 Welcome to MackeetGab, where we are going to express how happy we are because we truly live in a world of wonder where we can have multiple timers on our iPhones, at least starting in this fall, that and other announcements and our reactions to them from Apple's WWDC keynote today, this evening, later today because we already released an episode this morning, Monday, June 5th, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to MackeetGab Episode 985, the show where normally you send in all your questions and your tips and your cool stuff, found a feedback at mackeetgab.com. But today, we are hot on the heels of watching Apple's keynote, watching Apple's State of the Union and consuming a great deal of caffeine in the process, which you can probably already tell. And we've got lots to share with you, so we're going to share it here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton. Oh, look, I'm on screen. Hi, I'm Jeff Gammett, all the way from Boulder, Colorado. And here in Lee, New Hampshire, it's Pilot Pete. Oh, man, this is great, but boy, was that a marathon session or what? It was. So yeah, normally, Jeff, welcome to the show. Well, I thank you. It's always a treat to get to hang out with you and Pilot Pete. Yeah, welcome. I should say welcome back to the show. This is certainly not your first appearance here. I believe this is at least your third, if not fourth appearance here on MackeetGab. But who's counting? Certainly not me. I have not been counting. Yeah, same. I'm just doing it in my head. You mentioned that you were on video and you are. I will remind all of us that our audience is mostly on audio, so we just need to make sure that we do our level best to explain any of the things that we might be showing. That said, we have in the past and today will also give ourselves permission with these keynote reaction episodes to make them more video heavy than they than our normal episodes might be. But you can always watch the video at mackeetgab.com or mgg.fm slash 985. We'll get you right to this episode and the video will be right there. You can find it on YouTube or any of that stuff. So we are also not here to recap the entirety of the keynote. You can go watch it. There are lots of written recaps. If we were to recap everything and react, we'd be here for five hours. Well, you folks already know how long this is because you get to see how long it is. We don't yet know, but we're hoping to keep it at about an hour. Let's see how we do. New Macs were announced today. I'm excited about the new Mac last week. I know. Thank you, Pete. I'm excited about the the MacBook Air, the 15 inch air. That I'm I'm I need to go touch one to decide if I want it to be the thing that replaces a 13 inch M1 air that I have. But but I am excited about that. Did any thoughts from from you there on that one, Jeff? You know, when they announced it, I was like, oh, here's the computer that I was waiting for but didn't buy because I bought a 14 inch M2 MacBook Pro. So I needed to migrate from my my 16 inch Intel. Okay. And so I wanted to get them to you. Yeah. And and I almost got a MacBook Air and then decided, you know, as long as I'm spending the money, let's spend a little bit more and get all the stuff that comes with the the pro model. I'll go with the 14 inch. So it's a little bit smaller. I love my choice. Okay. But if I was making that choice today, it would be much more difficult to choose between that 14 inch MacBook Pro and this new 15 inch MacBook Air. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. 14 inch MacBook Pro. Which chip did you get in your 14 inch MacBook Pro, Jeff? The. Oh crap. What were our options? The Pro and the Max? Yeah, I believe that's right. Yep. Oh my God, I have to go look. I don't actually remember. All I know is I spent a lot of money. What? MacBook Pro 14 inch. So I have the I have the Pro, the M2 Pro. Okay. Great. So I am looking at the the the specs on the like the Apple creates a beautiful sort of highlight screen of this. And so looking at this, the comparison of the specs between the M2 15 inch MacBook Pro MacBook Air, which they announced today as well as the M2 13 inch MacBook Air that was available, say yesterday. And in terms of like horsepower, you're and by the way, your MacBook Pro beats these. Yes. Right. But in terms of horsepower, it's got the same eight core M2. It's got the same 10 core, the same 10 core graphics, the GPU chip. It's got the same 24 gigs of unified memory up to 24 gigs of unified memory, same storage capability, same 18 hours. It's really like in terms of the guts of it. It is the same thing, except it has this 15.3 inch screen as opposed to a 13 six, which gives you 2880 by 1864 pixels. So a little bit more. It is almost exactly the same thickness as the 13 inch air. But of course, it's what about an inch, maybe a little or an inch and a half wider and maybe an inch sort of taller. I mean, I don't know what Apple said. Apple says the depth is the from the bottom of the keyboard to the top of the keyboard, like from the bottom of the trackpad to the top of the keyboard. That's what they call depth. That's nine point three five. I don't know what we would call that. Like that's a weird measurement to use it. But it's a weird word to say, but so it's a clever way to make your computer sound smaller since you're not going from edge to edge. Yeah. No, no, you are going from edge to edge. That's what I'm saying. But it's like the word depth. I'm just trying to use it to describe because like the width of it, I like depth, I guess, because there's length and width. I don't know why you call that depth. But anyway, that's that's the word they use. But that that measurement across when you are sitting at it is nine point three five inches versus eight point four six. So it's, you know, an inch deeper and an inch and a half wider. So it's it's substantially larger form factor than it's 13 inch brother, which may obviously make sense space for the screen. You need space for the screen. That does allow them to fit two more speakers in. It's got six instead of four, which I suppose is is, you know, I mean, more is better. And the rest of it is basically the same. That's it. It's it's the. Yeah. Well, the whole thing, you know, it's three pounds. So that's nice. Yeah, it's a half pound more than the than the other one. Yeah, but it's definitely lighter than the pros. Carrying one of those around that, you know, that is what it is. The six speakers is great. And I'm glad to see that they've stuck with the MagSafe. I was so disappointed that they'd gone away from that. And I think MagSafe is a brilliant anti-damage. Yes. Do you use MagSafe on your on your new one, Pete? For the first time today, I have. For those that don't know, you can plug a USB-C into into your MacBook Pro Z port and it will charge the battery. Right. I started using the MagSafe today just because the only damage I have on my 13 inch MacBook Pro that's a year and a half old is a nick from when I managed to pull it off the table. Nice. USB cable attached to it. So. All right. So there's the there's the 15 inch air. I also got the Max Studio, which now has. Before you go, before you go, I get one other reason. I love the new air. Great. Because Debbie is on the market for a new MacBook and that brings the current ones down by a hundred bucks a piece. It does. And refurbs down even more than that, I would think. So there are some nice machines out there that are really smoking at really good prices now compared to what they were yesterday. Yep. No, it's this opens up a nice spot in the product line. There's there's also, as I said, the Max Studio now has M2 Max and Ultra. And finally, the transition to Apple Silicon, I will say is nearly complete. Apple said it's complete. And I don't like that because it means we aren't getting a large screen Apple Silicon iMac. Dave, we all have to learn to cope with disappointment at some point in our life. Yes, we do. Well, I've run Ventura on this computer. Of course, I've learned to cope with disappointment. But the the Apple Silicon Mac Pro is the Mac Pro is now Apple Silicon, if you want it to be. And it starts at about seven grand, just a dollar shy of seven grand, but no one's going to buy that one. So I saw somebody on Twitter spec that out fully all the way up to about 50 K. So, you know, oh my goodness, really. You know, considering the market that this computer is aimed at. Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, this isn't something that we buy to use at home. No, it's not. And the Max Studio solves the problem, at least in the product line of offering the prosumer Mac, if you will, for the home or the home office. Whereas this is the heavy duty Mac. There will still be some people that choose to buy it who need it. Obviously. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Any any thoughts? So all of the new Max are on the table for discussion here. What do we have to add before we move on to the new operating system? I've got an initial impression on it. Yeah. That was that, you know, they they upgraded the pro. I kind of expected that they would sideline the pro for good discontinue it. And so the pro almost seems superfluous considering you have a studio a low end studio for a pretty good price to what? I don't know. Yeah. I think to, well, I mean, your point, Jeff, is that the pro is for actual pros in, you know, design production studios and not many other people. Mm hmm. Yeah. When when Apple showed off the the new Mac Studio and they're showing off the processor and all of that. I I wondered has Apple tricked us and the Mac Pro has been in front of us all along. And what I was wondering is if they were going to say, so here's the Mac Studio. Now, here's how it becomes a Mac Pro. And then they show this add on thing that becomes like a click on module that gives you all the other expansion. And then you have a Mac Pro. And I mean, because the horsepower you have in the Mac Studio, it's it's it's a pro machine as far as functionality goes. Yes, just there's some other things that pro users need that go beyond the the limited hardware, you know, expansion that you get with the studio. Yeah. And so they wrap that up and I'm like, OK, so I was wrong. That's OK. But it was a fun idea. And then they start talking about the Mac Pro and they start and they're showing what they're doing with it. I'm like, I wasn't exactly completely wrong because basically that one box that's up in the corner is a Mac Studio without the studio case on it's just, you know, just that basically that same hardware. But then you have all this other expansion stuff that goes with it that really makes it a pro. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I like that idea. Obviously they went a different route, but that's I like it. They went the correct route. I think you're probably right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And then any. So now we have Mac OS Sonoma, which speaking of Dave's disappointments. Well, you know, I mean, Apple's going to Apple there. There are lots. They're going to upgrade their operating system every year. Yep. So we were hoping here on Mac eCab, I was hoping here on Mac eCab, Jeff, that Apple might go to an every other year cycle with Mac OS and in this year maybe do, you know, a snow ventura with bug fixes. Sure. I'd love that. Yeah. We all would. We don't get that. But we do. I mentioned it in the intro. Apple talked about it during iPad OS, but digging into stuff. We get multiple timers on every platform, including Mac OS. So Apple's all about innovation. That they are. Yeah. We truly live in a world of wonder. They're watch. That's right. Yep. We get widgets on the desktop, which like and and we get some of those widgets, like notification widgets that can come over via continuity from iOS. So that's going to be interesting, like more integration from that standpoint, which I like. Go ahead. Okay. I'll go. I heard you. I was going to let you finish. But at the same time, I was like, no, I have something to say. Yeah. So what you just mentioned, the widgets with the ability to have notifications or whatever from another device. Interactions. Interactions. This hits on what to me is the core feature for all the new OSs that Apple is rolling out this year and its interactivity and collaboration. So that's collaboration between your devices and collaboration with other people. Yes. To me, that's what these updates are. Yeah. You're right. And a big one is the video conferencing add-ons that they added to Mac OS, which I want to stress after having watched the platform State of the Union, which is sort of the keynote for developers ish. The video conferencing stuff is all API-driven meaning and in their demos, they weren't showing it with FaceTime. They were showing it with Zoom. So all of this stuff, there's this presenter overlay. There are, you can share multiple screens at once. You can share screens on your Mac with the, you know, the little green bubble that you never click on your Mac? Well, now you can click that. If you're in a video call, including a third party video call, you can choose to share that window in your active video call. So it's no more of this, how do I find it in this jumble of things that whatever video app I'm using, it's like, no, this is the one I want to share. So let me just say to share it. So, you know, that kind of stuff, I like that a lot. I think that's great. And the fact that they're not trying to tell us that we have to use FaceTime for all of this, they're adding these features to the OS and making them accessible to third party apps. I like, I love, I love that because it means they, like it's, it's great on the surface, but it also tells me that they are committed to the Mac. They're not, it's not just an afterthought. Yes. And doing the, the focus on Zoom or highlighting Zoom instead of FaceTime. Of course it's intentional because that's how Apple rolls. The message it sends isn't, you have to stay in our ecosystem to use our features. It's, we want to be a collaborative tool for everyone. Yes. There you go. And there you go. Yeah. By the same token, by having all these devices talk to each other in the way they do, seamlessly as they do, they're drawing everybody into their, well, as many people as they can into their ecosystem. Absolutely. That was brilliant. And once you're in, you're not leaving. Like cause it, cause it works so well. It's a commitment once you're in. Yeah. But it's a commitment you're okay with because it all works. Right. Usually. Well. Better than other places. Yes. Generally. So Safari on the Mac gets quite a few, but I think are really important features. Number one is profiles. I see that being super valuable. I was just showing somebody something the other day where they were like, oh, I have to log into a different Gmail account. I'm like, oh, are you in Chrome already? They're like, yeah. I'm like, okay, we'll just add another profile. And it was like their mind had not ever considered that that was a way of dealing with all that stuff. Right. And now you get profiles in Safari and you get to use them the same way. You can have your home profile. So I think that's great. We now get web apps. I wonder who you're talking about. Oh, and actually I wasn't, I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about our told me the same thing. You're absolutely right. About using StreamYard. I'm going to keep, you know, I do one show. I have to log out. I have to log back. Yeah. Code. Oh dude, just use profile. Duh. Yep. I totally forgot about that because I was talking to our friend Brian yesterday about profiles and it like blew his mind. Web apps. I am someone who uses a few web apps. Currently I use something called, I think I use Unite. There's two apps from BZG apps. One's called Unite that makes web apps out of Safari. One's called Coherence which makes them out of Chrome. Having web apps accessible is fantastic. For example, we have a Google doc that is our Mackie cab like show notes that we edit live during the show. I don't want to have to find that in a browser tab. So years ago I built a web app using Unite and I am able to launch it. It sits in my doc. I click on it. It comes up. It is a single app window. But it happens to be a website. All you have to do is drop a tab in your doc. That's it. And you're done. I know this does sure lock the folks at BZG apps and that's never great. It creates an opportunity for them to do something that goes beyond what Apple is offering. My guess is they already are doing things that go beyond what Apple is offering. So it is probably going to remain. It has always been a tool for power users because it is too complicated. Complicated is the wrong word. It is too outside the box for most people to think, I want that. Let me go find an app that is going to give me that functionality. Whereas now if it is inside the box and it is right there, I think more people will do this and then probably create that opportunity for BZG apps market to grow with all their little nuanced features. Don't question corner. I figured it out today but it was probably four or five times in discord. I had not seen the term before sure lock. Oh, so right. There was an app called sure lock that let you search your Mac. And this is a decade and a half ago, maybe more and then Apple because I've been here 16 years. So everybody used sure lock because you needed something. No. Apple's thing was Watson. Apple's thing was. Was it? Okay. So the app was no. It was called Watson. No. I forget. Honest. I thought. I don't even remember anymore. There was an app. I forget the name of it. Someone will write into feedback at Mac. Com and tell us questions. Skip that. No, it's not a dumb question. The there. There was an app that everyone used to search their Macs. And everybody had it because you needed it. And then in Mac OS eight. Thank you, Mark M. In our discord at live. Mac, he kept calm. Apple introduced the sure lock functionality in Mac OS eight, which completely negated the need for this very popular third party app. And so that's why we have adopted the term sure locking. And then Apple made sure lock and it it killed off the need for everyone to have the ubiquity of this other app. So yeah. Okay. So yeah, sure lock. My quick Google search. There was a different built-in search feature named sure lock named after the wait, never mind. That actually doesn't help at all. Yeah. Yeah, I forget what that I forget what the app's name was, but the app was not sure lock. It was Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, somebody will help us and get there at some point. But anyway, we will move on. So web apps and then and this goes to every every device with the new software. We get to share iCloud key chain passwords and and pass keys with a group of people if you would like, which sure locks parts of one password because that's one of the main reasons that people have used one password is because of that. All right. Cause that one stumped me. I'm like, isn't that the point of a password that the other people can't get? No. Like there's passwords. But yeah, I get it. There's passwords. Family vault and a private or a business vault. Right. Yeah. So that it doesn't really sure lock a feature in one password because it's like so many of these things where Apple gives us a little bit. So if it's something you need, it's there. But if it's something that you need where you really need it and it and it needs to be something beyond just this very basic thing. Yeah. Then then third party apps step in like key chain did not sure lock one password and the app that that first got sure locked was called Watson. Wow. It. Wow. Okay. So they know exactly software. Yeah, that's it. Right. Thank you. I have one more feature in Mac OS that was not announced in the keynote. You know that wonderful thing that we do when or that we get to do when a two factor code is sent to us via SMS and it just auto fills right there in Safari. Sometimes. Right. Most times. It will look for those same codes in mail on all your devices. Not just not just on Mac but but you know iOS and iPad OS get this too. So yeah, I know that's it's a little bit handy. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. It's good. Be made obsolete. Obsoleted by past keys. Yeah. Well, eventually. Not everything. Yes. It will get there. And then the one last thing I believe that I have in the not announced during the keynote list for Mac OS Sonoma is that it adds and I think again this is across all the platforms visual lookup and Apple's description is find recipes for similar dishes just by using a photo. Lookup information on an object that appears either in a picture or in a paused video frame so you can pause a video and say find me more things like whatever is on the screen. So however you choose to use that is up to you. And there is there is a sensitive content warning now that will block you from having to see images that are sent to you that on device your device decides has nudity and and other sort of trigger warning things in them. Sorry. You're going to have to let me know you're sending me those photos first. Okay. That's a little creepy. Is it is it time to move on other quickly and the widgets that fade you know they're there but they fade nicely into the background. Yep. That's distracting. A lot of thought went into that. I agree. I love what they're doing with the widgets and I love the idea of using them and I know me. It is not a feature I'm going back. Yep. Yeah. There's there's a lot of distraction potential there. Yeah. Yeah. Well they used to be a lot more prominent and interactive. Not so many OSs ago back in Tiger and Lion. And then they just kind of faded off into the. Yeah. They went away and then they came back and now they're trying to find a way to bring them back. No you're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. All right. So we all knew it was coming. So we ended up using the phrase one more thing which I don't believe we've seen since Steve passed away. Apple Watch. It was the Apple Watch. Okay. I wonder. Yes. Right. The Apple Watch got a one more thing. Right. That's right. Okay. Thank you. As those words were coming out of my mouth I was thinking wait a minute. No I was sitting there in the you know in the room where that happened. Yeah. Yeah. It was an awful cell service or something. There was some server outage that day that we had at Mac Observer or something. Everybody. You were using. Everybody has. Yeah. Yeah. There was some anyway. They used it when they today when they announced the the Vision Pro the Apple Vision Pro which is as they call it their spatial computing headset. Thoughts Jeff. This is some crazy fracking technology regardless of whether or not this is something you're interested in using personally as they say holy forking shirt balls what what they showed off. It's. You know I watering cool. When when Zuckerberg did the the new meta headset announcement a few days ago to get out in front of Apple's news. What he probably learned today in retrospect is that he should have just kept his mouth shut and not said anything about this this cheapo headset that they're designing. And I say cheapo because the selling point on that product it's not the features it's the price point. Right. But with apples it's the features and that I think they're doing an amazing job if this does everything as well as they're claiming this does an amazing job of getting beyond the I'm completely isolated when I put my headset on so that you can have a sort of mixed reality environment but you can control that level and so I can completely immerse in a movie or project I'm working on but then dial it back literally so I can see to go and get a snack out of the fridge. Right. What I likened it to when I was talking to my sister earlier tonight was it's like wearing ski goggles. I mean my hope was that this was going to be something that would work with my glasses. Okay. We don't have that technology yet. I bet in 10 years a pair of glasses will do it. Maybe yeah maybe 20. But I was like oh man I really hope that they don't have this big heavy plastic solid thing and the brilliance that they've put into this the thought of it's like looking at ski goggles. Now obviously it's projected onto the screen. It's not a clear lens but they make it look like a translucent lens that you're looking at somebody's face. You're looking at their eyes so if someone winks you can see one eye closed and it's like a video of their face underneath there. It's so cool. I mean it just the thought that went into it. They also did something that I haven't seen any of these other VR headset makers do which is genuinely address vision issues. I have never found a VR headset that I like or can wear then more than just a few minutes because I have to wear glasses with them which smashes my glasses into my face which screws up the focal distance and then it hurts and if I take my glasses off there's no way to get the image in focus even though it's close to my face and what Apple did was they designed it so that you have control over that distance between your pupils with the lenses and you can put prescription lenses in these things. I found it very interesting that the word reality was either never used or if it was used it was used in passing. In fact I didn't hear the word reality come out of an Apple employee's mouth during the announcements today until they started talking about reality kit during the State of the Union. The term they use I think the reality distortion field has eroded enough that I'm confident saying what I'm about to say. I think spatial computing is the right term to use for what they showed us today. This is it's not the virtual reality gimmicky stuff. It's it's not even what we have in my opinion what we have seen as augmented reality. It's you are using your computer in this way not you are interacting with your environment with this like extra thing on this is this is your computer or a computer just like your phone is a computer that you have your Mac is a computer that you have this for the people that will have it is another computer that they will have we will have that you interact with in its native way but it's not the the lens on your environment it is another way of interacting I think there's people who will have this that maybe would have a MacBook and an external monitor and won't buy the external monitor but they also won't buy a 60 inch TV for their apartment especially somebody who lives alone right like yeah it remains to be seen how this works with multiple people and like like all of that but they will for a while as long as you can get a 60 inch TV for under $500 well yeah there's that sure gonna buy a whole family $3,500 headsets no but if you're if you're in a studio apartment and it's just you yes you know is there a world where this makes more sense or or if you are someone who spends a great deal of your life on airplanes or whatever think about it you have you know the smallest MacBook Air that you can get or an iPad and then this thing is your screen on an airplane in a hotel room wherever you are in your space you're not space constrained so I like this idea of spatial computing with computing being the focus of what you are using this device for yes sure we I mean we use our computing devices for entertainment as well and that's certainly part of this but it's I don't know like that that was the part of this that really obviously struck struck me yeah I'm with you when when they were going through the demo or going through all the features and showing stuff off they they got to the point where they took us into that design studio and showed it being used there and when they hit that that was the point where where I really felt like I found a solid legit use case yeah because up until that it was just as really fracking cool technology but being able to have your your business workspace where it takes up as much space as you need in your face but not in your real world and that and I was looking at it thinking the same thing you said which is you have your laptop and you have this but you don't have a big display right and I was looking at my desk thinking I've got this 34 inch wide curved display right here if that went away my whole desk really opens up and I can sit here and work and have a much bigger screen than I do right now especially when they show the part where it just threw the screen from your laptop up in front of your face and then make it bigger like bigger yep I and think about you know people who work in either your cubicles or even open space environments where again where space is at a premium you can be with other people you can collaborate with other people I think certainly this is not the first this is not the last of these that we will see I think you know there will be other vendors who probably much less expensively create something that approximates bits and pieces of this but maybe not the entire feature set of it but that like if you're going to outfit an office of 20 people and you're like break I don't want to buy the monitors but let's do let's do this type of thing and and get there as long as it's like you said the point is for the key is how smooth will it be the price the price point at 3499 my first thought well they said 3499 and you can't get it until next year right okay great can't even place a pre-order my guess like we saw with the original iPhone there will be more features it will get better the battery life they say is two hours if you've got the little battery pack or whatever it's definitely going to be four or five hours they're going to say oh we figured out a way to make it more efficient and it's going to be less than 3499 that's my prediction obviously I have no insight knowledge I also and I can't take credit for this next bit but I eventually will take credit for it but not today so somebody I think it was unmasked on saying you know they called this the Apple vision pro doesn't that mean that we will eventually have Apple vision air that does some subset of these features right for a lower price you know yada yada yada yep so that's like I was thinking the same thing and I think the other thing that's going to be cool about this excuse me the augmented reality and not to be nitpicky I they I know they use the term AR if they didn't use augmented reality I remember them saying AR but because they were talking about being able to hand things back and forth and sure in your room and seeing people interacting but the thing that I see huge potential for is is training be it flight training yeah surgeons training mechanics training anybody on anything where you know it's expensive to go work on a jet engine or get a donated jet engine at your school you know you don't need one right you know that sort of thing it's expensive to get well could average there are probably expensive too but it's expensive to have people come in and volunteer to be operating on an open art surgery yeah I don't need it yeah fair and this I'm amazed at where this is going to go this does they showed it working with or they said it would work with a keyboard and a mouse for those use cases they showed it being used with a traditional game controller and I like it works and I like I and then of course you know hand gestures one thing that was described in the state of the union is that you can I think it was either an AR kit or reality kit that allows you developers not us as users but developers can create custom hand gestures to use in their app so there will be the the you know sort of system-wide gestures that work all throughout vision pro but if you have a specific thing that your app needs people to be able to do you can create your own custom gestures for them to do with their hands in your app so I thought that was pretty that was pretty cool too yeah yeah you're going to be able to have conversations with people across the world as if they're go ahead Pete you go first I'm sorry yeah so as you're saying you're going to be able to have conversations with people across the world yes sitting right in the room with you things like that so you said that in our our discord chat during the thing and I had about a minute prior to that had a thought the way you FaceTime with this it obviously it well maybe not obviously it can't see your face and Apple explained all I mean it sees enough of your face to get your your like eye gestures and things like that but it doesn't have a camera on your face that someone on a FaceTime call could see so it builds I forget what they call a digital persona of you you scan your face with the thing and right and that's all fine and good and great and that allows you to have that that you know meaningful conversation with somebody who's you know on the other side of the world or something who was also wearing one of these it also opens up the opportunity for you to have a meaningful conversation with someone who is no longer alive yes I hadn't thought about that with this was a huge a huge thing at CES right people capturing I think it was also called digital personas of of you know themselves or relatives before they pass away and they're including their voices and their mannerisms and all of that stuff and you know in a few thousand words and right make your own Tasha you're you can make your own Tasha you're there you go there you go I think that has real potential for evil though oh I didn't say it I shared the idea good and evil that's right I have no evil potential you know mom really want you to sell her house now that look she said so man oh man oh man oh man yeah just saying okay yeah we got to go we got to move on here because the other way I don't need to be the head show iOS 17 so wait they have to do iOS today they did one of my favorite things that they mentioned during the iOS announcement I'm sure we get it on all platforms again is search filters in messages like we have in mail so that although we were complaining on this morning's episode that mail search filters just a very day are very confusing to like actually get it to stick with criteria set number one and then you know move on to criteria set number two but being able to have those in messages is better than not having them in messages and maybe just maybe by having them in messages someone will decide at Apple will decide hey we need to make these work a little more intuitively so maybe they get better we can live in hope you know like like Craig Federighi says we truly live in a world of wonder with those multiple timers and maybe we can add more intuitive mail and message filters to you know the fact that they took the time in the keynote to point out multiple timers I feel like somebody listens to this show yeah it's I mean there are so many things that they could have highlighted and then just put this on the slide yep and not mentioned and it would have been totally fine I don't know it's ridiculous that the only place you get multiple timers right currently right now is with Apple watch because you can do multiple timers there you can't do them on any of others with Apple's native apps on any other platform you can do it with the S-Lady on HomePod writes ah dang it I knew it yep yeah I don't have HomePod I you know such a Sonos house it wrong again Dave you it's it's okay Dave because I'm finding HomePod to be incredibly frustrating oh good I don't need that in my life pick me I know why go pilot lady she they better catcher they didn't talk much they didn't talk any improvement there and they will figure that out fast the I had a after we got through everything but I'll put it in now I had a question to ask all of us what well and I it came from I believe it was Mark M. in our in our discord discord thank you at Mackie Cub dot com slash discord he asked where was AI today there was no mention of AI in in in terms of AI certainly there are things Apple does that use machine learning neural networks the the the building blocks of AI we could call different pieces of AI but there's no there I mean in the developer state of the union they started by talking about swift macros which sort of like write some code for you in your projects so there was this that it was sort of there but they never said it's like you know it's like a GitHub co-pilot it writes your code for you like AI there was no mention of AI and I I can understand why Apple would choose to stay out of saying anything using the term AI and I also think it's a huge mistake because Siri sucks compared to the other assistance and unless and it's gonna that that delta is gonna get that gap is gonna get wider if if they don't get on the AI bandwagon with Siri I mean it's already using some version of AI like some like obviously but it's not a good one you know considering 10 years ago right she's amazing just amazing but compared to Google assistant or the Amazon a lady no just not even not even in the same ballpark no it's it's very frustrating because we all grew up with with captain Kirk and captain Picard talking to the computer and it just it's so we have an expectation and and what I think Apple is doing is taking a very different approach to AI than say what what well what we want companies are doing yeah but what we expect what we expect yes and and then that's currently being compounded by the fact that that open AI and and other companies in that same space are rolling out large language models and telling us it's a I right and it's creating this expectation that's completely wrong and and people are expecting that Apple should have an LLM running on on the home pod and when you say something then it responds back like a human and and they're conflating this whole artificial intelligence with large language model and and it's creating this hot mess of confusion and I don't think Apple wants to go down that path anyhow but they they need to do something to make it clear to the average person what it is that they are doing I mean I look at all these devices that have Apple logos on them and it's obvious to me that I'm seeing AI and ML stuff happening all the time but it's not that in your face Star Trek computer stuff no but we will here's the thing you're right that saying that AI is only things that are using LLMs large language models like chat GPT is a misnomer so for the purposes of this conversation here let's use the umbrella definition of AI that includes all of this stuff including the large language models the fact that Apple is doing nothing with a large language model aka that thing that the general public currently calls AI is a huge mistake I really think it is because within we already have text based LLMs that are answering like humans we are much closer to having voice based assistants that are using LLMs that will be answering like humans I guarantee you we will see Google assistant and Amazon a lady doing this I'm surprised Google assistant isn't doing it yet right because they have barred it's all right there we are it's a way that's probably double the amount of time it will actually take for us to have this in our homes right because the tech is all there we just need somebody to glue it together and you know they already have they just need to roll it out yep by not having that on HomePod and iPhone and Apple Watch Apple is going to fall so far behind in terms of I mean they are already behind that's what I mean about this gap widening you know I talked earlier about the integration of all the various devices the Mac, the iPad, the phone, the Watch that sort of thing if there's one thing that's going to draw people out of the Apple walled garden that's it you're not wrong but you don't have to leave well I guess you do have to leave the Apple walled garden you don't have to leave all your Apple devices behind fair enough but maybe give it a year if my iPhone can't do I want Jane like an Apple, Jane from Ender's Game right from the Ender universe Jane was the assistant that everyone had Jane would theoretically maintain your privacy by not telling other people what it knew about you right so but it was a voice assistant that was aware of everything you did and everyone you encountered and then would you know process things and be your always on assistant we are getting closer and closer to having that as a reality I want Apple to be the ones that create Jane for me because I trust them with my privacy and my data more than any other company out there and I mean it's ridiculous I even need to say that like it should be obvious if there's any company on the planet that has the resources to do it Apple is it can do it Apple how is it that we've made it this far into voice assistant AI, ML and we still cannot give the S-Lady a compound or complex statement hey S-Lady I'm home turn on the living room lights set the TV for the new Ted Lasso's show there's no more Ted Lasso's there's no more Ted Lasso's show don't ruin this fantasy for me Dave I like your fantasy keep going, yes send a message to Dave that I can chat when he's ready and and whatever else get my slippers darn it and just do all of these things figure it all out from what I just said and it just because chat apt can respond to those in order item by item by item right now and right now if I went to do something like turn on the living room lights turn off the hall lights and set my office light color to blue that's a five minute process to do it assuming it works at all well that's what I mean two of those five minutes is going and fixing yourself a drink because of how frustrated you now are right and her responding the Google app you need to do that is not installed Pete gets that from Siri all the time the Google app you need you know what's cool I actually did this a couple weeks ago I said hey yes lady turn off the living room lamp off it went and I walked out of the room and I went oh I forgot something hey yes lady turn the living room lamp on the Google app you need to turn it on is not installed I went hey yes lady the living room lamp that you just turned off turn it back on and it worked what I'm sorry you man you keep hitting that microphone today I'm gonna have to come over there Pete there you go right so don't make me come over there be kidding me how on earth did that work it shouldn't have worked but I went I was so frustrated look you just turned it off turn it back on turn it back on yeah exactly if I was like oh crap yes sir yes sir alright so back to the reactions from the keynote what I'm gonna do for this last little segment is we're just gonna combine everything that we haven't talked about yet which is the rest of iOS 17 because we got one item into that maybe there was only one item left to talk about with that but we got one item in before we took the AI path which we were gonna take anyway and then we have iPad OS 17 watch OS 10 super happy that Apple merged all the version numbers into just year because we should have iOS 20 23 iPad OS 20 23 watch OS 20 23 we don't have that uh one of the things and we talked about multiple timers that I like for iOS 17 is the standby mode where you put your iPhone on a mag charger and you turn it into landscape mode and it it changes and it becomes a different thing at first like in the first five seconds of them showing that I thought oh this is stupid I already have what I need by my bed I don't need this it's just an alarm clock look whatever I don't want it on all night anyway and then by the 17 second mark I had done a complete 180 and I'm like I will use this every day at my desk this is amazing I want this right now how quickly can I install the beta so I'm with you that was one of those features that well I was hooked like right away because my iPhone is my nightstand clock anyhow now it will be upright instead of laying flat and at my desk the charger stand that I have for my iPhone it has a sensor in it so it actually moves the the coil up or down depending on what position my phone is in so I'll just set my phone in landscape mode in the charger there we go boom Bob's your uncle it's freaking amazing that's fascinating how have I known you this long and that phrase has never come up in an opportunity for you to actually respond that way I love it so there's that the sharing you're not tapping but the sharing by airdrop by putting our phones close to each other with either our contact cards 15 years ago there was an app called bump and all you had to do was bump your phones I remember bumping so we get to bump again bump got sure locked but they went under long before they could claim that so yeah I'll probably stick with my dot card there you go oh nice nice yeah another one that's about to get sure locked I think is PDF expert again no you don't think so nope but for people that don't need the features that come in PDF expert this gives them it's a full featured and obviously iOS doesn't have that but they're working in that direction I feel like saying keychain is slowly sure locking one password no it is not but over time it will be a viable opportunity or option for a wider range of people I think your comments earlier about the web apps and BZG apps unite in coherence it's the same here with PDF expert there's a few things that this does that people probably weren't going to spend over 100 bucks to get anyway but this opens that door yeah I agree I agree how about this in 2021 Apple Insider I believe was the first to report that our series remotes for the Apple TV had find my capability in them but we had no way of using it or activating it and iOS 17 finally brings that home we can use our phones to find the lost remote that may be the one that I should have led the show with instead of the multiple timers but we've talked so much about the multiple timers here it was obvious but yeah fascinating the sleeper feature we've got these things in our home hopefully Apple hasn't been using them but the remotes are already well if they were I wish my home pod would tell me exactly just let me know you can know actually when I'm away and went on Amazon and bought a little rubber case that fits around my Apple TV remote and has an air tag well you can get rid of that air tag in September or October well you can use that air tag for something else you can repurpose it you have to figure out something else you might lose what they haven't done yet and I'm shocked shocked they haven't given us a flat credit card so I used air tag yet no but there is there is an office yeah it's the rolling square people have one I'll put a link in the show notes here we will talk about it in 986 I almost talked about it in 984 this morning but we ran out of time from rolling square I'm just shocked that Apple hasn't done it yet I know they know there's a need for it speaking of find my you can now share your find my you know your air tags you can create a group of them that you can share with I think up to like five other people share air tag or find my network accessories with up to five other people everyone in the group can see the item on a map and play a sound to pinpoint the location of the desired accessory when nearby so yeah the first time I lose something at a conference that has an air tag with it all of my friends I'm sharing this with them so they can all be looking right now that's a great idea right well at least five you probably have more than five friends at a conference the five that are physically closest to you yes your proximity it makes you put you higher on the list of friends proximity based friendship you crystallized my thoughts I have geofences for my friends hey we're having fun here and that's a good thing the mental health tracking that Apple has put into iOS 17 and the other operating systems as well checking in with you and then using your other data points like your sleep and your you know just your mood well but asking you about your mood but then also relating that to hey when you say you're sad 80% of the time you didn't get enough sleep or you didn't exercise the day before right like and of course keeping all of this on device right well or maybe you had too much to drink I don't know why there isn't yet a thing in in Apple health like you can log your food I guess there would be a third party app and they probably do exist to log your alcoholic beverages or whatever substances you use I think it would be a good thing knowing is and again who do you trust with the privacy for that bingo right exactly a lot of big companies and I'm very distrustful of even Apple but that being said if it's on device it's on device I think of all the big companies that I don't trust Apple is the least of them that I trust the most I guess so no that's a big deal and I mentioned it in the discord at some point that that's going to be I think helpful to people that are in my situation which is a professional pilot gee you think there's any pilots out there that are taking antidepressants which are verboten they're out there but they're hiding it and as long as it's forbidden they're going to hide it wouldn't you rather know about it and have somebody working positively on fixing their issues yep but my answer is yes and as a guy that sits in the back of the plane who isn't allowed to go up front and fly I would prefer that the person who's flying up front if they do need antidepressants or whatever to help regulate their mental health it would be good that everybody's I will say this I won't completely burn them down to the ground they're out of the stone age and into the dark ages at least there are some antidepressants now which are acceptable yeah and they've moved forward on that and they had an amnesty program for a while I don't know where that stands but it isn't flying that isn't the only one there's people operating trains and trucks and buses and there's people operating heavy equipment and I'm sure there's other professions I don't know what they are but they're safety related and oh my gosh you don't want people hiding those issues you want them positively this comes down to the whole stigma I see a therapist I have no qualms about it I met my therapist at like a community event the other day and he came and said hi I introduced him to my family who he had not yet met and then the next time I saw him he was like I hope that was okay I hope I wasn't like breaching your trust like no no it's totally fine like I'm okay with like this is a good it's okay like I have a doctor a medical doctor I have a head doctor like it's all fine it's all good oh so you're right right exactly you know I can't remember who I had this conversation with and Dave I think it might have been you years ago where we were talking about mental health and therapy and I made a comment about I see therapy the same as I see car maintenance doesn't matter how well your car's running every now and then you take it in for a tune-up and an oil change it's the same for your brain yep yep I couldn't agree more alright so we have a few minutes left actually we don't but we're gonna do it anyway we'll do a little bit of a quick run through anything that was not announced in the keynote that we have not yet talked about I have a list so I don't want to Sherlock any of your list and I don't know what's on your list so Jeff do you have anything that is on your mind that we haven't talked about that wasn't announced in the keynote you know we've done a really good job of hitting the stuff that that was coming up for me and you even hit the thing in in the developer state of the developers thing that I was going to bring up which was the whole macros thing and Apple making it easier to have Swift help you write code but to go along with that the overarching theme for the state of developers for me was Apple listening and understanding that they need to take steps to make it easier and less opaque for developers to do the things they do and to that point the they mention this in the keynote but the whole game mode thing that they talked about in the keynote they dug deeper into that in the state of the union they that is all about porting games from windows in fact windows and gaming consoles in fact they said in the state of the union which was a little bit more keynote like than like nerdy state of the union they said if you're a developer who builds games for windows or gaming consoles this is for you it's to show you how easy it is to port your stuff over yes fascinating that's almost verbatim what they said it is verbatim this is for you exactly Pete do you have anything that you found that they didn't mention in the keynote before I go through my like I didn't I confess now that wasn't it wasn't an assignment these are the nerdy things it's totally fine I just didn't want to show it to me to go look for things that they did put in there that they didn't talk about today I'm like oh yeah I probably should have done that that would have been I bet I found some really cool stuff there so I did find some cool stuff Apple TV gets third party support they say this can benefit yes this can benefit enterprise and education users wanting to access content on their private networks allowing Apple TV to be a great office and conference room solution sure also it lets right so lets you watch Netflix from another country so I like that that's good you can now use any USB camera with your iPad that's new and interesting the you can link related notes to each other so if you have a group of notes for like a trip that you're taking you can link them to each other and yep so that's there it was like journaling was kind of cool they talked about that yes right yeah the right the journaling thing I joked on the discord what what no smell a vision you know no smells they didn't get you know you have the audio the visual and that was kind of cool yep also with notes you can start something in notes and migrate it to pages seamlessly so if things get a little more than notes I like that in mail this is interesting they say you can see travel related emails at the top of your search results as your trip dates approach so that's interesting if you start searching for maybe flights or something it's gonna bring the ones for your next trip up even if that's not the most recent thing from I don't know I'll have to see this to get it my assumption is that your search results are being intercepted locally and then your computer or your Mac is re-ranking Google search results for you no not search results your mail this happening this is happening your mail search results what they were doing your mail search results right yep on iOS 17 couple of these for iOS 17 apps can now ask for ad only permissions for your calendar so if you have an app that you want to let your calendar but it never is going to need to see the contents of your calendar that's a new permission that can be granted which I like in maps for iOS 17 you can now download maps for offline access which is great iPad can do that too okay right perfect thank you and the maps app also allows you to pick your preferred EV electric vehicle charging network and then it will show you that network on your maps so you can stay right in Apple maps grocery lists in reminders automatically sort items into categories to make shopping easier and you can change how items are grouped and the list remembers your preferences this may actually get me to use in limited situations the reminders app there you go yep and then there are new there are now zoom and pan controls when using continuity camera with studio display or your iPhone so this was sort of a thing that could happen automatically but you didn't get any controls over it now you can actually control it kind of like webcam settings or camo so a few more features for all of that so I think oh and speaking of camera apps third party camera apps get access now to volume shutter buttons zero shutter lag overlapping captures aka pictures and deferred processing so all the things that Apple's camera app was the only app that could do now third party apps can do that too good yeah right so that's what we have folks I got two quick things amazing keep going yeah the phone the phone app yep you can essentially screen the call screening you got a number that comes up they're not in your contacts they're starting to leave a message who are oh I do want to talk that's the dentist office or yes you know they're using a different number oh that's crew scheduling no I don't want to talk to I mean I do want to talk to them just now yeah exactly I yeah the caught the light though the call screening with voicemail is great inscribing what they're saying the transcription is the key yeah yeah yeah I like it you don't have to you know anyway so that was what was the other one was the ability to essentially it's another continuity feature you start transferring a file via bluetooth and it's too big I don't have I gotta go I got a bus to catch yeah I gotta go and it continues after so if you start transferring a large file it continues to transfer over the internet once you're so this isn't continuity that's airdrop it was airdrop to start oh you leave bluetooth range they called it you keep saying bluetooth airdrop doesn't use bluetooth for transfers it uses wi-fi okay it uses bluetooth to find other devices right exactly and then it's and then it's wi-fi but yes it continues over the internet okay because once you're out of bluetooth range that's fair since the handshake dies that's fair that's why I used it but yeah no you're right yeah yeah it continues on after you leave it was a huge oh yeah I agree yeah yeah alright do we have anything else I think that I know my answer okay well here we are now I get to like go and eat food or something so what is this four letter word starting with F you know yeah I'll draw you a picture oh man okay we're turning off the video now thanks for hanging out with us everybody Jeff thank you for coming and hanging out with us where can people find you these days Jeff Dave and Pete thanks for for including me this has been so much fun okay how about some socials sure gamut consistently okay I'm active on it on an Instagram right now alright I will make sure to have links in the show notes for both of those then how about some shows Chuck Joyner has me on Mac Voices live on Tuesdays Dave Ginsburg has me on in touch with ILS on Thursdays then I am the apparently permanent interim host of the big show and the Mac show on British Tech Network okay and then a mutual friend of ours brand chaffin I do the context machine with him amazing thank you internet so now I have like 18 links to put in the show notes thanks for that Jeff yeah that no really thanks for coming this was a perfect perfect little get together for for today and seriously thank you for having me this has been so much fun absolutely thanks to cash fly for providing all the bandwidth to get the show from us to you and mostly folks or not mostly but also thanks to all of you no that is mostly thanks to you for listening thanks for all your support especially for sending in your questions and comments and all that to feedback at macgeekup.com we'll be back next week with the next regular episode Jeff yes can you tell me I would like three words of advice for you and if you are needing inspiration I would ask you to look at the video and maybe maybe read Pete's shirt I don't need any extra inspiration because these are words to live by an excellent life choice Dave Pete don't get caught maybe it's good advice oh yeah later alright and we're out