iOS Today Episode 607 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 is out, but don't worry. We have got somebody great here who you will learn to talk about watch OS nine. It's what you can expect. And the next version of watch OS and the magic you will have on your Apple watch stay tuned.

... (00:00:23):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:28):
This is iOS today. Episode 607 recorded Tuesday, June 21st, 2022. What to expect from watch OS nine. This episode of iOS today is brought to you by Wealthfront to start building your wealth and get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/ios. Today. It is time for iOS today. This is the show where we talk all things. Ios TV OS watch OS home pod OS iPad. OST di said, I said, tvOS, it's all the OSS that Apple has that offer. We love to talk about them here on iOS today. And today we're going to be focusing mainly on watch OS 9. Now you may remember that Rosemary orchard mentioned she was going to be out this week, but don't worry. I have a fantastic guest joining us today. It is YouTuber extraordinaire and iPad power user. It's Christopher lolly. Welcome to the show, Christopher,

Christopher Lawley (00:01:24):
Thank you for having me on. I am no Rosemary orchard. Those are shoes. I definitely can't fill, but I am happy to be here and try my best.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:33):
I was talking to David Sparks at the at WWDC and he and I both came to the realization together because we both host shows with Rosemary orchard. That there's truly no one who can fill the shoes of Rosemary orchard. She is one and one above the rest. <Laugh>

Christopher Lawley (00:01:48):
Yeah, absolutely 100%,

Mikah Sargent (00:01:51):
But I am so glad to get you here today to talk about watch OS and you know, to, to, I mean, can we just switch back to that video? Look at how good, like the background is amazing. <Laugh> the video looks great. I mean, you look great. You sound great. I'm so excited.

Christopher Lawley (00:02:08):
I, I figured I as like somebody that does video stuff, I needed to bring my, a game to it. So, you know, I got the nice light up, made sure the angle's good. Got good lighting. Yeah. So I, I wanted to make sure everything, you know, was, was good.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:21):
Well, it absolutely is. So let's kick things off. We talked, I guess it's been two weeks ago now, Rosemary and I about the different features that were announced at at WWDC Apple's worldwide developers conference. And there was a lot, so we weren't able to cover everything. And one of the things that we weren't able to cover was watch OS the features that are coming in the next version of watch OS dubbed watch OS nine. This of course is the operating system for the Apple watch. Apple's very popular wearable and there are quite a few new features that folks are going to be, I think, excited about. And what's interesting to me is there was just not too long ago, a study done on this was a, a, like a sales study, not a, a scientific study, but a, a sales study done on where people are purchasing like who is purchasing wearables and in what categories they're purchasing wearables.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:19):
And the Apple watch is far and away a a standout competitor in the space, but one place where it doesn't stand out is in the market for very high quality fitness, wearables, and garment is actually the one that leads the market there because Garin, yeah, isn't that interesting. Garin has a lot of features that are tied to to runners in particular, and to folks who are kind of trying to, to keep track of their, their logging as they're running, that kind of thing. And so I feel like watch O S nine first is meant to address that market and it kicks things off with workout. Now, before we get into the new features that come with workout, I'm curious Christopher, I, I think you have an Apple watch. How, if you do, how do you use your Apple watch? What are the main features that you use or your Apple watch for?

Christopher Lawley (00:04:15):
If, okay, well, it's not advisable to run a beta on, especially beta one on any device, but if somebody happened to be sitting in this very chair right now wearing an Apple watch, they might be running beta, one of watch OS nine on it. Yeah. but I use my Apple watch primarily as work for workouts and measurement and all those health sensors I'm diabetic. And for me, keeping track of all, like making sure I have, you know, I'm moving around, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm exercising, I'm not, you know, sitting in this chair, working all day is really important. So that's where the Apple watch is really important to me. I also use it as like an input method for when it comes to tasks and reminders. I have some shortcuts that I run from this watch that allow me to quickly add a note or a reminder to my associated task manager notes app. And so it's just kind of like a quick entry place for me to just kind of get what's ever in my head when I'm out and about or wherever, just out of my head and put it somewhere. So I don't forget about it because I forget everything. So I need to constantly write things down. So between workouts and just entry stuff, that's kind of where my app watch lives.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:30):
All right. Yeah. I I kind of fit into that same bubble. I maybe don't use as many of the workout features as are available. But it is definitely a good reminder for me, a health reminder in particular, in a way for me to kind of keep track of all of those things, I'm all about the quantified self. And so having that information available on my wrist is really nice. So let's get into some of the new stuff that's available in workout first. There are, there are going to be some new workout views. Again, this is for watch S nine. Apple will be releasing public betas of the different operating systems in July is what they said originally. We'll see if that still holds true. It's sometimes not the case that watch S is part of that, but they have orchestrated a way for folks to be able to replace the operating system on their watch without needing to send it into a to, to Apple itself, to be able to fix that.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:28):
So I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see more encouragement even for public beta on the watch, but into the features now, for sure there are, when you're using the workout features on the Apple watch, you can use the digital crown to kind of cycle through some of the new metrics that are available. So you've got your normal metrics that you or the, the typical metrics that you're used to like activity rings which I know a lot of us are very fond of and a way to kind of gamify our activity. But now there's heart rate zones, there's power, there's elevation. So starting with heart rate zones, this is a way to keep track of your heart rate and have it, have you give you an understanding of kind of how your heart rate is responding to the workout that you're doing?

Mikah Sargent (00:07:16):
And what I love about this Christopher is that it is a personalized experience because mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I actually have a pretty high resting heart rate. And so when I am working out, my resting heart rate is already high. So then of course my heart rate is a lot higher as it goes kind of up the track. And so knowing that these zones are personalized to me that my zone two is different from another person zone two is good, because that means that, you know, we're not all kind of working in the same bubble and then really what my zone two is, should be a zone three or vice versa. I think that's good that these are personalized. Do you use your, your Apple watch for heart rate tracking in general and have you kind of paid attention to those alerts and, and whatnot that have come up before?

Christopher Lawley (00:08:04):
Yeah. I, few years ago, I wasn't in the most healthy spot, so I was getting those high heart rate alerts all the time. And that's what kind of got me to be like, Hey, I need to like, get on top of this. So tho those high heart rate alerts were really key, but I also never really knew what to do with like resting heart rate data. Like, I didn't like, oh, is 70 beats per minute good. Or, or when you're like resting or is 130 good when you're working out or what. So I really like these idea of these zones that they're just kind of like visual, like, Hey, you're in zone three and you're coming down from a workout or something like that. And that way you can kind of like, understand what that group like, that heart rate range does for you. I, I've only done one workout with watch O S nine so far, so I haven't like really gotten to test everything. So I'm kind of curious to see how that all works out with me.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:01):
Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of other features, including the ability to customize your workouts at that kind of up. And what I think is an interesting new feature. I gotta tell you, it did make me feel a little bit a little bit self-conscious the ability to understand your not only your pacing, but also your stride. So running form, that's what it was called. These running form metrics. They were showing sort of like the vertical oscillation ground contact time, stride length, and it just made me go, oh my God, have I been running wrong this whole time? <Laugh>

Christopher Lawley (00:09:38):
I, I'm honestly afraid to try that. I feel the same way. Like I've, I'm not a runner by any means. I do it just for the cardio, but I hate, I hate every second of it. So I'm genuinely afraid to try that and like, see what it comes back with.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:53):
Yeah. It's gonna tell me, I'm you are moving your hips up and down too much as you're running. And I don't wanna hear that. I don't know. But I, I know that again, this is, I don't think that this is for the everyday runner. This is a person who is running and wants to improve upon their run. You know, they're already at kind of at the peak, how do you get further? How do you get farther? And that's where these runners in the past have turned to Garin as their fitness tracker. And I think that Apple hopes that they will turn to the Apple watch as the fitness tracker, there's also running power. It is a, a sort of nebulous measurement of your running. And it helps you to kind of figure out what, what running power you have again, this it's a nebulous measurement.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:40):
It says an instantaneous measure of your effort. It helps you stay at a level you can sustain. So the idea is like all of the exertion that you're putting into it is a measurement of the power that you're applying. And that way you can sort of trick your brain or convince your brain like, Hey, I wanna push my running power further, or I wanna lay back as we're coming around this curve, that kind of thing. Also for folks who swim, bike and run wow, good for you in the first place, but there will be, <laugh> an ability to switch between those different running and, or rather switch between those different fitness types. So you will be able to do your magical triathlon stuff without having to kind of switch those workouts on your Apple watch. So some more automatic features that I think folks are gonna like and be able to, to kick off. Do you, have you ever used your Apple watch in, in swimming situations or in yes. Any water situations?

Christopher Lawley (00:11:39):
So I used to be a competitive swimmer long, long time ago, but when I was kind of getting back into exercising, I figured I'd give that a shot. And it's really cool. Just like being able to jump in the pool and not having to worry about like this thing's gonna get ruined and just going for a swim the whole triathlon, like thing that they added the transition between, Hey, go for a run, go for a bike ride and go for a swim. That's just, that's awesome for the people that do it. You will never see me do it. <Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:12:09):
Yeah. I I think it's, it's, it's great that again, those features are there for those elite power athletes who are looking for a wearable that they can use in those situations. So that's fantastic. The last thing for fitness or for workout stuff is an enhanced summary. So it just gives you both on the Apple watch and on your iPhone, actually more information about what your workout has been like, what you have been able to achieve there. So again, a nice nice set of features that's available for you to be able to make sure that you're running or walking or swimming or doing whatever it is that you wanna do in the way that you want to, to do it. So pretty cool new workout features available and worth checking out now moving right along the next set of features is one that I'm pretty excited about. You mentioned being, yes. Right? You mentioned being a person who is running the beta on a watch on your wrist. I'm also running a beta on the watch of my wrist. <Laugh> and most of the reason why is because of this new watch, actually a couple of new features here, but I have for the longest recommended the app called do, do you same? Right. Right. Isn't it great for the,

Christopher Lawley (00:13:33):
The same thing it's perfect for this. It is the perfect app for this.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:36):
So this is medication tracking. Basically if you have a medication that you need to take every day, or even, you know, a couple of times a week or vitamins that you take every day, I have a problem with remembering to take those medications. And sometimes I do take them, but then I forget if I did take them when I was supposed to. So the way that I've dealt with that up to this point is by using the app called do where it will remind me Hey, you need to do this thing. And then if I don't do it immediately, it reminds me again and again, and again and again. Yep. So I've talked plenty about do what Apple is bringing to watch O S nine and actually to iOS as well is a whole new set of features for medications.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:22):
It's going to allow you to track your medications. So you will get reminders so that you take your medication and be able to log those medications that you've taken at a, at a given time. On top of that, there are some features in iOS, including the ability to look at drug interactions some nonmedical explanations of what medications you're taking and what they are meant to do side effect, information, all sorts of stuff that's available in these two areas. But the logging and reminders are really great because on top of that, you can scan in your medications using the bottle. I've tried out these different features. I have to, I'm curious to hear if you've used this yet for me as I've been using it, I am still of course running due alongside it because due is like I can trust do due has worked forever and it continues to work.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:21):
So I have that going, but I've been doing this to just test it out. And I will say that there's a bit more friction to this experience and some weirdness. And of course, this is where if this were a developer focused show we would be making jokes about how we need to submit feedback, blah, blah, blah, blah. <Laugh> that's in the works for sure. There is some feedback that I wanna submit about this, but it's just not, not quite there in terms of the ease that I've had with, with due. Yeah. So tell me about your experience. If you have been using this,

Christopher Lawley (00:15:55):
It, it, I have, and it's, it's similar to yours. So you have to basically enter all the medication you're taking and you set up what times you're supposed to take it and stuff like that. So I have two medications I take once in the morning and then once in the evening. And so you gotta enter those and it's fine, but I, here, here, the thing is, is I've been taking that medication long enough to know like, Hey, this is the stuff I take in the morning. This is the stuff I take in the evening. Like I don't have, I know what it is, so I don't need yeah. The health app to tell me. So like having to manually enter really all I want from the health app is like, Hey, let me set a reminder to tell me to take my meds.

Christopher Lawley (00:16:35):
I don't necessarily need all that extra stuff. And that's where I kind of think do still wins out is I just have a reminder that's that pops up at 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM that says take meds. And I know because I, I have the little med thing that every, you know, everyone's got the yeah. Sunday through Monday or, or whatever it is, the pill box, the pill box. Yeah. And I just, you know, fill that up Sunday morning and I just go and grab those. So it is a little more friction, like you said, I, I, I kind of want, I'm just, I'm also like you, I'm running on both side by side, so we'll see. I've only been running watch at west nine for a few days now, so we'll see, maybe it shapes out a little bit more in future betas and stuff. So we'll, we'll kind of see how it shakes out. But for right now, I, I think like if I just had to pick one or the other, I would just stick with due because I'm already yeah. I've already paid for it. So at this point mm-hmm <affirmative>, but I guess it goes without saying the, the med part in the health app is free, so you don't have to pay for it.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:33):
Yes, I, so I'm right there with you. It's because due has worked so well for me so far, the reason why I ended up wanting to log all of these is because I like the interaction checker that's built in. I like the idea that it can track, you know, vitamins and stuff like that. And then I want all of that information in one place because Apple has over time added different features, like in your in your health information, you can put in medications that will affect heart rate. And then the Apple watch is aware of that and will change how it alerts you for high or low heart rate notifications. So I take a beta blocker not, not regularly, but as needed because in the past I I ended up in the hospital for it was a whole thing with, it was ended up being gluten intolerance.

Mikah Sargent (00:18:30):
But what led up to that was a whole bunch of different issues that had to do with heart rhythm and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so occasionally I will have some, some cardiac anxiety, basically that takes place based in that. And so the beta blocker is helpful in those situations. And so occasionally my low heart rate is not what it would be without that medication. And so by the Apple watch, knowing that it can change when it does or does not notify. And so what I'm hopeful for is a future where Apple is even more mindful about the other medications that you might take and how those change things. Because for example, that beta blocker there have been a number of studies that show that it will raise blood glucose level, even though it's a, it's a medicine that acts on heart rhythm, it does have an impact on blood glucose levels.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:22):
So for you, that would be something that you would need to be aware of. Yeah. Knowing that, like that if, if the, if Apple health could know that in general and be able to apply that, then if you had a glucose tracker, for example, that was tied to Apple health, and it's like, oh, normally you'd be at, you know, one 30 or something. But right now you're at one 50 that's because you took indol this morning or something like that. I want, that's why I'm logging all these things now. So I have that history in there so that as more features come out, it's there. So that's kind of, what's keeping me going with this. It's not so much just the, the momentary reminders of medication logging.

Christopher Lawley (00:19:59):
That's very smart. Yeah. I didn't even think about it like that, but that is smart. And the other nice thing too, is logging all that medication. So if something happened to you, you're in a car accident, knocked unconscious, some something terrible happened and you go and they take you to the hospital, they can check that medical ID on the iPhone and they can see what medication you're taking. So that, that is, that would actually be really important. So yeah, that, those are all really good points.

Mikah Sargent (00:20:27):
All right, let's move along to one of my favorite things in general. I am a huge, and a lot of people on Iowa today who watch Iowa city know this I'm a huge sleep science nerd. I, I, at one point was doing a podcast in sleep and I had a subscription to the journal, sleep reading, all sorts of different studies from there. I lo I love the science of sleep. And so I was pumped when Apple announced that sleep for the Apple watch was going to get a lot better. I will admit that I do not use my Apple watch for sleep tracking because I have an eight sleep mattress who eight sleep has been a sponsor on the network in the past. So that's, there's a heads up there as well as a Beautyrest sleep tracker. That, and, and those two things are these sort of passive methods of tracking your sleep, where when you lay down, it knows you're laying down.

Mikah Sargent (00:21:20):
It, it knows all of the stuff to kind of monitor when you're awake, when you're sleep and all that magic. So I have not had to wear an Apple watch on my wrist to be able to track those things. But I was super pumped to see that Apple is getting a little bit more in detail with its sleep tracking. First is with sleep stages. So there's Reem sleep, which is rapid eye movement sleep. There's a deep sleep, which is sort of the bottom stage of sleep. And then Apple calls the other's core essentially it's stage one, stage two, stage three there's REM, and then there's awake. So the way that your sleep cycle works is obviously you start out awake and you fall down into stage one, sleep, you fall down into stage two, sleep, you fall down into stage three, sleep.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:08):
You go back up to stage two stage one. And then at that point, your body makes a decision. Are, are we gonna stay asleep or are we gonna wake up? And typically you stay asleep. So then you hop up to REM, which is rapid eye movement sleep. And a lot of folks think REM is actually below deep sleep. No, no, no. It's all the way at the top. It's the most like being awake that you can possibly be while still being asleep. And then you fall back down stage one, stage two, stage three, stage two stage one REM stage one, stage two, stage three, up and down and up and down until you eventually wake up. Up to this point, Apple is more tracked, basically I'm Waker, I'm asleep. And when I'm asleep here is my respiration. Here's my heart rate, yada yada yada and oxygen saturation now, because it's got plenty of data feels comfortable being able to kind of break those stages of sleep out a little bit more and determine what is, what so that you can get an understanding of how much sleep you're getting.

Mikah Sargent (00:23:06):
That's deep, how much is core, how much is REM and how much is, you know, you being awake before you fall asleep. This is fantastic. I love to that. Then you can start to look at the trends of your sleep over time and, and get a better understanding of how other things might be impacting your sleep based on when your caffeine and intake was when if you worked out that day, all those sorts of things. So are you a sleep tracker kind of person, or do you prefer to sort of leave it up to just keeping your eyes off of it and hoping that sleep goes well? <Laugh>, I've, I've tried doing the sleep tracking thing, but I just can't

Christopher Lawley (00:23:44):
Fall asleep with the Apple watch on it doesn't matter which watch band I use. I just cannot fall asleep with any jewelry or anything on it. I just find it uncomfortable. And then the thing in the past that's always prevented me from using Apple sleep tracking, is it was based on the sleep focus or the sleep mode or, yeah, the, the, the, yeah, the sleep mode and it wasn't like, Hey, if I laid down to take a nap at 1:00 PM, which I never do, I would never lay down at 1:00 PM to take a nap. Totally do. It, it wouldn't track that. So does, does the new version do the auto sleep tracking?

Mikah Sargent (00:24:22):
That is yeah, it's, it is an autos sleep tracker that will not have to make you say, oh, I'm going to sleep now, which has always been the problem with those sleep trackers in the past. Right. Yeah. I don't want to have to think about when that's, why I've always used the bed style trackers rather than one for my phone or something like that. Don't make me remember to do it. Cause I will not remember to do it. I will forget. And, or I will like, I, there's something about just having to say that that then makes it harder for me to fall asleep too. Exactly.

Christopher Lawley (00:24:54):
It's like now I'm like having to do this, another thing for prep and I autos sleep tracker. Maybe I will give it another shot. Maybe I'll go. I think I, I had the best luck with the Nike Apple watch bands, the one with the holes in 'em because they just briefed a little more. Maybe I'll put that one back on and give it another shot. But just in the past, I just was not able to fall asleep or maybe I'll get one of those bed trackers like you have, cuz that actually sounds like would work for me. That

Mikah Sargent (00:25:19):
That ends up being what I recommend to most people because it it also reduces the anxiety that a person has about. Like what about when I wake up in the morning is my Apple watch gonna have enough battery for the day, et cetera, et cetera. I think that an a bed tracker is so much better. And I found can be far more accurate because it is not also trying to do a hundred other things. It is a very focused device that is just set on trying to make sure that it's tracking your sleep. Alright, let's move on to watch faces here. Actually, no, we're gonna take a quick break and then we will talk about watch faces and we come back from the break cuz there's some fun, new watch faces to talk about. Before we do that though, I wanna tell you about wealth front, who are bringing you this episode of iOS today.

Mikah Sargent (00:26:05):
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Christopher Lawley (00:28:04):
So the first one is metropolitan and it's one of my favorites. It's a circular watch face that looks more like a traditional watch face, but what's really cool is you can use the digital crown and you can scroll it back and forth. So the numbers kind of change the typography a little bit, so you can kind of make it look a little different the way you want it. And it has the edge complications on it too. So all the, it has four complications out to the side. I'm a little boring when it comes to watch faces. I like the ones that look more like traditional watches and have lots of complications. So I can like have lots of data. I'm a nerd. I love data <laugh>. So I like to have all that glanceable then there's play time, which was, I forget the artist's name. I didn't write it down. I'm sorry. But it was designed by an artist for Apple and it's one of those fun watch faces like the Mickey and, and Woody ones and stuff. And it's great if, if that's the kind of thing you like, <laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (00:28:59):
If that's your thing, if, if

Christopher Lawley (00:29:01):
That's your thing, I, I mean, I, look, if I'm being honest, I don't get 'em like, I really don't because like, you're you have a computer on your wrist and like, like have the data, but again, I'm a nerd, so that's, that's just me. Astronomy is another really interesting one that I like, I, I put it in the category of like those fun watch faces, but I would actually use this one cuz I like space again a nerd. So I like space and like you can kind of like it, like does the thing that like a lot of the portrait complications do where it like covers up or partially covers up the time so you can get that depth look. Yeah. And I just, I think it's a really neat look and watch face. Then there's lunar, lunar is a new one and it kind of shows, I, I don't fully get this one. It, it shows the lunar calendar mm-hmm <affirmative> but I, I think there's something else and I forget what it was off top of my head. Do you remember Micah?

Mikah Sargent (00:29:57):
So with the lunar watch face, it is all about the lunar calendar and they're just three different versions. You can check out the Chinese lunar calendar, the Hebrew lunar calendar and the Islamic lunar calendars.

Christopher Lawley (00:30:08):
That's what it is. I couldn't, I couldn't remember there was the three different versions, but yeah, the, those are, I think those are all the new ones. And then there's some previous ones that got updated, like I think is it utility got updated to support the new, the, I say new, but year old comp years old complications now. And it's just kind of been lingering the dog and cat portrait face one, I think is actually gonna be kind of cool. So the, the portrait photo watch face was one that I've seen a lot of people use, but it only worked with people up until now. So if you take a portrait photo of your dog or your cat, it'll do the death separation, so you can have your animal up front, then, then kind of like the, the clock the time. And then it has the blurry background behind it. So it gives it that nice depth of field look. So that that's kind of cool. And then 

Mikah Sargent (00:30:54):
It's got some kind of cool tenting that you can do. So with that background separation, you can have the dog or the cat or the person with the portrait face stick out a little bit more, and then you can change the color of the background with the depth effect so that it is maybe more, more washed out. And then it makes that photo really pop. So they're doing a lot of depthy fun stuff. We talked about the features that are available on the iPhone that have to do with that depth effect. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so not surprised to see that kind of come to the Apple watch in this way.

Christopher Lawley (00:31:26):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, I think that'll be a really cool one especially since, you know, people love their love, their animals who, who doesn't love a dog. Oh. And, and I guess there's cats, but I mean, look, dogs like dogs. I just made like

Mikah Sargent (00:31:39):
Half yard with you. Look, I look, they know I, so Rosemary's the cat person. I am severely allergic to cats. So that's the only reason that I, you know, am such a dog person and I've got two dogs. So yeah, my iPhone lock screen right now is an adorable photo of my dog. And I love in fact, I'll just show it real quick. It's got that depth effect with the nice, the time partially obscured there with Henry's head taking over a bit of the, the time. So really fun feature there. But the last thing in the new watch O S nine is that there are just some more colors and color options, colors, and grads available. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> for the modular compact, the modular and the extra large watch faces. So just some more options to kind of add color to those faces. And I think that this is the first time that we've seen such bright colors as backgrounds on these faces. So we we've always been able to tint kind of the, the actual the time and, and the, the different complications, but to have that background, tinting is really interesting to me.

Christopher Lawley (00:32:54):
I thi my theory is because the series seven pushed the BES out even further, or virtually no BES, now that they can go more to the edge with those background colors, cuz like the first watch and like even like the series three and all that stuff, there's still quite a big bezel. So developers were told, Hey, push all of your objects to the edge because it's a black O led screen and your background will be black. It'll look like it's not at the edge, but it was at the edge. So that I think that's why we're starting to get those kind of colors now. So that's cool. Still no custom watch face option though.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:29):
Yeah. I don't think that's

Christopher Lawley (00:33:30):
Happening, which

Mikah Sargent (00:33:31):
I don't think it's happening either. I think that Apple is too protective of their battery life for now. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and I'm hopeful that there is some future where they've figured out a way to offer this, because think about the complications coming to iPhone by way of the new widget functionality with that live activity option and all that kind of magic that's, that's gonna be going on in the next version of iOS and then consider how that could possibly come to watch OS as a watch face API. So I think there's a future where this could happen. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it's just right now, Apple hasn't quite nailed it in a way that you're not gonna be worried about battery drain and also perhaps it's it has some concern about submissions. I don't know about that part because everybody and their uncle could submit sticker packs at one point. I mean still can, and that was a big thing. So it would be cool if people could make, watch faces on their iPad using swift playgrounds and then be able to make those available to folks if they wanna use them.

Christopher Lawley (00:34:45):
That would be awesome.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:47):
Yeah. I guess they would still need to be submitted so that you don't get faces that, you know, are not NIS or something. I don't know. I don't know what the, the concern is, but

Christopher Lawley (00:34:57):
There would also be the copyright issue. Like you'd have like submit 'em and make sure that, you know, it's not a Rolex watch face or, you know, there's not a star wars character, so I'm sure they had that with the sticker packs as well, because you know, you couldn't have somebody submit a Mickey mouse sticker pack that wasn't Disney.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:13):
Right, right. That makes sense. All right, moving right along. We've got AFib history as a a new option. This is a set of features that can basically, for folks who have a history of atrial fibrillation, they will be able to keep track of the times when their heart is showing AFib, meaning that when their heart is in this arrhythmia a rhythm of the heart that is not clinically typical, then you can kind of be aware of when that's happening and sort of look at how sleep exercise and other things might be impacting your AFib. And so it's just more quantified self stuff that makes this work so much better and makes sure that you are aware of your own heart and its and heart health. There are also some new features in family setup. So this was kind of a wide sweeping feature for iOS and watch OS where you are able to set up a child's phone or in this case watch and have it be exactly how you wanna, but do you wanna tell us about the podcast's feature? This is kind of an interesting one.

Christopher Lawley (00:36:35):
Yeah. I, and I didn't realize this wasn't available until they set it in the keynote, but if you have a device set up in family share and it's, you know, a watch dedicated to kids, they didn't have access to the podcast app. Now they will. So they can, you know, pair AirPods to their Apple watch and listen to podcasts. I highly recommend iOS today. And that way you can kind of like, you know, kids can, you know, Hey, when I was in high school, I was listened to Mac power users. So like kids, these kids, they, they like the, they like the tech podcast. Wow. I just sounded like I was 80 there, but

Mikah Sargent (00:37:11):
Hey, all kids <laugh>

Christopher Lawley (00:37:15):
Yeah, so that's pretty cool. And then like kids have access to other stuff now, too, so they can parents can give them access to all the home features so they can control lights or home pods and do playback for that stuff. And now they also can give them access to keys. So you can do digital keys for your home hotel. I, I kind of wonder, can you give kids keys to the car? Cause you remember a couple years ago they, they announced the, the car keys in the wallet app.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:43):
Can you to the BMW 16, if a kid's 16 then yeah. That would be legal to do so.

Christopher Lawley (00:37:50):
Yeah. Well, well, and that's what I'm wondering is like, do they have to legally be 16 or something like, cause I got my driver's permit when I was 15. So I was that's true. That's true before. So like what is the like, could, could a kid like get ahold of their parents' phone and then give them at like a 13 year old kid get ahold of their parents' phone and give themselves access to the BMW and have a dear have a, a Ferris Bueller's day off <laugh> <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:38:13):
I don't know. That's a good question. That's yeah, one of the things I, I remember former colleague of mine serenity Caldwell, who now works at Apple, she had created a kid's account on her Apple ID for the sake of being able to test a bunch of different features. And for the longest time she was unable to remove that fake kid from her account. It just stayed and she couldn't figure out a way to delete it. So I have never gone the way of I've created a fake account that I use. That's an adult on my Apple ID, like the family so that I can test features. But after her experience, I was like, no, I'm not putting a kid online, some fake kid to test those out. So hopefully there's some developer out there who is testing that out in the beta so we can know what, what goes on there.

Christopher Lawley (00:39:01):
Yeah, absolutely. Plus I don't have the BMW that lets you use the car key thing. So

Mikah Sargent (00:39:05):
Yeah. That's yeah. That's the other part too. Yeah. It's a very small group that actually fits into what we need there.

Christopher Lawley (00:39:11):
Exactly.

Mikah Sargent (00:39:14):
Apple of course also announced a bunch of accessibility features some of these, they had pre-announced one of them is a really cool feature. That's called double pinch to start a workout or take a photo. And what this does is it uses your wrist and wrist movements to interact with the Apple watch. So this watch has a bunch of L E D lights on the back and sensors that it uses to determine your internal to determine your, your oxygen saturation to in the case of the, the actual sort of electronic contacts that are on the back of it, it is being used to measure ECG electrocardiogram. And so all of these different things and the built in accelerometer and gyroscope and all of the different sensors can be used to notice when you're doing certain movements with your wrist.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:12):
And they showed originally grabbing with a fist versus pinching with fingers and how the watch is able to tell the difference between those and then be able to perform in action. So in this case it will start a workout or take a photo, but there's also a cool new feature. I was trying to make use of it earlier. So I could show off the watch faces in motion on on my iPhone. But I think it doesn't work because my phone is currently set up to work with E cam live. And so the sort of built in airplay or screenplay functionality is being used at the moment because there's a new feature in accessibility called Apple watch mirroring. And what this does is it lets you use your iPhone to control your Apple, watch. It will actually show your iPhones or excuse me, your Apple watches screen on your iPhone.

Mikah Sargent (00:41:04):
And you can do a bunch of different things on the iPhone with and then have that actually work on the Apple watch. So in this way, you're streaming your Apple watch to your iPhone and you can use those assistive features that the iPhone can do because it's a powerful machine with more battery life and all of that. So you can actually use switch control and voice control with the Apple watch right there from your iPhone, a really neat feature that I, like I said, I was gonna show for the sake of being able to just show my screen. I'm kind of looking forward to it for that because anytime we've had an Apple watch episode in the past with apps and things, I've always had to put up another camera that is, you know, perfectly placed and zoomed in and all that kind stuff. So I can show my wrist. So I'm looking forward to this feature, why I don't have to do that anymore.

Christopher Lawley (00:41:50):
App Apple wa filming the Apple watch is the hardest thing I have ever done in my career. It is, it is like I holding a camera, holding a five pound camera while one handed while trying to film the O it is just, it, it is the hardest thing I've ever done. So yeah, that, that's a great accessibility feature for, for those that, that want, want and need it. But it's also nice for people that need to show off the watch as well, because it'll be kind of handy.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:16):
Absolutely. there are a few more features I'll briefly mention in productivity notifications are a little bit better. If you're using your watch, they just pop up as little banners at the top. And when your wrist is down, then they will pop up as full screen notifications. I have been liking those apps running in the right isn't that nice and apps running in the background are prioritized over the rest of the apps in the doc. So that way you can make sure that you will get back to those easier. I remember setting up my doc originally and, you know, sort of maintaining that tracking over time to make sure all of the apps that I use regularly are there some updates to the calendar app for the Apple watch and updates to the keyboard, as well as some new Apple fitness plus stuff including trainer call outs.

Mikah Sargent (00:43:05):
It, this is that key moments in the workout intensity metrics are called out and will appear on the screen for motivation so that you can see kind of what the training experience is like and sort of say, oh, I'm gonna work harder. This this go, or I'm going to slow things down. Cause I did an intense session and some goals and other metrics that are available there as well. So lots of stuff in watch O S nine that's coming that we can be excited about. Plus loads of tiny, tiny features that will sort of make themselves known over time. Now that we have reached the end of the watch OS nine, what's doing in watch OS nine segment, it's time to move along and talk about the news.

Speaker 4 (00:43:46):
Let's blast off to the ISS, the moon Mars and beyond I'm rod pile host and your personal space expert on this week in space each week, I'm joined by Tark Mallek of space.com and together we break down the latest rumblings about atomic rockets, space, junk blue origin and SpaceX with an ever-changing panel of guests, including astronauts, former asset scientists, and more, it's more fun than a person should be allowed to have in this or any other galaxy get a new episode of this week in space every Friday and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:18):
All right, it's time to talk about the news. The first thing I saw this story over on tech crunch, and I thought it was a really interesting one. The, the title is all the things Apple sherlocked at WWDC 2022. It's important to note that when they're talking about sherlocking it is a verb that is used to describe a describe Apple in particular, creating a feature or announcing an app or bringing a new bit of hardware that is the same as a feature or or, or piece of software that has already existed in a third party way. So a good example of this is a a, well, actually, let's just go through the list. I think that the first one is a, is a good description of that mm-hmm <affirmative> so continuity camera, the app that was sherlocked meaning that Apple came out with a first party version of the third party feature is called camo. And by the way, right now I am talking to you with an iPhone 12 camera. Ooh, look at that refocus using the camo app, it is a fantastic app, right? Oh, you're using camera right now,

Christopher Lawley (00:45:28):
Too. Yeah. I, I haven't plugged into an iPhone 13, many. Yep, absolutely.

Mikah Sargent (00:45:31):
Nice, nice. And CA's fantastic. And I've used a little bit of continuity camera and it's pretty cool. Continuity camera is a feature that Apple announced that will let you finally finally finally use your iPhone as a webcam. Now, the cool thing about what Apple's doing is that you can use it wired or wirelessly, and it is a, a simple as sort of bringing your phone close to your your MacBook or your Mac, and then being able to choose it as the camera for that view. And it automatically enables center stage, which is Apple's feature for kind of re realigning the screen so that you are in the middle of the screen. And also an interesting feature where it uses the ultra wide camera to be able to show what you're looking at, what you're talking about and your desk view at the same time, although I've heard in early tests of that, it's not quite what you'd expect and need some, some stuff ironed out there. But yeah, I, I am not surprised that that eventually got sherlocked, but as I think a lot of sites have said, and I will continue to say camo still outpaces and out does continuity camera in, in many ways and with many different features that you have. And so I think there's still a long, a long life ahead for camo.

Christopher Lawley (00:46:58):
Yeah. I, I think I will still use camo for something like this. That's gonna be recorded for posterity's sake, but if I'm just going to have like a web chat or, or a video called web chat, a video call with people,

Mikah Sargent (00:47:09):
A web chat

Christopher Lawley (00:47:10):
Doing the web. I, I, my, I aged like 50 years this morning, apparently. So if I'm, if I'm doing video call or something and it's just gonna be like me talking to friends or catching up or something, I could see me just using continuity camera, cuz it's easier. It's wireless. I could just throw it on there. And I truly think this helps make up for the not so great webcams on the max, just especially like the Stu I'm sitting right next to a studio display right now, and that has webcam built into it. And I decided to set up a tripod and an iPhone on my desk instead of use that webcam, which would've been easier, but I wanted to make sure this looked good. So I, I definitely think camo is not down. The other thing is camo also works with Android and windows and it's not like you can go from Android phone to Mac or iPhone to windows. Like it's not the the continuity camera is limited just iPhone to Mac.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:04):
Yep. That's a good point. That's a really good point. Some other features that, well I'll briefly mention here, cuz we gotta keep it moving along. Apple pay later. It is a feature that lets you sort of split up your payments into four equal payments over six weeks. There are other apps that do that or other services that do that visual lookup, which is a feature that lets you kind of cut subjects out of photos very quickly. There are a few apps out there that are, that have attempted to do this in different ways and Apples is okay. I could still use some work, but again, we're in beta right now. Medication tracking we talked about due is one app for this, there are also apps that are specific to medications, like an app called pill box and an app called my therapy.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:47):
I had never actually heard of either of those apps before me either. Yeah, so that was, that was news to me cuz I just used due for all of that free form, which is a collaboration app that isn't out yet. It's gonna be coming out later this year. That is like so many apps on the app store that are digital whiteboards that are collaborative sleep tracking of course with more data available with sleep tracking that competes with all of the other sleep tracking apps out there and that pretty much covers it. All right. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, please. I,

Christopher Lawley (00:49:20):
I was gonna say, I would also throw in there, there was a whole class of small utility apps that basically used to blur images. So you could make them background that's now sherlocked because that's built right into the wallpaper settings.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:32):
Oh that's right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. Most of the time you were using those four wallpapers and so those utility apps for a wallpaper, so yeah, it's already there now. I don't think that you know, of course any individual app developer who's made an app who that ends up getting sherlocked is going to feel as if this experience is something that is very targeted. I think that the, the argument I would make is that in many cases, this is not a nefarious thing, but instead is a a idea that, Hey, we want our users to be able to have these features and they should just be built in versus having to go elsewhere to be able to find them. There are some features that are on that list that like anyone should be able to have these and have them right away.

Mikah Sargent (00:50:21):
So I think that, you know, it's, it's worth celebrating that. I just, I want those third party apps to remain alive. And I think that they, in many cases, we'll still have plenty of users who are willing to stay with them and, and make use of those. Real quick, I'll mention that the EU of course has sort of officially said, look, we want to make it so that USBC charging is universal. If you've got a device that is sort of a modern device that you're selling, you should be able to charge it with USBC. And if it if it's big enough, so this basically excludes wearables from, from that EU ruling. And if they don't, then you've gotta include something that lets you use USBC to charge. Now it seems like the us is hopping on board. There are some senators who are saying, look, we want to adopt a common charger as well. And it's likely that that common charger would be USBC as that is the most widely available type of, of cord and charging device and port in terms of something that can sort of be universally standardized around. All right, let us move on because I'm very excited to say that even though Rosemary orchard is not here, shortcuts corner is next

Mikah Sargent (00:51:51):
It's time for shortcuts corner. This is the part of the show where you write in with your shortcuts corner requests and typically Rosemary orchard, the shortcuts expert provides a response. Rosemary is not here today, but Christopher lolly is here and I asked Christopher this morning, Hey do you think you'd be able to answer the shortcuts corner request and we do have an answer. So Christopher I'll read the request and then you can take it away. Alan writes in and says, I set up shortcut to turn on and turn off my alarm system when I leave the house. And when I return, unfortunately they require me to set them manually. Each time I leave the house and come back, I do not remember any option to eliminate the manual settings. When I set the short, when I set these shortcut up originally, I thought an iOS 15, this feature was enabled. Is there any way I can get rid of this? Or is that just a function of the location based shortcut? And this is again from Alan, what can we do here?

Christopher Lawley (00:52:50):
So it sounded like you're using personal automations to, to trigger the location. So when you leave and when you come home, the, the the alarm system turns off or turns on unfortunately location based personal automation still require you to manually trigger them and iOS 15, some personal automations allow you to turn off the manual ones, like time based ones. So if you always left at 6:00 AM, you could set it to turn on at 6 0 5, kind of give you a little bit of a window right there that you can do. It's not, it's not ideal. I know. But unfortunately, location based personal automation cannot be automatically triggered. And I think the reason why, and I don't know this for sure, but the, the, the reason that I've heard through the grapevine is safety. They don't want people like, Hey, every time this person leaves here, send this other person a ping on where it is and stuff like that. So I, I get it. I, I, I get why they don't do it. It's a bummer because I have a lot of really cool ideas that could, you know, work on location based stuff. But unfortunately right now you just, you can't turn those off or, or you can't have those run automatically in the background

Mikah Sargent (00:54:05):
Rat, so no such luck, but again, understandable for the most part, why this feature is, why are you the way that you are, it is understandable why this feature is the way that it is. Yeah. As, as much as we wish it wasn't that way. So, Alan. Yeah. Alas, that's just the way that these work right now. And when that changes, or if that changes, of course, we will be covering that. So you are aware, all right, moving into feedback and questions. Daniel is written in hi, Rosemary and Mike, oh, let me cross that out. Hi, strike through Rosemary, Christopher and Micah. I have an iPhone 12 that is running the latest version of iOS. I'm having a few weird problems. One sometimes when I mute the phone with the mute switch, it will still ring. The volume of the ring tone is about half of the volume that I normally have it set at when it happens.

Mikah Sargent (00:54:56):
I have restarted the phone, but this doesn't fix it. Two. There are times when one of my contacts tries to text me and iMessage notifies them. My phone is in do not disturb mode. So they call me instead. However, my phone isn't in do not disturb mode. And I verify this. The only time I use D and D is when I'm at church or when I go to sleep at night, I Haven, it said from 12:00 AM to 7:00 AM. If they go ahead and text me, I will not receive a notification that I received it. Both of these problems only happen occasionally and seem to stop on their own. Again, restarting doesn't help. Three. My phone is sometimes auto answering calls. It's happened four or five times once in the previous version of iOS and the rest of the times in the latest version twice when I was wearing Bluetooth earbuds and the rest of the time I wasn't wearing headphones, a couple of the calls were spam calls, but the others were contacts.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:47):
The phone would start ringing. And all of a sudden I could hear talking the times I wasn't wearing headphones. It didn't answer in speaker mode. This is getting very frustrating. So any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Daniel. Daniel. This is an interesting thing. This, yeah. Number one. And number two are two issues that I hear about a lot. In fact, just on the radio show, we had somebody call in on Saturday and ask Leo LePort and myself about issue number two, where, or no, I think it was issue number one, where they put on the mute switch, but their phone was still ringing. So there are some features that are built into iOS that allow certain contacts to bypass the do not disturb mode. And so that is one thing that you're going to want to check is, and we'll include a link in the show notes for all of the settings with do not disturb because there's basically what's called emergency bypass.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:43):
And with emergency bypass, those contacts get to ignore the, the mute switch and get to ignore, do not disturb and get to ignore all the things. And so it could be that that is what's happening there, where it's still ringing even whenever you've got it on mute as far as number two, the do not disturb feature. This appears to be a problem that it was introduced when Apple added the ability to sync, focus modes between devices. So if we launch the settings app and my settings, Apple look a little bit different because it is running a beta, but the most of the features are still the, in the same place. If we launch the settings app and we choose focus, you will see an option there that says share across devices. What you wanna do is toggle that off and then toggle it back on again.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:34):
And the reason why is because essentially what's happening is when you go into a focus mode, like do not disturb, then it sort of syncs with Apple servers, the same one that uses iMessage. And it will then share that status to all of your different contacts. It will say that you are in do not disturb mode and or in whatever mode it might happen to be. And then it will have that set up in that way. So in this functionality, you are probably having a sync error where there is a device that or not even a device necessarily, but on the, on the server side of things, it thinks that you're still in this mode. So toggling that off and back on again will help to kind of Jostle it and say, look, I don't wanna be in, do not disturb.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:20):
My partner actually had this issue ongoing where everyone he was texting, it would always show that he was in do not disturb. And he's like, I'm not in, do not disturb. The other suggestion that I have for you is go to every single one of the devices that you have, that's logged into your Apple ID account and make sure that do not disturb or sleep or driving or whatever form of focus you have is not turned on on that device. Turn it off on that device, because I've had an issue before where my Apple watch had DND turned on, but it was not on my iPhone. And so it was still appearing as if I was in do not disturb mode across different systems. So that's just something to be aware of that sometimes it's just a matter of toggling that off and on to kind of kick the server and say, Hey, I'm out of D N D, but sometimes it's a matter of, one of your devices somewhere is still reporting to the system that you are and do not disturb mode.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:14):
So if you use share cross devices, make sure that's toggled on across all of your different devices when you decide to turn it off. So that, that way all of them get told I'm no longer in do not disturb because it could be that there's some iPad somewhere that's in, do not disturb that's then telling everything else, Hey, he's still in, do not disturb. That's why you aren't being able to reach him. So check that out. And then as far as auto answering calls there are some features in iOS, and I don't remember where they are. I don't know if you know, off the top of your head, Chris, but there is I believe it's an accessibility feature that lets you automatically answer phone calls based on if you have Bluetooth headphones turned in and what I'm thinking Daniel is that your phone may have still been registering that you had your Bluetooth headphones in. And because of that, then it was going ahead and auto answering the call when you were making use of it. But I'm, I'm checking through the settings right now. I,

Christopher Lawley (01:00:16):
I have it right here. It's accessibility touch mm-hmm <affirmative> and then scroll down to the bottom second to the last option, call auto O call audio routing, and then there's auto answer. There's, there's an option for automatic Bluetooth headset speakers, but there's an option there that says autos answer calls and just make sure that's off. And that's, that's probably it right there.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:38):
Absolutely. So yes, that is a really good thing. And then in that way, you're also making sure that it is also not going to turn that on. Whenever, you know, you just have Bluetooth headphones or when it thinks that you might have Bluetooth headphones in. So Daniel, I hope that helps that was quite a bit of info to take in, but again, we'll include some links in the show notes to help you out with that. And then there is one more that we'll cover today from I'm going to pronounce it whale. Whale writes in, hi, I'm newish to iPhone and I'm wondering what's the best way to unlock my phone. Let's say you're in an app and you lock the screen, but when you want to unlock it, there's someone next to you and you don't want them to see that app open, like say a game at work.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:26):
Oh, sorry. Hey bosses who are watching this or listening, just, just plug your ears for a second or turn around, count down from five and then you can come back. <Laugh> okay. They're gone. Now. I can say like a game at work, like playing a game at work. Okay. Everybody's back. What is the best way to go about that? What I do is I go to the cam, this is still whale, not me. What I do is I go to the camera app on the lock screen and then unlock. Is there a more elegant way to go about this? Honestly, I had never even heard of anyone doing this in the first place. So this is kind of like this suggestion is really interesting to be that you could just have the camera be the way to do that. Do, do you know of any other way to like obscure what you're looking at on the, on the phone?

Christopher Lawley (01:02:08):
So I, I am the perfect question to ask this question to because I worked in corporate America for almost 10 years and have left and now I'm self-employed so I don't mind giving away any of my secrets anymore because I, I, I am totally fine. Sticking it to corporate America. I'm just quick on the draw and you gotta practice this. So you take your iPhone and you unlock it. But as it's unlocking, you flick up again from the bottom. If you have a home button, one, you can, you can just double tap and it'll go into the, the multitasking deal. But like, you just gotta be quick and, and practice it a few times. But if you're just quick on the draw, they won't see it. It'll just because when, when apps close, they go into a suspended state. And a lot of times they have just like a, a static image and like, it's just nothing like, oh, well, like you, you didn't really see anything. So I'm just, I'm just quick on the flick, but the camera app idea, that's actually good too. Like, oh, oops, I opened the camera. Let me just, you know, go home. And that's, that's smart too.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:06):
Yeah, I like that idea. I, I guess the one thing, the one thing I would worry about in any situation is that the locking the screen could, if you're playing a high high performance game, it could not get out of memory. And so you may end up, you know, not, not leaving off where you were. And that's going to be the case whale, no matter what, you know, just by locking the screen in general, you risk that. So there's nothing to really solve for that. But I like that flick flick idea. Or even as you said, go into the camera, I don't think there's a more elegant way to do it.

Christopher Lawley (01:03:43):
<Laugh> yeah, I don't, I can't think of anything. Maybe you could, oh, I wonder if you had a shortcut, you could put a sh I would have to test this. I literally just thought of this, but you could make a shortcut that says go uses the, go to home screen action, put the shortcuts widget on in the today view. So you can swipe over and then hit that. That might work. I, but I haven't tested that. That could theoretically work.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:07):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll have to, you'll have to give that a go and let us know. Well, all right. And with that, it is time for app caps. This is the part of the show where we wear caps a top hour heads to honor our app or gadget picks of the week. These are the apps or gadgets we are using that we want to share with all of you. And that we want to celebrate by wearing caps. A top hour heads as is usual. We will start by having Christopher describe the cap at top, his head for our listeners out there. And then tell us about your app cap. Christopher, take it away.

Christopher Lawley (01:04:51):
When Rosemary mentioned this part, I was like, oh, I have the perfect hat for this. So at WWDC this year, I, I got to attend the keynote in person. I was one of the few lucky media peoples, very excited to go, but Apple gave everyone a hat and it might be kind of hard to see on video. So let me see if I can tilt down. There is a swift emblem right here. Swift is one of the programming languages, iOS watch OS iPad, OS Mac OS apps is written in. So it's like, oh, this is the perfect hat for this. So swift hat, swift air it's black on black. So it's kind of hard to see, but yeah. Yeah. Good WWDC hat. Perfect.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:28):
Yeah. It's very good. Very good. So along with the celebration of WWD, she tell us about your app cap.

Christopher Lawley (01:05:38):
Yeah. So I tried to figure out like an app, you know, one that maybe Rosemary hasn't covered or Micah hasn't covered something that, that was kind of unique to me. And I came up with Luma fusion for about four years when I I've like Mike has said at the top of the show, I'm YouTuber, I've been doing YouTube for a little over five years now for four years, I edited all of my videos from Luma fusion on my iPad. It is a multitrack video editor. It started off by supporting three video tracks and three audio tracks. And now I believe it's up to six video tracks and six, six audio tracks. You could do all sorts of different things like Chrome, key green screen, audio effects, VI visual effects, titles ripple edits, all sorts of really cool stuff.

Christopher Lawley (01:06:24):
And it's only $30, which may sound like a lot for an iPad app or an iPhone app. But when you kind of get into the realm of multi-track video editors, you're typically looking at $300, like that's what final cut costs. Or if you go into something like avid or premier, you're gonna be looking at subscriptions and all sorts of licensing things. So for $30 you get a pretty advanced video editor. Now I had some issues with it. If, if you've followed my YouTube channel in the past, I, I had some issues with it because I pushed it a little too far than what the app and what iPad OS at the time could handle. But what's really exciting is with iPad OS 16 apps are now able to use up to 16 gigs of memory. And there is now virtual memory swap, meaning it can use empty storage space and basically convert that into Ram.

Christopher Lawley (01:07:16):
So with that, I've been testing Lumo fusion again, and all the issues that I had in the past seem to be solved by this. So I'm very excited to kind of give this a go again. I still have beta the beta on my iPad, beta one on the iPad. So I'm not using it as my production machine right now, but I am very excited as things start as bugs, start to smooth out system bugs. I I'm definitely gonna use it more and more, but I'm very excited to see that like the performance of the iPad has been unlocked and that this app can really take advantage of it. Like I said, I used it for four years. I added like 200 something videos O with it. Yeah, it's, it's very good. If you're looking for even just a casual VI video editor if you're just looking to splice some clips together, it does a really good job at like taking care of a lot of the settings automatically. So you don't need to know if your clips are 10 bed or eight bid or 4, 2, 2 or 4, 2, 0, or 4k or 10 ADP, or he VC or EG four. Like you don't need to know any of that. It takes care of all that. But if you do know that you can really get into the settings and, and tweak it to make it what you want it to be. So I highly recommend it as a video editor.

Mikah Sargent (01:08:24):
Nice. That is a really good tip, a really good app worth checking out. I think I have it on my iPad as well. I haven't done a whole lot of video editing editing as of late, but I really do like editing on the iPad versus my, I was editing on my Intel Mac and that thing sometimes just got so hot and chugged a along that's a heater, just something, yeah, something really nice about editing on the iPad and this, that smoothness of kind of working with the footage. The app that I, oh, the cap top of my head is a hat from the red hat conference. One of our former colleagues went, or I think it was her husband who went to the red hat conference and he brought back two of these red hat caps one for being one for Leo.

Mikah Sargent (01:09:08):
And so, yes, that's the one I'm wearing today. It's a bright red cap that says red hat on the side. And the app that I wanna talk about is called land drop capital L capital a capital land drop. And the reason I wanna talk about this is actually two reasons one, because it's awesome. But two, because we got a call on the radio show last Saturday for someone who used to use an app where they were able to essentially airdrop between their iOS device and their windows machine. And then that app went away. And so they were looking for something and there is a free and open source app called land drop that will let you achieve file sharing super simply between Mac, a PC, an iPhone, an Android it's, it's on Linux, it's everywhere. So very awesome stuff.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:01):
And I'll show you I have here this is my windows machine Elvis, and this is just a, a folder within the app or excuse me, folder on the desktop of it. And I have land drop open on my iPhone. And in fact, I think I can show you that as well. Let me see if I can't just go ahead and add that somewhere. There it is very small, so let me make this bigger. And so now you can kind of see, this is my iPhone here, and I've got some different files. And so what I will do is just choose this top file and maybe, and choose open, and then you'll see that it says, oops my windows machine went to sleep. It says it says that that file is selected. The, the name of this device's iPhone.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:53):
And it shows down here the devices that I can actually send to, I want to send to Elvis, which is the name of this windows machine. And so I'll tap on that and then it's going to send it, but you'll see that it pops up a code 5, 5, 6 2 5 1. And I need to confirm that on the windows machine, and it shows the same code 5, 5, 6, 2 5 1, I choose. Yes. And then, boom, it's already sent the text file. It's done. It's there. That little loading bar will disappear. I could do the same. I'll hide the iPhone now, just so you can see the windows machine. I could do the same from the windows machine to my iPhone by choosing land drop and write, clicking on it and choose, send files. I will drag the, this image here to that, and then I will choose send, and you'll see that iPhone is shown here.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:43):
If I had other ones popped up, I could get to those as well. I'll choose send. And then it says on my iPhone receiving, and if we've got codes again, and I say, yes, I want to receive that file. And then it will pop open that file for me and automatically add it to a section of the app called files. You see that that's a little bit slower going from the windows machine over. And now I've got, what I love is that on my iPhone, I've got an option here that says, do you wanna allow access to all of these photos? That means that land drop is smart enough to know that this is a photo and automatically add it to my photo library, as opposed to adding it to it has a temporary storage space that are for files so that you can properly save them out to where you want to.

Mikah Sargent (01:12:27):
So this will just automatically add that photo to my photo library. And again, this is between a windows machine and an iPhone where in the past, I would rather have to use the weird Bluetooth sharing that is garbage, where you have to like go into a bunch of settings and set it up. Or I would use one drive, which I don't use regularly as a way to move files in between these two places with this. I've got a simple app where I can get to the files that I want to, and be able to share those back in no time at all in no time flat. And this works, as I said, it's cross platform across so many different devices it's free and open source. It's incredible land drop for anyone who's trying to share files between different devices on their own network.

Mikah Sargent (01:13:14):
This cross platform app is just so amazing and yes no worries about compression. So you're, you know, if you're uploading photos and videos, it's not gonna compress them before it sends them or anything like that. It's just gonna send them right out and be just as you expect them to be the OG files. So check out land drop it's well, I mean, it's, it's free, so absolutely it's worth it to, to get and be able to share files between your different devices. With that. We've reached the end of this episode of iOS today. You can head to, or you can email us@iostwi.tv. That's where you go. If you want to share feedback, if you have questions, if you have shortcuts corner requests, that's the best way to get them to us. You can also tweet at us if you'd like, but honestly, iOS today@twi.tv, that's your go to spot.

Mikah Sargent (01:14:01):
If you would like to tune in and watch the show live, we do record the show live every Tuesday at 12:00 PM. Eastern 9:00 AM Pacific. We get lots of fun folks tuning in and chatting with us in the IRC and also on the discord, which I'll talk about in a second. But it is an awesome way to watch the show twit, do TV slash live, where we have all the different places we're live on YouTube, on Twitch, et cetera. And we think that the best way to get the show, even though if you wanna watch it live, see all the flubs and BLS we make the best way to get the show is by getting the final package, which you can do by going to twit.tv/ios, where you'll see links to subscribe to audio or video, you just click, subscribe to audio or subscribe to video.

Mikah Sargent (01:14:41):
You choose Google podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, basically all those different places. We try to be where you are and you can get the show that way. And I'll briefly mention club TWI. I did talk about that discord there for a second. If you would like to support our show directly then we have a way for you to do that. You go to twit.tv/club TWI, and for seven bucks a month, you can be a member of club twit. What does that get you? Well, instead of listening to ads, as the way to pay for the content you are paying for the content directly. So you get a complete ad free experience. That means that you'll get all of the shows ad free. You'll also get access to the TWI plus bonus feed that has extra content. You won't find anywhere else before the show, after the show behind the scenes, all sorts of fun stuff and access to the club, TWI discord.

Mikah Sargent (01:15:27):
That is the place where you can go to chat with your fellow club, twit members. And also those of us here at twit, Rosemary orchard is one of the most active people in the club, TWI discord. So it's a great place to go to, to hang out with her and get questions answered twit.tv/club TWI, to support our shows and make it possible for us to do fun stuff. We've got a few announcements coming up for new things that are happening that I can't talk about just yet, but club TWI is making them possible. And now it is time for Christopher lo to tell us where folks can go to find you online.

Christopher Lawley (01:16:02):
Yes. Line. Yes. if you're interested in iPad apps, productivity, shortcut stuff, you can find me on YouTube at Christopher lolli. That's L a w L E Y. It's. It's the one that talks about the iPad, not the folk singer, actually. I don't know if he's still on there, but there literally was a Christopher lolli, same spelling on YouTube for the longest time. Oh, wow. There's also a folk folk singer. So that that's been my ongoing joke for years now and I should probably stop it. But yeah, you could see me there, or if you wanna follow me on Twitter, I'm Chris underscore lolli. My website has links to everything. That's the untitled.site. Thank

Mikah Sargent (01:16:38):
You. Awesome. Thank you, Chris so much for joining us today. I just appreciate it so much that you took the time out to be here. Fantastic show really loved having you. We'll definitely have you back on in the future. And until next time I hope all of you enjoyed today's show that you found out what you can expect and watch us nine. Very excited for that. We or I, and Rosemary will see you for the next episode of iOS today. Goodbye,

Christopher Lawley (01:17:05):
Bye. The world is changing rapidly.

Jason Howell (01:17:08):
So in fact that it's hard to keep up. That's why Mica Sergeant and I, Jason Howell, talk with the people, making and breaking the tech news on tech news weekly. Every Thursday. They know these stories better than anyone. So why not get them to talk about it in their own words, subscribe to tech news weekly, and you won't miss a beat every thursday@twit.tv.