Because we just talked about it. Right. A way to get to it. And I've got a link to the support article actually from Apple, which is really written well. It gives you a lot of direction on how to work with this. You go into the settings app under system settings, or I'm sorry, settings app system tabs. And you can do this on the Mac as well. And then you select your name and then you scroll down at the very bottom and there's going to be a choice down there called the contact key verification. And once you go in there, you're going to get your public key and you have to get that key sent over to the person that you want to make secure. And we went through this and there's ways of doing it manly as well. And there's a public, you can share your public verification code with somebody and then you can add it. And it's kind of like what the X does when they have their, the big thing about your verified. Well, yeah. If Jeff and I look at each other's name at the top, we got the little check mark next to our names now because we're now verified. And the difference is we didn't have to pay for this. And it's now we didn't. And we didn't. We didn't. Ben, have you, have you tried this too? I, I have it on, but I haven't tried it. Okay. Well, so we got some exercise here that between, between all of us, we have to do it. Let's just, you have right now live here, uh, and, and there's places where you can check this, this, check the verification status in the, in the conversation details. But yeah, check this, the support article here. This is going to really give a good, good idea of here going, going through this, these steps and getting it done. I am not going to do a lot of it because we got to keep a show going here. Yeah, you keep the show going and, uh, and, and okay. So now Ben, I'm in, in our chat, I'm going to go into, there we go. So verify contacts. So if you're in the info for our chat, when I type verify contact and it didn't work, I don't think you were in yet. This is making for fabulous. Yes. Yeah, I was going to say, like probably need to move on here. Yeah. Later. Uh, so, uh, yeah, I will, well, I'll do it. Also I want to talk a little bit about Mac OS six Sequoia beta two. As we talked about it, it did, it did enable iPhone mirroring support. I can't wait to try it. And Ben, why don't you give us a little more background of what your experience was so far with iPhone mirror? I said you're doing it right now, right? Yeah. I mean, literally I am, I have the, the messages app on my phone open. It works 90% of the way, but there is one major, major bug so far. Okay. It doesn't pick up input from the space bar on your keyboard. Oh, that could be a problem. Yeah. That's an issue. Yeah. But once, once that is fixed and is out of beta and available for the people who are not dumb, this is going to be a game changer feature. Yeah. Why did you try to? No, I haven't tried it. My work computer that I'm on right now, I don't have set up with Sequoia yet. So I'll have to try it on one of my laptops. Okay. And July, no, you don't dabble in this in Mac beta just yet, right? Mac betas are okay because you can set up the second machine, right? That's true. That won't affect your main machine. And so I will try it. I just because of this little conference coming up, I've been a little tied up, but I will try it after the conference. Just a little conference. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. But yeah, I will do it. But something to the side, I got really excited about this, this feature when it was announced, oh, I was like, ah, this is awesome. We're going to be able to do a full control and then doing presentations is going to make it so much easier too, because you're a full control of your iPhone and be able to demo it. So, but this is just amazing. We didn't touch about this a little bit earlier, but I'm going to talk about it. I want to mention it again here is about the AirPods, AirPods and the Beats firmware upgrades had that did address some important security issue, which is unusual because usually when there are AirPods updates, they say we don't know what's up being updated and you just got to do it. So they offer still few details of what was available, but there was a separate support document outlining a security fix that added firmware updates, the AirPods AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, the PowerBeats Pro and the Beats Fit Pro. It's saying a security issue that could have allowed an attacker with Bluetooth range to spoof the details of the device you previously connected your headphones to, allowing the attacker to gain access to your headphones. So, they're not going to be doing it, be able to do much with that. I'm curious. I'm guessing that's step one to taking more control over your device. Yeah. So using the AirPods as a weak point to get into your iPhone or iPad. Or you could just mess with somebody's head while listening to you could bring in your own voice of God. This is just the old man in the middle attack, wasn't it? That was announced with Bluetooth ages ago, or is this a different, I think it's the same. It might be the same attack, yeah. I thought this was different, but don't quote me on that. Yeah. But yeah, messing with someone is for sure listening to a call, maybe you're not supposed to hear. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting because I said Apple doesn't tend to announce much of that when it comes to AirPods updates, all the other than to say, "Oh, it'll eventually get up to you." I was like, "Okay." Apple did release a new Beats Pill Bluetooth speaker. It's making a comeback. It was with improved sound, water resistance, and I thought it was at a lower price tag. This was launched back in 2012, I mean, before Apple even purchased acquired Beats. And the Beats Pill shook up the portable Bluetooth speaker category with fun colors, well-regarded sound quality. The speaker got an upgrade in 2015, the launch of the Pill Plus under the Apple's ownership. But over time, it appeared to have become an afterthought for Beats compared to the headphones and earphones. And the Pill Plus was eventually discontinued back in 2022. But after several months of teasing, they officially announced the return of the Beats Pill today with a host of upgrades at a lower price point, $149.99. The new Pill features a completely redesigned speaker system consisting of a single tweeter, and a single racetrack woofer, and a removable lanyard USB-C, which is good, and Bluetooth. And 24 hours of battery life, and it's also water resistant to the IP67, comes in some different colors. I know, Ben, you're a big Beats fan. You've got a Beats earbuds, what do you think of this? I had too many expectations for this product. I mean, what it is, is what it advertised, a upgraded Bluetooth speaker, an updated version of the original Pill with better features, and all that jazz. What I was hoping for, essentially a Beats branded competitor to the Rome 2, which this is not. It's very good for what it is. I mean, you have all the features that are in modern Beats headphones. You have the ability to do either kind of that louder mode or stereo mode. So it's a definite upgrade if you're still holding on to a Beats or a pill or pill plus. If you're waiting for Beats to finally come around on that AirPlay 2 promise that Apple made how many years ago? This ain't it. Yeah. Seriously. Wow! The huge loss. What do you think, Jeff? I was thinking, yeah, this seems like a nice thing to bring back in the product. If it doesn't even do AirPlay 2 yet, maybe Apple should contact the company that makes AirPlay 2 to get engineering support to add this to your product. Yeah. I mean, come on, Apple. What's the deal with this? How about you, Martin? It's got a new lanyard, you know. That's important. Okay. There is that. That is important. Jill, do you have any kind of these kind of speakers that you use? I got myself involved in the Sonos world and over the course of luckily before they got too terribly expensive way back in the day. But first of all, I want to banish all outdoor speakers because they bring them to my little prairies that I go hiking in and they're all listening to everything out loud. So I will banish all out loud speakers. Okay. These have all gotten so expensive that it is kind of nice to see something come in at a lower price point for some people who I want to beat up at the campground. So I think this is going to be-- Yes. Beat them up. I'm going to take their pill. I'm going to take their pill. So yeah. Check it out. It's going to be a little competitor. I bet Apple will solve a ton of them because just the price point alone makes a difference. I think it's for a market that I'm not part of. I think it's a younger generation market. Most of us. It's all they see. It's affordable. It's like, ah, it's a nice little thing I could pick it on the go. Those are the ones that want to carry their music out to where Jill is so she can beat them up. Mm-hmm. Yeah. How people buy those JBL portable speakers that are out there, some number of others. I think that's the class of what this speaker is. Hi. Can you turn that down? I'm seven miles away and I can hear your music. Thank you. I'm sorry. Oh. Speak louder. I can't hear you over my music. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. I'm going up to 11. In fact, where's that punk rock rock song from Star Trek 4? You know, there are other ways to make social commentaries instead of playing your music really loud. Yeah. Apple TV Plus, the shows and movies, there's, oh my gosh, there's so much great content on Apple TV Plus. We've been talking about this over a number of episodes. A lot of exclusive Apple originals and movies and it's all 4K HDR quality. You watch across all the screens on your devices, wherever you picked up and left off. You can get to it from each of your devices and it's exclusive right through the Apple TV app. And boy, it's for a 990 done in a month subscription, but of course I have a package in the Apple one. So I don't even think about it. It does. It does give you some great opportunities to watch some great content. The TV app is exclusive destination for that, but it gets a little confusing because it does blend in the purchase TV shows as well as movies from the iTunes store, whether you can buy a rent and it also has some Amazon Prime and Disney Plus and some of the Apple TV channels, but it's hard to distinguish what's free and what isn't. I mean, generally it's not free because it's some good content. So what should you really watch on Apple TV? I mean, it goes from TV shows to movies to sports and shorts and specials and also there's a lot of stuff that's coming soon. I can tell you one thing right now, which I'm really enjoying, is presumed innocent. I don't know if anybody starts watching that or not, but what an amazing show. It's really great and it actually takes place in Chicago and a very good show to check that out. You know, they've come up with a number of other shows like Land of Women that that's with Eva Gallegoria and it's a Spanish comedy drama and it looks kind of an interesting show and I don't have anybody taking a look at that one. Trying has come back and big cigar, which seems like an interesting show, the sort of a Hollywood and social overhaul, Hollywood producer and Dark Matter, has anybody seen Dark Matter? Yeah. That looks like a really good one. Yep. It's on the list, however, it just happened to come out in the same timeframe as the boys season three or season two or season three before I forget, but the new scene is at the new House of the Dragon season. Oh, yeah, yeah. The acolyte, really bad timing for a great series that I will be, I will be binging the whole thing in about three, in about a day once I actually get trying to watch it. I read the book and I liked the book and so I know, unfortunately, how it ends or how at least the book ended, but the thing that freaked me out is my grandmother lived in Chicago and they showed a post-apocalyptic scene of my grandmother's apartment, which I will never get out of my brain. Wow. I'm like, I'm going to have nightmares about this for weeks, but it's terrible, but I like the show and it's a good book too. Yeah. And I watch Franklin too. That's another good one. That was on. I was just mentioned. I got, I got to go. I want to finish watching that. And show. The other one, the other show I forgot about is the Big Door prize. Oh, that's with the Chris, Chris O'Dowd. I love Chris O'Dowd only because I remember it crowd. That was one of my, I think all of us working in the IT, it can, can relate to all amazing that show. It's like, I go back and watch those old episodes from time to time and say it's going back, but 10 or 15 years now, but how, how great that shows and he's, he's a great actor. Yeah. I got reintroduced to Apple TV Plus with the Vision Pro headset. And so then I started like going through series, Big Door prize was one of them, Manhunt, which if you haven't seen it, you need to see that show. It's great historic drama. I'm interested in that every month we get these new things that are coming out. And what's in this article, I'm kind of interested in seeing Sunny, which is, it looks like a thriller robot kind of combination thing. So there's always something new that will keep me adding into my query of things I need to, need to look at. Haven't seen presumed innocent yet because I'm so con, my head's so connected to the movie that I'm afraid it's just going to be an extended six, seven episode of the movie. But I'll take a look at it. But yeah, go, go check out Apple TV Plus. I keep, we always keep talking about it on this show and it's, it's well worth even, even to check it out. And I think they might, I don't know if they have a trial, I think you could try it for a short period. By an Apple thing. I'll give you one. Yeah. And then if you wanted to, if you like silly British humor, the completely made up adventures of Dick Turpin. Oh, that is wonderfully fun. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's some great, great stuff on there. It's worth highly work, highly recommend it. Foundation. That's another good one. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So check it out. We got a link here and show notes to the article that talked about all this and it's really great. Last thing I want to talk about here is we, Jill, you talk about your podcast app of choice. You like overcast, right? I really love pocket casts. It's probably one of my favorite apps that I use for, for, I've tried them all and I've done. I've written an article about all these, a podcast, podcast, podcast catchers and I've looked at all of them over the years and I've really just navigated right back to pocket casts. It's just a, just a, a really, really robust, great app. Well, I was very excited to see that they did, they did a complete overhaul. They do have a Mac version of pocket casts and I've never seen a really good podcast app besides Apple podcasts on the Mac. And this one, they really did some great cleaning up of the, of the app and I still, I see retro rewatch sitting right there waiting in my queue here and, and it's, it's, it's a really clean interface. You can go right to, right to the particular podcast you want to listen to and it brings right up. It shows all the art. It shows all the episodes. You can put them in folders. Like this one, I put in like all the Apple podcasts I listened to is in a folder. So I don't have to be thumbing through all of these, all those podcasts I already subscribed to. And you know, a lot of us probably just subscribe to the podcast and just, if it's there, it's something that you want to, you want to listen to you grab it and just like can't tell you if I have 80 or so podcast sitting in my library that I'm going to listen to half of those. So then you guys work use pocket casts. I think it's a great app. I try it now. It's like my podcast listening needs are so simple. It doesn't matter what app I use. Okay. Yeah. I've tried pretty much all of them. I just keep going back to Apple podcasts. Okay. It does what I needed to do. Right. Yeah. I'm in the same boat with Ben. I am such a short commute and what five minutes? Yeah. Five minutes. And so it's not a lot of long driving. Unless I'm driving back to Illinois on vacation or driving there to Mac stock, then I have opportunities to play around with different apps. But I know how to navigate Apple podcasts and it manages everything that I need. I'm sure I have a subscription to pocket gas. Right. Yeah. They just they enhance it to give you an enhancement and sports the sports developer, which is great. Okay. Well, I'll play with it now. I mean, I'll check it out. I think it's. I really like it. I really like it. So I'm a high customizer with many playlists and I want them to automatically update and I try pocketcast way back in version one. So it's time to give it this version to now. So we're going back and check it out. So before we go, I can't believe this. It is 14 days until Park Mac stock. We are all going to see each other. I'm sorry, Ben. But most of us will see us everybody will be will be seeing each other at Mac stock here 14 days on July 12th 13th and 14th in Crystal Lake, Illinois at the at the Huddian Convention Center. And we are going to have an absolute blast. There's some, I think Jeff speaking, I'm speaking, Marty is going to be speaking, Jill is going to be speaking, Chuck Joyner is going to be there. Allison Sheridan is going to be there. I can just keep going on and on. There's just so many amazing speakers going to be there. It's a great place, a network, a great place to meet new people, see friends, we'll all be giving group hugs to everybody when we see each other. I mean, it's just going to be just an amazing event. I'm really excited. I'm so glad to hear a lot of people are coming that I wasn't expecting it going to be there. We also get to meet Guy Serrell. He'll be there. There'll be just so many other folks that will be there, but church bus going to be speaking. So they're just amazing, amazing speakers and Dave Hamilton will be speaking and we've got all kinds of, Kelly, your mouth is going to be there. She's, I'm so excited. She's going to be there. I don't know if she's posted what her, that she post what her, what her, she's speaking about. Yeah, I don't know. No, I'm going to go look at the next website right now. No, she didn't. It isn't there yet. Did Chuck do it? That's the good question. Chuck. Let's see. Is there now? It is. Oh, there it is. You and you and Chuck are doing a tag team. That's great. It's going to be a lot of fun. Oh, yeah. You guys will too. You'll be doing great. I can't wait to see that. And I'll be talking about Apple services. I think I've got some good info on that. And Jill, you've got, what is your topic that you're going to be talking about? Organizing Bliss with Notion, right? With Notion. Yeah, but hopefully even if you're not using Notion, you'll take away some good ideas of what to store and how to store it. Yep. I'm excited. You're getting about that. Yeah, I'm excited about that, Jill, because yeah, because I have tried and tried and tried Notion and have not. So I'm interested in seeing what you're doing with it and maybe that'll inspire me to pick it up again. I'm doing a workshop on AI for 90 minutes and it's going to be just ways in which you can improve your productivity using it. And then I'm doing a presentation called Apple Whisperer, how to deal with all the demands people place on you for tech support. Oh, it's going to be so looking forward to that. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to work up a comedy routine on that. But you have two options available. You can go to the, you can get the weekend pass for just Saturday and Sunday if you aren't able to make it for the workshop, but I highly recommend coming to the workshops. This is a brand new thing for max stock, having these workshops on on Friday. Alison Sheridan is going to be doing workshops, Marty and I'm having a brain cramp. Mike is going to Mike Mike, yeah, both the mics will be doing it too. So come out, check us out. So one good thing is if because you're a viewer and listener of in touch with iOS, you actually can get a discount. So if you go once you're red, go register, all you have to do is go to the coupon code and put in one word in touch with iOS and you get $30 off of your, your ticket. So please use that offer code and you will be able to see us and all kinds of our friends. Meet new friends. So come out, check us out. It's going to be an absolute blast and I can't wait to, I can't wait to see it. Can't wait to see it. Can't wait to see everybody. Yeah. It's going to be here soon. That's what I'm saying. Um, but with that, let's go ahead and wrap things up for this week. And, uh, just a programming note, we're going to have a little bit of a delayed next week since it's the, uh, Independence Day holiday in the United States. So you'll probably have our show a little later than normally in the feed. So we're going to be recording probably on Saturday. So just, just give you that info ahead of time here. Uh, so that's a wrap for this week. Please send your comments, questions and suggestions to our email address, which is feedback@intouchableios.com. You can follow us on mastodon@intouchableios@techhangout.social support the show, buy me a coffee at intouchableios.com/coffee. We would really appreciate it. You can become a patron of the show by going to patreon.com/intouchableios. We have two tiers available to support the show. We would really appreciate it. Make sure you like, share and subscribe so you are notified when we are live streaming on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, 5 p.m. Pacific, on our YouTube channel, which is youtube.com/intouchableios. So it's great to see Brian in the chat and Cletus and Winter with her bucket was there. And so thanks for being in the chat this week. And we always enjoy when we have people there hanging out in the chat room here. So you also go to intouchableios.magazines on Flipboard where many of the topics we discussed are flipped into that magazine, the link is in our show notes. You can subscribe to the show and your favorite podcatcher including pocket casts, over casts, apple podcasts, many others. But better yet just go to our website intouchableios.com where all the links to all the ways to listen to us are on that website. I am Dave Ginsberg and you can find me on Macedon at DaveG65@massadon.cloud. Jill McKinney, thank you so much for being here, it's always a pleasure having you here. I have a blog called A Better Life, it starts with a letter A. A Better Life from smallsteps.com. All the podcasts are there and a new blog is coming next week that is my friend, Mature blog. You can find everything right there. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. I'm going to mix it up a little bit here. Thank you for being here, it's always a pleasure having you here on the show where people find you. Well, thank you for just being so patient and tolerant and continuing to let me join you. I do appreciate that. Okay, Jay Gamnet on social media, I am active on Macedon and Instagram and Threads. Then for shows, Chuck Joyner, Smackfusses Live on Tuesdays, here with Dave on Intouchable Live on Thursdays on the British Tech Network for The Big Show and then on Fridays for The Mac Show. Brian Chaffin and I do the Context Machine and Dave mentioned Retro Rewatch a minute ago. That's the new show that Patrice Brindomour and I are doing where we watch older TV shows that I should have seen that I haven't, that she has. So she rewatches, I watch for the first time and then we talk about the episodes, we're doing a Stargate issue right now. A lot of fun. Thank you, Jeff. Ben Rethik, thank you for being here. We always enjoy having you on the show here and where can we find you? Well Dave, you can find me at Ben Rethik on the plethora of social media sites out there. You can find my writings at rethiktech.com, I have brand new contact, brand new contents up there about WWDC and I'm going to be writing another here very quickly about the big arms coming of age on Intouchable. On Tuesdays, you can find me on Math Force Live with Mr. Chuck Joyner. On Thursday and Friday, you can find me again on the British Tech Network on the big hand match shows. Great. Thanks for being here. And Marty Gencius, always a pleasure having you on the show as well. Thank you for being here and where can people find you? There's lots of fun to be here. You can get ahold of me, Gencius, J-E-N-C-I-U-S at mastodon.social. I'm going to give you one link that finds them all or brings them together, ThePodTalk.net, which is a website I've set up and set up a while ago to include some of the podcasts that I've either helping other people produce, but the three podcasts that I'm active with right now, you can get the links from that simplethepodtalk.net. The three podcasts I've got going is the Vision Profiles, which I was told nobody wants to know about that product, which just made me want to do a podcast about it, and I'm having a great time doing that, good response and good reaction from people. So the tech savvy professor, which was started back in 2018 and kind of revived it in the last year, and the Circular Firing Squad, which is kind of a fun chat show. All right, thank you so much, Marty, and thank everybody here for listening and watching being in the YouTube channel, and we really enjoyed you in the show, and I hope you enjoy it. As I mentioned, we'll have a bit of a delay because of the 4th of July holiday in the United States, but we'll be back next week. We've got to keep the show going, make sure we give you some great stuff about Apple. It'll be pre-max-doc discussion because it'll be a week away, so until then, thanks for listening, thanks for watching, and we'll talk again soon. [music] [music] [music]
