iOS Today 661, 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, get your pets, sit them down on your laps, give them a pet as you do with pets, because we are talking about apps and gadgets For your best friends, stay tuned for iOS Today.

Narrator (00:00:17):
Podcasts you love From people you Trust. This is TWiT.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:27):
This is iOS today, episode 661, recorded Tuesday, July 11th, 2023, apps and gadgets for your pets. This episode of iOS Today is brought to you by Electric E-Bikes. Rediscover your independence this summer with an XP 3.0 from electric. Visit electric e-bikes dot com to learn more and explore the Epic models Electric has to offer. And by Linn Summer is in full swing and Brooklyn, and is here to help you swap out winter warmth for easy breezy comfort with their award-winning sheets and home essentials. Visit linn.com today and get $20 off plus free shipping on orders of $100 or more with Code iOS and buy cashflow. Cashflow delivers rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods and 30% faster than other Major CDNs. Meet customer expectations 100% of the time. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashflow.com. Welcome back to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS and TV os and watch OS and iPad os. Send all of the OSS that Apple has on offer, all of the software platforms that run on these wonderful devices we purchased from the big old Apple Company. I am one of your hosts, Mike S. Sargent.

Rosemary Orchard (00:01:50):
And I am Rosemary Orchard and very excited to be doing this episode, though unfortunately, I did try Micah to borrow a couple of cats. Apparently they object to travel.

Rosemary Orchard (00:02:01):
Darn it. So yeah, I don't unfor unfortunately, I actually have any furry friends here in my home studio. But I do have a, a fuzzy snake and some octopi. And there's a camel over there from Kazakhstan. So

Mikah Sargent (00:02:13):
Now that I think about it, I should brought in one of, one of my animals. Although then it would've just been kind of awkward whenever Henry got tired of sitting in my lap and wanted to go around. And then, yeah. Anyway, it's probably best we are focusing on the apps and gadgets for your pets. You will have your pets and can, can, you know, introduce them to these different things. Now, the reason why this episode was inspired, not just because we adore pets and because we have the quote unquote pet tax here at iOS today, where if you so choose, you can include a photo of your wonderful animal whenever you send in feedback, but also because there's an improved feature coming in iOS 17 that does a better job of knowing when there is a specific kind of animal in your photos. Rosemary, what's changing in iOS 17?

Rosemary Orchard (00:03:12):
Well, in iOS 16 and previous recent versions in the Photos app, you can identify a person. And so this means that, you know, when, when you go into photos and I'm just gonna open photos and go back without spoiling the surprise then you can actually have like a little album dedicated to that person with all the different pictures that you have with that person in. So, for example, here's some great shots that were taken when it is the studio earlier this year. And, you know, if I scroll back, then I'll see a bunch of photos here, including some from the first time or actually second time throwback, which that I met Micah which was back in 2019 in August. And so it's, it's great that, you know, you can recognize a person and you can say that, you know, you wanna remove somebody from your your people or zoom in on their face in the pictures, which zooms in with questionable results depending on the quality Oh my goodness.

(00:04:06):
And things like that. But what you can also do is review photos, and then I can say, oh, right, yeah, these photos are also mica done. Okay, so that's great. But now, now in iOS 17, a feature that's coming soon to your devices hats. And as you can see right here, I've gone ahead and favorited some of the lovely animals that have been in my life. So we've got Lily, who is a lovely dog who is possibly in the studio right now with Burke maybe outside of the actual studio, but in the studio building. And then there's Ruby and Gracie who I've been spending a lot of time with recently. Oh Ruby has opinions. She believes she's an alarm clock. She also believes that four o'clock in the morning is breakfast time. Oh, no.

(00:04:48):
And Gracie is rather fluffy and a little scaredy, but she's decided that I'm, I'm an acceptable human and has even gone as far as to climb on my lap recently. But now because of the the feature in iOS 17, I can say, okay, I'm gonna review some pictures and I'm gonna say, yes, these two pictures are indeed of Gracie. And then there we go. That's that done. And if I pop into Ruby, then I can check as well and review pictures. And there's another picture of Ruby that it wasn't a hundred percent sure about, but now I can check and look through and see all the pictures of pets. And this is great because what you can do is if you tap on the name, then you can change the name of your pet. And you no longer have to go through the rigmarole of, for example if I were to open up this picture, then you can't really tell.

(00:05:34):
But there are two cats in this picture as well as a tiger. But previously when you tapped on the little sort of info button at the bottom, the only way to name a pet was kind of to add a caption. So I'd have to type in the names of the animals there as it is now because it recognizes pet faces. Ruby Gracie has been identified automatically. Ruby's hiding behind, unfortunately. And it's also highlighting that I can pick this up and turn it into a sticker in messages.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:01):
Lovely. And that's a really well done. So what I love about that too is I honestly thought that it had just that the system had thought that that tiger was the cat, because they have similar patterns. So the fact that it did spot the cat, cuz I can, I don't, I can barely see one cat in the photo. You say there were two in that photo <laugh> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.

Rosemary Orchard (00:06:21):
So that's quite impressive. Ruby's hiding literally right behind Gracie. They're kind of like mirroring each other shape wise, but Gracie's just got a lot of fluff, so you wouldn't see Ruby behind her. Really.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:30):
Yeah, that's impressive. And I mean I was, so I was sitting at Apple Park during WWDC this year, during the announcement, and when they announced that you would be able to have your pets identified as part of that people album now called People and Pets album. There was audible applause and cheer about that. People were very excited that that was coming. It's something that has been in both Google Photos and I al I believe it's also in Amazon Photos where what I would have to do with, with Apple's Photos app up to this point was I would just type in the word dog and then kind of sort through from there. Or it was just that over time I had created an album that was called Henry and Missy. And so those photos were there, but I, you know, it wasn't automatically adding them as I took new photos.

(00:07:23):
So now that I can always find and probably find some photos that I might have missed of them, I'm really excited about having that as a feature. Now that is something that's coming in iOS 17. And of note, we're probably getting closer to the official launch of the iOS 17 and iPad, all of the, the OSS public beta. At which point we will show even more, I think, of the feature set and kind of really dig into the nitty gritty. Apple has some rules in place that kind of, when you are a developer and you sign up for these operating systems and go through the process, you kind of agree not to show too much of what's going on behind the scenes, but upon the introduction of the public beta. Because at that point, anyone can have access to these, these platforms.

(00:08:19):
Then it's sort of just mutually agreed upon understanding among journalists as, you know, tech journalists and tech bloggers and everything, that that's the time when we go ahead and, and feel comfortable kind of taking and sharing screenshots, showing you know, video of how these features work. So Rosemary and I plan to continue to cover in depth all of this stuff, and I am looking forward to when the journal app comes out later this year as well to talk about that. But anyway, that's what's coming. And you as a, a listener who may not be on the beta you could get access to that if you decide to join the public beta and help Apple test its software, but maybe you'll wait until fall when it officially launches. But let's talk about some apps that anyone can check out right now.

(00:09:14):
The first one that I wanna talk about is an app called Pupper, and I really like Pupper. When I moved to California Leo and I, way long time ago did an episode talking about pets. And one of the apps that I talked about at the time was pupper. And to this day, I still recommend it to people who have pets because Pupper is a dog training app and it teaches you how to train your dog. Now, there are some different things here. You get a lot for free but if you join the premium service, you can actually sign up for classes that involve the opportunity to speak with an actual dog trainer. But let's take a look at the app. So here I am in the app and I'm on the homepage. And on the homepage we've got your basic lessons.

(00:10:03):
So let's say you've got a new dog and you are wanting to look into maybe trimming their nails, right? I can tap on nail trimming and then I can read about it. It says, it's important to keep your dog's nails trimmed so he is able to walk and run properly. It helps prevent injuries from running and getting caught in things. Things that you might need would include a nail clipper, perhaps a Dremel or Dremel style device, and then also some tic powder or tic powder which is a powder that if you cut into the quick of the nail and it starts to bleed, you basically just dip it into this powder and it will stop the bleeding. Now because I put my dog's name into this, one of my dog's names into the app that's why, and the, the dog's sex, that is why it said he at the top here, the so he's able to walk and that's why here it's saying Henry's name. So introduce Henry to the Clipper by having him smell it, click and reward every time his nose touches the clipper. So they're very ab they're very much about the click the clicker device. And what's cool is this actually has a built-in clicker right within the app. Now, I don't know if you're hearing that, but let me see if I can't make that happen.

(00:11:24):
So it, it may not be that you're able to hear that but the point is, if not,

Rosemary Orchard (00:11:29):
I happen to have one here. Oh, nice. Like a physical one, which makes a similar sound, I'm sure. Yes. So I can just click that.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:35):
And that is part of dog training. It's just essentially a way to kind of signal that they're doing something correctly. Now, it says, after he's comfortable with step one, began gently, gently touching his paws and nails with the clipper to get him used to the sensation click and reward every time the clipper touches his paws. After Henry is comfortable with step two, you can begin trimming his nails, hold his paw firmly with one hand while using the other to clip the nail clip only a little bit at a time. And then that's where it talks about avoid cutting into the quick cut just below the quick and remember to give lots of praise after the trimming session. And I love this. It's got more tips, it's time for a trim. When you start hearing tip tap sounds when Henry walks around, if Henry has dark nails, my girl dog does Missy, that prevents you from seeing the quick get a clipper that has a safeguard that prevents overcut.

(00:12:23):
If Henry is extremely uncomfortable with Clippers filing his nails down with a Dremel as a good alternative, that's actually what I do with both of my dogs. Take Henry to a local groomer if you're not comfortable with trimming his nails, and then have some of that powder on hand in case you do cut the nail too short and it starts to bleed. Now what's great is if I ran into an issue here is I'm trying to work through the training. Okay, well, every time I get to step two, my dog does blank. You can do a live chat and talk with a trainer and get some advice there. Now there are these lessons which just kind of have have information about how to do it with kind of a step-by-step instruction, but there's video included. And then there are some more in-depth things.

(00:13:09):
So let's look at let's look at some silly options like rollover and spin. Now, these are also included for free. If you want the extras crawl something called Footsie backup Play Dead and Dance, you have to unlock those. I'm gonna tap unlock. So you can see it's a seven day free trial. And then if you choose to subscribe per year annually, it's a hundred dollars per year, which for some might be expensive. But keep in mind that when you do, you get access to not only the current lessons, but lessons that continue to be added over time. You also get access to the master classes that are more in depth and they are taught by experts. And then also you get that live chat with your, with the trainers. You can subscribe for 1299 per month as well. So $13 a month, a hundred dollars per year to get these extra options, but without any of that you can teach the dog to spin It shows kind of the difficulty here.

(00:14:08):
You can start to track your progress. So I'm in progress in teaching this. And then you walk through the steps here and then we can go and learn about some of the other options. There are these photo challenges, which are kind of fun. You can show off when the dog is working through something and, and if it works. And then I believe you can win things in these challenges. Here is the shop. This is one way that the app does make money. It has some, you know, treats and equipment and stuff like that that are sold within the app, and that's why there were specific products mentioned in that original training. And then last but not least is you can start to gain badges over time. Track your progress and include the photo of your dog if you'd like.

(00:14:55):
And I do think I have, I guess I haven't, this was before I added Missy to the app as well, so I may have had this even before California. But yes, there are so many different options in here. And look, there's shake hands and cross Pauls say your prayers sit pretty being shy. That's one of my favorite things that, that Henry does. So yes, this is Pupper again available in the app store for free with, as you can see, lots of options, lots of good information that you don't have to pay for. And then if you'd like, you can hop in and pay for the more involved experience that gives you access. Oh, actually that was the other thing I wanted to show real quick, were these masterclass. So if you, let's say you just got a new dog, you might consider doing the Puppy 1 0 1 masterclass.

(00:15:48):
It has lessons for learning how to teach your dog to respond to their name. Teaching a dog how to walk on a leash with loose leash walking teaching them. This was the most important. When I first got Henry, I went and did classes at a local place that offered classes and leave. It was easily the most important lesson that I ever learned, but he and I both learned, which is how to teach your dog to ignore an object. So if you take medication for example, or if you're out and about and something gets dropped, you're basically telling the dog, do not pick that up. Do not put that in your mouth. Leave it. And if they do, put it in their mouth and then you catch them. You can also train them at that point saying, leave it, and then they will drop it.

(00:16:37):
It's so incredibly important. So yes, that is Pepper. I think it's a fantastic app. And well worth looking into. I think it's about time. Yeah, we can take our, our first little break here before we come back with with a, a few options from Rosemary as well. This, of course, is all about pet apps and gadgets. For all of you out there who are pet parents, lemme take a moment to tell you about our first sponsor, which is Electric E-Bikes. Summer is in full swing, which means there's no better time to get out there and explore and just in Time Electric is bringing you a fast and fresh new ride. It's the XP 3.0, their latest e-bike model featuring new hydraulic brakes. You can snag your electric XP 3.0 e-bike this month. An experience freedom like never before.

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Rosemary Orchard (00:21:02):
Well, it doesn't really matter what kind of pet you have feathers, fur or skin or shells, whatever it is, <laugh>. You probably need to look after them that is part of being a pet owner or pet parent. And one of the ways that you'll need to do that probably is by taking them to the vet on a regular basis or giving them checkups and making sure that they're eating regularly and so on and so forth. So I have two options to recommend. Number one, if you are a dog owner is a dog buddy, which believe it or not, is a virtual buddy for your dog in the form of an app where you've got a diary. So you can go ahead and add a diary once you've added a dog. I don't actually have a dog which is why I haven't got that.

(00:21:43):
They, there are milestones that you can log. You can do things like weight tracking and so on medications so that you can log various different medications that you have may need to take for your dog or give to your dog, not take on your dog's behalf please. And and so on and so forth. And you can also track things like your vaccinations and allergies and so on, set up reminders. And so if I were to add a dog I might just borrow Micah's dog for a moment and just pop in. Henry, I'm not gonna add any of the other information here except apparently the breed because I do need to do that. And now I have to remember, Micah

Mikah Sargent (00:22:18):
Says H hua, h Hua,

Rosemary Orchard (00:22:20):
<Laugh>, yeah, at the end of every episode. So Henry's apparently a new boarder according to this app. But now I can go ahead and add vaccines and so on in here, complete with reminders if I wanted to. Oh, I'm

Mikah Sargent (00:22:33):
Getting this app right now,

Rosemary Orchard (00:22:35):
<Laugh> and so on. And yeah, it's, it's just a really nice app. I've got several friends who use this for their various dogs. And also because you can log the weight of your dog he, Maria apparently is a 60 pound newborn puppy. So that's, that's good for him. Well done. I'm, I'm gonna give him bonus points there. But once you've got this set up, then you, it'll be easy to keep track of things like the vaccinations and hardware, medication and so on. So the app itself is free to download, or there's a, a 1 99 pro or plus version I don't remember the exact terminology. Or instead you can upgrade to the pro version in the app which we'll just take you to that in the app store so that you can download dot Buddy Pro, which is 1 99.

(00:23:21):
And it does have some optional in app purchases not which can remove extra ads and so on. But you won't really see them as far as I'm aware, aware. I do wanna just note this has a couple of nice features in it. Obviously you can switch between pounds, foot and inches or kilograms and centimeters. But you can also if unfortunately one of your furry friends passes away you can hide dogs who have passed away in the app. So you still have their data and the records, which may be useful, especially if you have other pets. But you don't have to see at that painful reminder all the time. So that's dog buddy. But some of you don't have dogs and you may not wanna put dog or cat information, turtle information, et cetera, into an app for a non dog.

(00:24:11):
So in that case, how about you look at 11 pets, all one word, and you can insert any pet of your choice pretty much. So I've just added Gracie here, and I can add various reminders. So I can add, for example, pill reminders for an internal deworming fleas and ticks and hair and things like that. And go ahead and add things. I can set a picture and so on and so forth. So I can add all the information I might need. I can even note here whether or not a, a pet has been spayed or neutered as is relevant for them and things like that. And this is just an alternative app to dog buddy, but it works with more pets. So if you have more than just dogs, you may want to consider 11 pets, which is also free to download on the app store.

(00:25:00):
And yeah, it's just a, a nice way to keep, keep track of all of the things that may be going on with your pets and so on, which, you know, it's very easy to lose track of these things sometimes. So it's good to have reminders pop in for things like vaccinations and so on. And yeah, this also has a mode where you can say, for example, that you're a pet grooming salon or something, and keep track of the, the animals that come into you. And animal welfare organizations also have a mode there as well. So yeah, it's quite a useful app and it's entirely free with no in-app purchases either. So definitely worth a look.

Mikah Sargent (00:25:35):
Definitely downloading dog buddy. That is a great way, cuz right now what I do is I just have a it's a, it's basically two numbers spreadsheets that I've, you know, fancified and I keep track of all of their information in there. And then when a veterinarian if I were to, you know, move veterinarians, they ask for their records, I print it out. But I like this cuz then it's all right there and I can regularly update it all within the app. I don't know why I never, I do this show iOS today and I did not think about getting an app to keep track of, I mean, I guess numbers is an app, but you know, this is, this is a little bit more focused. I wanna mention a free app that you can get in the app store for, from the American Red Cross that is specifically tailored to making sure your pet is safe and healthy.

(00:26:32):
And that is the app called Pet first Aid. It is focused on dogs and cats, so be mindful of that. If you've got a Gila lizard that's choking on a grasshopper, then this is probably not where you would want to look. But here I've got dog selected at the top and I've got some information. So first of all, know what's normal? What is a dog's breathing rate normally? How can I determine my dog's breathing rate, their capillary refill time? How do I look at if my dog is dehydrated? Pull up on the skin between the shoulder blades and it should spring right back if it stays tented. This is a sign of dehydration. Pulse rate, heart rate, which I guess I didn't realize were two different things. The mucus membrane color, if that's off. And then of course how to take your dog's temperature and how to know when the dog's temperature is nominal.

(00:27:28):
What's interesting is I was unaware of how much warmer dogs are by default. Their, their body temperature is a little bit higher. You've got your doggy ABCs of check the airway, check the breathing, check circulation, which is just like the ABCs for humans. Well, you know, not the alphabet one. Also allergic reactions, this poor baby. Look at this photo of this poor baby. And then what you could do to help the dog if your dog was stung, do not attempt to pick the stinger out cuz that could release more of the toxin. If your dog develops hives, obviously call the veterinarian bleeding bloat and torsion bloat is a terrible, terrible thing for a dog and often leads to, to death. Blood sugar emergencies if your dog is, has sensitivities there. Breathing problems burns, I mean, basically everything here so you can look through and see.

(00:28:23):
Oh, doggy cpr and you can access CPR videos showing how. Now I do have I, okay, there we go. Down at the bottom, I thought I saw a small dog and I thought it was for the video above, and I was like, that's not a small dog <laugh>. That is, that's a very large dog. But here you can see a little looks like a dachshund type of dog. And so you dog E C P R wrap your hand around the sternum at the level of the heart and with your thumb on the upside and the rest of your fingers underneath, you perform 30 compressions. And then give two rescue breaths. Placing your mouth over the nose. You can use two-handed technique as well by placing your hands on top of the chest and pressing down. And then it's essentially like CPR for a human being, but obviously just changed for the anatomy of the animal.

(00:29:22):
So there's so much information in here for all sorts of concerns. And I think that that on its own is enough to check this out and see if there's something here for you. You can also take online training for cat and dog first aid. And then of course, here's the cat side of things. Let's look at let's look at the smoke inhalation for a kitty. Immediately remove the cat from the smoke and into fresh hair. Check the ABCs and perform CPR as needed. And then take your cat to a veterinary hospital immediately. You've also got sections done here for preparation. That includes, I love this pet-friendly hotels. So you can find what hotels would be able to you know, keep your pet if you have a disaster. There's also preventative care and wellbeing that you should do spaying and neutering information how to find a lost dog depending on what service you use and all sorts of other stuff here.

(00:30:25):
So, yes it's well worth checking this out. Oh, you can add your vet's number in the app itself so that that way, you know, if you think you would immediately go to this app then you could go ahead and call the vet as you needed to. You could find a nearby vet hospital and then also do quizzes to see if you're up to date with your knowledge of your dog or Cat's health. So that is Pet First Aid, completely available for free in the App Store. Of note, it is the American Red Cross. It is an app available to folks within the us. Unfortunately outside of that you'll probably want to find another first aid app, although there are several I've seen in the App Store, so you can check those out as well. Rosemary, I believe you've got a potential other option for, for folks to check out. And then a few more suggestions.

Rosemary Orchard (00:31:21):
Well, I'm not sure this is necessarily another option. It is by the A S P C A, which is the American Society for the Protection and Care of Animals. But this is Animal Poison by the A S P C A. So this is more targeted ad folks in the us. I haven't downloaded the app on my phone because you, you would need an account and being as I don't live in the us and I'm hoping that my non-existent pets won't be poisoned by anything. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> then I figured I was okay to not do this. But should your animal or pet get stung or poisoned by something then this app could be a very good port of call. Now, ideally you would look through this beforehand and know what sort of things might happen and therefore be able to react a little faster. But it could be a very useful tool to have this app or Pet First Aid installed, even if you don't have pets. And have a look for similar ones. I didn't find anything over here yet for the Pet First Aid but I'm gonna keep having a look and if I can find something, I'll pop it into the show notes for later.

Mikah Sargent (00:32:26):
Beautiful. And then yeah, yeah, what, what, what else do we have here? Well, I like that you, you covered the cats for me, cuz I don't know much about them. <Laugh>.

Rosemary Orchard (00:32:36):
Yes. Well, this one is, it's kind of a weird pick. There are a lot of apps out there for cats. Usually they're the sort that would take like your iPhone screen and put like fishies on it so that your cats like tap at the screen or something. I kind of feel that's a bit like a laser pointer. They're never gonna get the satisfaction of catching it, so that's maybe not so great for them. But the, the app Relax My Cat. Relaxing Music TV is an app designed to help relax your cat. Apparently it plays music that is relaxing to cats. It is based on a YouTube channel. But basically what happens, you open up the app and you'll see a number of different videos which I've got here. Some of which do have a padlock icon on them indicating that they are locked.

(00:33:20):
But then when you tap on it, you get the option to play with audio or video. And then it will go ahead and play a little video that will explain some things and you know, make sure that you actually understand. So if cats are not getting adequate care, then they tend to get cranky. They do have opinions that is very much the feline way of life. And there's also the option to sign up and listen to live radio and so on. So that you can get music to relax your cat. So if your cat is stressed you may wanna look for Relax My Cat relaxing music TV or for YouTube videos, which can do the same sort of thing.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:59):
Beautiful. And then last but not least you have some physical products that you wanted to talk about. Yep. And I'm very excited about the final one on the list as I have reviewed this product in the past. Yes. But first, let's talk about the name that I'm refraining from saying, because I don't know how it's supposed to be pronounced. <Laugh>.

Rosemary Orchard (00:34:22):
Well, I believe Roko is a Spanish brand, R o J E C O. But it's based on the Toya line of products. But essentially my friend was looking for a smart pet feeder. So we did a bunch of research and some testing lots of testing and investigation and eventually landed on a Roko Smart Feeder, which is a automatic pet feeder. Now this one has an option to feed two cats. But you can also get it with the option to feed one cat. There are lots of ones that look very similar on the app store. You just download a different app. But what's great about this is you can actually go through and you can set things up so that you can have a slow feed. So the food will come out a little bit slower, have a visible indicator on there.

(00:35:08):
You can also set up a meal plan so that it would feed your pet internally automatically at the same times. It does note that there may be an error of it being off by up to say 30 seconds. That's somewhat understandable. But you can also just use as manually where you go, oh, I'm not actually gonna be at home on time to feed the pets. You know, like, something has happened, but I need to make sure they get fed. And so then you can go ahead and dispense a portion of food, which when you do that through the manual option, it will say feed success. Don't worry, I warn my friend I was gonna feed the cats in advance. And one portion of food is very small. So you'll wanna like, have a play with this and set it up.

(00:35:46):
You can then also see a feed record which I can only see a couple of options here because I am a guest user on this device rather than the primary user. But this allows you to feed your pets remotely when something happens. Or, you know, either because you planned to not be there or because you didn't plan. And there's nobody at home that can feed the pets. So this is a great option. If you are a person who feeds your pets dry food, then you can look it up. I don't have the physical device here in the studio. It's not super loud, I have to say. It is quite large because it holds four liters of pet food, which is a lot of pet food. But it is pretty good because even if you have a larger dog, that means that you'll be able to feed them a good couple of times before it needs refilling. So worth looking into if you need a way to feed your pets without you physically being involved, be that for physical ability reasons or just location based issues.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:46):
Nice. Yeah, the, I, there are so many different options out there and I'm glad that, you know, this one worked for, for your friend. Yes. And then last but not least there are of course many people will microchip their pets. And that is a tiny little device about the size of a grain of rice that goes underneath the skin of the animal. And then if your animal is ever lost it could be taken to a place that has a microchip reader, they read the chip and then looking at the database or a number of databases, depending on if you've registered your microchip with those databases the dog can be returned to you, or the pet, I should say can be returned to you. But there are a number of reasons why that could not result in your pet being returned to you as quickly as you would like.

(00:37:47):
Of course, there's pet thievery, which would obviously result in that, that chip not coming in handy. There's the chance that the person might not know about taking it to a place where it can be scanned. I mean, any number of things. And so there are other ways to keep track of your pet. One of those that we've talked about before, it's not a recommendation provided by Apple directly. They never use this as they, they never list this as one of the use cases for air tags, but I know quite a few folks now who do use air tags to keep track of their pet. But there are purpose-built devices that can help you keep track of your pet. And one of those is whistle, the smart pet tracker. With whistle, you have a little charm. And I should say little is relative.

(00:38:44):
If you've got a dog that is mid-sized or larger, then it's a little charm that goes on the collar of the dog. If you have a small dog like I do, then it's about the size of their head. So it's not quite little in comparison. But with different whistle devices, cuz they sell a few different options, you'll get different features that come as part of the tracking. And I'm gonna get to the tracking last because I want to talk about the other features that you can get that are kind of included. Many of the trackers also include pet tracking features. So with those pet tracking features, you can know about how your dog is moving around other staying active. There are features for the, the one that I have and have tested in the past has a little light on it, a little l e d light, so that if you are walking your dog at night, you can turn that light on and it will show you where your dog is, as well as just provide some general light in that area.

(00:39:49):
Some of them can, can make some sounds. But primarily many of these trackers feature a little cellular radio inside. And so you pay every month to a cellular carrier of some sort. A fee that lets the little sim card essentially inside of this tracker connect to the network. And when it does, it can use three different cell tower signals to essentially triangulate the location of your pet. That's how a lot of the location awareness works in many devices, unless the device has a G P S tracking service as part of it Whistle does offer a G Ps tracking charm, it's bigger. So again, probably better for bigger dogs because it is instead using GPS in place of cellular. And then I know they also offer a collar their collar is the most expensive device.

(00:40:57):
It is the sleekest of the devices, so better for smaller pets, arguably. What I found for me with my very tiny dogs is that this thing ended up being practically a weight around their neck. So it was not an ideal solution for my dogs. But if you have, you know, a very common breed that tend to be at least middle-sized or larger medium-sized or larger, then this can be a great device for you. Depending on what you're doing in there. It's talking about how they're using at and t's 4G network to do the tracking for this whistle. So, yeah they are, I, I know a couple of folks who have gone the way of whistle and are very happy with their devices, not only for the purposes of, of finding a lost dog, but also for those activity tracking features that kind of encourage the use of the device outside of, of walks.

(00:42:03):
I don't know about you Rosemary, I I dunno if you've ever owned dogs or had dogs as pets, but I had a good friend who unfortunately lost I I, who's her, her dog died because the dog was wearing a collar inside the home and got tangled up in something inside the home and unfortunately passed away. So I don't keep collars on my dog except when they're being used for walking them around going places so they don't wear collars inside the home because I don't want to lose them to something like that. So in that way the whistle, like, I didn't get that extra value of the whistle as an activity tracker. So for me it was already big and didn't I didn't need to have it inside the home cuz it, I couldn't put it on anything, so it was not worth it for me there, but outside of the home, an excellent choice for folks to be able to, to keep track of their animals. And I think also I, I met some of the folks who who've not founded the company, but have worked at the company for a long time and they are genuine pet lovers, which I think is always kind of a good feeling inside. So they're, they're all about it.

Rosemary Orchard (00:43:30):
Yeah, definitely. The only thing I can say about collar because had cat growing up and he we would always take his collar off when we needed to groom him. And he, we got the impression that he didn't love the collar, but he would make a point of being like, you forgot to put my collar back on <laugh>. See my neck, my neck doesn't have a collar. That's funny. But we would also always make sure it was one of the str stretchy ones with the emergency breakaway. Yeah. So if it got snagged on like a branch or something then it would just like ping off and he could always wriggle out of it. Yeah. They make

Mikah Sargent (00:44:01):
Those is good. Make those breakaway collar for cats especially. And I think I I I kind of won her

Rosemary Orchard (00:44:09):
Dogs, dogs a small enough Mya. Yeah, you could use cat colors

Mikah Sargent (00:44:12):
On them. They could, they could have breakaway collar, but you know what, they've been collarless for so long that I think they'd be doing the opposite, going, why are you putting this on me when I'm inside? Actually, they'd be going, are we going outside right now? Are we going outside <laugh>? Yeah. and then I love you included a last minute

Rosemary Orchard (00:44:26):
Suggestion. Yes. Tell us about this. I, I, I had, I had a thought last minute of an app if you would like a virtual pet which you don't have to take for physical walks or clean up physical poo for then you may wanna investigate pixel pals where you can have a little pixel pal on your iPhone. So my, my p pet's name is Hugo and he lives just above my dynamic island. Now. I previously had another Hugo in the Apollo app for Reddit. Unfortunately, Apollo has closed down because Reddit decided to influence some rather nasty a p i changes. But fortunately Christian, the developer already have Pixel pals, the separate app where you can have a Pixel Pal and take your pixel pill with you everywhere. So you can say that you would always like to show your pixel Pell and you can have your pixel pill do various things.

(00:45:14):
So when I exit the app, then you can see Hugo is still here, even though I'm in my app library, if you're watching the video, he's up in the top left over near the time just chilling out. And you can even show a second pixel Pell if you would like, if you have the premium option. So the app is free to download and try out. There are a number of pets available. And then you can also get 14 for 14 19 9 a year choice of more pets like a butterfly named Freya. Or I believe it's an altar, maybe a stoke named Nugget. Either way there's some really cool, cute options and you can choose what to feed your pet and also even play with them. So I can play, follow the wand with Hugo, or I can slide the wand around on my screen and Hugo will follow it. Look at that. Isn't he cute? Aw. so yeah, as, as you do more with your pet, over time, your pet will grow to, to love you more. And if you try and feed your pet or overfeed your pet, then it will let you know so that you don't overfeed your virtual pet.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:11):
Hmm. Nice. That is, yes, that's adorable. And also, of course, yeah, we're helping out Christian Selig the wonderful developer of Apollo. So it's well worth grabbing and having a little, little pet friend on your phone, so you don't even have to have a separate key chain, you know, it's all right there on the, on the same phone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. All righty. That brings us to the end of this first segment where we've covered some wonderful apps and gadgets that will help you with your lovely, adorable, sweet little animals. Of course, as always, we love to hear about the, the apps and gadgets that you are using with your pets. So let us know iOS today at Twitter tv what has helped you over time. Before we continue with the show and head into the news segment, I do wanna take a quick break to tell you about the lovely and wonderful Brooke Linen who is bringing you this episode of iOS today.

(00:47:09):
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And another said, best sheets in the world like Butter Linn uses only the highest quality materials for all of their products, such as long staple cotton. So everything they create is built to last. That's one of the best things I think about this, is that, you know, I'm using these sheets that I, I've got the classic per kale weave and I got those because I am a warm sleeper, even with my mattress that cools, I have an eight sleep mattress. Even with that, the sheets that I put on top of the bed are obviously important too, because I need them to be breathable. Why I went with the classic option sleeping so cool. But what that means is I need to wash these things pretty regularly because I'm not moving back to those old sheets I had on the bed before. I'm sticking with these.

(00:49:43):
And so with that long staple cotton, with this high quality material, you can wash them a bunch and not have to worry about them. You know, wearing out these, they, they get softer with time. It's, they're, they're wonderful. I think that this, this sheet set is I've got the sheet set in the duvet cover, and they're all so just cleverly designed. The, the pillows have these really deep envelope closures with them so you can, you know, put the pillow in and, and tuck it in on both sides and it just fits so nicely. And I'm very happy with these I've said it before. I'm eyeballing the robes that they sell now because I've been so happy with this sheet That gotta, gotta check out that robe. So you should check them out. Shop in store. Yes.

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Or online@brooklinen.com today to give yourself the cooling sleep you deserve this summer. Use iOS that code iOS for $20 off your online purchase of $100 or more. Plus, you'll get free shipping on brooklinen.com. That's B R O O K L I N e n.com with the promo code iOS for $20 off, plus free shipping there. It's such a great gift to give yourself some great sheets to fall asleep in. We spend so much of our lives asleep and I think people end up not investing in it enough, and we should invest in it. Invest in yourself and check out brooklinen brooklinen.com with the code iOS. All righty, folks, we are back from the break, and that means it's time to head into the news segment up. First, we have to pull out the party hats pop the party poppers, throw the party confetti, because the app store as of yesterday is 15 years old.

(00:51:38):
15 years ago as of July 10th, the app store opened its store and it had 500 apps in it. At this point, we've got more than 1.5 million apps <laugh>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it's, it's grown, it's grown quite a bit from those first days of the app store from the days where you could download a flashlight app, a lighter app. Of course they had the infamous fart apps which were often part of the original App Store, Texas Hold them which was an Apple created app, Pacman, I mean, there were, again, 500 apps in the app store on the launch. That's kind of impressive that there were that many. But now we've got so many apps. I mean, that's why we can do a show like this because we'll never run out of apps to be able to talk about on the show. Of course, we, we should give a mention to a friend of the show, James Thompson, whose app peacock turned 15 to, or turned 15 yesterday be it Monday, July 10th as well. But yeah, anything you wanna say about the 15 year anniversary of the App store?

Rosemary Orchard (00:52:57):
Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to mention that I've seen a lot of developers posting, you know, that they, they were, you know, part of this way back then, and it's, it's crazy to think that I maybe have been using OmniFocus. You know, I've haven't quite been using it for 15 years, for example. But OmniFocus and Omni Group were one of the first companies and apps on the App Store. And there are so many other apps out there as well. Like Peacock for iOS is 15, I believe Peacock itself is 30. That's how long the app has been around. It's amazing how well, many of these things have withstood the test of time. And yes, there have been the the Flappy Birds of the era, which have come and then gone very, very quickly. But there have also been some other apps that have really stuck around, and I'm glad to see that they've you know, survived the test of time.

Mikah Sargent (00:53:44):
Beautiful. and speaking of of Great Apps, <laugh> which have existed so long in the App Store as of today, July 11th to tomorrow, July 12th, there is a sale an app store sale going on that was organized by developer Matt Cory, correct. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Now, Matt, Cory said, look, prime day's going on, there're gonna be sales there. People are gonna be paying attention to that. What would be great is if we offered sales on our apps so that while people are kind of in that buying spirit, they might as well pick up some great apps. So there are more than 100 apps in the App store that starting today going into tomorrow will be on sale. And you can check out, there's a GitHub page that lists all of the apps that are available and shows how you can save money. I mean, there are gonna be many apps that we've talked about on the show. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that will be included in that list. Some apps that will probably probably be talking about in the future given that they are here as well. And yeah, I mean, this is very exciting that so many third party developers have said, look, why not offer our apps with a discount for the Indie Apps sale? So, yeah. Yeah. Go check that out. <Laugh>.

Rosemary Orchard (00:55:21):
Yes. I should mention Matthew. Cory is the developer of an app that I know Micah really likes and I like, which is Signals for Home Kit. Oh, yeah. Which allows you to do things like flash a particular light, a color, and then restore it back to its original color, which is really great in combination with shortcuts and things like the Intercom feature, so that you can tell somebody that dinner's ready and flash the lights in their room you know, a couple of different colors and then set it back to normal so that they can still see safely to get back.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:50):
That

Rosemary Orchard (00:55:50):
They'll be on time for dinner without injury. Yeah, exactly. They really definitely know <laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:56):
That is awesome. That that is included. That's a must have app for sure. And yeah, so many of these apps are offering 50% off some of them you know, 40, 30, but a lot, I'm seeing 50% off, 50% off, 50% off. So very exciting stuff that that folks are doing. All right. Then I should, we should also mention that there was recently an emergency security update that Apple launched that, that Apple rolled out. Unfortunately it was pulled, so if you got one of these Rapid Security update notifications then you may have gone in and saw that it was gone and wanted to then get it back. So depending on what version you're running and whether or not you have automatic updates turned on you may have, may have or may have not seen that there was a security rapid security responses they're called that rolled out to phones. The problem was that it interfered with some apps, and so they had to roll it back, and hopefully they're gonna be rolling it out again soon, because this was in response to a, an actively exploited issue in the system. So, yeah, it, it needs to be fixed <laugh>.

Rosemary Orchard (00:57:18):
Yes. Yeah. So if you've got it and it's installed just don't worry. Hang tight. There's nothing you can do anyway. If you don't have it, keep an eye out for updates and yeah, make sure that you check with your friends and family when this update comes out so that they install that. And if you don't have automatic updates turned on then it's, it's worth considering turning them on. Just so that you do get things like this. I know that some folks don't like immediately updating to the big new ioss, by all means, when Apple has their iPhone announcement in September, go in and turn off the toggle for the the big updates for the automatic ones there. But yeah, other than that, I'd recommend leaving automatic updates on, and then you should be good to go.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:59):
And then last but not least oh, actually there were two. Do you wanna tell us about the WeChat mini app

Rosemary Orchard (00:58:08):
<Laugh>? Yeah. So apple has stores around the world in some countries it doesn't have any physical stores, but it works with third party retailers. Now, in China, it does have physical stores but as, as some folks know that the availability of various Apple services and so on does vary depending on your, your location. It can, if you are, for example, in some certain parts of the US you can even get things like same day delivery from the Apple store which is often done through things like GrubHub or similar, I believe. But in app in China, apple has launched a mini app on the WeChat platform. Now the WeChat is really popular. It's more than a chat app, really in China, people use it for all sorts of things. And a lot of vendors have sort of mini apps on there where you can buy things and then have them delivered to you without ever having to leave your chat app.

(00:59:00):
So apple has launched a mini app on WeChat so that people can buy iPhones, because who doesn't wanna buy an iPhone by text or similar apparently people in China wanna do that. So there we go. This isn't uncommon for China. You can do things like book hotels and sort of thing, do bank transfers and stuff like that through WeChat. So this is not something that's completely innovative, but apple have you know, decided to hop on that bandwagon. So who knows, maybe we'll see something similar in more places soon. Or maybe they'll just figure out a drone delivery system so that everybody everywhere can have same day Apple deliveries.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:35):
Hmm. and then of course, we would be remiss if we didn't mention that Prime Day is underway. Amazon's Prime Day is a day where the company offloads a bunch of junk that no one wants <laugh>, sorry. But also occasionally there are some good sales anchor, which makes fantastic products for your, I mean, not just the iPhone, but just in general, fan fantastic tech products for charging and storage and all sorts of stuff. Typically has good sales going on during Prime Day mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And occasionally you'll get a good sale like the Apple Watch series eight, which you can get for up to 30% off headphones. A lot of times it's electronics that tend to be the best prime day deals, but occasionally they'll slip in a few other products like that, pair of shoes from Adidas <laugh> but yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you'll notice that as you're scrolling through here, a lot of this stuff is going to be tech or other electronic gadgetry and gizmos with the occasional other kind of product. Anything that you want to point out specifically or any tips that you have outside of, for me, I just tell people to head over to the wire cutter because their deals team always tries to find the actual good deals that are available.

Rosemary Orchard (01:01:04):
Yeah. The wire cutter is a great side checkout. I more also has a couple of lists of good prime day deals for Apple and Apple related things. So yeah, worth checking that out as well, just to see if you are in the market, for example, for a new battery pack then you may find a great prime day deal on something. The other thing is, is if you've had an item in your basket, and there's like a number of variations of it, so say for example, you had an iPhone in your Amazon basket and it hasn't like, flagged up that it's on sale, make a point of going back to the product page and looking at like, the different colors and storage sizes or whatever options are available, because you'll probably find that one of them somewhere is on a prime day deal. And if you're not so worried about which color iPhone or iPad to get, then you may be able to get a really good deal by you know just changing the color. So it's worth having a look at all of the options because things are not discounted equally across the board.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:58):
Very, very true. I just saw that they've got an induction capable non-stick cook pan from my favorite company. The I don't know if that's how it's pronounced, I'm sorry. But that is where most of my, my cookware comes from, but most of it is not ready for induction. So anyway, I will try not to get too distracted by Prime Day. And in fact, I think it's time we take a quick break. So I can tell you about our third sponsor today, which is Cash Fly. You know, cash Fly. They're bringing you this episode. Viewers out there. We know they don't hang around for videos that Buffer. I know I as a shopper do not hang around, but instead, abandon the cart on e-commerce sites that are slow and gamers. Boy, howdy. Do they ever leave bad reviews?

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(01:05:17):
I am so excited about this episode and this this, this segment of Shortcuts Corner because just this last weekend I was talking with Leo, well, I was talking with a listener who called in to the show that Leo and I host called Ask the Tech Guys. And that listener had a problem. The listener said, look, I my, my father-in-law passed away recently and I have a bunch of photos. And I took them to work to this very fast scanner, this Xerox scanner that was at work and scanned these photos so that I could digitize them. But unfortunately it didn't properly crop the photos. So this was Sean who wrote in, and Sean said, hi, Micah, per your recommendation, I'm following up on a question I asked on Ask the Tech guys. I'm looking for a way to batch edge detect and auto crop photos I scanned on a high speed scanner.

(01:06:19):
I've attached a couple of reference photos. I had a great time on the show with you both. Thank you for taking the torch from Leo for the next generation of tech geeks. Sean. Sean, thanks so much for writing in. Thanks so much for those kind words. And as I promised, I said I would talk to my good pal and co-host Rosemary Orchard, the brilliant Rosemary Orchard, to see if it was possible to handle this using shortcuts or some semblance of these tools, because we talked on the show about how you could use Photoshop to do this, but then you have to have Photoshop and be able to use that. We talked about a bunch of different ways to do this, reorganizing the photos into four by six and five by seven, and then taking them in and possibly trying to re-scan them with the Xerox. But I thought we would talk to Rosemary to see if there was some way to make this happen. And Rosemary, it sounds like you might have an idea for something Shawn can try.

Rosemary Orchard (01:07:18):
I do have an idea. And before I get to the idea, I am just gonna show folks a little bit of the background if they're watching the video, because Shawn was really kind and sent in a couple of example pictures, which I have here on my iPad. And I've just realized that my face is in the way. So I'll just move your inquire. I've put the pictures over to the other side. So here I have an example of two Uncropped images. So if I just sort of zoom in, then you'll see that there is an image, but then there's like this gray border off to one side. And that's on the left and the right of that image, which is a landscape image. And then the next image we have is a portrait one, which has, oh look great.

(01:07:54):
It's gray, top and bottom. Lovely. So we wanna try and get rid of that and crop that away. And so the first thing that I did, which is what you want to do if you're going to be doing anything like this at all, is I actually manually cropped those two images. Now, you don't wanna manually crop all of them, obviously that's beside the point. We're looking to automate this, but by manually cropping the image, then when I get the info of it, I can actually see the size. So I can see that the landscape one is 887 pixels by 671 pixels. And if I get the info on the other one, which is the portrait one, it's 658 pixels by 983. So I'm hoping that all of these, these pictures are gonna be a sort of similar size when they are, you know, the same physical size.

(01:08:42):
So if they're five by seven, they're gonna be somewhere between say 600 and 700 pixels. In on, on the, on the shorter side. So we need to start with figuring out, first of all we need to know if the picture that we're looking at is landscape or portrait. Because if it's portrait, we're gonna be, you know, trying to get the, the size off the top and the bottom or the, the gray off the top and the bottom. And if it's landscape, we wanna get it off the left and the right. So that's the first part. And the second part is what size of image is this? Is this a five by seven image or is this a six by four image? Because that's gonna tell us how much we need to, you know, crop this down. So I've started with a shortcut because this is what we're gonna do.

(01:09:25):
We're gonna sell this using shortcuts. I'll just make shortcuts full screen. So I have select photos to start with cuz you're gonna need to select the photos. And then you're gonna want to make sure that you open up the select photos and choose select multiple. And so what I can also do here is I can turn off selecting live photos and videos, which will narrow it down a little bit. But you do wanna make sure that you select multiple, because otherwise it's gonna be a really, really, really, really, really long game of press the play button, choose a picture, press the play button, choose a picture, press the play, you, you get the item. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, it's gonna be very frustrating. So to start with, we're gonna want to actually get some dimensions from our image and just have a look and see if it's a landscape image or a portrait image.

(01:10:09):
So there's this really useful little action called get details of image where we can do something like get the width, and then if I just duplicate this one, then I can change that to height, and then I can say if, so to start with, we're just gonna say, okay, if our height there we go is greater than our width, and I'll just tap in there and insert the width, then ta-da, we know that this is portrait, right? Because that's, that's how, how, how that works, right? If you've got something that's taller than it is wide, it's a portrait image. And so I'll just type that in there. Oops. If I could spell the word portrait, that would be very useful. And then I'll just duplicate that and I'll pop landscape into the other side of it. Okay. So now, now we know this and I'm going to hope that both of the images that Sean was kind enough to send are actually both either five by seven or six by four.

(01:11:07):
Either way, I'm hoping they're the same size uhhuh, because then that's gonna give me a little bit of information with which I can do some magic guesstimating. Okay? So this one landscape is 887 pixels by 671. And the portrait one is just tap on the right button there to get the info. 658 by 983. So this isn't gonna be an exact science, but we're gonna get pretty close, I hope. So what we're gonna do is we're going to say now, so if, so we know here that we are looking on landscape images, we wanna crop off the sides mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So it's the longer side that we need to crop off the sides, sides on. So we're gonna check, actually we're gonna use the the, the shorter dimension just to figure out which size of image this is, because that one's the one that's been pre cropped by the Xerox scanner, right?

(01:11:59):
So in, in the case of the height being greater than the width, we actually wanna check the width option. So we're gonna say if the width, and I'm only gonna work through this on, on one of these just to give people an idea because otherwise it'll be quite petitive. So if our width is between, and this is a really useful little feature and shortcuts and I'm just gonna say 620 and let me just double check the other one da da da of the height on there. That was 671. So I'll just say 700. Cuz that gives us, that gives us an approximate idea. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> of what this is. Then I'll just say that this is, I'm gonna guess five by seven. I don't know, I'm not very good at guessing. The what is imperial, imperial measurements?

(01:12:46):
Yeah, I'm not very good at guessing. Those and also I don't have a physical point of these pictures. You know so I'm, I'm just gonna take a wild guess that this is a five by seven. And I'll just duplicate that little comment and pop it into the otherwise and say five by four. Four by six, right? That's the other dimension. 4, 4, 4 by six five by four. That's, it's all the same thing, right? So we know that this one, or we're saying this one's probably this. So now we know that our width is between those two dimensions. So now we're gonna use, oops if I tap into the right thing, then I can use a crop image action. So the crop image action, we actually want to crop our, and I'll tap and hold on image here, select variable.

(01:13:31):
And then I can go up and I can choose my repeat item, which is the photo that I'm currently working on. Now, I can crop this in this center. So we know that our width is fine, we don't want our width to change, but and this is a portrait image, okay? So in our uncropped image we had it at oops da da da, it was for it, da da. That was 2,154 pixels high. Wow. and then the cropped version of the image is just going to double check there. 983 mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Okay. So I'm just gonna pop in a thousand just to, you know, give ourselves a bit of room cuz I prefer to under crop rather than over cropp, right? So you can always tweak this afterwards. Now you could use some really fancy maths in here. You can use the calculate function built into shortcuts to figure out exactly.

(01:14:27):
Okay, so I've got a formula that I've made up based on this, so I know if it's exactly this number of pixels and width, there's gotta be that number of pixels and height and so on and so forth. By all means, go for it. I'm trying to keep this really simple. And then after you've cropped your image at the end of the repeat loop, I would suggest you pop in a save two photo album. And then you're just going to save that. And then you might even wanna make a new photo album for these which you know, you can then pop everything into because that way you can, I'll just create, create one up here. There we go. You can even create it in shortcuts so I don't have to leave shortcuts. And yeah, there we go.

(01:15:08):
So now that we've got that, I'm only gonna select the uncropped one of the portrait version because that's all I've set up here. But what should happen, fingers crossed, is when I go into photos, there should now be another one, which look at that, it's not perfect, right? It's, you can make adjustments, but it's a Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You, you, you can tweak this to figure it out. There was a weird sort of white, extra secondary white background on the photos that I was sent. But the great thing about the crop action in shortcuts is it's doing it from the center. So you could change it to say, do it from the top left, top right, bottom, left, bottom right. And there's also custom where you can choose to do it from particular coordinates. Oh, interesting.

(01:15:53):
So you can definitely look into this and figure out what it is that you wanna do with this. But I suspect that cropping from the center is gonna be the way to go because then you just need to know, okay, am I keeping like all of the width or all of the height? Because in the alternative version, the landscape version, you would take the original height of the image and keep that and then just insert a width to, to figure it out. So I hope that this will give Sean an idea of where to get started and how sort this so that all of those pictures from his father-in-law can be shared digitally with family members so that they don't get lost. But yeah, this, this was an interesting challenge to solve. Micah, I, I think I've done as well as I can, yes, with shortcuts and only two sample images, if I had a lot of sample images, then it would be simultaneously easier and more difficult because I'd have a really big haystack with which to go and find a couple of pins, right?

(01:16:47):
But, you know, as it is two sample images was really helpful. So thank you for that, Sean. And yeah, fingers crossed this give some other folks ideas of what to do. I know when my dad digitized the family photos, he built like a little carpool frame and put all of the family photos like one by one into the carpool frame and took photo with dslr. Wow. And then just flipped it out and dropped the next one in. But meant because he had Photoshop, he could crop one in Photoshop and then batch crop, all the rest of the pictures taken in that session to be the exact same and bam, done simple. But that only works if you have Photoshop. Yes. If you don't, well maybe shortcuts can help.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:23):
Yeah, that was fantastic. And yeah, as, as you know, we've talked about, the good thing is you can make little adjustments. You can see if there are some edge cases and also find out if maybe, you know, the, the scanner made subtle adjustments as it was doing it. So there are mm-hmm these little edge cases or rather tweaks that you can do for the edge cases. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. The next shortcuts corner request comes in from Jeremy. Jeremy writes, our personal automation's supposed to stop if the iPhone battery is under 20%. This morning, my wake up automation didn't happen and I found that my iPhone again didn't charge while on a charger, so it was below 20% and showed as read, I was able to run the automation manually without having to charge the phone. Thus, my question on if that is a limitation, it sure would be nice if Apple actually gave us some messages with automations and this was again, sent from Jeremy. And this is an interesting question. So is there a time where Apple stops a personal automation to help save on battery life?

Rosemary Orchard (01:18:31):
So the answer to this, Micah, is not that I'm aware of. And being as I'm running a beta, I, I do suspect that I pushing the edge of my battery a lot of the time. If you pop into the settings app into the shortcut section, then you'll see that there are some advanced options, but they're only for allowing other scripts and so on. Now, the only thing I can think of is maybe, well there are two things that I can think of. Number one, in your personal automation, are you ha by any chance checking if your battery is low and stopping shortcuts if it is low, right? Because if you are, that's something that you've programmed in there, which was a very smart idea, but it may now be poking you just to get back at you there.

(01:19:11):
The other thing is, is some apps will not do certain things when you are in low power mode or similar. Now, if your iPhone automatically went into low power mode when it hit 20%, which by default it does then it's entirely possible that various apps went into a low power mode as well. I know for example Apollo, which we mentioned earlier wouldn't do things like stream data automatically if you were in low power mode for example. And you could also set it to not do that on cellular and things like that, all of which are really nice features built in by app developers to try and help you conserve battery, save data, et cetera. But if the app with the third party action in is perhaps not doing the thing because you're in low power mode then that might be why your shortcut automation didn't run.

(01:19:59):
Now if your shortcut automation failed, it should actually send you a little notification. And I thought I had one here cuz I to make a shortcut, automation fail on purpose. There we go. So I found one, I just need to clear a couple of other notifications that I don't want everyone to see quickly. There we go. So here we have shortcuts, automation failed. When my iPhone is connected to or disconnected from power, the operation can be completed. I N C E extension error, domain error 13 0 7. That last bit isn't supposed to mean anything to you Fox, by the way. That's doesn't even mean anything to me. But this is an error message that you get when your automation fails. So if you didn't get one of those error messages then did sleep focus mode turn on last night, that's another variable to investigate.

(01:20:52):
Or do you have something that turns your sleep focus mode off when your battery hits a certain power point or similar and then doesn't run your wake up automation? I don't know exactly what happened to your Jeremy, but I'm guessing something somewhere is not quite hooked up the way you think it is. Or a third party app developer is doing something to save your power when actually you preferred if they didn't, in which case you may have to investigate what those things are. But yeah, good luck and feel free to write back in if you figure out what the cause of this problem was.

Mikah Sargent (01:21:22):
Yes please do. We love to have that follow up and coming up. It's time for the app caps. So this is the part of the show where we place caps at top hour heads to honor our app and gadget picks of the week. These are the apps and gadgets we are using now or have used at some point in our lives that we think are great and want to share with all of you. This is easily one of my favorite parts of the show but occasionally we do get those questions of, wait, why are you putting caps on your head? Well, it's because it caps off the end of the show and also because it's a cap or a hat or a wig or something of some sort. So, Rosemary Orchard, please first tell us about the cap, the top of your head, and then tell us about your app or gadget pick of the week.

Rosemary Orchard (01:22:06):
Well, the cap the top of my head, it's pink. It's a sombrero. Yes, it is a pink sombrero. It's got little white pompoms around the edge, including one that was sitting up at a weird angle, which I've just fixed. Yeah, it's, it's rather ginormous. This is perhaps the, the largest offender in my hat box. It's not the worst offender. The, the hats that don't like reshape at all are definitely more of a problem. As far as the hat box goes yeah, my iOS today hat box is pretty big. But the good news is it's, it's a lovely hat that doesn't make me melt as I am doing this last section of the show. And that works really nicely with my app pick of the week because I've been really enjoying Zelda tears of the Kingdom on my Switch.

(01:22:47):
I may or may not have spent a little too long playing it this weekend but it was great fun and sometimes it's nice to have a little assistance with these things. Now I'm not talking about actually cheating. You could do that using this app, but you don't need to. So the app that I am talking about here is a tiers of the Kingdom Guide, which is available on the App store. And you can download it to your iPhone it's tiers of the Kingdom Travel Guide companion specifically, and it's free to download. And basically what it gives you is it gives you maps of various different areas of your tears of the kingdom world. And as you go through, you can choose to enable various regions. So once you've, for example, found somewhere in a region and I'm just trying to remember the name of one that I unlocked the other day.

(01:23:40):
There we go. The great high rule Forest. I've not been keeping a super up to date with unlocking these sections as I go. But I do need to go in and, and mark the shrines that I have done as done because it can be, you know, really frustrating to realize that you've missed a shrine for the 17th time whilst going past it. But when you find, for example, a shrine you can then mark it as discovered and then completed which of course are two separate states. And it also has like handy little thing for you to pop in notes if you got stuck on something somewhere, you can add your own pins to things as well. And it does have like a little sort of discovery thing here as well. So that if you know that there's something kind of somewhere in this area and you're sure you saw it, but you just, like, you, you can't find it in game anymore, then you can sort of go around and have a look and see if you can find, oh, there's, that's Shrine.

(01:24:29):
It does support both the lower levels, the upper, the, the sort of land level and then the Sky Islands as well. And then it also has other options to show things on the map. So you can show towers light roots labs Zini Reliefs villages, staples Inns, general stores, armor shops jewelry shops, dye shops, great fairies, horse squads, et cetera. You can basically turn pretty much anything on here and you can choose to show everything or hide things until you've discovered them, which is the way that I prefer to play. That is the default mode. And yeah, it's just quite nice. You can also choose to add your own quick notes which you can just have notes of any kind anywhere. And you can also go to coordinates and so find certain things, et cetera.

(01:25:17):
It's, it's just a really nice app. They recently released a new update to help you find various different kinds of armor and so on. So if you or somebody you know is really enjoying tears of the kingdom medication, that gets a bit frustrated with I wanna do all of the shrines, or for example, where is it that I can find this armor because I've been looking for 45 minutes to find a place I can go find buy this armor. You can you know, have a little companion app on your phone to help you keep track of things like that. So yeah, that's tiers of the Kingdom Travel Guide. It is free to download and there is an optional in-app purchase to allow you to do things like extra quick notes and so on and so forth. Which is I believe that was 3 99. So yeah, it works on iPhone and iPad and it's just,

Mikah Sargent (01:26:03):
That's really nice. I'm, I really enjoyed to use the Kingdom that is very impressive that they've packed in all that information. I've downloaded an app like that for assassins Creed Valhalla, and it was so incredibly helpful and just keeping track of everything. So I really, I think those apps are pretty great. So I was talking to Diana Prince the other day wonder Woman. Some of you might know her. And I said, I really need a cap for iOS today. And she said, I have no idea what you're talking about. So then I had to explain the whole thing. And so she walked away and she went into her invisible jet and came back and gave me a cap. So it's very hard to see if you're watching the video, but I'm wearing a giant hat at top of my head right now sort of Wonder Woman motif.

(01:26:49):
And it's, it's quite delightful, although it makes me tell the truth, just like the the whip that she carries. I wanna tell you about the app that is available on both Mac OS and on iOS. It is an app that is very simple, available for free called Acrylic. Acrylic is an app that lets you oh, did I disconnect from the, oh, no, I'm still there. Okay, good. Acrylic is an app that lets you create wallpapers. They're very simple gradient wallpapers, and the app that's available on iOS doesn't have a whole lot of features. You hit the refresh button at the bottom of the screen and it changes to different types of beautiful gradients. And so you can just kind of keep going until you come across a random gradient that you like. And then you choose save, and it will save it, and then you can add it to your, you know, your background or add it wherever you'd like.

(01:27:51):
And then I think what's super cool about this app is, and that is why I'm mentioning it for mentioning it for iOS, is because if you get the version for, oh, and I forgot to mention too, you can choose to have it just be SRG b the color space SRG B, linear SRG B or display P three, you can go all the way up to display P three. So it's going to work with a phone that has the capability of showing display P three. Now, if you get this app for the Mac, it lets you create gradients, so you can actually choose different portions of the screen. If you want to click on that third image there, Kevin with the blue, oh, does it not let you? Nope. Weird. So for some reason it's not letting them go full screen with it, but it ha <laugh> it's very tiny, but essentially, so yes, we can, we can kind of see there are these dark circles around the edges, and then a dark circle in the middle.

(01:28:52):
You can choose how many circles that you want. Each of those circles represents a color, and you can change the color of each of those to kind of have the color bleed in. And on the Mac too, you can create an animated wallpaper. And so it is a really cool thing that again, on iOS, not super in depth, but if you're just wanting some quick cool wallpapers that are actually in that full color space for your iPhone, check out acrylic. And I'm hearing some people out there are able to actually see my, my hats today which is very impressive. So I'll have to talk to Diana later about how she might need to add a new coat of paint on the and visit, oh, no, she gave me special glasses, Micah. Oh, special contact lenses. Oh, okay. Cool.

(01:29:40):
Okay. So you're, you're in, you, you know. Yeah. Yeah, you're in the club. Got it. Okay. folks, I wanna thank you so much for tuning into this episode of iOS today. Again, we'd love to hear about your pets. If you check out any of the apps or gadgets that we talked about, and you're using them with your pets, the training apps, maybe send us some video. We'd love to see that. Share that you know, on future episodes. Again, you can send that to iOS today, twit tv iOS today, twit tv that's for feedback, concerns, questions, all sorts of great stuff. You can also reach out to us in other places. We try to you know, look around and make sure that we're, we're getting your questions. And shortcuts corner requests. We do record the show live every Tuesday around about 12:00 PM Eastern, 9:00 AM Pacific, 1600 utc.

(01:30:27):
You can watch the show live by going to twit tv slash live. I will note that next week, Rosemary Orchard and I will not be here. So what's gonna happen, we'll be here, but we won't be here. We recorded next week's episode, and so it will hit your streams or your, your podcast apps of choice at the normal time. So our around about the normal time, so you will still get to see it. But when I say iOS Today, records live every Tuesday. The hat was compelling me to be honest with you all and say that next Tuesday will not be recording live. You can of course subscribe to the show, which we'd love to have you do by going to twit tv slash iOS. You can choose a you to subscribe to audio or subscribe to video pick a provider.

(01:31:15):
So we've got Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, YouTube podcasts. So we try to be in all the places that you are. And of course, just plain old rss. That's what makes all of this possible. So whatever you're using to get your podcasts, you can get it via that r s s feed. And then of course, I should mention Club Twit. Starting at $7 a month, $84 a year. You can join the club at twit tv slash club twit. When you join the club, you get some great stuff. First and foremost, you get access to every single twit show with no ads. It's all the shows just the content, none of the ads you get access to the members only twit plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show.

(01:32:00):
Special Club TWI events are published there and access to the members only Discord server. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow club tweet members. And also those of us here at twit Rosemary Orchard, my co-host is an incredibly active member of the Club Twit Discord. And it's also a place where we occasionally pull topic ideas for the show and questions, feedback, et cetera. Twit TV slash club twit starts at $7 a month, $84 a year, and the fun doesn't stop there. You're also going to get access to some special shows that are only available in the club. There's the Untitled Linux Show, which is a show covering Linux, the hottest Linux news, and you know, conversations about what Linux distributions folks are using. You can also check out Paul Tho Roth's Hands-on Windows program. It's a short format show that covers windows, tips and tricks.

(01:32:53):
You can check out Micah Sergeants my hands-on Mac program, which covers apple tips and tricks. It's another short format show that drills in on one topic specifically and check out the newly launched or recently launched Home Theater Geeks. It's a relaunched, technically, Scott Wilkinson is back this time in the club covering all sorts of great home theater topics. Plus soon there will be a new exclusive show for Club twit listeners and subscribers from Jason Howell that's going to cover ai. So we're looking forward to that. All of that twit TV slash club twit. Now, Rosemary Orchard, tell us where can folks find you online?

Rosemary Orchard (01:33:40):
Well, the best place to go is rosemary orchard.com, which has links to podcast books, apps and more where you can find me, including social networks, which seems to be an ever expanding list, but constantly needs updating. Not that I'm particularly active on any of them, though I am lurking everywhere. And of course you can also find me on methadone@rosemarysnailit.social. What about you, Micah?

Mikah Sargent (01:34:01):
You can find me online@chihuahua.coffee, c i h oa h a.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. So be sure to head there to check out the different podcasts I do, the social media, some of the social media services I'm on, these ones where I'm more active. And yeah, we do appreciate you for checking that out. Oh, I don't remember if I said I'm at Micah Sergeant on many social media networks, so you can also just type that in to define me as well. With that, we will say goodbye on our end. It's for two weeks on your end. You won't know the difference. That's the magic of podcasting. So thank you so much for tuning in every week. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for telling your friends, your family about this show. I would love it if you would consider sharing this show with at least one other person in your life that helps make sure that we can continue to bring these, this content to you, that we continue to answer your great questions and continue to wear caps both visible and invisible each and every week.

(01:35:11):
So thank you so much, and we will see you soon for another episode of iOS Today. Goodbye.

Jason Howell (01:35:19):
It's midweek and you really wanna know even more about the world of technology.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:23):
So you should check out Tech News Weekly, the show where we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news.

Jason Howell (01:35:29):
It's the biggest news. We talk with the people writing the stories that you're probably reading. We also talk between ourselves about the stories that are getting us even more excited about tech News this week.

Mikah Sargent (01:35:39):
So if you are excited, well then join us. Head to twit.tv/tnw to subscribe.