iOS Today 655, Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on iOS today, Rosemary Orchard and I, Mikah Sargent, are here to provide you an Apple arcade update. Yes, it's time to get gaming with Apple arcade's. Latest offerings, stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (00:00:16):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit, is tweet.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:26):
This is iOS today with Rosemary Orchard and Mikah Sargent, episode 655 Recorded Monday, May 22nd, 2023 for Tuesday, May 23rd. 2023, an Apple Arcade update. This episode of iOS Today is brought to you by Duo. Duo protects against breaches with a leading access management suite, providing strong multi-layered defenses to only allow legitimate users in. For any organization concerned about being breached and needing a solution Fast Duo quickly enables strong security and improves user productivity. Visit signup.duo.com today for a free trial and buy fast mail, reclaim your privacy, boosto productivity, and make email yours with fast mail. Try it now free for 30 days@fastmail.com slash twi and buy HelloFresh America's number one meal kit. Get farm fresh pre proportioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. Go to hellofresh.com/ios 16 and use code iOS 16 for 16 free meals plus reshipping.

(00:01:48):
Welcome back to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, iPad, os, home, pod os, watch, os, tv, OS and Os and os. Basically this is the show where we talk about the different platforms or operating systems that Apple puts out and discuss. How you out there can make the most of those Apple devices that are running those operating systems. We try to help you make sure you are using all of the features that you are checking out all of the apps that you are rocking it on your devices. I am one of the hosts hoping to help you Rocket Mikah, Sargent

Rosemary Orchard (00:02:28):
And I am Rosemary Orchard and very happy to be talking games again, Mikah, we've been doing a little games traffic answer over the last few weeks and it's very good to see how we can use these devices for entertainment purposes as well as productivity purposes like we usually talk about.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:44):
Yeah, and also it's been kind of nice to hear from folks who have their special games that they enjoy. So having that kind of be part of the conversation and learning a little bit about what folks like has been fun. But today it is time. Talk about Apple Arcade because one of the magnificent sort of features of Apple Arcade is that it regularly is, I guess behaviors is a better way. It's regularly adding new games to the catalog. Now, before we get into all of that, we should talk about Apple Arcade itself. Apple announced quite a while ago now a new service, a new subscription that it was providing called Apple Arcade. And Apple Arcade is an online game library. And by, by online I mean it's just, it's available by going into the app store. So you go into the app store, you can get different games that you download to your iPhones, your iPads, your Mac, and these are, and I should say games.

(00:03:47):
And and they're all sorts of games. It's not just a specific type, but all of these games exist in this library and are available for 4 99 a month for Apple Arcade. If you've never subscribed to Apple Arcade, you will get a free one month trial. If you subscribe to Apple's Apple One Plan, you also get Apple Arcade included with it in many of the plans that are available there. And then there's also the ability to get three months for free if you purchase an Apple device. So if you buy an Apple Watch or an iPhone or some other device you can get three months of Apple Arcade for free. After that, you will then need to pay the subscription. But with the subscription, you get access to 200 plus games. And when you subscribe these games, they have some sort of very specific rules about them.

(00:04:47):
They don't have the free to play mechanics in them. So it's not, you play for five minutes and then an ad pops up and you watch that ad and then you get to go back to the game. It's not you play for 10 minutes and then you run out of energy. So you have to wait 30 minutes to get to play again. Or you buy coins in the store with real money that then, or actually it's usually like you buy gems in the store with real money that you can then take some of those gems and turn them into coins, which you can then use mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to take away or, or add to your energy so you can keep playing. Apple wanted to give folks the ability to play these games without having to concern themselves with that. And then there are also some other stipulations.

(00:05:30):
These games need to be able to be played offline if you'd like to, so you don't need to have an internet connection to play them, although there are components that allow for that. So if you are playing a multiplayer game or something similar, then there you can go online. But the point is that there has to be an offline component. And then the last thing is that these games are more privacy focused. So you may not have the same sort of behavioral that gets sent off to a bunch of different places. All of that comes together to try to make Apple Arcade a valuable resource for folks. And that is kind of what Apple Arcade is as a whole. But as some time goes on, more app developers and more sort of gaming platforms are adding, or gaming publishers, I guess, are adding new games to the Apple Arcade Library. So we, I recently saw in the app store a promo showing some of the new games, and I thought, oh, this would be a great time to check back in with Apple Arcade because it has been a while. So that is what today's episode is all about. And Rosemary, I'd love to hear any thoughts you have and then of course for you to share your first title that you want to talk about from Apple Arcade.

Rosemary Orchard (00:06:49):
Yeah, so Apple Arcade's one of those things where 4 99 a month both sounds like a lot of money if you're not really into gaming, but it's also really not a lot when compared to a lot of other games, and especially when you've got all those in-app purchases and so on, adding up. So if you've if you know somebody who's got kids and so on, then it's definitely worth checking out the Apple Arcade option recommending it to them because there's loads of titles on there from Disney and things like that, which kids really love. And there's plenty on there for adults as well. And the thing that really strikes me whenever I go and look in the app store for Apple Arcade is just how wide that range is of all of the different apps that are, or different kinds of games that are available.

(00:07:27):
Obviously the app store itself is huge but you know, when I pop open the, the app store for Apple Arcade then it, it gives me you know, all sorts of things. So the top arcade games right now over here in the UK are fr manager solitaire bi mobility, what the car Cityscapes. And then there's, you know, classics like Temple, were on mini motorways and spell Tower Fruit Ninja classic, things like that. But, you know, the, the variety of different games here is pretty huge. So it's definitely worth you know, considering what options are available. And, you know, you can always subscribe for a month if you're gonna be doing a lot of travel or something and want some games offline and then cancel if you don't need games for a while if you're gonna be busy.

(00:08:11):
But the first game I wanna talk about is a game called Squiggle Drop. So squiggle drop the is you have to squiggle. And so you can open this one up on your iPad, but it'll be in portrait mode. So I've gone with the, the iPhone option here, and it wants me to start on level one by drawing a square. I've not done a great job of drawing a square, but the idea is I draw a squiggle and then it drops, and you have to solve the puzzle using the squiggle you've drawn. So it's very simple and easy to understand. You get coins for, for doing things. And so now I have to save the cake from the rain, so I think I'm gonna try and draw a bridge perhaps that, that didn't work. I'm gonna try again. I drew on the edge of the box, so I'm just gonna draw a bridge and drop it over the cake and with a little bouncing.

(00:08:57):
Yeah, the cake has been saved and is no longer being rained on. Awesome. So as you can see, it's very simple. There are lots of different levels. There's <inaudible> Town. There is a daily challenge where you have to try and make something hit the target. I'm not quite sure how exactly one would do that. Maybe not quite like I've just done there, <laugh>. But yeah, it, you know, there, there's different options. There's achievements and so on. And you can when you open the app, it does use your, your Apple Arcade account sorry, your Apple Game Center account, which links into Apple Arcade, so you can see like your recent activity and so on. But don't forget, you can disable all of the sharing on that if you don't want people to be able to see what you're doing with games on your phone. So yeah, squiggle drop. It's a very simple game. I have to try and now draw something that weighs the same as a weight. So I guess I'll just try Squiggling and see, and no, I, I failed balance scales. That, that, that's way too heavy. But you know what? I can try again and I don't have to pay any coins or anything which involves actual money to do. So

Mikah Sargent (00:10:01):
That is, that's kind of my style of game, honestly, that looks like a lot of fun. I, I was wondering if it had some localization changes because I'm not used to using the word squiggle. Usually I would use scribble. So Squiggle Drop is an interesting name for it. But yeah, the, the fact that you, because that is one of those games that just seems ripe for sort of free to play mechanics. So the fact that you can play a game like that without the free-to-play mechanics built in is delightful. Those are the kinds of games you'll see kind of come up on Instagram and you go, oh, that would be fun to play. But I don't feel like sitting through 12 ads and having 15 different things pop up in the way of me just trying to play the game.

(00:10:46):
So hundreds of levels to get to play there looks like a lot of fun. Now I think whenever Apple Arcade first launched, it gave this impression that a lot of the games are going to be sort of small puzzle games, kind of like squiggle drop and that there might be sort of bigger more involved games lacking from the store. But as time has gone on, I do feel that apple Arcade has added some great titles and one of one of the most popular kind of genres of games a simulation game. And so here I have launched Cityscapes Sim Builder, again, as Rosemary and I continue to talk about these titles, keep in mind that we are able to play all of these games for part of our Apple Arcade subscription, meaning it's not an extra cost for any of these games.

(00:11:46):
So this is Don, and what Don is going to be telling us here is that there's a local city that we need to go to. It was ravaged by a, I think it was a hurricane. And essentially this is just a little city that needs a little bit of help. While Mayor Novo continues to work on other parts of the city. Essentially this is the tutorial city before you go and make your own. So here we are going to start to build part of the city. So I wanna build some roads. I'll select a blue dot for where I wanna start and then build out from there. And anyone who's played kind of city building and simulation games is going to be familiar with a lot of the controls for this game. Now people have a way to get back to the rest of that city.

(00:12:32):
We'll go down and it's time to start building some places for people to live. So it says, drag out a residential blueprint, be sure to place it next to a road. So we'll take this and I think we'll add it right there on the corner and tap, okay. Of course that'll cost some money. And then the houses can be built pretty quickly and the first group of citizens can return from where they were because as I mentioned, this was a, a problem. I think there was like a hurricane or a tornado, something tore apart the city a little bit. So they are returning to the city. And now it's time to add some more to the area. So we will add this, this other kind of apartment complex here. Tap okay. And even more, I think we'll put those across the street and okay.

(00:13:24):
And then they want us to build out some more we'll tap. Okay. And now we're starting to build out a city. More citizens are moving in. The neighborhood is really starting to take shape. So here they come in their little trucks and cars and moving vans as they move into these newly constructed apartments and homes says there is another way to grow your population. If you take care of your buildings, they will level up and more citizens will move inside of them. The bubble above the building shows you that something is wrong, the people are not happy, and the building is not leveling up. That bubble shows us exactly how many jobs that building needs. So I'll tap on that and it says, we just moved in and now we need jobs in the area. So we have to build an industrial building so we can have some jobs.

(00:14:10):
And so it's like, oh, this little area that's off of the way, this is probably a good way to do some industrial buildings. So we'll go into the industrial mode, find an office space and drop that in and choose. Okay, now we're building out this building of industry where folks can get some jobs. So now they've got jobs where they can go to work, and now we don't have that bubble above the building anymore. And now it's going to level up and check that out. Now our houses are getting bigger which probably means that more people will move in, which probably means that we're going to end up needing to create more. But anyone who's played a sort of city building sim is going to be familiar with a lot of these mechanics. This is just one small part of this city cityscapes sim builder.

(00:15:05):
And now you can see that it's wanting to move us on to creating our own city in River Valley. So here you're completely or nearly completely empty with lots of lots that need to be unlocked. There are some roads and it looks like that might be a location where I don't, I'm not sure exactly what that is, but we do have some roads already here. And this is a government subsidized project that says we need to be careful because Greed Corp lost this contract effort after chopping down in nearby Forest. There are rumors they're going to try to sabotage your development. Oh no. And the greed CEO says, I don't know who you bribed in the government to take over our contract, but you won't last a week before you go bankrupt. And then our, our city says, city manager says, maybe you shouldn't have chopped down that rare woodland.

(00:15:59):
We're going to maintain the woodlands and make this a successful city. Right? Mayor, of course, I am the mayor in this case. You get the idea. I'm not going to keep playing this. This is tutorial still, but Cityscape Sim Builder, like a full featured game with story and all sorts of you know, simulation built in. I think it's fantastic. And again, all part of Apple arcade, you can just get it as part of Apple Arcade. So check out that Cityscapes sim builder in Apple Arcade. All right, Rosemary, what's next on your list? And then we're gonna take a quick break after you were next pick.

Rosemary Orchard (00:16:39):
Well, my next pick is one that I am pretty certain I've talked about on iOS today before. And if I haven't, then I'm sorry, because this app should have been talked about ages ago. And this app is called Tint. That's t i n t with a period or full stop at the end. And the idea of tint is that you have a pencil, perhaps an Apple pencil, or it could just be your finger and you need to draw to match the colors. And so this, I've just gone back to the beginning of level one here so that I can show folks. So on screen I've got a yellow dot and a blue dot, and I have a yellow butterfly and a green butterfly. So I need to mix some colors to get the green butterfly. And I need to not mix colors to get the yellow butterfly.

(00:17:18):
So to start with, I can just use my pencil or finger to draw from the yellow.to the yellow butterfly. Yellow DOT's now been used, so I can't use that again. But when I draw down from the blue dot, then it'll cross the yellow line and then merge into green cuz blue plus yellow equals green and touch the green butterfly. And voila, that's that. And then the butterflies will fly away because I've succeeded at my job and it'll take me to the next page. So this is obviously sort of the tutorial level, which is why I've gone back to the but there's one important thing to know, which is if you cross two colors, your, your, your your paint kind of runs out and it just goes blah and into this sort of gray murky mess color, which is not gray. And so you don't wanna do that.

(00:18:03):
But if your color crosses its own color, so if blue, for example, goes over a blue line before it goes over a yellow line, then it will not go messy and horrible. And so in this case, I can then again draw to the green by going from my blue dot over a blue line and then a yellow line and voa, and then my butterfly flies away. And I have to say, this is a very nice sort of relaxing game to be able to play. So what I can do you know, I, I get to choose how I'm going to do this every time. But it's just a really nice sort of texture paper with watercolor dots on and you know, some little nice art decorations on it and so on. It's a very visual game, very relaxing. There's no points or anything if you get anything wrong, there's an undo button, there's hints available and they kind of show up as like little cutout pieces of paper on the opposite page to where you're currently drawing. But it's just really lovely and fun and just, it, it makes me happy when I use it because it's so simple. So yeah, there we go. That, that's tint.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:09):
Yeah, it's very zen, which I enjoy about it. And just, just just a touch of, of puzzle, just a touch of mm-hmm. <Affirmative> of sort of challenging your mind, which I think is great. Alright. we are gonna take a quick break before we come back with some more Apple arcade picks, but I do wanna tell you about Duo was bringing you this episode of io s Today Duo protects against breaches with a leading access management suite. Strong multi-layered defenses and innovative capabilities only allow legitimate users in and keep the bad actors out. For any organization that's concerned about being breached, that needs protection fast, well that's where DUO comes in because it quickly enables strong security while also improving user productivity. Duo prevents unauthorized access with multi-layered defenses and modern capabilities that thot sophisticated malicious access attempts. You can increase authentication requirements in real time when risk rises, which I think is great.

(00:20:13):
So, you know, you, you start to see that there's some maybe some people are trying to test your network trying to get in. So you might wanna just scale up those authentication requirements during that period of time. Duo enables high productivity by only requiring authentication when needed, which enables swift, easy and secure access. Duo provides an all-in-one solution for strong MFA for list, for single sign on, and for trusted endpoint verification. And lastly, DUO helps you implement zero trust principles by verifying users and their devices. I don't trust anything until it can be trusted, and that's what Duo does as well. You can start your free trial and sign up today@signup.duo.com. That's signup dot d uo.com, signup.duo.com. Thank you duo for sponsoring this week's episode of iOS Today. We appreciate it. Alright, back from the break and I wanna talk about, we just covered word games the other day, so I thought it'd be a great time to talk about another little word game that I came across.

(00:21:23):
Especially for those of you who have a soft spot in your heart for Disney stories. Apple Arcade has a game called Disney Spells Struck, and I have to tell you, I was a little bit misled because the description for this game said crossword style. And we'll talk about what just popped up on my screen in a moment. But crossword style what does it say? Crossword style magic. It's not crossword style magic, it's Scrabble style magic, but I don't think they can say Scrabble because Scrabble is the name of a game. And so they went with Crossword instead. It's really not a crossword game, it's a Scrabble game. But let's talk about what just popped up on my screen here. It says Share analytics data. And this is part of the Apple Arcade experience because it is telling me, Hey, I would like to see how you are using the game.

(00:22:21):
I would like to see when the game crashes and know about that. I would like to see what buttons you do tap on, what things you might skip, what's working, what's not. You can choose to share that analytics data if you want, or because it's an Apple arcade game. And there are some others that have these features built in just because they feel like it's what needs to be. But when it comes to Apple Arcade games, they have to ask you. So I can choose no thanks, I don't wanna share my information and no, I'm not interested in getting notifications, so let's continue my adventure. The whole sort of conceit of the game is that you are playing a little character that is moving through different maps and in order to sort of complete the map, you have, oh, sorry, there's a little bit toy story there for a second.

(00:23:07):
Anyway in order to complete the map, you have to fill in the letters for the name of the stage that you're on. So right now you can see I have Steam Oat Willy, which I don't think that that is the name of a latte. I think that it should be Steamboat Willy. So I need to get the B by completing this next stage. I think the other letter that I got was a w when I first started. So we'll tap on this section to start. And I'm facing off against a little minion called Letter Lacky. And Letter Lacky is a minion of a, an enemy called Blink. They are trying to basically bring chaos to the world and you are trying to restore order to the world a little bit like the Galactic Empire. So are we the bad guys.

(00:23:55):
Anyway let's go ahead and play this. So you have to start in the middle. And I do think that oh, it looks like I get to go first, which is great. Excuse me. So, oh no, they do get to go first the letter, like he got to go first, so they put in their word king and now it's my turn. I want to obviously I need to play off of the word that is here. So there are these different squares that represent some options for getting even more points than you would otherwise. But I've got all of my little letters down here and I can play a word off of that. So hopefully while I'm talking about this, Rosemary is also looking so that we could both work

Rosemary Orchard (00:24:43):
Together. I am, but there's a little iOS today logo covering the first three letters. Oh, shoot. I can't actually see all of your letters there. There we go. Oh, ae that's the vowels. Those were the bits that I was gonna need because yeah I mean I, hmm, I mean, at the moment I've come up with goats, which is not a great word as far as Scrabble goes.

Mikah Sargent (00:25:01):
Not great, but let's go ahead and go with that. Just because it's longer than the words that I was coming up with while I was trying to talk at the same time. So we've got goats here, I'll tap play and you can see that I got some points, but then I also got oh, shoot, letter lack. He ended up getting that extra point from that square with the word bent. So let's see what else we can do here. So let's see.

Rosemary Orchard (00:25:31):
Hmm. This is where it would be very handy if somebody watching the show were a Scrabble genius. Yes. And would happen to just pop in with a great solution for us. Let's see.

Mikah Sargent (00:25:45):
We've got no, that's probably not going to work. Let's just do Obo <laugh> for the sake of continuing the game, cuz I just wanna show you. Is it, oh, I think it has an e the episode.

Rosemary Orchard (00:25:57):
Oh, I was gonna say Obo. O B O E.

Mikah Sargent (00:25:59):
Yeah, I don't know why it let me do that. My turn again and we will go with I'd love to use this X but I can't think of a way to use it.

Rosemary Orchard (00:26:15):
Could you do oxen? O xox,

Mikah Sargent (00:26:18):
E n? Yes. Let's see, where's that O

Rosemary Orchard (00:26:20):
And that gets you onto, I can't see if that's a double or triple is a double word score.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:24):
So we'll play oxen. Very good. And aha, that helps me to move a little bit of ahead, ahead of letter lackey which is fantastic. And now look a little dance from Steamboat Willie. Nice. And then it adds even more to the board as you're going. Ooh, <affirmative> does a blank. Is that equivalent to, you can fill in with any letter. I

Rosemary Orchard (00:26:47):
Think that's a wild card. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:26:48):
I love a wild card. Just

Rosemary Orchard (00:26:49):
Wondering if we can get the word wharf in there somewhere. W h A r F. Ooh.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:54):
Yeah, there's a w Oh no, it goes down too far, huh?

Rosemary Orchard (00:26:57):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:58):
Oh, that's too bad.

Rosemary Orchard (00:26:58):
And it would run into the s as well, which is a shame. Oh, well

Mikah Sargent (00:27:03):
You know what, I'm gonna go ahead and just say, you get the idea. This is a Scrabble game, and as you're moving along trying to beat the letter lackey then you can unlock more stages and continue to play. And as you play, it'll also add some more kind of fun to the board. So if you are a Scrabble fanatic, you might enjoy Disney spells struck, and of course that pairs very well with folks who quite like Disney. So consider checking out spells struck as part of the Apple Arcade subscription. All right, I'm excited for you to talk about this next game because it is genuinely one of my favorite games.

Rosemary Orchard (00:27:43):
Yeah. So the next game that I'm gonna talk about is a game called Stitch. So if you are into embroidery needle craft, then you're definitely gonna love this game. If you're into sort of coloring games, you probably also love this game. And the idea of stitch is that you need to stitch in the color blocks. And yeah, it, it's basically as simple as it sounds. So on my screen at the moment, I've got a grid and that grid has got numbers in with slightly different colors. And so in my bottom left hand corner, I have a six. And so I'm just gonna start in that corner and sort of draw upwards and outwards and try and fill in those six blocks there. Now these blocks aren't an exact grid as in squares. They're kind of not misshapen, but they're, they're natural more natural shapes.

(00:28:28):
And the idea is that I have to try and drag over either you can start from the number, depending on your shape. You may actually want to just start from a side and then go across to the other side. And once you've stitched your section it will then sort of ripple outwards and then fill it in very nicely with various different kinds of stitches. So there was a nice herringbone stitch there, and then you just sort of continue on to the next bit and so on and so forth so that you can fill everything in. And then at the end you get a lovely sort of stitched embroidery piece without having to actually carry you know fabric and, and needles and thread and everything around and risk dropping things and poking yourself and so on. But yeah, it's very enjoyable to play and I've, you know, I've just been sitting here for a while now just playing with this and, you know fooling in the colors and trying to figure out what everything is.

(00:29:21):
I'm guessing this was gonna be a frog when it's done, Mikah. I'm not sure. It just seems to me like definitely it's probably gonna be a frog based on the green coloring and the slightly bulbous looking. I'm guessing these are eyes yes. That I'm working on at the moment. But yeah, I'll just see if I can get this finished quickly so that I can show Fox what it looks like when it's done. Okay. So there is a, ooh that's interesting. So there's two a two and two, okay. And then two there. There we go. There we go. I've got a little frog. Yay. Finished. Yay. and he's very cute. Lovely little stitched frog. And yeah, there we go. I can share my hoop on the, on to friends and family, claim a badge and see where I am on the leaderboard. And yeah, then continue with my first stitches. There are passions for beginners and so on. And yeah, as you complete more hoops and frames, then you get more of them to continue with as well. So it's nice in that it unlocks the next levels as you go. So as the more you do, the more you can do.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:23):
Yes. And so I've <laugh>, I, I mentioned I like the game. I like the game. I've compl, I completed every single hoop that was available, is how much I liked the game. And so once you do that, you are able to start over, or as gamers would call it prestige in such a way that it will not reveal to you the number part of, like, there will be one number that's just an asterisk instead of the number. So you kind of have to figure out how, how many needs to go into this area, and you kind of have to fill in all of those spots around in order to figure out the last one. So it, it just kind of makes it harder so you start over with that new mode and try to beat it that way. Nice. and I, there's something about this, it's obviously not as I guess zen as actually doing cross-stitch, but it comes close for me. It, it is mm-hmm. <Affirmative> just a nice sort of zone out and, and create kind of game. And you could see Rosemary's continuing on. It's just, it's nice. Yeah. You, you sort of get the hang

Rosemary Orchard (00:31:30):
Of the, I thought it would be a nice thing to have in the background as you talk Mikah. So

Mikah Sargent (00:31:33):
There we go. Yeah, and that's the other thing. It is kind of visually appealing even for folks who are just watching because you start to kind of, I think that you can even watch and kind of pick up on how the game is played. And so that makes it fun too. Alright. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. let me talk about the next title on Milas. This one's not for the faint of heart, I would say but it is for folks who, again, I think like games this is very little nightmares and it will be familiar to some folks who've played it, I think on Xbox and maybe even PlayStation. It's a Bandi Namco game and you are kind of a small little person in a yellow rain jacket. And you are moving throughout this world. I can't remember if you're, you're trying to, yeah, I think the most of the time you're running away from something.

(00:32:26):
So you can see the little person has gone into a room, closed the door, and sort of bared it shut with a, a wood, a piece of wood. And you kind of are always in the state of anxiety as you walk along. So here I am in what looks like a a hot air balloon and I need to move my character around. So you move by tapping on the screen and then you can interact with things that will light up as just happened and dropped me down to this floor. So now I can come out and kind of look around and see if there's anything in this room. And you'll notice, let me be quiet for a moment cause I want you to hear the sounds of the game. It's very chilling. There's a sense of isolation and a subtle rumble in the background here. I can see a pigeon above. We'll see about moving to this area back here. No, it doesn't appear. I can go that way. So we'll go forward by this bird. Oh no, I almost fell down. So we'll keep moving along. It looks like that is broken, so we don't want to go that way. So we'll go up into this area this other way. And let's see about going across this area looks okay,

(00:33:58):
So we'll go that way. And I probably wanna go that way. That gray box back there looks interesting. Let's see what happens when we get close to it. So I tap on the box, I'm leave and go forward. So in this instance, you are tapping. I wouldn't be surprised if this also does have controller support because of the nature of the game. Oh, no.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:38):
Ah,

Mikah Sargent (00:34:40):
I needed to get out of the way of that. So luckily it kind of, oh, tap. So there you go. We're getting the first mechanics, so we'll have that come back down. And then I'm gonna tap twice and run outta the way. Oh, wonder if another one, okay, it looks like it was just that one. Now we can go up this ladder and make it to

Mikah Sargent (00:35:06):
The top.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:10):
So I don't know if something pushed that down or what happened there, but that was a little frightening. And you can hear that rope as the fan is sort of moving back and forth.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:25):
Come on.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:32):
All right, so then, oh, there was a person over there. Once again, you, this is always the part where I say you get the idea. It is a creepy game for sure. It is very little nightmares. And this is, I mean, there's a whole story involved with this. It's got multiple levels and once again, this is a game that you can play for quite some time. Again, just part of Apple arcade, just part of the, the subscription. So if you've got a subscription, you'll, I think you'll be surprised how much you're able to, to get to. Alright, let's check out your next title. Well, I'll let you, I'll let you tell us what it's called.

Rosemary Orchard (00:36:16):
Well, my next title, oops which has apparently caused an iPhone to come up on my screen is called Sneak Yo. So if you've ever played snake you know, back on the good old Nokia 33 tens you'll probably be familiar with the game where you have a snake that you need to control and you want it to eat things not crash into itself or any other snakes or crash into the walls. So Snake Hero is very similar to a modern online version, which some people may have play called Slitherio, where you have a snake and you need to control it. So onscreen, I have a thumb JoyCon sort of thing in the bottom left. And then in the bottom right I have a burst mode where I can move faster. But that of course is going to eat up some of my length as I go.

(00:37:01):
And if I crash into another snake, as you might expect I die. And I can either revive myself or continue onto the next version. And I'll just continue and see what happens. So now let's see. So I'm becoming orange because I started out by eating mostly orange food, and you do sort of change color a little bit as you go but not really all that much. But essentially your aim is to try and eat as much food as possible. And there's also a little icon on screen, which has got a sort of crown with an arrow, and this will appear somewhere around the edge of your screen and that tells you where the biggest snake in the game is right now. This can be a good thing to know because either, depending on your playing tactic, you might wanna get in there and try and meet it head on, in which case if you successfully do so, then you could win or you might do what I've just done and die sadly.

(00:37:53):
But if you are looking for a version of snake, maybe to reminisce or just to see whether or not you can get a harsh score like you used to be able to then stay here, plus is available in Apple Arcade. And yeah, it's fun. You can be a rainbow snake. It's a little bit more flexible than the original Nokia snake because you can go in any direction diagonals are allowed at all of the various angles. But yeah, it's a bit more of a challenge as well. And I have to say, it's, it's good fun and I have wasted many hours playing Snake Snakey

Mikah Sargent (00:38:24):
<Laugh>. There are loads and loads and loads of new games available in Apple arcade. Again you can subscribe 4 99 a month to get access to all the titles we just talked about, but so, so, so many more as well as part of an Apple one subscription or three months free when you purchase an Apple device. Please as always let us know about your favorite Apple Arcade games. I love to hear what folks are playing, what they are interested in, what new titles have excited them. And Rosemary and I will continue to keep an eye on what has launched thus far, what will, you know, come out later. And all of that, of course is available there in Apple Arcade. As far as letting us know, you can email us iOS today@twit.tv. Before we move on with the rest of the show though, I do want to take another quick break to tell you about our second sponsor today, and that is Fast Mail.

(00:39:25):
I love Fast Mail and I think you will too. You can make email work for you with Fast Mail by customizing your workflow with colors, custom swipes, night mode and more. Yes, fast Mail is a powerful email option and they continue to make their own services, you know, their, their app and their online site even more powerful so that you can even skip out on having to use third party apps if you want to with Fast Mail. It's kind of the all in one solution at this point. See, fast Mail now has quick settings. With a quick settings menu. You can easily choose a new theme. You can switch between light mode and dark Mode. You can change your tech size without leaving the fast mail screen. You're looking at quick settings. Also offer options related to the fast mail screen you're viewing. You can generate a new masked email address.

(00:40:14):
You can show or hide your reading pain. You can switch between folders and labels and do so much more. Those masked email addresses. That's the opportunity to create an individual email for every account you sign up with online and have that go back to your actual Fast mail account. I have that feature tied in with my one password service. So when I create a new account for a website, I generate the email, the masked email, and the password at the same time. It just adds that extra layer of security. But it also is great because then you can find out who, by who I mean what site or what service is actually giving your email to other people because that email is coming to that specific email address. You can choose to autos, save contacts, or choose to show public images of senders from external services like gravita.

(00:41:02):
You can set default reminders for events because it does have calendar features built in, change how invitations are handled, turn off notifications for calendar alerts, and you can also now add or buy a domain through Fast Mail and they will set all the records up for you. So it works immediately. Fast Mail gives you the ability to send and receive emails from your own domain and manage multiple email addresses in one space, which helps keep you organized and protects your personal data. And I have to say, even me, I did not this, you know, this feature was not available at the time. So I have my domain through another Service Hover, which is a sponsor of the network. And setting up the domain that I use with my Fast Mail email was incredibly simple even without this new feature because they will let you essentially set it up with, for folks who know about this stuff, the name servers, and handle everything kind of in the background.

(00:41:59):
So don't, because I, I think if I had heard this, oh, now you can buy the domain, then that I would go, oh, so it's probably not easy to do it if I wanna do it with my own domain that I already have. No, it is, it's very easy to do. I was able to do it in no time Flat and honestly it was faster than some of the other domain work that I've done to try and change things around with domain records. I was impressed at how quickly it all was just working. For more than 20 years, fast Mail has been a leader in email privacy. The Fast Mail team believes in working for customers as people to be cared for, not products to be exploited. Advertisers are left out and that means that you are put at the center of Fast Mail's Focus.

(00:42:42):
You pay for free email with your privacy. If you are using a free email service, it's not free. You're paying for it with your privacy at Fast Mail. Your data stays yours with better productivity features for as little as $3 a month. And Fast Mail has better spam filters and it has absolutely no ads. Privacy isn't all you get with Fast Mail, though. You get superior productivity tools with scheduled Send Snooze folders, labels the search bar. And I've heard Leo talk about how he can find any email at any time, any day with the search features for Fast Mail. Plus, you can keep track of all of the important details in your life easily because Fast Mail has an incredibly powerful sidebar. It works with password managers, as I mentioned, like Bit Warden who's a sponsor and one password to make it easy for you to create unique passwords for every account and safely store them on your device.

(00:43:35):
It is great on desktop and mobile, especially when you download the Fast Mail app to get the most out of your email. It's easy to download your old data and import it into your new Fast Mail inbox. Fast Mail is moving email forward with new internet standards and open source innovations that power many email services other than their own. So you don't get left behind by substandard email providers, especially, you know, you, you get internet through your internet service provider and then you hear that you can have an email along with it. Ugh, that email is almost never a good idea cuz that email typically is something that's so far down the priority line for those companies. It's not the way to go. Paying for your email is the way to go and Fast Mail as your option I feel is the way to go.

(00:44:20):
I love Fast Mail. I made the change per Leo's suggestion years ago, and I'm so glad I did. Fast Mail is fantastic. So reclaim privacy, boost your productivity with Fast Mail, try it now free for 30 days@fastmail.com slash twit. That's fast mail.com/twit and we thank Fast Mail for sponsoring this week's episode of iOS Today. Alright, back from the break and I wanted to start out with a mention. I know a lot of our listeners out there really love our accessories episodes and so I wanted to mention a new product that is launched that I think some folks would be excited about. Mofi has revealed a couple of new products. They're both MagSafe Carve mounts and I have to say this is one of the most popular product categories in terms of, of something that folks look for. I, I, anytime I take a, you know, a Lyft or an Uber ride, someone's always got some sort of new car mount that I haven't seen before, so I'm always interested in seeing what's out there.

(00:45:29):
Everybody uses different options a lot of times, you know, if you've got wireless CarPlay or you've got wired car, well actually I should say wireless CarPlay is less likely that you would want or need amount. I have wireless CarPlay in my vehicle, so my phone is typically in my bag in the, like below on the ground behind my seat. So I don't use a vent mount or a car mount anymore, but there was a time when I did and when I did, or if you have wired car play, then you may also want to mount this Mofi option would've been what I wanted because they have two options here. They've got one that does not wirelessly charge available for $40, about $40, and then one that does wirelessly charge available for about $100. And essentially what you have is a, an apple MagSafe puck on the end of an arm that can move around.

(00:46:28):
So an articulating arm, and I think that is a very clever design that makes it so that you can move your phone around and get it exactly where you want it. And then whenever you've got that magnet, what's nice about it is if you th walk it on there, you can have it where it's portrait mode, but then you can very easily change it to landscape because the magnet just lets you move it very easily and independently of anything else. Then you're going to get that faster charging speed that 15 watts of wireless charging because of, or rather is it, it's, I think it's 12 or 13 because of the built in MagSafe charging puck. So yeah good on mo with this latest addition to its lineup and I wouldn't be surprised if I start to see some of those in different Ubers and Lyfts <laugh> going forward. Alright,

Rosemary Orchard (00:47:21):
Yeah, yeah, I noticed there's also a new one out from you Green, but it looks like it's not actually available in the US Green Store at the moment. It's only available over here in the uk. But that has both a stick on the dash one and a clip on the vent one. So it's quite a nice, it's good to

Mikah Sargent (00:47:35):
Have options. You need

Rosemary Orchard (00:47:36):
Wireless charging.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:37):
Yeah, because I

Rosemary Orchard (00:47:38):
Know some folks, especially with my car, like there's nowhere to stick it and there's not really a vent to mount it on either. And so I'm, I might buy it and see what happens and see if I can fit it in there somehow because even though I have wireless CarPlay CarPlay uses your battery, so you may wanna consider a charger regardless.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:52):
Yes, indeed. Alright. also the Apple support app, if you have ever made use of that application, you might wanna know that it is recently gotten a nice redesign both on iPhone and on iPad just to, to kind of make it a little bit easier. Now this can be perhaps you have a, a, a device that you need to check on the status of it find a repair store check out your repairs that you may have, you know, sort of that you're in the process of doing to see where things are in terms of the repair process. But it has been sort of redesigned and updated to I think make it not just simpler to browse, but also simpler to get to the features that matter most. So Rosemary, looks like you've got a tour prepared for us here.

Rosemary Orchard (00:48:48):
Well, I don't exactly have a tour prepared, but I did just pop it open so that folks can have a look. So on the main support screen it starts out with your devices where you can scroll across through your devices. So if you've got a problem with say your iPhone, you can tap on your iPhone and tell them what the problem is and just kind of pick through the list and so on. There's also a nice little tool for managing subscriptions and so on, which will take you through when it loads to the section for the settings where you've got all of your various subscriptions for apps and so on, resetting password checking Apple Care coverage. And then they've also brought in some of the features from the Tips app where you can learn how to do various things such as customizing the action button on an Apple Watch Ultra or personalizing your lock screen and get a bit of an overview of the services that you've got available and you know, what you can use from them and so on.

(00:49:42):
There's also a locations section which will show you nearby Apple stores and so on that you can get support from. And alt also affiliate stores, that's the word where they, where you can get support. And then any recent activity, which I have none of in the last 90 days, so luckily my device is working, I guess. But yeah, if you've ever needed support from Apple and you've done it remotely or you've probably used this app before and it's certainly worth having a look at every once in a while just say that you're aware of, like, for example, when your Apple AppleCare coverage is expiring on your devices and things like that.

Mikah Sargent (00:50:20):
All right. And you know, typically when a new update comes out, Rosemary Orchard and I recommend that you make that update that it is mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it is time to hop into the new because it's going to have bug fixes and security improvements, and there's every reason why you should be making that update. However, if you are a regular user of Apple's lightning to USB three camera adapter which Rosemary has in her hand there, then you might want to wait on doing the update to iOS 16.5 if you've already done it. I'm sorry it's a little late. But of course, as these things happen, you often don't find out that there's something wrong until after the update has come out. Folks wanting to make use of the lightning to u SB three camera adapter, which is a very common feature for, for folks who are wanting to connect some sort of USB accessory to their iPhone or their older model iPad. You are left without that opportunity because of something in iOS 16.5 that kind of keeps the dongle from being able to take in power and pass that through to whatever U USB accessory is connected to it. So Rosemary, tell us about the, the details here.

Rosemary Orchard (00:51:48):
Yeah, so just to be clear there are two U Ussb adapters wi for lightning. I've got both of them here. So there's the lightning to U USB adapter, which works with some cameras. And then there is the powered lightning to USB adapter, which the difference is, is at the bottom of one of them, there's also a lightning port with the idea being that you can take a lightning cable and plug it into that and then plug that the whole dongle plus the power into your phone, and then it should pass things through. Now I am running iOS 16.6, I installed the developer beta earlier, so mine seems to be working just fine with the exception of the fact that my phone is not showing up on screen temporarily <laugh>, but that's what happens when you unplug your phone and plug it back in, in the middle of a live stream.

(00:52:32):
So yeah, but it, it, it is working on the 16.6 update. So Apple do have a fixed incoming for this. If you are heavily reliant on this angle then you, you may wanna just sit and sit, sit tight and wait. But if you are not heavily reliant on it, then you of course can go ahead and update. And if you're there going, Ooh maybe I need to pick one of these adapters up because it would be really nice to be able to plug my phone into my camera. Please pause, consider your devices, look at how many lightning devices you have and whether or not you're likely to upgrade any devices in the next year or so, because it's quite likely there's a U s BBC iPhone coming, which of course means that you can then just buy a u SBC adapter instead, which of course would be multipurpose and work with computers and so on as well.

(00:53:20):
But yeah the regular one with just u sb on it works fine. This one doesn't seem to be passing everything through quite as it should do right now unless you have installed the latest developer beta. Of course, if you're on the public beta. Then 16.6 will likely be coming out tomorrow as we record this, which will be our regular recording day. Or maybe Wednesday. So yeah, if you're, if you're desperate and you've already installed the update, consider joining the public beta for this that needs a public beter of Iowas 16 folks. Melt 17, which will be coming in a few weeks. Mm-Hmm.

Mikah Sargent (00:53:52):
<Affirmative>, someone said in the forums about this, I've been using the official Apple Lightning to USB three camera adapter for months to send Lossless Apple music to my dak, my digital analog converter. And it's worked flawlessly and charged my phone at the same time. As soon as I updated to iOS 16.5 this morning. The adapter not only doesn't communicate to the DAK at all, it doesn't even charge my phone. When I test plugging in an iPad on a previous OS version, it communicates and charges just fine. This has to be an issue with iOS 16.5, and I hope it's resolved quickly. Very bad. Look for an official Apple accessory to be rendered inoperable by a step update of iOS. I agree. It should not have happened. It did happen. And hopefully Apple is working on a fix for this. As more folks begin to talk about it, I think that's one of the important things that, you know, once they're made aware of it, then they can quickly move to fix that and make sure that they're able to get that compatibility back. Alright, with that, we have come to the end of the news segment, which means I can hear the music. It's time for Shortcuts Corner.

(00:55:11):
Welcome to Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts, corner requests or shortcuts requests. And Rosemary Orchard, the shortcuts expert, provides a response. The Shortcuts Corner request this week comes in from Mike Kai who writes, hi, love the show. I am a club member and I love all the shows on Twitter. Thank you Mike Kai for being a subscriber. I am beginning my journey with shortcuts because I am inspired to really learn how to save time and be fast and get back more of my life by using automation. Can you tell me or show me how to send form emails with attachments in mail and be able to format text and swap out different people's names? I am a realtor in Orange County trying to automate my life. I have a young family, and my dream is to really get my mind around shortcuts so I can win back my life and save a lot of time automating text messages and emails and all those redundant activities to be more in the moment with my family. This seems really exciting and I am excited to learn more. I bought the Max Sparky Automation class and I am learning some things, but he hasn't dug into email marketing that way, or just emailing in general to save time. Thanks for all you do and big fan of the show. Thanks, Mike. I Alright, so let us, let us see if there's some help here for kind of automated email marketing.

Rosemary Orchard (00:56:33):
Yeah, so I mean, there's a couple of questions that Mike I has here, which you know, will be useful to various people in various forms, such as how, for example, can I send the same sort of message to most people, but just swap out the name and how can I send formatted emails using shortcuts? Those are the two questions we need to solve. And of course I do have a shortcut right here, which solves both of those. And I'm gonna walk through how I did that. And so what I'll actually do, I'll just save this one and I'll go out and I'll create a brand new shortcut. So to start with assuming that you want basically the same text every time, and maybe you just wanna be able to swap in a name then what you could start with is just a simple ask for input.

(00:57:15):
And then in the prompt for that, probably type something like name, so that you know that it's the name. And then when you run your shortcut, this is gonna pop up and ask you for a name. So I could type in Mikah and then, well, I've just got the word Mikah, so I probably need to do something with this, right? So if I take a text action then this gives me a nice space where I can just write anything. So I could write hello, and then I can select that provided input. And if I tap on this, then I can give that variable a name, which I always recommend doing. And I'll call that name because then I'll know that that's the name. And then I can just write something. So how are you question mark, for example. And then I'll just pop my name in at the end, and that's it.

(00:57:56):
So now when I run this, it's gonna ask me for a name. It'll and then I'll, I'll pop in Mikah like this, and then we've got look text. Hello Mikah, how are You, rose? And that's spaced out on three lines. Okay. But now we, we were talking about foresting. I really wants to know how you can format my emails. And this is something where you're gonna need to know a little thing called markdown. Now, people might be going, oh my God, this sounds complicated. I promise you there are very simple guides out there on the internet, but essentially all you need to know is you can put one underscore on each side of something to make it italic. And if you put two asterisks on the sides of something, then it'll make it bold. So I'm just gonna write underscore, italic. If I could spell the word italic, this would be way better.

(00:58:44):
And then I'm gonna put star, star bold and star, star. And now when I run this, it'll still pop up and it'll last me for the name Mikah, and it'll do this. And so that doesn't look like what we want yet, but Shortcut has this great action called make Rich Text from Markdown. So now when I take that input and I pop in my word Mikah, when I run this, it is going to apparently crash. And Pauls in a very dramatic fashion because of course we love that. I'll just force quit shortcuts and pop back into it. And give it a moment because it's still crushing nice. There we go. I just got a little stuck there. I'll just scroll down into my demo. Perfect. So there we go. Let's try that again. And now I type in the word Mikah and da da, da.

(00:59:37):
Oh, look at that. Now, I had to zoom in a bit because this is now formatted html. It says, how are you italic and bold and italic is italicized and bold is in bold. Lovely. So now what we would need to do from here is send a message from using the mail app. So we can just tap on, send email, and you can type in a pre formatted subject like for example update on life something nice and important, and you can even input your recipients. Now if you are being really smart here at the beginning, instead of asking for input and typing in a name, you'd ask it to choose a contact, and then you could get the name from the contact, and then you could get the email address from the contact for later. So you can save yourself a step.

(01:00:22):
But now if I run this and I just pop in Mikah as my name, then when it pops open the email, look at that, it's got my email with Hello Mikah. So it's got Mikah's name in there, how are you? Atec and Bold. And that's nicely formatted. And it's just using the default iOS font format and everything as well. If I'd already put in the two in in the recipient section a shortcut, it would've prefilled out the email address or the person here. And if I've done that, so if I've got everything, then I can also turn off show incom compose sheet and just have it send that straight away, which is very nice once you've got your shortcut working. So that's the kind of starting point, which I think probably solves most of Mike, i's questions.

(01:01:07):
So you can use markdown and then make rich texts from markdown to create nice formatted emails and you can use and ask for input to get you to do something like choose a name. But there is one more thing that I wanted to mention because I'm guessing as my case as a realtor, there's gonna be like different sections of an email that might need to be included. Like for example if somebody is selling I guess a condo versus a house versus just like a lot or something, I'm, I'm, I'm guesstimating here. I know nothing about American real estate. But what you can do for this is you could do a nice simple choose for a menu and then just type, I'll just type in the word condo and then house here, because I'm gonna assume that they're different enough that you might have different text for them.

(01:01:49):
And then I'm gonna add a text action into each one of these. And I will just copy that down and paste that into here. And then I'll just write in the word condo and write in the word house. And now if I take another text action, I pop that in at the end. Thanks for getting in touch. Oops. and then I can pop in my menu result into this text. And so now what I can do is I can say, oh, okay, it's a house that they're, they're getting, and now it says, thanks for getting in touch, and then whatever you put in that house section mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is what comes out there. And this could be very useful if you've got like blocks of texts that you need to reuse for things like this. And so that's how you can do that with shortcuts.

(01:02:36):
So yeah, fingers crossed this gives folks some ideas of different things. There are lots of different ways to approach this this question and this problem. And I would like to hear from other folks, especially, you know, having, having seen this, you know, what, what questions do they have and how might they want to use this or how might they be struggling with it? Because shortcuts can be super powerful and great for for all sorts of things. So yeah, it's it's always nice to see what people are trying to do with it. And I suspect my guy that you are gonna do pretty well with shortcuts and getting all this stuff done.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:12):
Yeah, that's, yeah, I think that obviously you take that and you build on it, and especially after you start to check out these different guides, that is going to help you even more. And don't forget to pick up Rosemary's own guide on shortcuts too, really take it to the next level. All right. I do want to take another quick break because it's time to tell you about our next sponsor. It's HelloFresh who're bringing you this episode of iOS Today Flavor is in full bloom at HelloFresh, you can enjoy the tastes of chef crafted recipes featuring ripe seasonal ingredients delivered right to your door. And this May HelloFresh is celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. You can try for a limited time authentic recipes created in partnership with Chef sbe, son of New York City's tag mo restaurant, and enjoy a cultural taste tour right in your own kitchen.

(01:04:10):
Don't call for takeout. No, don't do it. Instead, get HelloFresh. Their quick and easy meals make feeding the family a cinch without that high price tag. And they've even got new fast and fresh options that are ready in just 15 minutes or less. And HelloFresh cares about quality. That's why seasonal ingredients are picked at peak ripeness and travel from the farm to your home in less than seven days. So, you know, they're fresh, there's no opening up that bag and going, great. This, these five potatoes are all rotten. No, HelloFresh does more than just delicious dinners. Not only can you take your pick from 40 weekly recipes, but you can also choose for more than 100 items that can help round out your order. Snacks, easy lunches, desserts, and pantry necessities. Everything arrives in one box on the delivery day you choose. So there's no more scouring the grocery store for that one ingredient.

(01:05:03):
You need to complete your recipe. Hellofresh takes away all of that hassle by delivering fresh pre-portioned ingredients so you have exactly what you need. And that way it also helps cut down on food waste. If you're hosting a get together, HelloFresh and HelloFresh market are going to help you make dinnertime a snap with deliciously easy options that will please everyone at your table. There's fit and wholesome, pescatarian, veggie, they've got a meal plan that suits your lifestyle, plus you can swap out proteins and sides to your liking. I think that's really cool as a feature that, oh, I'm not big on this. I'd rather have this protein instead. So you can sort of narrow in on the recipe that works perfect for you. You might as well check save money off of your growing to-do list, and you can do that with HelloFresh. Hellofresh is cheaper than grocery shopping and 25% cheaper than takeout.

(01:05:56):
They when they send you the box, they send these great recipe cards. They come with all sorts of instructions for creating exactly what you are, you know, what you're hoping to make. There's this creamy lemon herb pork chops. Oh my goodness, I love pork chops. And these look so good. There's a delicious sauce. You get some Brussels sprouts and some carrots. I had a recent recipe. It was it was one of the fast and fresh options and I thought, okay, you know, this isn't gonna take very long. It's probably not gonna be it, you know, it'll, it'll be fine. But I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of it cuz of how quick it was to make. Well, that's not the thinking I should have had in place because it was really, really good. In fact, my partner goes I would order this at a restaurant and want to get it again and again and again.

(01:06:46):
It was this delicious sort of roasted potato salad. And it was like a micro, not microgreens, but a mixed green salad and I think chicken, if I remember correctly. But it came with this garlic butter that you used for roasting the potatoes and this sauce that you made that went over everything. And it was just so good, so much so that I saved that recipe card so that I could try to remake it just with my own ingredients, because I definitely don't want to miss out on that as a possible sort of option for us to eat because it was so, so good. And honestly, the idea of going home and just grabbing that bag, pulling out everything, looking at my recipe card, making what I wanna make and having it is so nice <laugh> when I compare it to what I do otherwise, which is go throughout the day and then realize far too late into the night, oh, you haven't eaten today, you should probably make something and then scrambling to make something as quickly as you can.

(01:07:47):
That's not how it should be done. I know that's not how it should be done. Hellofresh makes it so it's not that way. So honestly, it made me happy as much as it made my doctor happy <laugh> HelloFresh, it's America's number one meal kit. Go to hellofresh.com/ios 16 and use code iOS 16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping. That's hellofresh.com/ios 16 with the code iOS 16 to get 16 free meals plus free shipping. Why not? Why not go there right now? Just go there. You're gonna get 16 free meals and free shipping. Try out HelloFresh hellofresh.com/ios 16. Alright, back from the break. And now it's time to talk about feedback and questions. And I do want to point out, scooter X has said that iOS 16.6 just now rolled out in public beta. So for those of you who are doing the public beta, if you are also using one of those adapters and are going, why can't I get the public beta?

(01:08:52):
That should help you out with that. Alright the request comes in from Brad. Brad writes, I'm listening to this late, so perhaps this has been mentioned already, but just in case Matthew mentioned that it can be frustrating to move an app from the app library to the first home screen because you have to drag it across all of your other home screens. And Brad points out, this actually isn't true from the first home screen. You can simply swipe down to pull up Spotlight, type the name of the app that you want to use, long Press, that app icon in the results screen. And when you do move your finger to drag the icon Spotlight screen disappears, and you can drop the app on that specific home screen. So what what Brad is talking about here is depending on how many home screens you have, they will sort of go in order, and then the last swipe is going to take you to the app library.

(01:09:43):
That's your entire library of app. All of the of apps, all of the apps that are installed on your device. And what Matthew was talking about is, depending on which focus mode he's in, he might have five, six different home screens. He swipes all the way over to the side to get to that app library and then to take an app from the app library and actually put it on his home screen. He has to then sort of lift it and swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe back to that first home screen and then drop it. And as Brad is pointing out, if you simply swipe down to Access Spotlight and look for the app, that way you can take the app from there, drop it on whatever home screen you happen to be on. So it's just a little bit easier. That's a great tip, Brad. And I don't think that was brought up since Matthew has been on the show, correct?

Rosemary Orchard (01:10:30):
No, no, it hasn't been. And it is a very good tip. And Brad also said that the dictator is on the go, so we should excuse any garment and punctuation issues, but I'd like to note that Sirius absolutely nailed that. Yeah. and so if people are a little wary of trying dictation, you know, it is gonna get it wrong every once in a while. Sure. But you really ought to give you know, this the, the dictation a go on iOS because it is so good. And I, it actually made me think of something that I did wanna sort of remind folks of. And I'll just pop up my iPhone here to show it off, which is what, when I'm actually dictating something at the moment, what I can actually do is go back and tap on a word and then say again what I meant to say.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:14):
Oh.

Rosemary Orchard (01:11:15):
And then it will just fix it. Because the, the dictation mode on iOS is massively improved recently came out this new version with iOS 16 where it doesn't replace your keyboard. So you can also pause and type it, it doesn't work as well if you don't disable that and you're also talking on a podcast <laugh>. But yeah, but it, it, it's, it's very useful. So yeah, folks folks who haven't tried it should also benefit from Brett's use of dictation and give it a go.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:46):
Alright, with that, I do believe I can hear the next set of music. It's time for app caps. This is the part of the show where we place caps, a top hour heads to honor our app and Gadget picks of the week. These, or the apps or gadgets we are using now or have been using for some time that we think are great and therefore want to share with all of you so that you know about them as well. And along with that, we then place things on around over by beside our heads too, say, I don't know what we're saying, to be honest with you,

Rosemary Orchard (01:12:29):
<Laugh>, we're capping off the show and we're doing it very literally. There you go. It's a, it's a meta joke.

Mikah Sargent (01:12:34):
There we go. There. Perfect. It is a meta joke. So Rosemary Orchard, tell us about the cap, the top of your head and then tell or the cat the top of your head perhaps. And then tell us about your Afro Gadget pick of the week.

Rosemary Orchard (01:12:45):
Well, I promise folks, there were no animals harmed in creation of this hat. As hopefully as obvious, this is a yellow plastic leopard, sorry, an orange plastic leopard print sort of cowboy hat. Yeah, I got a big box of party hats. And yeah, there's a few of these in different colors and different prints that will be continuing to make an appearance over time. But yeah, it, it works. And you know what, these are great cuz they nest inside of one of one another, so I don't have to designate as much space in my wardrobe to my hack collection <laugh>. So I'm, I'm gonna call it a win on all counts. And speaking of winning sometimes you need to be able to add up your winnings or you know, how much money somebody owes you or like try and keep track of like how much you're spending on a, a, a trip or something like that.

(01:13:31):
And there is a great app for this which I have used many a time. And I'm just having a little trouble opening it up. There we go. And this is called Silver Now. Silver kind of disappeared a little bit for a while on iOS and it's now back and it's just available on the iPad. I've just moved my face so that I'm not blocking anything. And I honestly, I love this app. So the idea is you have a sheet and then you can type on on that sheet. So for example if I were going shopping and then I bought some bananas and they were, I don't know say for example I don't know, one pound 50 for some bananas I may get many bananas.

(01:14:20):
I may not get many bananas for that. And then I bought some chocolate and that was 99 p 19 MP doesn't quite work. I'll put in a 0.99 there just to make sure that that works because currency is harpo. And then maybe I also bought gosh, I don't know some bread. And so I've got my bread and my bread was say maybe I'm getting a very fancy loaf today. And so I'll get a 35 pound, 78 loaf of bread. Woo. Now obviously I'm not spending this much on bread really, but what's happened as I'm going here is the numerical values and the currency signs have been plucked out of what I've written and they appear on the right hand side and then there happens to be a handy little total at the bottom.

(01:15:10):
But because this is silver, I can also just you know, write what I want to happen and, and have it insert data for me. So it has a number of little features which, you know, you can turn on and off. So you've got obviously your different sheets and the fact that it shows totals and so on. But you can also go into the getting started guide and it will tell you what you can do. So for example, if I write one plus one on the line, it's going to put two. So for example, if I then also had dinner which was say 40 pounds plus a 20% tip because I assume that I'm dining in the US where if I don't give the servers a tip, then they, they may not get paid.

(01:15:56):
Then this is actually automatically calculated 40 pounds plus 20% to 48 pounds for me. And you know, it, it's nice to be able to just type this sort of in line and, and see things add up. And then if something changes later, then you know, okay, that was on this line. So if you're splitting dinner with friends, for example, and you write down that Mikah had this and then another line, Mikah had that, and then it turns out that this thing never arrives, so they take it off the bill, then I can take that out so that Mikah doesn't have to to pay for that and so on. So yeah, it's got the ability to do percentages and and so on. And I just love the way that you can annotate as you go. You can also do conversions. So you can convert hours to minutes kilometers to miles Celsius to Fahrenheit counts to kilograms, et cetera.

(01:16:39):
There's currency conversions, there's calendar conversions. So if you wanna add three weeks and seven days, why we would do that. I don't know. I said seven. The example here is four <laugh>. I should be better at reading apparently. And it will allow you to input various date formats. You can calculate how long is passed between dates, number of work, days between something, time zones, all sorts. So Solver is 2 99, 2 2 download for most folks. And then it, that, that's it. But there's a 1999 in-app purchase to unlock absolutely everything forever. Which is great. And it looks like it's now showing up back on the iPhone as well, which is great because it they were re recently advertising this on setup again as back on the iPad and they weren't saying it was back on the iPhone. And so I was there going, oh, I, I really want it on my iPhone because that's where I've always used it the most. And I still had it cause it was still listed in the App store even though it went away for a bit. So yeah, I'm really glad it's back. And that is silver for iPad. S O U L V E R.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:44):
That is a very important as far as I'm concerned, a very important app that I, I just, it's smart about figuring out what you are looking for without you having to be super detailed about what you want. I know that those were a lot of words that sort of add up to something, but the point is, there are times where I can't quite figure out how I am trying to do a calculation and I can just kind of drop it into Solver and then it figures out for me what it is that I'm trying to truly get at in the end. So I, I think that that's what makes it magnificent to me. I wanted to mention mostly because folks are having a hard time finding it. Chat g p t is now available as an app in the app store.

(01:18:33):
It's available to download for free. It does have an in-app purchase if you want to use chat g p t plus, but searching for it up to this point has been difficult for people. And there are lots of third party apps that are basically using the G P T API to access it and make their own third party apps that have all of these weird subscriptions and sometimes they're charging a lot of money. And so I wanted to make it so that we've got one more link to the actual app, but also because some of you might want to use chat G P T and up to this point haven't really figured out the chat.openai.com thing in getting there and being able to use it. So you can download the app and it features both G P T 3.5 and if you are a GPT plus subscriber, GPT four 3.5 is great.

(01:19:24):
Four of course adds even more and is better. It's Scott, what I like about the app is that they've kind of tried to just add a little bit to it. So when I'm using this app it has some haptic feedback involved, so it's almost as if the, the little G p t bot is kind of aware and trying to hear out what you are looking for. So let's, let's do something here. Let's go with, I have Brussels sprouts, carrots, eggs, celery, mayonnaise, mustard, and targon in my fridge period. Tell me a recipe I can make with these ingredients plus standard pantry staples, period. Okay, so I have brussel sprouts, carrots, eggs, celery, mayonnaise, mustard, and tarragon in my fridge. Tell me a recipe I can make with these ingredients plus standard pantry staples. Let's see what G P T four says.

(01:20:32):
While you can make a terragon egg salad with roasted brussel sprouts and carrots, and then they provide it provides a recipe cup of brussel sprouts, a cup of carrots for eggs, a stock, celery, mayo, mustard, targon, olive oil, salt and pepper. It talks about preheating the oven to roast those brussel sprouts. And as it's going, I can feel a little from the haptic the haptic engine in my iPhone, which of course is just haptic feedback as it provides this recipe. And it says the recipe provides a good balance of protein from the eggs and healthy roasted vegetables for a light but satisfying meal. Of course, G P T is useful for all sorts of all sorts of queries, all sorts of questions, all sorts of stuff. Let me, lemme try this. Are you aware of a show called iOS today? Question mark.

(01:21:30):
Tell us about the show exclamation point. Now it's important to note that G P t four's latest information comes from September of 2021. So let's see what it says. Ios today is a podcast that originated from the twit and then in parenthesis this week in tech network. Thank you for pointing that out because you go what twit what's that mean? The show is hosted by tech enthusiasts who explore all things related to Apples iOS operating system, which powers devices such as the iPhone and iPad. The hosts discuss news, share app recommendations and provide tips and tricks to help listeners get the most out of their iOS devices. They also often answer questions from listeners and discuss broader topics in the tech world that pertain to Apple and its products. As of my knowledge cutoff in September of 2021, the hosts were Mikah Sargent and Leo Laport.

(01:22:16):
They each bring a unique perspective to the show with Leo being one of the original tech podcasters and Mikah providing a fresh new media perspective. Please note the hosts might have changed since then and remember to check the most recent episodes to see who the current hosts are and what topics they're discussing. So again, this is I'm not gonna go into everything there is to know about G P T, but if you've been looking for a chance to try G P T or maybe you're just wanting an easier way to get access to a chat, g p t an app might be the way for you to do so. And what I'm looking forward to, Rosemary, is this app to start tying in with shortcuts, at which point I think that'll make magic happen.

Rosemary Orchard (01:23:01):
Well, if they had shortcuts so far, I'm sure we'll see that. And just in case any folks have seen it and are a little bit confused apple has officially st told employees don't, you're not allowed to use chat g p t for work. And people are thinking, oh, that, that sounds bad. This is a fairly standard thing in tech companies where they don't want all of the code to be fed into chat G P T or any of these online AI tools because you don't quite know what's gonna happen with that data. And in Apples particular case, the last thing they want is leaks right before WWDC of all those new features coming. So yeah, yeah, it's one of those things where if anybody's worried about that, then I think providing your feeding it your own information, there's nothing to worry about there.

Mikah Sargent (01:23:43):
Absolutely. Alright, with that, we have reached the end of this episode of iOS Today. Hopefully you got some new games you want to check out or you were shouting at the screen going talk about my game. In which case we want to hear from you iOS today@twit.tv. That's where you can provide feedback, that's where you can ask questions, that's where you can send your shortcuts corner requests. That's where you can let us that's where you can send us emails to ask for addresses where you can send us new hats that we wanna wear. <Laugh>. All of that is available at iOS today, TWIT dot t v. Now we want you of course to check out the show as we record it live. We're recording it on a different day today, but we typically record the show live every Tuesday at 12:00 PM Eastern, which is 9:00 AM Pacific or 1600 utc.

(01:24:37):
You can do that by going to twit tv slash live to watch the show as we record it live. Again, not this week, but going forward of course. And we think that the best way for you to get the show is by subscribing to the show. You can do that by going to twit tv slash iOS. There is where you go to subscribe to the show in its various formats. Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, YouTube. Were in all those places. You can subscribe to audio or video. We try to make the audio just as sort of understandable as the video. Of course the show is great in video form. But we try to describe things that are going on on screen and do all of that to make sure that, you know, even if you're just listening to us via audio, again, that's at twit TV slash iOS.

(01:25:24):
I should also mention that you should consider joining the Club club twit at twit.tv/club twit. When you join the club. Starting at $7 a month or $84 a year, you get access to a lot of great stuff. First, every single Twitch show with no ads. It's all of the content, none of the ads because you in effect are the supporter of the show. So you get to get all of the content. You also get access to the twit plus bonus feed that has extra stuff you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show in special twit events. Plus access to the members only Discord server. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow club TWIT members and also those of us here at twit. It is a great place to be to hang out. Rosemary Orchard is incredibly active member of the Club Twit Discord, so if you've been looking forward for it or looking for an opportunity to chat with Rosemary, consider joining the club.

(01:26:14):
Again. I say starting at $7 a month because it's not that there's sort of tears or anything like that. No, it's that Some folks said, Hey, I feel like I would like to give you some more money than just $7 a month because you really provide a lot of great stuff. Thank you. We said to that person and gave, gave everyone the ability to offer more if they'd like to, along with those great perks. You also are going to get some special twit club Twit exclusive shows. There's the Untitled Linux Show, which is a show all about Linux. You also get access to Paul TH's Hands on Windows program, the short format show that covers Windows, tips and tricks. Hands on Mac from wa from i Mikah Sargent that covers Window or Windows. Wow. That covers Apple tips and tricks. Again, another short format show. And you also get to watch home Theater Geeks, which is newly relaunched in the club hosted by Scott Wilkinson. So consider checking out those programs as part of your Club twit subscription Rosemary Orchard. Tell us where folks can find you online.

Rosemary Orchard (01:27:25):
Well, you can find me@rosemaryosha.com, which has got links to podcast books, apps, and old places. You can find me on the internet, including social media where you can find me on Macedon, rosemary snail it.social. And of course you can find me here on iOS today. We've got a couple of great shows lined up for folks who're gonna be looking at the new final cut and logic for our iPad next week, which is gonna be very exciting. And of course, I'm available in the Club Twit Discord as Mikah mentioned, Mikah working folks find you,

Mikah Sargent (01:27:53):
You can find me at Mikah Sargent on many a social media site. So that's just my first name and my last name. Or you can head to chihuahua.coffee at c h i h u a h u a.coffee where I've got links to many of the places I'm most active online. And we will see you all next week.

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
Bye.

Jason Howell (01:28:15):
Do you wanna hear about the latest news happening in the tech world from the people who write the article sometimes from the people who are actually making the news? Well, we got a show for you here@twit.tv. It's called Tech News Weekly. Me, Jason Howell, and my co-host Mikah Sargent. We talk with some amazing people each and every Thursday on Tech News Weekly, and we share a little bit of our own insights in each of us bringing a story of the week. That's a twit TV slash tnw subscribe right now.