iOS Today Episode 584 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on iOS today, Rosemary Orchard is out, but don't worry because I've got Dan Moren here with me to talk all things Safari, we are covering tips, tricks, and the latest updates to Safari in iOS 15.
Speaker 2 (00:00:17):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.
Mikah Sargent (00:00:24):
This episode of iOS today is brought to you by BetterHelp. Join more than 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health. As a listener, you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/ios. Whoa, <laugh> welcome to iOS today. This is the show where we talk all things iOS, TV OS, watch OS, home OS, iPad OS. It's all the OS's Apple has to offer. I am one of your hosts, Micah Sergeant, and I am joined today by my good pal. It is Dan Mor. Welcome back to the show, Dan.
Dan Moren (00:01:17):
Hey, it's O OS astounding to be here. I was trying to figure out a way to make it work. I don't know if that did.
Mikah Sargent (00:01:23):
Look on this show there's plenty of room for puns. If it, you know, even if it's a little bit of a reach, I will still laugh at it. So that is totally fine. Oh, astounding. It's good. It's good. Ah, well, so of course, Rosemary orchard does not hear this week. Should we back next week, but ask my pal, Dan to step in. And we were kind of trying to figure out the show. Dan is a a novelist he's written some fantastic science fiction books. And also is what do, do you call yourself a nerd or a geek?
Dan Moren (00:01:57):
I, depending on, oh my God. Geez. You really open a can of worm here, Micah. I would use either. That's fine. I'm okay with it.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:04):
I'm in either or two, but some people younger folks seem to be very nerd, anti-geek and older folks I've noticed seem to be very geek anti-nerd. So I have to be careful, but as a nerd in a geek, you watch and enjoy a lot of the, the sort of pop culture media with superhero rose and, and all that kind of thing. And so it extended to be that in the past, we've had you on, we talked about for example, when I was out, I know that you and Rosemary talked about sort of tracking your media and ma knowing like, oh, these are the books I've read. These are ones I wanna share. And because you're a writer before we've had you on and talked about kind of notes and, and writing. And so there were a lot of topics we've covered before, but it turns out because you and I do a show together every Wednesday that I can remember hearing you talk about some different Quis with safari that you had.
Mikah Sargent (00:02:58):
And I thought, ah, there's an episode we, we can have, we can talk about Safari. So in iOS 15 as is customary in every version of iOS, apple adds a bunch of new features to the browser and typically kind of list them out and talk about the different ones, but safari and iOS 15 got some kind of big visual will changes as well as a couple of interesting features that are helpful for your privacy that are helpful for kind of keeping track of things. And so we thought we would go over those but the big one that we're gonna start out with is quite the polarizing feature. Mm. And yeah, yeah, exactly. You're, there's this a little mm-hmm there because some people just do not like this. I'm curious if you are using the bottom tab bar in Safari, Dan.
Dan Moren (00:03:50):
Yeah. So specifically on the, the iPhone side, right. We know the bottom tab, so it moves the address bar moves down to the bottom. I am using it. I decided when the beta started that I should give it a try at least. And I think there's a lot that I've decided I really like about the bottom location bar set up, because I think it adds a lot of convenience. It is one of those things where, you know, if you're your me, even though I have like, you know, fairly large hands an iPhone 13 is still pretty large and trying to get all the way up there to the top to hit the address bar and type in, and then move your thumbs back down and type in a URL has always been a little bit of a dextrous challenge for me.
Dan Moren (00:04:33):
So moving the address bar to the bottom does seem kind of natural. Like I know it's weird because all the browsers were used to put the address bar at the top. And that it feels like definitely a change, but I kind of liken to you know, maybe it was almost close to a decade ago, I think when apple switched the scrolling direction on the max. So like when you scroll on a track pad oh yeah. Just to scroll like in one direction and they changed it. So it's more like the iPhone and it's the same sort of thing where it's like, I had to change it and it took me like a week to get used to it. And then I didn't really look back, but I, I think it took longer with me. Maybe I'm just, cuz I'm getting older with the, with the address bar, but I definitely hit a point where it's like now when it's at the top in an iPhone, like on somebody else's phone, I think it's weird. What about you?
Mikah Sargent (00:05:17):
Interesting. The bottom one too. Interesting. So I was gonna show here's mine right now. My bar is at the top at the top. You're still at the top. Yeah. I didn't make the switch or like I didn't stick with the switch. So I wanted to show folks how they can make that adjustment if they want to. You can see that mine's at the top now here's the thing is that I totally agree. Whenever it comes to sort of the explanation for this feature, why this feature exists, what makes you know, for this kind of idea and that is that, you know, you, you don't wanna do all of these thumb gymnastics to try to get to what you are typing in. And so I get why they made that change. And typically I'm the kind of person who tends to be very aware of myself being bothered by change and going, am I bothered by this?
Mikah Sargent (00:06:09):
Just because it's change, which is just a thing that all humans experience, we all have that bit of like, Ugh, whenever change happens or am I bothered by this? Because it's something more so I gave it the old college try. But it just did not. It didn't gel for me in the betas. And unfortunately, because I made that change while I was using the beta software now that you know, the full featured version is out, I just have never switched back to the new version. I've not gone back to the feature as it were.
Dan Moren (00:06:38):
Are you a, how do you like, so I'm, I'm thinking about like my, my giant phone here and mm-hmm <affirmative>, I'm like when I read a thing, I was on Twitter a few weeks ago and it stuck with me and it's the like, you know, one of those like, oh, I don't need to know who needs to hear this, but stop using your pinky to balance your phone. Cuz you're like ruining all your like nerves. Yeah, you do that. Okay. That's the thing that I've been trying to constantly like not do it whenever I catch myself doing it. Now it's very hard because the phones are so big, but they are having the bottom address. Bar does help a little bit with that. It feels a little more ergonomic to me. I'm not, I'm not saying I've, I've managed to give it up entirely, but I'm trying to do better
Mikah Sargent (00:07:15):
Now. I'm wondering if my pinky is misshape enough. Haven't you know, it's like, I,
Dan Moren (00:07:19):
I, I, you know, it gets, gets a little, it gets a little sore sometimes. You know, that's a lot of, that's a lot of muscle work there. Absolutely. Their pinkys not cut out for it.
Mikah Sargent (00:07:28):
So you could launch the settings app. You scroll down until you get to safari, you tap on that and then you scroll down until you get to the tab tabs section, excuse me. And then you'll see the left option, which is the standard option is tab bar and the right option, which is single tab is the option that I have set on right now. If I were to change it back, then it'd bring that bar back down to the bottom. There are some other features here, like landscape tab bar. That means whenever I put it into landscape mode, the tab bar is still at the top, but it is it shows more than just that one single tab at one time. So you can make those adjustments. I do. There's, also's a faster way to do that.
Dan Moren (00:08:09):
Do you know this? Like a
Mikah Sargent (00:08:11):
Oh, it's there? No.
Dan Moren (00:08:13):
Yeah, if you, you're in Safari and you wanna change it, you can actually toggle it back and forth from inside safari, but like hitting that there's a little font button, the AA to the left of the address bar. If you hit that, there is an option to switch to the top or bottom address bar, depending on which one you're currently using. It's it's in a big menu full of stuff, but it's in there. If you hit that, there's a scroll down show, bottom tab bar all the way at the
Mikah Sargent (00:08:40):
Bottom tab bar. There it is.
Dan Moren (00:08:42):
And then, and then it's all ironically, if you hit it, now it show top bar top tab bar. Is that all the way? It's the top <laugh>
Mikah Sargent (00:08:49):
Oh, gotta look. Get to it. Well, that's so handy. Okay. So it is a little, I, that means I could make the switch. Let's just do it all the time, time whenever you want. Oh, I'm feeling like it's a, it's a bottom tab bar today kind of day. That's right. That's right. So that's there for you. If you do have trouble reaching the top as you are, you know, moving around in safari, you are able to do that. Now the next few was one that I have to admit. I was very excited about in seeing the introduction of this feature at WWDC and seeing how I was, think, you know, thinking, oh man, this is really gonna be super helpful. I can see so many different ways of making use of this. And I have to admit, I have no not use this as much as I thought I would.
Mikah Sargent (00:09:37):
Its tab groups and tab groups syncing. So tab groups, it's the idea that you may have a bunch of different tabs related to a specific category. So I do have some tab groups. Let me see where's the best way to show these. I'll show them on my iPad here. I've got some tab groups for something called basics clockwise, my time at Porsche and HomeBridge I was playing this game called my time at Porsche at one point, and I had a bunch of different tabs open related to it as I was kind of studying the game and understanding some of the stuff clockwise, which is the podcast I do with Dan on Wednesdays. And we have to open the same tabs each time mm-hmm <affirmative> basics. I don't remember what that is. And then home bridge, which it's just the basics mic.
Mikah Sargent (00:10:25):
It's just the basics. Exactly. And then home bridge, which is a it's a tool that we use to be able to add non-home kit devices, who a home kit home. And there were a bunch of different extensions that I wanted to check out to see if I wanted to add them. So tapping on any of these is going to bring up all of the tabs related to that. Specific thing. I can see all of the tabs here and they're all saved and ready for me to view as I need to. And in switching to any of the other options on this list will what appears to be close out those tabs and just have the ones open. What's great is that these will sync across different devices. I think the example that apple showed on stage was the idea of you're planning like a, a, a trip.
Mikah Sargent (00:11:18):
And while you're planning the trip, you are trying to, you know, get the information for the different things you're gonna do while you're there. And you want to have the hotel's website pulled up in case you need to reach out to them or you want to, you know, check where the parking is, all sorts of stuff. So you just make a tab group for that and you, you can bring that up whenever you're ready, but it doesn't have to kind of stay up in the background because I certainly used to be a person who had, you know, 15, 20 tabs at a time just hanging out in the background when I was ready to get around to 'em. I don't do that as much anymore, but tab groups was going to be the solution to this. You however, have discovered a couple of potential issues that someone might have when using tab groups. You wanna talk about that?
Dan Moren (00:12:07):
Yeah. A lot of them relate basically to the syncing issue. I like you, I have a some tab groups I've was just looking, I've got about eight and sometimes I just, I've gotten better at making tab groups when I'm working on a specific topic or project. So for example, if I'm doing research on something for one of my books, I'll just make a tab group for that. We bought a house that we moved into late last year and you know, every time I want to do some sort of project or whatever, I can throw that into a tab group, which is, is really handy. However, I do have some quibbles it, the whole issue with the syncing. It it's cool that like, I can go from my laptop to my, you know, iMac and have the same tabs open or go pick up my phone and have all the same tabs available.
Dan Moren (00:12:48):
What I think is rather weird is the way the sinking works. Sometimes it's like a little bit of a lag, so I'll open up a tab group or have a tab group already open on a different device and I'll go to it. And it hasn't been active, right. Because I've been using, say my phone and I sit down at my computer and I open up that same window, or it's already left open. And all of a sudden, like after about 10, 20 seconds, all those tabs I opened in that tab group on another device start popping in <laugh> Um-huh or Oriel tried to be, he'll be like, oh, I swear God, I closed this on one device, but because it was still up the other device, it syncs back to the device where you closed everything and reopens your tabs. And you're like, no, I, I was done with those tabs.
Dan Moren (00:13:27):
And then I I've had some weird bug that I don't know if it's related to tag groups or not, where I'll open something in a tab group and like click on or hit a button or something to go to a different page. And it'll kick me back to the page I was just on. And I'm like, what happened? I, I clicked through a link. Right. I, I definitely clicked that link. So I think there's some, there's some, you know growing pains with some of the there you sinking stuff. And I think one of the trickiness tricky things to figure out is sort of the persistence of it. As you mentioned, for example, you know, you and I both have clockwise tab groups for our show that we do together, and we tend to always have the SA same tabs open, but because it's like a live view of that tab, I find that sometimes if I change something in that tab group, right, like, oh, I'm editing a, a, a CMS record for the episode that we put up and I forget to close it, but I close the tab group when I open it next week.
Dan Moren (00:14:17):
There's like, whatever, extra tabs I opened or whatever I left opened by mistake, it doesn't like reset to the base. Like, you know, sort of, these are the four tabs I want open, it's got whatever Detroit, this is sort of left over from your, your last session, which is, you know, it, it makes sense. It's the way it should work. It seems like, but at the same time, it can be annoying cuz you want that sort of pristine, like open up my tabs. But yeah, it's, it's, that's more of a usability thing than a actual bug I think. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:14:44):
I, I agree. And I think that the sinking part, they really could hone in a little bit and make that just a little bit cleaner. Just a little bit cleaner. Yeah. At that point I, yeah, at that point, I think I would be much more likely to to take advantage of that. It's interesting because in my former job, I think I would be using tab groups quite a bit because there were occasional writing pro projects that I had that were over time. And so being able to quickly go and grab to go back to that, you know, project I was working on and the research that I was doing versus now where a lot of times it's kind of just, it's what's in this moment what's happening right now. Right. I don't quite need to have those breaks or where I step away and come back kind of thing doesn't happen as much.
Mikah Sargent (00:15:34):
So I don't do it. But I also am being I am a little lazy about the kind of turning what I have right now into this new system of tab groups. For example, I was using bookmarks bookmark folders before. And so I have a bookmark folder for clockwise. I have a bookmark folder for the Dungeons and dragons actual play podcast that we do. And I have a bookmark folder for TWI and those each contain the links that I use regularly. Right. for these different things, if there was like a turn this into a tab group button, I think I'd press that for sure.
Dan Moren (00:16:16):
I will. I will say my one other complaint about tab groups and this is especially on the Mac. There is no support that I have found for them in shortcuts, either on the Mac or on iOS. Ah, which is annoying, cuz you're like, oh, surely I could automate this ability to open a tab group, like at a specific time or something. Like we always do our show on Wednesdays at noon. And like, wouldn't it be great if that tab group just could pop open or at least it could, Hey, it's noon. You wanna open this tab group or something like that. But a last, they did not, apple did not build any support for tab groups into shortcuts. So we'll have to wait maybe till later this year.
Mikah Sargent (00:16:51):
Yeah. Hopefully we'll see that in June at the latest all right. We are gonna take a quick break before we come back with more fun safari features. But I do wanna tell you about better help who are bringing you this episode of iOS today. A question for you is something preventing you from achieving your goals. What fears with your happiness? Well, check out better help.com/ios as you ponder. That question. I now I'm a huge fan of better help. When, you know, went to the site, got signed up and whenever you're kind of onboarding, they ask you some questions questions you'll be familiar are with, if you've ever sought help in the past. And some questions that'll be new is you're going, huh? It's interesting that they're asking this kind of asking about your religiosity, I guess your, if, if you sort of practice a faith other questions that can kind of hone in on getting the right therapist for you, that's what was pretty magical about it is you sort of fill out a little bit of information about yourself and then what's cool.
Mikah Sargent (00:18:01):
Is that the therapists on better help can then look at the different folks who have signed up and say, oh yeah, I think that we would gel. I think that I could help this person. I think that our values line up all of that can come together and make for a really good therapy experience. That's what makes this so magical. I have talked before about better help and in particular about how I knew that the, the therapist I was magical was right for me during our first session. She was talking about quantum physics and sort of emotional experiences. And I thought, oh my God, this nerdy therapist is so amazing and is perfect for me. She she's fantastic. Better help will assess your needs and match you with your own life. Since professional therapist, you can connect in a safe and private online environment.
Mikah Sargent (00:18:55):
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Mikah Sargent (00:21:25):
Again, that's better help. H E L p.com/ios. Thank you so much to better help for sponsoring this week's episode of iOS today. All right. Back to the show, back to the safari updates. The next one I wanna talk about, it's kind of a fun one. The start page in safari is now customizable. Mine right now has this fun sort of paper looking background. And then it's got all of my tabs. It's also got iCloud tabs. These are the tabs from my iPad mini that are showing up here in in, on this iPad in particular shared with you, which are links that have been shared with me from different folks. So Dan had shared a link with me to remind me that they had done a show where they were tracking media. My partner shared a link with me about a funny Elmo and Zoe <laugh> and Roco conversation.
Mikah Sargent (00:22:26):
If you don't know the Rocko drama folks look up Rocko Elmo, because there's a lock band. It's just a rock Micah. <Laugh>, he's not alive. He's not alive. Why do you think he's alive? Okay. and some other fun ones as well. Now I can this is, this is how you actually make customizations to the page down at the bottom. There's an edit button and want to tap on that. You'll see these different options. First of all, use start page on all devices as a tolerable setting that says, Hey, I want you to sync the way that my start page looks on all of the devices that I'm using. And then you've got a bunch of options here. You've got favorites, which I always keep frequently visited, which are sites that you, as you guested it visit frequently iCloud tabs, which is what I was talking about earlier.
Mikah Sargent (00:23:14):
Those are tabs from your other devices that you can show on whatever device you're on. This is super helpful too. If you're like, oh man, I know I was just on my iPhone and I had this. You can pop it up here. I'll go back to that menu in a second to show you the dropdown. So you can switch between them shared with you. That is a new feature in I 15, where it pull those links out of iMessage and other places where folks have shared content with you reading list, which is Apple's version of a save it later feature kind of like pocket or any number of others. There are plenty of them in to paper, cetera, privacy report, which will show you how sites have been tracking you. I have that turned off, cuz it just gives me anxiety and sir suggestions, which is series own suggestions on what sites you may want to visit depending on the sites that you visit at this time regularly, or content that you may want to see based on what you, what activity you have. And then last but not least is background image. Now you'll notice there's no custom background image option. These are background images have been selected. I assume that is because apple once this page loads super quick. And so these ones are kind of available in the settings and are easy to get to there's one with emoji in the background of tacos and donuts and hamburgers.
Dan Moren (00:24:40):
I, I use the bear one. That's my favorite spare one. Yeah, I use that. I like
Mikah Sargent (00:24:46):
The bear. Yeah, that one's very pretty. I think I'm gonna switch mine to the animals for a little while. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> oh no, I was, I was incorrect. I apologize. There is a plus button, so you can do a custom background image. So that's nice. Yeah. I like the ones that are built in those are pretty cool. Now along with being able to toggle all of these on and, and off, you'll see that those three lines are available to the right of the toggle buttons as we've come to understand that means that these are able to be moved around. So maybe I want, and I do iCloud tabs to be above frequently visited and shared with you. I don't really care about frequently visited, so I'm actually gonna move it near to
Dan Moren (00:25:26):
At the bottom contentious. I'm a frequently visited person. Oh, are you okay? Yeah. I, I don't know. I got used to using it. I like it. It's up towards the top near I'll just blow my favorites. And I've used iCloud tabs. I love iCloud tabs, but I use it less than I used to because of the like ability to do tab groups. And also just the fact that you can sort of auto complete. Like if you open something and start typing a website, that's open on one of your other devices. It like suggests like, oh, by the way, you've got that tab open on another device or something. So, oh, nice. I, I think, yeah, I, I use it less than I used to from this, this screen anyway,
Mikah Sargent (00:26:02):
Noise. And then the thing that I promised I was gonna show is that here under iCloud tabs was just second on my list. Now I can tap on that and you can see that I can choose these other devices which I am aware of what each of those is. There's also a little parenthesis. It tells you too, so I could tap on one of those. I would pull up the tabs that are available there and then reading list. I don't really use all that much. I'm keeping it on right now because I have some different automations that end up popping things into reading list as a place for the those automations to go and check. But I don't use those all that much in any case, those are available there and you can make those adjustments. I think it's just fun to customize your start page. Like safari is one of the most launched apps on my iPhone anyway. So being able to see that as I launch it and go through is, is quite fun. Well,
Dan Moren (00:26:50):
We'll talk about this probably a little bit later. I see down on our list, but it is worth noting that safari, there are safari extensions that can alter your start page as well. So if you don't see something with the built in features that does what you want it to do, or you might want to extend it. Some of the ways there are the possibility for extensions to change the way that your start page looks, which is pretty cool, too
Mikah Sargent (00:27:12):
Nice. Up next new privacy protections. So this is the actually I'm gonna mention the next two kind of together new privacy protections and HTTPS upgrades. So new privacy protections include the ability to prevent trackers from profiling, you using your IP address. So essentially what this does is it can mask your IP address so that a a site isn't able to see your IP address and then use that to follow you across to from sites and see how you behave on those other sites, what you click on, what you tap on, et cetera. So you can go into your settings. So I've tapped, I've gone into settings and I've tapped on safari and under the privacy and security section, you'll see prevent cross site tracking, which I have turned on, but also the option called hide IP address. If I tap on that, you can see hide IP address from trackers, or I can have that turned off.
Mikah Sargent (00:28:14):
There's a little bit of information underneath. It says your IP address can be used to determine personal information like your location to protect, protect this information. Safari can hide your, he addressed from known trackers. So I have that turned on and that means that those trackers are not able to track me across different sites. I also turn on a lot of the other stuff, fraudulent website, warning privacy, preserving ad measurement, and check for apple pay so that if a site has apple pay, then I'm able to use apple pay on that site. Lots of other security features, including iCloud, private relay, and some others, if you want to use those as well, but those basic ones built in are handy. And then HTTPS upgrade, all that does is it says, Hey, when I go to a site, if I, if it's an HTTP site, meaning it's not encrypted look for the same site, but with HTTPS, meaning it is encrypted and go to that one instead. So it will automatically make that change if that site is available as an encrypted site and not do the unencrypted version. So it's, it's, I like this kind of automatic safety feature in, in a way it's a safety feature, safety, security, privacy feature that will give you a more secure, more private version of the site automatically without you having to remember, oh, I need to go to the HTTPS version. Yeah.
Dan Moren (00:29:41):
The transparency of both of those features, I think is a huge huge deal for that because you don't wanna have to think about that. Right. You don't want to have to. Exactly. Yeah. I know. We're all used to looking for the little padlock icon. Right. But do you know what to do if you don't see it right. Like this, this simplifies that just does it for you.
Mikah Sargent (00:29:57):
Yep. Next I'll mention just a, a couple of other ones here will end with web extensions, cuz that's a big one. And I'm curious to hear what web extensions you use. So the other three that we'll mention first are poll to refresh, which was something that wasn't available in the, in safari, on iOS before basically it is what it sounds like I can sort of grab the screen with my finger and pull down and in doing so it tells the page refresh please. And then the page refreshes. And I can see that again. So pull the refresh, very simple. Do it. Voice search is one that I don't make use of, but you can, if you want to, all it does is it makes it easier to search the web using your voice. So it used to be that you kind of have to do a couple of taps to be able to tap into safari and dictate text now instead of typing in text, whenever I'm in that URL bar at the top, I can just hit the microphone on the right side and then type in whatever I'm looking for, fluffy kittens.
Mikah Sargent (00:31:06):
And then it will help me search for fluffy kittens and last but not least is tab overview grid view. So what this does is it makes it easier to see and switch between tabs. The tab overview button, we'll show you all of your different tabs in a grid view that kind of gives you a preview of those. Let me I'll go to a tab group and then I will use this tab overview view. And so you can see here all of those tabs, it shows a preview of them loaded. And then I could go to any of them if I want to. And I can also tap the X on any of them to remove them from this. And I can see, oh, pair of third party, Bluetooth accessory that doesn't belong in this tab group. Now that's gone. And I can now see my tabs, if I had my tab bar at the bottom, I would be able to swipe up from the tab bar to go to tab overview. I don't think it's possible to do so.
Dan Moren (00:32:12):
I don't think it works on the iPad. I think that's specifically on phone, an iPhone phone. Yeah. And, and the big change here is that the the tab view on the iPhone also has that overview previously, it had those kind of like weird per like, like a file of facts. Like you were looking down at like a folders and now it does the tab over you that the iPad and safari on the Mac already do, which is a nice change, cuz it's a lot easier to sort of navigate those things
Mikah Sargent (00:32:36):
Sort of strange layers of pages. Yes. And then last but not least are web extensions on iOS. This was a feature where in the past you could do this on the Mac, but you weren't able to do this on iOS. These are are extensions that are built using JavaScript and you know, similar code to be able to create these Stens on iOS. You'd have to, developers would have to kind of make an app or an app like object that let them install certain extensions into safari on iOS. Now the it's, it's a wild, wild web where you have many more options for extensions. And I, I'm curious to hear Dan, which ones you have. Some of the ones that I use are one password is that as my password manager. And now I've got one password in the browser and in a much kind of better experience depending on who you talk to, some people still like this kind of standard or the, the older way of doing it at two HTML, which is just an HTML source viewer, which is very handy implosion which is a way to bypass those Google amp pages.
Mikah Sargent (00:33:52):
Although I've noticed that if you install most, any content blocker, any popular content blocker these days, most of them now have a built to redirect from amp pages. But tell me about the extensions that you have installed before we show people how to install extensions. I've got
Dan Moren (00:34:09):
A few here. I was just looking to see what I'm actually using right now. So I also have a chew and implosion the other few that I use there's one called I haven't really tried. I this out very much on my I iOS device, but it's called PIFI. And it's something I use a lot on my Mac, which is it lets you do picture and picture mode for videos that you watch on the web. So it lets you just sort of like take a video that you're watching and turn it into a little picture to picture window that floats over the rest of the stuff that you're doing. It may work with various that may not work with some, I know that YouTube in particular is sometimes a little picky about how that works, but it, it can be handy at times.
Dan Moren (00:34:47):
And if you wanna turn something into a picture and picture window and then I just noticed that there's now a tweet bot, which is my Twitter client of choice now has an open in tweet bot extension, which lets you open tweets and profiles in tweet when youve, when you visit a page in safari. So I was gonna try that a second ago, but cuz I, I wasn't sure how it worked, but yeah, I don't know. I haven't, I haven't gotten into work yet, but I like the idea that like I use tweet bot it's annoying whenever, like I look at something on the web and it sort of hijacks me into the the Twitter app instead if I can get that to work work. Yeah. Okay. So it pops up like a screen that says like, you can, you can tap open and tweet Bott instead and it will take you to Tweetbot which is a nice little change.
Dan Moren (00:35:31):
And then the last one, which is one of my favorite extensions on the Mac that finally made its way to iOS is called safari keyword search. And essentially this is a it lets you define certain texts as a keyword that you can use to search a particular site. So for example, I often look up stuff on, I MDB, you know, I'm watching TV and I will look up at actor or a show or something. And I can type, I M D B space, whatever, like the you name of the actor. And it will take me to automatically like search IMDB and take me to the results for that. I love that like there is a feature that's very similar built into iOS and Macs, but I, that one like sort of uses the I don't like it as much because you have to like then tap on the result that you want to go to.
Dan Moren (00:36:14):
Whereas this lets me just hit return and it automatically does the sort it for me and it's customizable. So you can set it up for any site that you want. So for example, I write with my blogging partner, Jason Snell, over@sixcolors.com and sometimes I need to search the archives there and be like, Hey, did we write about this thing? And so I have a, a custom like keyword to there where I type SC space, whatever. And then it goes to Google and searches specifically the six colors.com site for that term. So I find that exceptionally useful. I love it. It's been a long time extension that I've used for many, many years on safari. And I'm delighted that not only like it had to go away for a little while, but it finally came back because they opened up the extension framework. And now it's also on iOS, which is the even better. So I, I love it. It's one of my favorites.
Mikah Sargent (00:37:01):
Yeah. that is currently downloading onto my Mac and later onto my other devices for sure. That's very cool. So let's show people how they can install extensions. If I tap in the top right here, you'll in the, the actual URL bar, there is a little puzzle icon and that puzzle icon is it's representative of extensions. I'll tap on that and you could see I've got all of my different extensions available, but then I also have an option called manage extensions. I can pull that up and then I can see these different extensions that are available that I don't have turned on right now. Like one blocker scripts keywords are, oh, I guess it already automatically downloaded. Let me go ahead and turn that one on noir, which will let you use dark mode on browsers, open in Apollo, which is a way to keep it from opening in the Reddit app or the Reddit website.
Mikah Sargent (00:37:57):
It'll open in the Apollo app instead, open it in aviary and open in ways. That's if you have I think mine is set up to make it so that all of the map URLs don't open in Google maps or another one, but actually open in apple maps. And then there's just an option if you would, rather, you can have it open in ways, but we'll go into the settings and we will once again, choose safari and then we will go down to extensions and you can see again, the different extensions that I have, but this button down at the bottom called more extensions will press. And what that does is it pops you into the part of the app store called safari extensions, where you can see all sorts of different options. So there's one called wiper, which is an ad and track blocker.
Mikah Sargent (00:38:52):
That's pretty popular. I like to look at the top, top free and top paid ones just to see what different people are purchasing and what they like. And so noir, for example, is a pretty popular one. Honey is a popular free one as well as Grammarly. Although I recommend the again, checking through all of these different ones that are available and it goes on and on throughout these to see the different ones that are available. So all you have to do is tap to buy or tap, to get and install, and then those will show up here and then you can turn them off. And on. Now there may come a prompt that says, Hey, this wants to be able to view all of the sites that you visit. And you have to give that permission to do what this is saying is these extensions need to be able to check the page to see if they can act on the page that you're on.
Mikah Sargent (00:39:51):
So it, I think it's the, the, the prompt seems a little scarier. It actually is, but the prompt is truthful in what it is saying. These sites can view, or these extensions can view these different pages, but that is because for example, vinegar, which is an app that lets you turn the sort of standard YouTube embed into the HTML five video embed, which I like better. I, I feel like I have more control over it and can do different things with it. That is you know, waiting to see if you're gonna visit a YouTube page. And then whenever you're on a YouTube page, it can find the YouTube link and properly turn it into that embed as it needs to. So it may seem scary, but that's just because it is being as blunt and forthright as possible. And it's, you know, giving you the information that you need to know. Whew, all right. That is web extensions on iOS, which brings us to the end of the first segment of the show. We were talking about new features for safari in I 15 and tips and tricks were kind of getting the most out of safari now that it's gotten even more powerful up next. We've got the news.
Speaker 4 (00:41:07):
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Mikah Sargent (00:41:41):
Alrighty, folks. It is time for the news. Our first little bit is about app store developers. And what they've earned this year, apple says developers made in total about 60 billion in 2021. It says that that's up about 60 billion from the year 2020. So yeah it's a, it's a, you know, new record and I do find it interesting that this, this is the part that's interesting to me. And I'm curious, kind of your thoughts on this. So depending on who you talked to and when you talked to them it's been, the pandemic has been rough in terms of people spending because they are finding themselves needing to save money or spend money on basic necessities that maybe they didn't need to before. You know, if your kids aren't going to school as much, then you are buying more food for them to eat at home.
Mikah Sargent (00:42:49):
If you are going to work less and your work has you know, know options for lunch or, or snacks even then you may be eating more at home. I mean, that's just one kind of section is, is food. But also some people having to supply certain things for themselves that maybe they didn't need to before the pandemic kicked off. So because of that, we've seen kind of folks needing to prioritize spending in other places and not spend money here. I'm curious why we think that in 2021, we saw $60 billion more in app store spending than we saw the year before. Any thoughts on that? Cuz I'm, I'm struggling. <Laugh>
Dan Moren (00:43:31):
I mean, I, I think that the other flip side of that at is people are at home. A lot people are using their devices a lot more and people are much more willing to get new stuff and try new things on their devices. And even though people are perhaps being more cognizant or more thoughtful about what they spend their money on, most apps are still only in the, you know, maybe $5 range. People are probably pretty willing, I think, to, to fork over a buck or two at this point, which hasn't always been the case, certainly, but as these devices have become more and more part of our lives, I think people have become a little bit more comfortable with shelling out a couple dollars if they want to try something. And just, I I'm interested to, to think about like the, I, I don't know.
Dan Moren (00:44:15):
I mean, like there there's certain aspects, I think about like apple arcade, for example, which is a service that apple offers where you subscribe and you get a bunch of games for free. And I can't tell whether that makes people more, more or less likely to decide, oh, well I like getting games and trying different games. Maybe I should be more willing to pay money for different things or people expect now that stuff become as part of a subscription package like they're streaming or their music, or what have you. So I think there is a good argument for just people are being stuck at home are more willing to be like, Hey, you know, let's spend money on something. That's gonna increase my enjoyment of the time that I'm I'm, you know, to at home or Hey, my kids are at home and they want this app and you know what $2 is a small price to pay for getting them out my hair for an hour.
Mikah Sargent (00:45:00):
Yes. Roco wants wants some more bubbles for his bubble clash game. And he's gonna keep asking, unless you just give, asking the dog on bubble, I think that that's probably dead on because even in, especially with, with the kids and also parents buying teaching apps and like teaching packs within those apps you know, you, you help, you're trying to help your kid do math. You haven't done that specific kind of math and years and years, you hear about some different apps that can help with that. And then suddenly you're having to buy these special things all sorts of, of options there, as well as I, I think about teachers who are getting, you know, like whiteboard apps so that they can teach their kids. And I mean, there's so many different options here. And then there are also might be a situation where you've got businesses who have their employees working from home, who are saying, Hey, we need you to get this, you know, normally you'd use it on the work device or whatever, but for whatever reason you can't.
Mikah Sargent (00:46:04):
And so we'll reimburse you or there's so many reasons why this might be the case. So makes sense, right? This next one is, is one that we, I think people joke about a lot, but somebody decided to kind of put it together in a very real way. And it's funny, I just dealt with this last week where there were a group of people trying to communicate, but there were a few people in the group who were in Android users and it just messed everything up where some people weren't getting communicated to. Some of the wrong people were getting communicated to people were trying to leave that chat message and unable to, it gets messy when you, as an iMessage user are trying to communicate with Android users. And it's so much kind of a, a part of the the, what the, the social fabric that right.
Mikah Sargent (00:47:00):
There's a little bit of of concern, stigma, a stigma. There you go. A stigma among teens this wall street journal article's titled why Apple's iMessage is winning teens dread the green text bubble. In fact, they quote one person who says Ew, that's gross in reference to the green text bubble. This is, this is interesting because I have to like, I've I've I have, what is the word? I can't even think of it now. I have added to this, but there's a better word for that. I have contributed to this in joking about it, but then also in some ways in taking it a little seriously in the sense of, of using the choice of smartphone as a first introductory kind of barometer to how a person might be, and it's not fair, it's not, you know, it's a not realistic.
Mikah Sargent (00:48:09):
It's not accurate. There are people who, for many reasons have different kinds of devices and use them for whatever reason. And it it's kind like it, it is a bit of a it's, it's a bummer because I think about low income households who may not be able to afford an iPhone, but they want to give their kid a phone. And then the kid is left out of certain conversations or left out of different things because of that. Sure. my partner, we used to work for a company. There was one gal who had an iPhone or excuse me, who had an Android device and everybody else at the job had an iPhone. And she was often left out of group chats because it made it difficult to communicate with her using the, the communication. This was not like the official method of communication.
Mikah Sargent (00:48:57):
It was just like them as colleagues, messaging each other all sorts of different issues that, that crop up that pop up. And there are parents who are being confronted with, you know, there child coming to them and saying can I please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please have an iPhone. I can't even talk to any of my friends. They don't wanna talk to me, et cetera, et cetera. The refrain that you common here online is commonly here online is Hey why don't you just use signal or why don't you just use telegram or, or why don't you just use this or use that? And I think people underestimate the level of laziness of the average human being laziness and risk averse, change, averse experience that the average person has. It's any level of friction that you add to a bit of communication is going to result in like half or more of those people saying, no, actually I'm not gonna do that. So yeah, I don't know. Do you have any green bubble friends, Dan?
Dan Moren (00:50:03):
Yeah, no, I do. And family members too. And I agree that at times it is definitely more challenging both due to stuff that apple has done as well as stuff that I think Android has done too. I, I hesitate to, to, you know, turn this into a, a big sort of you know a writ large for a situation. I think this has always happened to a certain degree with different things. I mean, I, I remember growing up and thinking like, ah, you know, I don't have like the cool sneakers or whatever, right? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> like, you know, it's not necessarily the same extent, but like this is a certainly a difficulty of teenagers everywhere. I feel like is wanting to fit in with everybody else. Absolutely. This, this turns it into something a little bit more essential, cuz we're talking, talking about a communications Android, you know, Google has taken this and, and kind of run with it and, and tried to use it as a way to make hay against apple for locking in users.
Dan Moren (00:50:58):
And I think while there is an argument that from a sort of commercial standpoint, obviously apple has a huge advantage in having this. You could also make the argument that they built a great product that people love using. And it's really hard for you know, somebody like Google, who has tried to launch several different messaging solutions with not great results over the past several years to cast themselves as sort of the underdog here. When it's just, you know, some of it at least is a matter of they're just a, there, there is some green bottle, some envy, there's a reason it's green. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> no, <laugh> it's, it's tough. It's tough for me to say like, well apple necessarily needs to make iMessage work with Android. They don't need to, from a strict market sense, like they're under no obligation to, they built a product that people like using, it's not necessarily their responsibility to make it work with all stuff.
Dan Moren (00:51:51):
And it does, right? Like it works fine. You can text people on Android all day, but they're not under a responsibility to make it work as well as it does with their own devices. It's just, there's no rule that says they have to do that. Would it be nice? Sure. But they also have no incentive to do it. Meanwhile Google's pushing its own for tax messaging, the RCS, which has been adopted by a lot of different carriers as well, but that's that, that whole thing has sort of plagued with problems and inconsistencies and different standards, cetera as well. So I'm not sure that apple is willing to necessarily dive into that pool either. So it is a challenge for sure. I don't know that necess necessarily it's something that apple is NEC is in a position where they can fix or have to fix but certainly an awareness of what's going on. It will be interesting to see how they decide to handle that because this has always been an issue. And I, I wanna say on the flip side too, speaking of someone who grew up in an era where PCs were dominant over max being the pro person on a platform where I couldn't get access to like software that I needed to run on my computer mm-hmm <affirmative> was also pretty hard. So I, I'm not exactly crying a river for, for people on Android phones. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:53:03):
It's so ultimately the, you know, the, the argument from Google side is that apple could solve this by playing ball with RCS rich. The, what is it? The rich chat service rich chat. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, but it there's arguments there about how that wouldn't actually solve things and it it's just, it is a back and forth. And as someone in the chat pointed out, I can't remember now it is, these companies kind of fanning the flames with this and really trying to turn it into something more than it may be. But I will say just anecdotally, there's something to be said about this because there's this whole section on dateability and never it's the, the, the section is never date a green texture, and I'm not gonna lie back back back in the day when I was you know, meeting new folks and going on dates, if the, you know, got the, for a number of the person I was talking to and they, I, I sent them message and it came up green, I thought, oh, okay. There's, there's one thing that will be different between us. <Laugh> interesting. I,
Dan Moren (00:54:17):
I will tell you, Mike, my wife was an Android user when we started dating. She now has, wow. It took her many years to get to that point, but she still uses a windows see though, for mainly for work. But yes, it was, it certainly has its challenges. And I think apple could do some things to smooth over the experience. I don't think they're gonna make iMessage for Android. It, it is, there's really no reason for them to sort of give up that competitive advantage, but it would be nice at least for the phone users among us who deal with people who have Android devices to not have to deal with some of the annoyances. And, and in that sense of like easing things for their own customers. There's a good example for that. But I, I also am hesitant to take one you know, op-ed in the wall street journal as a exactly example of everything that is going wrong in society. Yeah.
Mikah Sargent (00:55:08):
A thousand percent, these, these are doom and gloom on purpose. Another doo and GLM story. Woo-Hoo the, the developer I can't now I've gotta think of his name. Oh, Costa El Faro. I I'm, I'm so sorry, Costa, if I been, if I mispronounced your name, but Costa has in the past exposed different sketchy app store, scammy nonsense that's taken place. And yet again has found one in a Twitter thread it shows that this is a, so it looks like 13 million. So the app is called amp, me speaker and music sync. It's supposed to boost the sound of your music by syncing it with all of your friends' phones, Bluetooth speakers, desktops, and laptops for free. But here's the thing. The app charges 10 a week in an auto-renewing subscription, it's super easy to sign up for, but much harder to cancel.
Mikah Sargent (00:56:15):
And then also the app buys a lot of fake reviews. So it's got 54,000 reviews, it's got a 4.3 star rating in the store. And it says there are high peaks of extremely positive reviews with long periods with barely any feedback or just negative ones. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> it's been available on the app store since 2018. The fake reviews have really drawn out all of the other ones or have drowned out all of the, the real ones. And it says that the developer shows that the company has actively been featuring the app across the globe. So that means that like they've actually been trying to advertise it in places to get it on, on more people's devices. What's unclear to me is if the app does not work at all, or if it actually does do what it says on the 10 because I think that makes it less of a scam app and more of just a very expensive app, $10 a week is very expensive for an app. And I wouldn't be surprised. I think Apple's gonna end up making an adjustment to that per week charge.
Dan Moren (00:57:28):
Yeah. Yeah. There's I mean, as you said, cost has look, you know, really pulled out a lot of these things and I'm sure apple does a lot of work in this regard that doesn't get highly publicized. They've talked a little bit about it before, but obviously they don't wanna be in a position where they like, ah, look here was a scam app that was made the tens of millions of dollars and we took it down, right? That's not as good publicity as saying, we have taken down X percentage of scam apps that are out there or something like that. But it is also a challenge because it is a store that, you know, is under apples per view and is supposed to be trusted. And it's tough. There's a huge volume of stuff really is, but it needs to implement better tools and sort of better oversight to deal with these kinds of things. Because if it really is a, a case where you're pulling 13 million for an app that doesn't work, if it doesn't in this case, then that is a real, real problem for consumers. And, and it's a real problem for apple because sooner or later, people will stop trusting the way the store is set up.
Mikah Sargent (00:58:24):
Yep. And if they're going to say that, you know, this store is a bastion of of safety and security and good apps, mm-hmm <affirmative>, then they really have to hold to that. Otherwise that doesn't absolutely doesn't hold up in court. All right. Let's move back to some feedback and then we'll round things out with our app caps. The first bit of feedback comes from Paul. Paul writes, hi. Hi Paul. My problem is I often get into the car or on my bike, and I get 200 feet away from the house. Before I realize I left my phone on the kitchen counter, I enable the new, I enabled the new iOS 15 setting to have my watch alert me when my iPhone loses separation from the watch. I've wanted this feature for years and apple finally put it in Iowa 15, but it works poorly as I don't get notified on my watch until I'm five blocks away.
Mikah Sargent (00:59:16):
How do we make this work? So I get alerted ASAP when I'm out of range, Paul, unfortunately, I've got some bad news for you right now. This is a feature that is at its best implementation, considering all of the aspects that it has to take into account battery life so that it's not checking super frequently to bring down the life of your apple watch, as well as the battery life of your iPhone. Bluetooth ability slash inability to communicate effectively over longer distances and through certain surfaces, all of these things kind of come together to make it so that this just is not at it EST in its current format. But what I can tell you is, you know, if you can, you can hold out a little bit. I think there will come a time when, because the newest iPhones and the newest apple watches both have the UW B the ultra wide bend chip in them. There will come a time when these devices will be able to communicate much more frequently because it's a super low power device. And then also communicate much more accurately and know the position of one another much more accurately. Yeah. With these devices. So Paul it's, you know, I know you, you waited a long time for it to come to iOS 15 and it's here, but it's not helpful to you yet. I think I gotta tell you, you gotta keep waiting. Unfortunately, it's too bad.
Dan Moren (01:00:52):
I have this issue with my AirPods all the time where it tells me I left my AirPods behind, but I also, I actually have them. <Laugh> like, cuz it it's. For some reason it sees the last place they were on the map. It's like, ah, you left AirPods at the house. I'm like, actually they're in my pocket guys. Come on, let's get with this.
Mikah Sargent (01:01:07):
<Laugh> alright, this next one comes from Kevin, who is writing in with a little bit of a tip for one of our listeners, a listener wrote in Alco to ask about an app, to be able to be reminded of when bills were going to be coming up. And we asked our listeners to provide some suggestions. So Kevin says I live in the UK, but originally I'm from Wisconsin. So both tax times used to be very stressful for me. About five years ago, I was looking for an app to replace the one that starts with a queue who has a big brother app with a similar name, ending books is QuickBooks that, that they're talking about. I found those apps to have very clumsy interfaces and poor support from multiple tech platforms except via a browser, which is a security nightmare.
Mikah Sargent (01:01:53):
If you don't know, if you can trust them to secure your information, I was looking for a simple checkbook program that would work on my iOS devices, my Mac and iPhones and securely sync between them without a of your data ever resting outside of your own control and also support multiple currencies. I searched and tried out a bunch of programs, but one stood out among all of them money Wiz by silver, Wiz limited did all that and tons more. Now Kevin goes on to write even more about what it does. I'm not going to go into the whole message, but I will read a little bit of what this app does in my process. I record all checks and credit card transactions so that I can budget and report on them by category. Plus I'm not very trusting of small companies that have my banking details.
Mikah Sargent (01:02:36):
So I don't want to sync with my bank, but if I did, they have amazing integration with every us and UK bank I've heard, ever heard of via plaid. And two other standards. Plaid is a very popular method of syncing. Plus they have a watch and Mac app and the interface is super clean and easy. The entry of a transaction takes me 10 seconds to enter three fields. Their pricing is very fair and their support has been outstanding. It pulled in all my data from the old program and annually, I'm able to produce easy category and detailed reports from my tax accountant in the us and the UK. Now again, more than that Kevin noted but that's what I'll I'll ended at. It sounds from reading, it sounds like this program is very powerful. It's money whiz by silver whiz limited.
Mikah Sargent (01:03:23):
And we'll include a link in the show notes for you to check out money whiz by silver Wiz limited. All right. The last one we'll mention here is from Jamie. Jamie wrote in with some advice for a Allen had asked about out an issue with their phone playing random songs in their car whenever they connected. And I gave them the recommendation of using this song that's available in apple music's library called it's like multiple letters of a, you just have to search up like a, a a a a a. And the reason why is because a lot of cars will start playing a music library automatically, and they do it based on the song list, alphabetically mm-hmm <affirmative> so multiple A's makes this song play. And the song's like four or five minutes of just no sound.
Mikah Sargent (01:04:16):
So it gives you time to choose what you actually want. So it'll just be playing in the background. It won't interrupt you it's, it's quite nice, but there are, there may be another solution here that Jamie writes with. I have a non CarPlay car stereo, so it might differ, but I changed the Bluetooth setting and in parentheses device type for my car stereo and the phone from car stereo, just to speaker by doing so they haven't had it play the random songs anymore. So this is a setting that you can adjust in the settings app. So I'm on my iPhone and I can tap on Bluetooth and you'll see, I've got different options here. Mike is apple watch Ember ceramic mug boom three. And if I type, if I tap boom three, which is a speaker, I can tap on device type here, and then I can change it to something else, car stereo, headphone hearing aids, speaker, or other.
Mikah Sargent (01:05:11):
Now this is a speaker. And so I I'll leave it at that and automatically, or it automatically tries to pick the right thing. My car stereo, it knows it's a car stereo, but Jamie was saying that by changing it from car stereo to just speaker, that was able to fix their issue. The one thing you need to be aware of is that if you change it away from car stereo, you won't get those automatic automations that happen whenever you connect something to your car. So for example, turning on, do not disturb while driving is not going to work. If you just have a speaker, instead of having it said as a car stereo. So just be aware of that, but thank you, Jamie, for that. Alrighty folks. Now it is time or up next. It is time for our app caps it's app cap time.
Mikah Sargent (01:05:59):
This is the part of the show where we put caps a top hour head to honor our picks of the week. These may be apps or gadgets we are using that we adore that we want to share with all of you. They may be apps we've had for a long time or apps that are even new to us, but that we think are worth talking about. So welcome to the app cap, Dan, more as we get to the end of the music, <laugh> tell us about the cap at top your head, and then tell us about your pick the week. This
Dan Moren (01:06:34):
Cap is sadly not compatible with my headphones, but it is the delightful one that I've owned for many years since I was a small kid, I think it came from colonial Williamsburg. It's a tri corner Tricor hat. But it also, I like to think it does double duty, cuz if you flip it around, then it's clearly a pirate hat, right?
Mikah Sargent (01:06:54):
<Laugh> nice. That's
Dan Moren (01:06:55):
Just the way it works. So it's a double, double usage hat. I'm very proud of it. Oh man. It's, it's seen a few needs, a little needs, a little reshaping. It's seen some stuff. My app though is an app that I think will be near and dear to both myself and Micah's hearts. As you mentioned earlier in the show, we are part of an actual play D and D podcast called total party kill over at the incomparable. And so I'm gonna recommend the D and D beyond app D and D beyond is a service that is provided by the company that makes Dungeons and dragons. And it lets you build your characters and look up details about the world and all this stuff, but they also have an app version, which is pretty cool. It lets you keep access all the characters that you've built or create new characters, lets you look things in the rules or in the different source books. And it even has, don't tell our friend James Thompson maker of dice by peak health, but it even has virtual dice rolling which is pretty nifty as well. I, I like using this app a lot. I think it's very convenient and they keep adding more stuff to it that makes it more and more useful. It's just a handy way to keep track of all your off during, during a game. And it's a pretty good looking app. I have to say. I've done a nice job with it.
Mikah Sargent (01:08:06):
Nice. Yes. I have made use of that as well. A number of times whenever I am, am you know, playing a game. So I'm, I I'm definitely on board with that. That one for sure. So yeah, you said free in the app store. That's great. It's free. It's free even better free. It's so good. Alright. My, the app that I wanna talk about today, oh the cap at top of my head is like a strong cap. It's got the black band and that sort of a standard straw. This also needs some reshaping. It used to be shaped as it was meant to be. And now it almost looks like a, like a gardeners cap <laugh> yeah, it's a little bent and wavy, I guess I, I should probably take a steamer to it that would probably help bring back the the shape as it needed to be.
Mikah Sargent (01:08:58):
So the app that I want to talk about is it's called hello? No, it's not called hello neighbor, is it? Yes, it is called hello neighbor. I don't know why I wrote secret neighbor in in the show notes, but it's called hello neighbor. And this is an app that's actually been out for quite a while. But it is new to me in terms of playing and I hadn't tried it out before. And it is, it's a creepy app. It's an app. That is all about kind of trying to solve this mystery. You see your neighbor do something in his house. You hear like what you think is screaming. And I think I can actually let me try and give you the, the sound here. You, you hear kind of like screaming or something and then you see the neighbors struggling right outside.
Mikah Sargent (01:09:53):
And you are, you, you have your thumb come control. In the bottom left corner, as you're moving through starting out, you can jump and kind of move the the page around by placing your other finger on the screen and moving. Oh no. Ah, the neighbor already got me. So what you're trying to do is like, this is giving me anxiety. <Laugh> right. That's this whole game is anxiety. So you're trying to sneak through the house and not get caught by the neighbor who you saw. Oh no. Where is he? That darkness that comes, oh my God, he's looking the little, no that darkness that comes through is telling you, Hey, neighbors caught you and you need to, to get away before he sees you. Oh dear. I don't know what that is. That just sprayed on me, but now, oh no, he's coming for me.
Mikah Sargent (01:10:49):
You didn't see anything, Mr. NA, I didn't see anything. Mr. Naber so anyways, tomatoes at you, what's happening. I think it's just the, yeah, I think it's tomato. That's the one thing that makes me that the, the kid just just is not, it like saw things that weren't actually there is because there's no, it hasn't shown him to actually try to hurt you. It also hasn't shown what was happening right outside of the line of sight. But what you do is you see him looks like he's strangling someone right outside of the, your view and you hear this screaming, but it could be a person. It could be an animal and it may not have been that he was strangling the animal. It's fine. If it's an animal, right. That's what you're saying. No, no, no, no, no, not at all.
Mikah Sargent (01:11:35):
But anyway, you're trying to move through the house and solve this mystery without getting caught. So you have to try to sneak and not get caught by your neighbor as you figure out what in the world the neighbor was doing. So interesting game, it's free to download. If you want the full game volume two and three, you can play volume one for free volume, two and three will then cost you 1499. But this is like, this is a high quality game with very good graphics. And it's my understanding that there's lots to play. Like you can keep playing for quite a while. So that is a hello neighbor from tiny bill was the name of the company that makes this game. And I, I had to mention it because yes, it is kind of anxiety inducing. It's, it's great to play while you're listening to it with headphones.
Mikah Sargent (01:12:25):
And it can, can be a little bit a little bit of a, of a, of a what a, a blood pressure razor. So yeah, if you're into that kind of thing, I guess, check it out. No, hello neighbor. It's fun. And available to play for free at first with the rest of the game being unlocked with the 1499 purchase folks that brings us to the end of this episode of iOS today, if you've got questions you have for us, or if you've got shortcuts corner quest for Rosemary, when she's back next week, email iOS, twit.tv we record the show live every Tuesday at 12:00 PM. Eastern 9:00 AM Pacific. You can tune in live to watch us at twit.tv/live, but we think the best way to get the show is by going to twit.tv/ios, to subscribe to the show there, you can click subscribe to Audi or subscribe to video and get the show in the format of your choice from the place of your choice.
Mikah Sargent (01:13:19):
We recommend the video version. It's a kind of the best way to watch the show. However, we do try to make the audio version accessible with lots of descriptions of what we're touching and tapping on screen so that you can follow along. Even if you're not able to consume the video version of the show, if you would like to get all of our shows, add free. If that sounds good to you. Well, we've got a way to do that. It's called Club TWIT for seven bucks a month, you get every single one of TWI shows, not just iOS today, but every single one of TWI shows add free. So you get your own personal little feed for each of those shows. You also get access to the TWIT plus bonus feed that has extra content. You won't find anywhere else as well as some really cool stuff from from an that aunt PR has put together including, I think there was just an AMA with Andy and NACO, we've had an AMA with Mary Jo Foley.
Mikah Sargent (01:14:10):
I don't know if he's reached out to you yet, Dan, but I imagine he will be asking if you'll do an AMA soon. And yeah, that's a great way to get that. Plus you get access to the members-only discord server. If you're going, what in the world, a discord server, if you've used slack or Microsoft team, then you will be familiar with discord. It's basically just a place to communicate with your fellow Club TWIT members. And then also all of us here at TWiT. In fact, Rosemary Orchard's super active in the club, TWI discord always chatting about stuff and we just added a word channel. So you can share your Wordle scores if you want to right there in discord. I'm very mad at yesterday's Wordle because I don't know why, but I could not get it. I was the first one I haven't gotten and I was very upset about it. Oh, no. Yeah. sometimes that happens, I guess. And now's the time for Dan you to tell us, or folks can follow you online, check out all your work and also get to see the other things that you do.
Dan Moren (01:15:14):
Well so many places I'm on Twitter at DMOREN. You can follow me over there or on Instagram at de moron as well. I host clockwise over at realm with Micah every Wednesday at noon, you can listen, live or check out the podcast, wherever fine podcasts or made. I also write a number of books. My newest one is coming out in July. It's called Nova incident. And to find a link to that and everything else that I've written, you can go to de warren.com and you get the full rundown of all of my novels, podcast, tech writing, et cetera.
Mikah Sargent (01:15:47):
Awesome. Awesome folks. Thank you for tuning into this episode of iOS today. We do appreciate you. We will be back next week, but until then it is time to say goodbye.
Ant Pruitt (01:15:58):
Goodbye. Bye. So you got yourself, the brand new latest and greatest iPhone or Samsung smartphone, because you heard about all of the beautiful photography those things can create, but for some reason, you're just not quite getting it done. When you try to make your photos, or you got yourself a brand new camera, because you were interested in getting started in photography, but you're a little new inexpensive camera still. Isn't quite cutting it. Well, you need to check out my show hands on photography here on TWI. I'm gonna show you how to be a better photographer and a better post processor. And quite frankly, just help you get the most outta that new camera that's either on your phone or the brand new one that you just got for your, your birthday or gifts or what have you. And it's gonna be a lot of fun. So head on over to twit.tv/hop that's twit.tv/h O P and subscribe today.
