iOS Today Episode 582 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, it is time to take a look back at the year and the best moments of 2021 on our show. Stay tuned.

... (00:00:14):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:22):
This episode of iOS today is brought to you by imperfect foods. Imperfect foods is catching the food. That's falling through the cracks of our food system by sourcing quirky yet delicious foods. Right now, imperfect foods is offering our listeners 20% off your first four orders. When you go to imperfect foods.com news promo code iOS.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:55):
Welcome. I'm so glad you could make it to this. The very special end of your episode for I iOS today, this is the episode where we get a chance to look back at the year and see what we've accomplished to see what were the best moments of iOS today. And folks, it starts out with easily. The best moment of this year. I got a chance to welcome Rosemary orchard to the show as my co-host. And I can imagine you all agree that Rosemary orchard joining iOS today is one of the best things that's happened. She's fantastic. Take a look. Whoa. Oh, welcome to a new year of iOS today. I am one of your hosts, Micah Sargent, and yes, things have changed. We did announce it in the in the outgoing of the past year. I am joined by former guest and now my co-host it's Rosemary orchard. Welcome officially to the show. Rosemary,

Rosemary Orchard (00:01:59):
Thank you very much. I am super excited to be here. This is gonna so much fun, Micah.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:05):
I am pumped. I, like I said to you, I think personally, and I said to some of my fellow colleagues here at TWI, one of the things that's always been so fun is that you come up with these apps that I'd never heard of or only heard of in passing. And you just, you, you show me these cool things that you can do. And so I'm really excited for you to get to do that for all of our listeners and viewers out there who already love iOS, but we're gonna take things, you know, even further with the understanding that you have for sure. So I'm looking forward to it.

Rosemary Orchard (00:02:38):
I'm looking forward to it too. There is so much that I've learned from this show. It was well, the first podcast that I listened to back when it was, is called you know, when it was the iPad show. So I'm, I'm really glad to actually be part of that now. Yay.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:52):
Ian writes, I'm interested to know which app you're using to mirror the iPad on your screen. Is it reflector or something else? Well, I've never heard of reflector, so it's definitely not reflector, but now I'm gonna have to check out reflector. But if we cut to Rosemary I actually asked her today to use the the free version of the trial version of this app, because it has the watermark in the top right corner. And the reason why is because we get this question so often. So very often that I wanted to have it be there for most of the episodes. So even if a person doesn't listen all the way to the end where we're answering these questions, they can know, go to eam.live ECA, m.live, and you could check out EAM live, which is the application that I've been using for quite a while.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:37):
Now, ever since the pandemic I, and are, you know, staying at home, I've been using, Ecamm live to do the switching and stuff like that for my devices. So it's got iPad. You can show your iPad on screen. You can show your iPhone on screen. It's got cool technology too, with Skype where it kind of works as a switcher folks use Ecamm like the, the main use of EAM live is actually for streaming online. So think about like gamers and stuff like that, Twitch people, all that or folks who are doing tutorials or showing, you know, Photoshop work that they're doing, but EAM has a plugin called virtual webcam that basically tricks your computer into thinking that the, whatever it has set up is a webcam. And so I can go into Skype and choose EAM as my webcam option and then use EAMS different stuffs to pull that up.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:36):
So Ian, to answer your question, it is EAM live. You can go to eam.live to get that and to everyone else who asks almost every week. <Laugh> I love you. It is Z cam live. You can check it out there. It's yeah, that's it. I am very excited about potential, well, most likely a change that we'll see in the final version of iOS 14.5, excuse me, I was just coughing which is going to allow you to use your apple watch to unlock your iPhone when you're wearing a mask. So this functionality you, if you have a phone that does face ID, you may have been frustrated with the it's that while you're wearing a mask, if you try to unlock your iPhone, it at first would just sort of error out, error out, error out, error out.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:30):
I think about three times if I remember correctly, and then it would show you a prompt to type in your password, apple updated that, so that when you looked at your phone, if it recognized that you were wearing a mask, then automatically just right there, prompt you for your password. Now as a person who is, who covers tech and is therefore kind of just the, the, the stand in for the proxy for all tech frustration, when family and friends were bothered by this, you know, then they usually would complain to me. And so that on its own was kind of like, I understand this is a frustration for you and it, it does suck and hopefully there'll be some improvements, but that goes a step further or farther when your partner works in a public facing job when they work in a job where they interact with the public and my partner does.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:30):
And he, of course, because now for some reason, if you, if you work in a job where you interact with the public, not only are you doing your job that you, you know, signed up for, but you were also becoming a like person Wrangler who has to tell people please wear your mask and, and please, you know, don't stay in this part. You need to stay outside all those things. You become a public health inspector as well, which is ridiculous, but they, they, that becomes part of their job. And so for him, the most frustrating thing was not that he himself couldn't unlock his phone with his face ID. It was that customers, when they were unlocking their phones with face ID would take their mask off to do so. And so they, you know, time and time again were removing their masks and potentially risking everyone else around them by doing so.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:26):
And so that was something that, you know, I certainly had there was more empathy there than there was with just like the, the base frustration. There was already plenty. Like I had a plenty of understanding for that, but the goes a step farther because that's so much more troublesome. And whenever you have to say, I'm sorry, but you can't use face ID to unlock your phone. We need you to wear your mask while you're indoors. That's the requirement of our, you know, business. So key more than anyone I've talked to was really excited to hear about this change coming to iOS. And it was interesting because he had some questions about it as well that I hadn't considered including what happens if I'm wearing my apple watch and I'm across the room and someone picks up their, picks up my phone, wearing a mask, is it going to unlock the phone? <Affirmative> and so I ended up kind of showing him how it worked and what it did. And Rosemary, you are gonna show us here on the show how, yeah, this works.

Rosemary Orchard (00:08:31):
Okay. So step one, a mask. This is ALO errors, a mask for anybody curious, cuz if I don't say we will have questions. Yes. Right. I've got this on. So my face is covered and I'm just gonna switch to showing my iPhone. And now if I swipe up to unlock says it's unlocking with the apple watch. And it actually does say that it's unlocking but my video appears to frozen. Ah, there we go. Wonderful. And that's a question that we've got maybe for next week on the show, but it has just unlocked. And that is working extremely well for me. I'm really impressed with it. I've been using it for a couple of days. It just works. You do need to set it up. And that's something that you'll do in the settings, but I'm hoping by the time I was 14.5 launches that there will be a prompt in there to enable that if your watch is up to date or once your watch updates yes.

Rosemary Orchard (00:09:22):
That's something, something you just change in the settings. Yeah. I'm pretty certain there will be a prompt, but you will need to be running the latest version of watch OS and the latest version of IOSS iOS 14.5 and watch OS I believe 7.5 as well in order for that to work. And that means that some of the older apple watches will not support this feature. But what I found really interesting about this John Gruber on daring fireball wrote a little bit about it is essentially when you unlock your phone with face ID, if your apple watch is on your wrist, but it's not, but it's locked at that point. It unlocks it and it was set up so that the phone could say to the watch, Hey, you're good to go now, but it was never set up so that it could do it both ways.

Rosemary Orchard (00:10:06):
It was set up as a one way path. And so they had to re-engineer it so that it could go in both directions. Because of course it would be a bit of a security flaw. If you can unlock your phone with your apple watch and your, your, you know, but your apple watch is locked and things like that. So I can, I see why it took them quite a while. And I know for a lot of people, it seems very obvious. Surely I have an apple watch, you know, it can unlock my Mac. Why can't it unlock my iPhone? It it's, these things are never that simple. But I'm really please to see that the engineers have got this and it works so well. I'm so impressed and it makes shopping so much easier because I, I use the, the app for the grocery store so I can scan the things as I go round and add them to my basket.

Rosemary Orchard (00:10:47):
And then I just scan a barcode at the checkout. It transfers the data I pay with apple pay. Everything's already bagged in, in the trillion. I'm gone. Wow. That app that's neat, does not, for some reason support it, it insists on lock my screen frequently. It's very annoying. So, but if I lock my phone, it doesn't lock the app. So now I, I have a way better chance of that actually working all the way around the grocery store. So I am very pleased that this is here and I'm, I'm sure everybody, I know that's got an apple watch will be pleased. And I think some people that don't have an apple watch might now go, you know what, actually, I can see the use case for this. And there are so many more users for the apple watch than just unlocking your iPhone.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:28):
Yeah, exactly. So with that, the, one of the, a couple things that I wanted to note when you do that face ID, while you're wearing your mask, the tactic in engine in the apple watch will on your wrist to let you know that it's happening and give you a notification. And to answer that question that my partner had where he was like, okay, but what if somebody else, you know, picks up your phone, first of all, there's proximity magic involved. So your watch has to be within a certain distance of the phone when that happens. But also when you get that notification with the buzz on your wrist, the notification that says your watch is being unlocked, has a button underneath it that says lock iPhone. And so if you look over it and your phone's sitting there and somebody's picked up your phone, messing around and has unlocked it, you hit that lock iPhone button and your phone will lock automatically.

Mikah Sargent (00:12:22):
And then your, your password will be required to enter into the phone at that point. So it it's got the, those security features in place, but that's also why it's in beta right now so that we can continue to see changes that need to be made to make sure that it's secure. And folks out there who want to get early access to this, it is, it just got rolled out into the public beta. So you can also download and get it and give it a try if you want to. Yeah.

Rosemary Orchard (00:12:53):
That's watch OS 7.4 and iOS 14.5. And both of those are in the public beta right now, but of course it's a beta, you know, at your risk or wait a couple of weeks and hopefully apple will roll that up to everybody. Well, the one I'm gonna talk about for anybody who hasn't guessed is widget Smith. Now wood Smith is a free app to download with an optional in app purchase of I think it's 1 99 a month. And it allows you to create widgets. So it's not about just put this widget from this app here. It's about creating widgets. So this calendar that I've got here that says Friday, March 19th, record iOS today, 18 to 20 that's 24 hour time 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM is a widget. And when I tap on it, it opens widget Smith. And as you can see, I've done some playing around in here to create widgets.

Rosemary Orchard (00:13:45):
And so what you do, I'm, I'm gonna go ahead and I think I'll create a medium widget right here. So first of all, widget Smith, isn't just a widget and your widget widget always looks like this. You can actually add timed widgets, which means that say between I dunno, 6:00 PM and 8:00 AM. You have one kind of widget show, and then, you know, 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. You have another kind of widget. So you have a work widget versus a personal widget, and it's the same widget. So it only occupies one spot and slot, but it, you know, shows different information, but then you can go ahead and select different things. Now, personally, for people who are there going all the time, I could have the time in really big numbers. I would just add a note of caution in that apple updates, widgets, when they feel like they have the battery level to do so and worth doing, which means sometimes widgets updates super quickly.

Rosemary Orchard (00:14:39):
Sometimes they don't. So you might find things like the time end up drifting off, and that's the case in any widget application. That's not widget Smiths pulled. So fuzzy time is great for things like that. And so, so are things like the sun path, but there are lots of options. So you can do like date options. I, I love those. You can select photos and overlay them with things like the current dates. So you've got utility combined with something fun and there's step counting built in, you've got health and activity options. You've even got weather options which are great. And then you've got, you know, upcoming events combined with a calendar and things like that, or just pulling out your reminders, or if you live near the beach, a tide graph, that could be really useful so that, you know, when it's safe to go for a walk on the beach and there's also things like a Starfield.

Rosemary Orchard (00:15:28):
But I'm just gonna go back up and I'm gonna select the, the custom text which is your text here. And then the next section, and this is one of the reasons why I really love this is you can select a theme. Okay. So there's seasonal ones. Like there's a couple of heart ones and some snow ones for Valentine's day and, and Christmas and winter, I presume. And then there's some general ones where you can just, you know, have candy, which is bright pink with bright green text on it. I'm not sure I would personally pick that one, but I'm sure somebody loves it. There's daring, which is gray with white text on and there's lights and leaves and neon and night vision and pumpkins and scrapbook. And one of my favorites, six colors, which is the original six colors of the, the apple logo back when it was really, you know, colorful, but you can also customize a theme and you can specify, you know, a particular text.

Rosemary Orchard (00:16:25):
So if you want a particular text, like you could use noteworthy or chalk duster, or typewriter or copper plate, things like that you, you can specify a tint color. So that's the color that's applied to anything that can change, like, you know, this purple I love purple. You can change a background color, so I can hopefully select this pastel purple, which should, if I do this right match my background. And you can also choose an artwork color. Now, this one doesn't really apply quite so much here because I'm, I'm using the colors theme. But you could change other things as well, and you can change the actual artwork and I'll just have save there. And now I just need to insert some texts. So I'm just going to put hello, iOS. Oops. Today. Oops. And auto. Correct. Did not quite help me there.

Rosemary Orchard (00:17:15):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I'll just rename this one to hello and tap save. So I've created the widget here. Now I will pop into edit mode, remove that draft widget, and then scroll down to find widget Smith. Now out, there are only three kinds of widgets that you can add here. So you select whichever size it is that you've created. That was a medium one. And then it should automatically jump to the latest one that you have created. Now, as you can see this Paal purple doesn't quite match my background, but if we look at that rainbow, that does indeed match the rainbow of my background. And this can be really lovely for, again, things like sticky notes that you, you want just like little, you know, personal motivational things. But also things like showing photos of your loved ones or, you know, your, your pets who are hopefully also your loved ones or, or your calendar or reminders or things, or the weather.

Rosemary Orchard (00:18:18):
And I actually have a large widget, which I'm just gonna go ahead and add right here. And that shows me, so I've got this calendar option, but I believe it was large for, Nope, this is my problem. I don't actually rename all of these properly. There we go where I can actually see all of the time zones of the people I work with, the Micah, you are actually in under the A's time zone because I was working with David before I was working with you. So I should probably rename that to west coast or something like that. But it, this shows me a calendar, so I know where I am in the month. And it also shows me times, you know, for myself and also for other people who I work with. So if I wanna message somebody, then if I message them at eight o'clock in the morning, my time I'll be well aware that they are fast asleep, their phones are and do not disturb, and they will not see my message until hopefully much, much later. And I really like that because this allows, this genuinely gives me utility, which I need and it makes my life much easier. And of course pretier

Mikah Sargent (00:19:31):
Absolutely. Yeah, I really I, I think it's incredible how much is available in that app and particularly with the timed widgets. I mean, you can go all out at that point to add on all sorts of things. You, you know, you talked about your, your work set up and your home setup. You can, you've got your day phone and your night phone <laugh> and each of those could have different widgets based on what you want and adding photos to your home screen. So it almost becomes like the old school, what was it dashboard on, on the Mac? Yeah. Yeah, just all of that is, is so nice. And just that, that cuz optimization that's available there. And underscore David Smith, the developer of the app continues to iterate and improve and update as folks have more suggestions or requests and you know, bug fixes and all that kind of stuff.

Mikah Sargent (00:20:30):
The app gets updated pretty regularly. So it's, it's kind of incredible what all you can do with widget Smith. And then there are lots of other apps that that developer has created that also offer so much customization. So it's pretty cool if you wanna go around and, and tool things in exactly as you want them then you can do that using widget Smith. All right. We will get back to the best OFS in just a moment, but I do wanna take a quick break to tell you about imperfect foods who are bringing you this episode of iOS today every day, delicious groceries fall through the cracks of our food system, simply because of how they look imperfect foods is turning this around by sourcing quirky yet delicious foods and delivering them to you in a way proven to reduce emissions. What if getting your favorite groceries put time back into your week instead of actually taking it away with the weather, getting colder outside, you can stay cozy inside and let imperfect foods deliver you intentionally sourced groceries with just a few clicks.

Mikah Sargent (00:21:35):
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Mikah Sargent (00:22:35):
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Mikah Sargent (00:23:22):
I, I had a meat, some poultry, and then also there was a whole pumpkin pie <laugh> in my grocery order. I was who pumped really exciting stuff. But what I love about this is that, you know, I've used some different recipe management recipe, online, ordering things subscriptions. And one of the things that always bugged me was I've got all these boxes and all of this cool packs and all of these metallic sort of reflective, cool coding bags. And I don't know what to do with them. Are they recyclable? Where do they go? Imperfect foods is awesome because they let you on your next delivery, send all that stuff right back to them. They'll make use of it in the way that works for them. You know, whether it's reusing or recycling to make sure that that stuff doesn't have to go to waste. It was really cool to see right now, imperfect foods is offering our listeners 20% off your first four orders. When you go to imperfect foods.com and use the promo code iOS again, that's 20% off your first four orders. That's up to an $80 value@imperfectfoods.com. When you use the promo code iOS imperfect foods.com, promo code iOS, check them out, imperfect foods.com with the promo code iOS, right? Let's head back to the best OFS.

Rosemary Orchard (00:24:49):
Well to start with let, let's give a little bit of background on what I ordered. So previously I had the 20 18, 11 inch iPad pro which is a, a great device. I loved it. I even bought the, the magic keyboard, which came out last year, which fits on the older one. But I, I was debating and I was very unsure. Do I get a bigger iPad? Do I not get a bigger iPad? You know, is it, is it a good thing to do or a bad thing to do? And then they said that it's got this fancy new display. And so here it is on my desk. I'm just gonna move my mouse out of the way here. And you'll have to excuse some of the boxes in background. I'm reorganizing my office right now, but I can just peel this off.

Rosemary Orchard (00:25:29):
I love how they've added these tabs, by the way. You know, it just makes life a little bit easier when it comes to getting into your apple products. There's no more trying to finagle around with the plastics, shoving her nail in the back or anything there though. I'm still having to rip it because I was doing this flat on a desk, but here we go, moment of truth here. Can I get the lid off of this box on air? Because otherwise it's gonna just be very, very embarrassing. There we go. I did it. I did it people. Do I get a round applause for this? You do exciting. There we go. There we go. So I, I went with the one terabyte option because it's got that extra Ramm it, and I'm hoping like I did with 2018 that I'm gonna be keeping this baby for a couple of years, because look at this, isn't this beautiful. I have not had one of these models. I've not held one of these. I don't think, I mean, I played with it in the apple store, but it is not the same as, you know, having one for a couple hour place from home. So I'm just gonna par that on a second or try to, there we go. I have an apple logo right here

Mikah Sargent (00:26:35):
On that, on this webcam in particular on this camera in particular, it looks so gigantic because of the distortion. It looks

Rosemary Orchard (00:26:42):
Huge. Yeah. So ju just for for scale, I have the old serial remote here, and I'll just put that on there for for comparison. And I'll just have a quick look in here. So I have the same 20 wat folding charger that you would get with a home pop mini. And it, is that a one meter cable? Come on apple, give two. I'm always,

Mikah Sargent (00:27:04):
I'm always using two meters to charge. Two meters is much better. Okay. <inaudible> iPad. I'm I'm not sure how to speak that. So I'm not gonna try, so I can just go through and set this up. Oh my gosh. It's so shiny. Oh, I absolutely love it. So this is shipped with 80% charge. I actually just set everything up manually, so I'm gonna have to type in some passwords and so on. Yeah. So you could switch back to me for a second while. Rosemary takes care of that. So is which did you get the silver or the space gray model? So

Rosemary Orchard (00:27:30):
I went with silver because the, the, the space gray has, so there are these lines on the back of the iPad which, I mean, it's very difficult to see on the 11 and iPad which I'm just holding up to the screen. Now, if then you just wanna quickly switch back. So you can just about see if you're, if you're watching, there's like a line right there. That's the antenna line. Okay. And this is present on wifi and cellular devices and that blends in much better with the silver than it does with the space, but the space is great. It kind of stands out. And so I actually went with the, you know, I, I went with the the the silver just because I like it to blend in. And also I like light particular devices.

Rosemary Orchard (00:28:17):
It sounds kind of silly but you know, pretty is important to me. So I wish that these came in the beautiful colors that the iMac does just because it's, you know, it, it's kind of a shame. I understand why they don't. I mean, how much space are they having to take up in an apple store with all of the same iMac? Just the color is different. It's not like they can just be like, okay, well just drop this configuration to this computer and done you know, they've got different color cables, they've got all of the accessories in matching colors, et cetera. So that is pretty scary. And I'm officially at the stage now where I can set up face ID. So that's, that's good fun. I've not connected this to gigantic ID. Yeah. Gigantic face ID. And I have to do it in portrait mode, which is extra fun.

Rosemary Orchard (00:29:04):
So there we go. Oh, it sings at me. I did not realize that it did that. There we go. So let's just see if I can get this to do the same thing again. And one tip for people setting up face ID, which I think some people sometimes struggle with it. Usually you have to, you know, do this circle with your head. I like to do one circle to the right and circle to the left that, you know, it just means that it's getting your face from slightly different angles, just because the way you, you move your head is gonna change. And I personally have had zero issues with face ID doing that. And I've had some friends who were having occasional issues with face ID. And I, I, I said, Hey, just do it again. But next time when you set it up, go right, and then go left when you do the, the face ID setup.

Rosemary Orchard (00:29:50):
And that's great. It works. So, so my mom did that on her iPhone. She kept going face ID is not working. And I said, well, part of the problem is you're wearing a mask because this was before ask lock came out. And so, you know, that, that, you know, that needed to be fixed. And the, the other issue was you know, she just she'd moved the, the phone when setting it up instead of holding the phone still and moving her head. So there we go. I can officially say don't transfer apps and data. I forgot that I can, I can use my phone to set up my iPad without transferring the data from my phone. Cause I wanna start this iPad from new, I mean, I've, I've had my 2018 iPad since launch date 2018. So that's, that's a pretty long time. I've accumulated a lot of apps on there that I don't use anymore. So I'm just setting this iPad up for brand new. So I'm sharing data with, at app developers. I will go with light mode for now and oh my gosh. I can officially show people again, look at this, look at this. Ah, it's ready. It's got all these apps. I have my refreshed widgets. And so 

Mikah Sargent (00:30:55):
One hopes we will get more screen to work with with with widgets in the next version of iOS.

Rosemary Orchard (00:31:04):
Oh yeah. I'm crossing my fingers for G and Micah. I am crossing my fingers for June because I mean, it's not that far away now we're a couple of weeks ago until, until June 7th. So it, it's gonna be good to see what we can do with our iPads then

Mikah Sargent (00:31:20):
Folks. This is the part of the show where you get to ask questions of Rosemary orchard related to Siri shortcuts. So Rosemary orchard, tell us what is the shortcuts corner request for today?

Rosemary Orchard (00:31:37):
Well, the shortcuts corner request for today came from Steve on Twitter. Fortunately tagged me. So I, I got to see it and Steve on Twitter asks, is there a series shortcut to find out how many times I wash my hands per day by taking data from my apple watch? Well, Steve the good news is there is, and I'm gonna show you how to build this. And then we're gonna put a link in the show notes to the finished shortcut so that you can just download this. Now, if you start with, I need to actually press the button and share my iPhone so that people can see it, if they're watching the video stream. So when you create a new shortcut, first thing you need to do is add an action. And if you tap into the app section, then scroll down, possibly depending on how many apps you've got installed.

Rosemary Orchard (00:32:21):
Yeah, I've got a lot of apps here and for the health app, then you'll see, there are actually four actions here. So you can log a health sample. You can log a workout, you can get details of a health sample, or you can find your health samples. And it starts by finding all your health samples and then it, it, it narrows it down a bit. So it looks for steps in the last seven days. So the first thing we need to do is tap on steps. And this is not quite alphabet order, so I'm just gonna cheat and type hand, which gives us hand washing and then start date. If you just tap the, is in the last for this, then you can change that to is today. We run this in my case, this is no samples found because I've developed a habit of actually taking off my apple watch and scrubbing like up to here when I really need to thoroughly wash my hands it's possibly not great.

Rosemary Orchard (00:33:10):
I should start looking my hand washing instead with a shortcut, but we'll get back to that in a minute. So now we have our, and we need to count these. And so then I will actually just tap okay there. And it's, it comes right with zero. So now we just need to give ourselves the results. And there's a great action for this called show results. But if we just do this like this then it's, it, it tells me I've not got any health samples. That's okay. And they just says zero. And I dunno about you MyCare, but that seems like a pretty, you know, rubbish end of shortcut. You know, <laugh>, you, you, you look at it and it's just like zero great, or, you know, 10 or 100, whatever. But if we tap on this count, okay.

Rosemary Orchard (00:33:57):
And then we look down here at the bottom, in the top of left at this, there's a little keyboard on a back button, and then you can actually go ahead and edit it. Now I'm gonna use a little trick that I know here, which is if you tap and hold on the space bar, then you can move the cursor. This is much easier than tapping around. So now you can type something, you washed your hands count, tap and hold on the space, hard to move again times today done. Okay. So now when I run my shortcut, that's okay. You wash your hands zero times today. Oops. Well, that's not true. I promise it's not, I've washed my hands many times today. But this is what happens when you take your hands off every time. Take your watch off every time. So now you can just go ahead.

Rosemary Orchard (00:34:41):
I will not I'll tap, cancel. I'll just tap into the one that I created earlier and here it is ready to share. So I can just share that with some people. But instead we'll put a link to that in the show notes for everybody, because this is a useful one. The count action is really useful for you know, people who who, who have the multiple things that they wanted, you know, just get the number of, so for example, if you've done seven workouts today I hope they were short, please don't overdo it. <Laugh> but it's you know, it's, it's really nice to just know how many times you've done something. So there we go.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:22):
And then our last bit of shortcuts corner comes from quadratic. I think this is a fantastic question. And I'm looking forward to hearing the response here. I have a general question about creating shortcuts. How do you think through your next steps when you are trying to use an app in a shortcut, but it doesn't appear in the abs list. This is often the point where I throw up my hands and I'm just curious how an expert thinks through it. So inquiring minds, including my own, want to know how do you do it?

Rosemary Orchard (00:35:49):
Well, it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish, of course, because sometimes what you're trying to accomplish is straight up impossible. You know, you're, you're trying to do something that you would need a humongous server to do or something like that. And you wanna do it on a plane in airplane mode with no internet connection. Well, it's kind of difficult. But there are plenty of different ways to get around problems. So if you're looking for an action and you, like, I dunno, like being able to detect whether I'm in light or dark mode, that has to be a thing shortcuts can do right wrong shortcuts. Can't do that. Okay. It can't detect whether or not whether or not you're in light mode or dark mode, whether or not the sun is up or down, but there is an app that can do that called toolbox pro.

Rosemary Orchard (00:36:34):
So I have several apps like toolbox pro and others shortcuts, accessory apps, basically. In my arsenal, toolbox pro is one of the big ones there is also and I've just forgotten the name. So I'm just gonna check what it is now. There is a specific home kit, one, which I use all the time. I think it's called hobo hobo for shortcuts, which lets you do all sorts of things. I talked a little bit to quadratic cuz fortunately he posted this in, in the, in the chat. So I was able to actually chat with him and in his particular case he said that he was trying to do something with Spotify. And so the solution to that was he had to do the action enough times in the Spotify I app. And eventually it would show up that is one way to do things sometimes also going into the app and looking under the settings, you'll be able to add a shortcut from there and then what you can do.

Rosemary Orchard (00:37:30):
And this is something I actually did myself the other day with an application called text case. I'm just gonna see if I can find the shortcut. Yes, perfect. So I've got it right here. I will just show people. So there's an application called text case where it can format text in specific ways for you beyond what shortcuts can do by itself and the way it adds actions is it, it creates a shortcut with that. But then if you tap on this little bubble here, you can copy that and then go to something else. And you can use actually I will try doing that the three fingers to paste. It's it's not gonna let me do that now. So I'm just gonna add an action. And I will just pop in this one from an app that I'm beta testing.

Rosemary Orchard (00:38:14):
If you tap on this, then you can paste above and below and that's tapping on that icon over on the left. So once you've got one of those shortcut you can do that. But honestly the best way to, to find these, these solutions is sometimes to work around it. If the podcast app doesn't support what you want, try looking at overcast PocketCasts Castro, downcast, all of these other apps have different options. So sometimes the correct solution is to use a different app. So yeah, it really depends. And of course, if you're trying to solve a problem and you can't solve it, you can always write into the show. You can contact us email, Twitter chat all of those are great. And I, I collect them all at even if we don't get to it in one week's show, we'll keep it for the next one. I know that for next week, I've got some sourdough cooking Micah. So Woohoo. Let's get back to that

Mikah Sargent (00:39:01):
Then. Yes, we definitely will.

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Mikah Sargent (00:39:34):
Doug has written N do you have any vaccination record app recommendations in the us? We're not likely to get one from the government, but local music venues are now requiring proof of vaccination for entry. That's a good thing. So far a picture of our CDC card that ties to our state ideas acceptable, but I would rather have some form of application, especially if I could pull it up from the iOS wallet. I've come across several here. And I'm a clear member, C L E a R. So that seems to be the front runner. And then they included a link to insider.com that has best vaccine passport apps. Yeah, there are some options out there and you can always I've scanned both sides of, of my idea as well as keeping it in the bag that I take with me everywhere.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:20):
So I've got it in multiple forms. But as we are going to talk about on the show here Rosemary and I if you want to go with a personalized version Rosemary and I are gonna talk about an app called make pass with, make pass. You can create your own custom apple wallet card. And so I have put together my own custom apple wallet card here and I've of course, mosaic out the QR code because it is a smart card QR code. So it actually has like health record, basic health record information that in Iowas 15 is actually something you can import into the health app. So I have my vaccine stuff digitally saved in the health app in one place. I've got my card front and back saved to my Dropbox, to my iCloud drive. And then I I've got this, which is available in my wallet app where I just made it on my own using make pass. So would you like to tell us about make pass?

Rosemary Orchard (00:41:28):
Yeah. So make pass does a whole bunch of things and you were the one that introduced me to it, actually, Mike, I believe it was one of your app caps. And of course I was ti up my iPhone earlier and I offloaded a whole bunch of apps and there it's there it's just reinstalled. So you can go ahead and make a brand new pass. And as you make a pass, of course, there's a whole bunch of things that you can do. You can also select an icon as a, you could set a barcode, including a barcode from a photo, which would allow you to pick a specific photo of say your vaccine card. And I would suggest that you probably want a generic card type rather than an event pass event ticket or a boarding pass for this, because you're going to want it to stand out.

Rosemary Orchard (00:42:12):
And you, you, you won't want a relevant date or location for this, but you can add a whole bunch of information here as well, so that everything shows up and you can give it everything that you, you like. So as you go through and add, don't forget that as, as you type and you've added a feels, then you can tap on that preview top. Right. and so if you want to say that it it's a CDC one, then you could do that and, and set that up. But you know, as you go through and set all the information that you you might want or need then you will hopefully actually end up with a great result of a read good looking vaccine pass. And don't forget that the local image is, is gonna be a smaller image.

Rosemary Orchard (00:43:01):
It's gonna be this barcode that you're going to want to set as that information as well, don't forget though, you can tap, you can type all this information here as well. So for example, first J we called them jabs over here. And so I, I don't remember when that was, so I'm just gonna guess that it was, I don't know, the 9th of March that that's wrong, but there we go. So I can add first jab and then I can add second jab. And that was on the 31st of July. I remember that much. There we go. And so now I've got both of those dates right there which is really useful, or I could put them down here in the, the past front fields if I prefer. So I'm just gonna type hello and world in their, oh, I can't spell world.

Rosemary Orchard (00:43:48):
There we go. I'm having a, having a day there, Micah, and this, this potentially is a bit more useful. So have a play around with all, all of those different fields. Now you could potentially use a shortcut to pull up some images every single time. Micah, you talked about this last week base 64, encoding an image to to put it in as a shortcut. So actually what I'm gonna do's cool. Nice. I'm gonna take a picture. I've got a really nice fancy keyboard. That was a very cool keyboard. I know, look at those rainbows, right as it's going, wow, man, I love it. And I'm using some really fancy switches so that they shouldn't be so loud when I type, so I've got a photo here and if you want to base 64 in code and image so that you can keep it in your shortcut, then what you need to do is you need to start with, but getting the picture, right.

Rosemary Orchard (00:44:38):
So you need to select your photo or photos. And then you'll need the base 64 action. Okay. And base 64 in code. And then when you've done that, so you select your, and then it encodes it, it might take a while. But that is your image. Wow. That is a lot of data. So what I would actually recommend doing before this actually, I'm just going to change this to get a latest picture because I know it's the last picture I took. So I'll just pop that in here. And then I'm going to convert my image. Now you might be thinking rose, you don't need to convert your image. It's fine. Well, if I convert my image, I can, first of all, turn off preserve metadata because people don't need to know exactly when and where I took this picture and I can bring down the quality, which is going to reduce the file slides.

Rosemary Orchard (00:45:27):
So now if I get the latest picture and then have a look at this, it's still long. I promise you it's actually smaller. So I'm just going to add that to my clipboard. And then I'm going to always allow that perfect. Done. Now I can delete all of these actions. Everything's gone. Okay. So I've got an empty action. I get a text section I paste in my base, 64 encoded image out. That's a big, that's a big textbook now, but that's okay. And then I look for that basics 64 code action again, and this time I tap on in code, I swap it to decode. And then you can, you can do a couple of things. I would suggest, however, for this what you're going to be looking for is the quick look action. And for those of you familiar with Macs, that's when you tap the space bar you'll get quick.

Rosemary Orchard (00:46:17):
Look, if you're in finder, for example, and you're looking at images my iPhone is a little stuck there. This is the problem with a software. There we go. Quick look. Wonderful. I have a random Dropbox section in there, but I don't need that. Okay. <affirmative> so now this is my image. Okay. This textbook right here is my image. So I don't have to, you know, hunt for something in my photo library or whatever. No, no, no, no, no, it decodes this. And then it's gonna show it to me every single time. Look at that Micah done. I hit play. That's that? That's it it's showing right up on my screen. And so then what I can do is I I'm gonna say this is keyboard image because otherwise I'm gonna get very confused later. If I pop into this little three dots here then I, I could pin it in my menu bar and everything.

Rosemary Orchard (00:47:06):
I can add some shortcuts options to do that. But instead, sorry, I want the share sheet option add, oops, cancel adds to my home screen. And there we go. Now I can add this to my home screen. If I pop back to my home screen, look right here. Boom. I tap it on there. I have my image done immediately shows it. Yeah, it's immediately shows it. Now I recommend including that convert image option and bringing down the file size of your image because the bigger, the image is the longer it's going to take to decode it. And so that means it's gonna take a longer time to, you know, get it to show up. So the smaller, the images, the faster it will show, you will have to play around with the co invo image option. I recommend not putting anything after it for a while and just playing around, drag the slider up and down and make sure that you can still read your glasses.

Rosemary Orchard (00:47:58):
Now, hold your iPhone AME away from you and make sure that you can still read your pasts. Okay. Because if you can't read it, then you're gonna have a problem. If it's written in doctor scroll, then nobody's gonna be able to read it, but make sure that you can read that image. So make sure somehow it's possible to read the image. Ideally try out that OCR feature that you can use in images on I 15, when that comes out, see if that works. Or if you're in the public beta, then give that a try right now. But there we go. That's how you can base 64 encode and decode an image so that you can have an image, a tap away on your home screen. So one of the first things that I had to check and I've checked it several times again to reconfirm, this is not the Promax, this is the pro and it feels humongous to me.

Rosemary Orchard (00:48:40):
Bear in mind, I was on the iPhone mini before. I actually had a 12 pro max, so theoretically I know about the sizes. But you know, the shuffling devices around in the family, there was a claim on the top Promax when I said that I was interested in getting a mini, so that happened but you know, this, the iPhone mini is, it doesn't seem screen size wise, like it's much smaller, but wow, that does make a big difference when you're holding it. But I couldn't say no to these cameras. These cameras are so good. But I did, you know, I started by picking it up, going, wow, this thing's amazing. Could I Fri be it? And then I immediately went and I got my MagSafe pop socket and stuck it on the back. This is just I think this is the, the galaxy Nebula.

Rosemary Orchard (00:49:20):
That's the name of it? Nebula pop socket from pops, socket, and it's MagSafe and you just pop it on, it sticks on there. It's very satisfying. Th and it's, it's not going anywhere. Just to be very clear, even on the, the, the pro I checked it on the old Promax. I, I, I went back, so the family member who, who claimed it on the weekend and, and said, I need to borrow your phone and stand next to your sofa for 10 minutes and shake. And it, it didn't go anywhere with that either. But yeah, I was slightly amazed at how big this thing is. And I did use it as an opportunity. I, I only transferred using iCloud. I didn't do the direct device transfer. A because I knew I had to leave the house and I needed a working phone for that.

Rosemary Orchard (00:50:01):
And I didn't want to have to take a humongous battery pack with me along with two iPhones and an apple watch an iPad mini. When I left the house, it seemed TA excessive to say least. So I did the iCloud option because this way, when apps are downloading, you can tap and hold on one and say, prioritize this. So for the apps that I use the most frequently, which are the ones on my home screen, I just did the, the tap and hold and prioritize those. I also use it as an opportunity to switch my mail client to the mail app from apple cuz it seemed like a good opportunity to do that. But yeah, it was, you know, set up for me, aside from the apple watch issue was relatively painless and a friend of mine just pinged me and, and noted that even if the transfer of the watch works because it did for him, it still turns off the watch unlock.

Rosemary Orchard (00:50:44):
So everybody is the facing that issue everybody. But as scooter X is posted in the RRC Apple's promised to fix us. I'm hoping that it's a relatively easy fix because yeah, it, that would be really good to have that back. It's very frustrating right now my passcode is only six characters, but it feels too long and I actually would like to send it to a longer passcode for security. But obviously I'm not willing to do that right now when I have to type it in 10, 15 times in the supermarket, even though technically I don't have to wear a mask, but I do. But yeah, no, I'm, I'm really impressed with it. It's it feels like a very nice device. And the blue in particular is a lovely shade of blue. And you know, you can like it depending on what light it's in <affirmative> you know, it, it really does pick up purples, which is really lovely.

Rosemary Orchard (00:51:32):
And especially if you, if you pop it next to something that is purple and for people who aren't aware purple is my favorite color. So I frequently have other purple things around <laugh>. So it does pick up that color very nicely. And especially in the, with hysteria case it, it, yeah, it's good. I'm, I'm, I'm genuinely impressed in the screen. I have to say captured me more than I was expecting. I do have the top 0.9 type I probe with the pro promotion display. That's gorgeous, but I've never, I don't know, maybe because I didn't have a 12.9 device before, but I've never really gone. Wow. This screen really feels amazing. It's because I do hold my phones, you know, closer to me most of the time, once my post is usually on my lap or a bit of a distance. But wow. Yeah, the screen is gorgeous and it really, you know, it, it somehow feels a little bit faster just from the screen perspective which I know is just my mind playing tricks on me rather than anything else. So yeah, it's,

Mikah Sargent (00:52:30):
It's the subtlety, the subtlety of that variable refresh rate for folks who are wondering what we're talking about here. Those the promotion technology in the iPhone in particular is a, a refresh rate that can ramp up or ramp down depending on what you're doing. And so often with scrolling, the screen is going to be at 120 Hertz refresh rate. So it just, it, everything looks it's instead of there being a kind of almost a motion blur that takes place where you see some of the stuff on screen, but not other things. So as you're scrolling things kind of blur away with 120 Hertz, it's like you're eyes got an upgrade in the sense that you can sort of see everything moving up and down on the screen as you are looking at it. So it's just a, it's a really fascinating thing, and it's kind of hard to sort of quantify without actually looking at it yourself.

Mikah Sargent (00:53:26):
But yeah, I have, I, I noticed it a little bit more. I, I think I've gotten used to it because of the iPad pro to a certain extent, but having it on the phone and sort of recalibrating everything, brought that out again. I know the people really, really love, especially sort of gear heads really love the 120 Hertz refresh rate. It hasn't, you know, been life changing or anything like that, but I do find it an interesting upgrade that looks cool. <Laugh> but with that, I think the is the opposite understanding. It goes up to 120 Hertz, but it can also drop down to very slow refresh rates depending on what's on screen. And by doing that, it improves upon the battery life and these phones, the, the iPhone 13, the iPhone 13 pro all got a huge battery life upgrade that think makes all the difference.

Mikah Sargent (00:54:28):
The people are really, if they are getting the newest phone are really going to, to dig <laugh> where the iPhone 12, I was able to, you know, use it all day and not have concern about battery. This just takes that to the next level. So when I'm doing things that are outside of the norm, or, you know, maybe I'm doing more going to San Francisco or something. So I'm using navigation more than with this newer phone at the end of the day, I don't have that concern that I might be running outta battery and need to pop on or, you know, pop in a a charger. So I think battery life is going to come out being one of the, the favorite features of these devices. Just because of the improvements there. I'm curious Rosemary about your experiences with the camera so far. I know I've had fun taking some macro photos.

Rosemary Orchard (00:55:21):
Yeah. So I've, I've not really gone anywhere to take great pictures yet. Something I'm actually hoping that I'm gonna be able to have an opportunity to do this Friday. But I have been messing around taking some pictures. I did some macro photos of the material of my sofa and things like that. And I I've really enjoyed that. What I'm I'm most enjoying though, is the new telephoto, the three X telephoto, because that was something I definitely missed on the mini that Teleo the mini for people. This is the, the 12 mini, not the 13 mini the, the, the stuff doesn't have a TFO lens. It it's only got the normal and wide angle lenses. And the, the new I iPhone mini apparently has very good battery life, which is my other complaint that one's fixed, but the, the camera has not.

Rosemary Orchard (00:56:05):
So they, they can't fit lens in there, but I'm really liking it, especially the image stabilization, the fact that every single lens has optical image stabilization. Now that for me is, is a big thing because I'm, I'm not a great photographer. I do love taking pictures and so on, but even though I've got a very nice point in shoot with, you know, proper optical zoom and everything on it you know, it it's I, I think it's a Canon something, or research times optical zoom or something like that. At least that's what I remembered saying. You know, I, I I've got that, but I'm rarely gonna take that and use it to take truth just because I always have my iPhone with me. And I don't know when I'm gonna want to take pictures.

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Mikah Sargent (00:57:35):
It's time to talk about the iPad mini, I don't know about you rose orchard, but I am loving this new iPad mini. I think it is the perfect size. It has a gorgeous little screen. It's my little buddy that I could carry around with me everywhere because I do have monster hands. And so it's very nice to have this little thing along with me. I got it in I, I think it's just called space grace still, but with this really vibrant orange case, and I'm actually, my shirt has some orange on it to <laugh> to, to match with my, to coordinate at least with my iPad mini. This is a beautiful little consumption device that mm-hmm, <affirmative> also has as some handy, you know creation features as well. So it's, it's a little productivity tool and I have been enjoying using it just every single day as the little take along device that does it all. So tell me about your initial thoughts with the new iPad mini kind of how you're feeling about it.

Rosemary Orchard (00:58:48):
Well, I had the IPA mini five, which is right here, it's rose gold. The, the apple pencil stuck to the I iPad mini behind it, because if I turn this around, you'll see that the new IPA mini is definitely smaller, at least heightwise with wise in the case in, in the folio cases is apples Follia case for the new IEP mini it's about the, and obviously depth wise. This is now a little bit thicker, but I picked it up and I immediately went, oh yeah, this is a little easier to hold. I'll just pop the iPad mini down instead of dropping it off on the floor, cuz my grandmother is after that she's got her eye on it. But I immediately, you know, I opened it up and gosh, this is gorgeous. This is a lovely device. And the screen again feels really nice.

Rosemary Orchard (00:59:28):
I know some people are saying that they, they can see the difference between this and the other, you know, the, the top 0.9 in Japa per the 11 inch Japa pro, but equally, you know, I'm holding this a little bit closer to me than say a bigger iPad, just cuz it's lighter. So it's easier to hold higher and I'm, I'm enjoying it. So I usually take my iPad mini with me when I go places. So this time I've opted for the cellular model. And Micah I'm, I'm not boring like you I've gone with, oh wait, I got it in purple. And I've got the, the iPad mini here from the 12 mini because I wanted to show people the, the purple contrast because unfortunately the, the iPad mini purple as people can see here, it's, it's kind of like gray that wants so purple and is longing.

Rosemary Orchard (01:00:15):
But it it's memory is quite faulty, so it's not very good at, at picking it up or remembering what it's like. And it's you, you say a little better perhaps when I do a bezel comparison one of those is much more purple than the other, but the case Mica, they nailed the case, the case, the English lavender case is absolutely gorgeous. I love this so much because first of all, it's a fol case, so it wraps all around the device. And it pops off incredibly easily. You know, I, I, I, I often have the iPad like this. Yep. But I can also just, you know, flip it around, like this, use my apple pencil, take some notes. And it's great. This apple pencil, I did not buy any apple pencil. I stole this from my tile 0.9 inch iPad pro and then at the weekend I was there and I was writing something up on my iPad mini I was using Notability and I went, hang on a minute.

Rosemary Orchard (01:01:04):
Mm-Hmm I, I need a bit more space. Went over to my 12.9 IPA pro picked up the, the apple pencil from the mini, stuck it on top of the iPad pro picked it up and then just wrote on the iPad pro. That was it that, you know, it's incredibly easy to swap this between devices. It's not like the previous one where you pop off the top and you stick it in the bottom of the ice and you wait a moment for it to connect. Or if it's not charged you wait half an hour and forget what you were going to do with your life <laugh> or anything and lose the cap. In the meantime, there's no like that. This just, it sticks on. And it magnetizes nicely. And for people who are curious about attention to detail, I'm gonna see if I can hold this in the right place.

Rosemary Orchard (01:01:40):
You can't really see it, but the, the pencil does just fit it nicely between the antenna bands on the Senator. One which is great because the, the SIM card is right down here underneath where you can Ize the apple pencil too. But yeah, this is good. So I upgraded cellular this time because I had wifi before. And you know, during the pandemic, that was fine. But before the pandemic, I did have a couple of little difficulties because I was having to tether to my phone and it would drop out every once in a while and so on. And I found out that the, the new deal that I will be on as of, I think next week with the phone company, I can also add the iPad to it. And I'll be able share data between the two devices if I need to so I can get a low data plan.

Rosemary Orchard (01:02:24):
And so I, when I found that out, it was a case of cellular is happening because isn't this gorgeous. I have to say my I've mostly used this for playing games. Mini Metro and mini motor ways have, have a bit of a comeback over the weekend for me. And I, I was all in on that because it is a really nice device to be able to play that with. And yeah, it charges quickly because that USBC, and you can just plug it into any USBC charger and it'll draw as much power as it's able to, which is great. What about you? Do you wish it would come green? Are, are you looking for green iPad? Mini

Mikah Sargent (01:02:58):
That's? Yeah. So the reason I went with the space gray model was because I was gonna, as I said, sort of, sort of step out, show it off with that really bright orange case. But yeah, mostly it was me sort of pouting about the fact that it didn't come in green because the iPad air did come in green. And so I was talking with the new iPad mini will as well, unfortunately, no. But as Anthony has pointed out in the iOS today, discord chat says he feels like this would be great for cloud gaming. I a thousand percent agree. This is the perfect little device for that. And you, you talked about how you, you know, you were also playing games on it. It's just big enough. And so you can put it somewhere, you know, it could sit on your lap, it could sit on a table, it could sit wherever you needed it to.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:49):
I the other day I was using it, I have an old Kindle, a Kindle voyage. And I, most of the time, I I've said before, I, most of the time I listen to audio books, but occasionally there will be a book that comes out before it's an audio book and it's enough of something that I want to consume that I will go ahead and grab it on on the Kindle store and read it. And so I was, I was reading through a book and most of the time I used my Kindle for that, however I wanted to eat. And so the Kindle you've, you know, you've gotta press the buttons on the side to, or the, the fake buttons on the side to move the pages along. And so I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll take my little iPad mini I'll roll the case back so I can set it up and I will open up the Kindle app and have it in landscape mode.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:46):
And then I will just be able to swipe really easily to change, you know, to, to, to go forward with pages. And so it was a very nice little experience for me for, for doing that as well. I think this is a great device for you know, sometimes you, you are like, oh I wanna show you this video. And everybody kind of huddles around a tiny little phone. This is the perfect size to where it's still handy, still convenient to hold in your hands, but you can show people things. You'll notice I've got the, I, the, the apple pencil stuck to the side of this. I don't always carry it on there. Because I do like using the apple pencil on the, the bigger screens. But what is handy is the quick notes feature within iPad OS 15, that lets you quickly take notes on your iPad and be able to use those for, you know, whatever you happen to want to, to use them for.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:40):
So you swipe from the bottom right corner of the screen and a little note pops up. You can then use the there's, there are different pencils or pens that you can use that are common in the notes app, but there's another one, which is really cool. And it is basically it automatically turns your writing into actual text. So as you're writing, it goes ahead and translates that into text that can then be stay stored in the app. I was curious about for you was in pulling this one out and putting it on and comparing it to the watch that you had. Did you notice the difference in screen and I'll I'll I'll quickly sort of give, go ahead.

Rosemary Orchard (01:06:22):
I was just gonna say, I really did notice the difference in screen size, like as I paired it up to set everything up yesterday I, I immediately went, oh yeah. Like this is a bigger one and I'm gonna see if I can demo it. Like on the wrist. I've got two apple watches on here now. So the, this one, the pro one lower one is my new one. And the, this one is the older one. It's very difficult to tell, but when you've got something that takes up the whole screen, wow. You immediately notice a difference.

Mikah Sargent (01:06:45):
Something like this contour watch face here, there. Let's get that in. Ooh, there we go. Bring it over. And yeah. So this contour watch face, it wraps around the edges of the screen in order to show you that new screen size. I have to say for me, I didn't notice much of a difference in the screen size between the two outside of one of the things that I have to do regularly, which is typing in my passcode. Those numbers are a lot bigger there. Oh yeah. One of the other things here that a lot of people don't like is look where that that notification indicator is it's over to the side. It's not centered, which is a little odd it's, you know, not a huge deal, but it is different that said, I think, of course that's the

Rosemary Orchard (01:07:31):
Contour base that it does set on to be clear. The other basis I've been using, like the California dial and stuff, those are all centered. Yeah. So, but the cont her face definitely has you know, that offset so that you can fully see the 12, they could just push the 12th down a little bit or made like a little rounding

Mikah Sargent (01:07:47):
On the two or something. I think that would've been cool. You

Rosemary Orchard (01:07:49):
Could have done some curing there.

Mikah Sargent (01:07:50):
Exactly. So yes, the, so the folks are aware. I think that's the thing is that everywhere else were used to that indicator being square in the center for this face. If you choose to go with that might be the one sort of thing you give up on. I love this green on green, on green look. So I've got the I can't remember what they call this. I think they call this color MOS, which is funny because everything else is Sequoia green. The apple watch itself. I, you probably can't tell, but I did get the green apple watch. It is a very subtle green. You can see kind of the highlights catching there to see that green color. But most of the time when people see this watch on your wrist, it's gonna look kind of it's, it's grayish Blackish with just this subtle hint of which makes me happy of course, but for folks, because one of the things that they did a little strangely with this series was the color selection is a bit off it's, there's no, just sort of plain color you can go with that, that, you know, folks have been used to in the past.

Mikah Sargent (01:08:52):
I gotta tell you, yeah, on here you can read, see the green, but me looking at it in, in real life with, with my eyes, it is not as pronounced as it is. So I kind of wish I had TWI camera eyes day to day because it would look more green to me. But yeah, this, this new leather link loop came with the apple watch. I was still able to get it on day one with that. And yeah, I I've, I've really been enjoying it. I'm curious, did you, do you have a cellular version or do you use the wifi version?

Rosemary Orchard (01:09:24):
Yeah. So this is the first time I've got a cellular version. I'm thinking that that may or may or may not affect the battery life. So I signed up with that this morning, and that was an, an interesting process, not helped by the fact that the provider here in the UK currently has coded their webpage. So that'll, doesn't look like you need to select anything. And so I'm there just tapping at random points on the page until I finally discovered the magic invisible tap point to enable selecting a cellular connection. That that was fun. So yeah. And I think actually this might be the better side to see it on. I managed to get the Starlight one. And as you said, like, there, there are no standard color options in aluminum. One, if you go for these stainless steel, then there are silver and black options.

Rosemary Orchard (01:10:02):
But other than that, you know, I've got Starlight, which is, I mean, kind of a champagne ish color. It's mostly silver, but every soft, it has a slight touch of gold. It's a nice color. It's still a very neutral color mm-hmm <affirmative>. Which I think is a good thing. Because one of the reasons why I've never gone with the red apple watch before is because a lot of my clothes are purple. I love purple and yeah, it's, it's definitely interesting to try and match everything up there with your outfits, if you've got, you know, have to watch that the wrong color. Right. which is why I always want the silver, I have a lot of silver jewelry. I usually wear silver or white gold. So, you know, for me that makes sense, but Starlight is a good compatible one because I do have some bits of gold and it was always like the one thing that doesn't match and line up and now, like it kind of does. And doesn't at the same time. I'm good with that.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:51):
Yeah. And I think that, that is part of the reason why these colors are more subtle is that you want to be able to wear your watch with everything and you did end up limiting or at least apple =Iwants you to be able to wear your watch with everything. And if you, if you have these very bright poppy colors it might be less likely that you wear it with everything. Cuz I feel comfortable wearing this green as a subtle hint. It's sort of, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's micro peacocking. <Laugh> it's just a, a light touch of the peacock feather as opposed to really sticking out there. Kahoot is a pretty neat app. It lets you do quizzes with your friends. I picked the category last time. So rom why don't you launch Kahoot on your iPad and then you pick the category that you want for this, this game. Right?

Rosemary Orchard (01:11:41):
Well, a little tip that I'm gonna give people because I, I mentioned earlier that I, my face was on top of my kids. If you, if you tap on holes on the person who's floating on your screen, when you're in a FaceTime video call, you are you know, trying to move things around or type or something. You can just pick that up and drag that it will not stay in the middle. It's gonna like snap to a corner. But it works pretty well for that. So I have tapped on the option. I'm gonna create, oh, I don't wanna create a Cahoot. No, I want to,

Mikah Sargent (01:12:12):
I would choose discover, I think.

Rosemary Orchard (01:12:14):
Yeah. give me a

Mikah Sargent (01:12:16):
Weird, nothing showing up for you about

Rosemary Orchard (01:12:18):
Chocolate. There we go. This, this seems like it may have an unfair advantage, but I will pick something. I'll pick something relatively short. If I can 20 questions, 15 questions, I think seven, which was the one I saw earlier is the shortest. Okay. Let's just do this chocolate quiz by Kathleen. And so if I start share play then I can just, oh it's throwing an error cuz I'm not logged in Mica. Maybe you wanna pick one and

Mikah Sargent (01:12:46):
Start, okay. I'll find the quiz.

Rosemary Orchard (01:12:48):
Cuz you don't need to be logged in to all of these for the necessaries work, but you do need to have the app downloaded and if you don't have the app downloaded then it's gonna prompt you to go ahead and download that app. When, when you when somebody tries to share the content with you and you tap on the open option which is quite nice. So

Mikah Sargent (01:13:09):
There you go. All right. So this is the quiz. You choose your name. I'm gonna just stick with my typical name of Micah Sergeant and we'll wait for Rosemary to join as well with her name. And then once that person joins or people join, I dunno why it does that. There there's something to know. For some reason it shows the person who starts it. It seems to make it as if there are two versions. That person there is only just the one. All right, here we go.

Rosemary Orchard (01:13:37):
All right. Let's see, can win up to a thousand points. The name

Mikah Sargent (01:13:41):
Of the tree chocolate comes from all right. That's an easy one. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and do we now they're really

Rosemary Orchard (01:13:49):
Good sound effects with this, but we're not going to be able to share them because of the, the way that we're sharing the content again. Which is a little bit shame. I'm gonna make sure you're in top, right Mica, because 

Mikah Sargent (01:14:02):
I have no clue.

Rosemary Orchard (01:14:04):
Darn it. It is 20 degrees. Oh, that was a total guess the E the equator who knew congratulations. Cocos.

Mikah Sargent (01:14:14):
Oh, we should read the questions. Cocoa pods are harvested by hand and split to remove what beans

Rosemary Orchard (01:14:20):
The beans is. The answer, Michael.

Mikah Sargent (01:14:22):
Oh yes. It's the beans. What was I thinking? It's hard to do a show and do this at the same time. Oh, I know the next question. The fermented beans are sense to chocolate processing plants to be ground into what I believe that is. I believe it's co oh, I thought it was co butter. Oh, I guess that makes sense. It's fermented. And the next one white chocolate is made from what white chocolate is not chocolate.

Rosemary Orchard (01:14:46):
No I think it's the first

Mikah Sargent (01:14:50):
One. I think it's cocoa butter.

Rosemary Orchard (01:14:52):
No, no. It's it's cocoa butter, sugar, and I'm not sure how to pronounce the last word. LEIN 

Mikah Sargent (01:14:58):
I am doing poorly milk. Chocolate is made from what?

Rosemary Orchard (01:15:03):
Oh, oh, oh, darn okay. <Laugh> yeah. I, I

Mikah Sargent (01:15:09):
Should always choose the longest answer in these quizzes.

Rosemary Orchard (01:15:11):
Apparently. Apparently dark chocolate does not contain what ingredient. I'm gonna guess

Mikah Sargent (01:15:18):
A better, I'm gonna guess milk. Oh, was milk. It

Rosemary Orchard (01:15:21):
Does contain milk. Depends on the, the percentage of the, I mean generally, but a hundred percent. You're not gonna eat, but Hey, I so much win. So I feel vindicated after yesterday, Micah 

Mikah Sargent (01:15:33):
Yesterday rose and I did a star wars. One, I didn't realize I was much of a star wars nerd as I was, cause I did quite well on that. But if you had and four or

Rosemary Orchard (01:15:44):
Five people, three PO

Mikah Sargent (01:15:46):
<Laugh>. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I did a little impression of C three P O. So depending on how many people you have, of course you'd have for a second, a place and then maybe more, but your whole family could play this game. And that's I think a lot, a lot of fun. This also has not just quizzes for fun. It also, well, I mean, okay. Learning can be fun kids. It also has quizzes for learning. It's not just complete and utter fun. Oh, there's a, there are some Miam Webster publishers. Let me see, ER, and Webster publisher on here. And so you can do things like synonyms summer fruits, baby animals, types of shoes. So this is Kahoot which is available on the app store to download. I think this one is a lot of fun.

Mikah Sargent (01:16:31):
The goodness that is share play, I, I can, can't tell you how awesome it is to be able to see the reactions of friends and family while you're playing a game or watching a show. And so it was a really fun episode to put together and, and get to see some of the different apps that are out there and they continue to add more all the time Disney plus was just added. That is the end of this episode of iOS today. Our best OFS episode, I wanna thank you so much for the time you've spent this year watching the show or listening to the show. It means the world to us, the absolute world to us. And we're so thankful that you tune in to see Rosemary orchard. And I talk about these gadgets and gizmos and how to make the most of those devices.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:16):
It's, it's awesome to get to do this every week for you. And I look forward to starting it up again in the new year. We record this show live on Tuesday at 9:00 AM Pacific. So you can tune in at that time, if you wanna watch us live at twit.tv/live, but the best way to get the show is twi.tv/ios, where you can subscribe to the show and audio and video formats. You just go to twit.tv/ios. You click subscribe to audio, subscribe to video and choose your provider of choice. From there. Very simple to do. Many of you are probably already subscribed and know how easy it is. I wanna also mention Club TWiT without Club TWiT things that have been dire. And so this year I'm so thankful to our Club TWiT listeners at twit.tv/club TWI. You can learn more about that seven bucks a month.

Mikah Sargent (01:18:06):
You get every single one of TWiT shows ad free. You get access to the TWI plus bonus fee that has content you won't find anywhere else. And it's, you know, behind the scenes, outtakes, that kind of thing, lots of good stuff. And you get access to the club, TWI server, it's a discord server and it's a great place to chat with your fellow club, TWI members, but also those of us here at TWI Rosemary is very active in the club, TWI discord. I'm sure many of you know it's where we get some of our best questions. So check that out. Again, we will be back very soon and can't wait to hang out with you once again, answer your questions and give you all sorts of tips and tricks. Thank you for tuning in to iOS today. And I will see you soon along with Rosemary Orchard. Goodbye.