9to5Mac Overtime 026 - I hope this message finds you well

Introduction [Music] throt throttling you I guess no not yet you think so I mean we're on M4 now I M1 Apple Silicon starting to show its age? mean not on the MacBook side but the M4 is out now yeah but the M1 Max still seems so new it does I mean what was it 2020 was it 2020 2020 was definitely the M1 MacBook Air I remember and then maybe maybe 21 but I mean yeah it's been 3 years if you think about it uh yeah that's true that's pretty old but it still seems so capable it still seems so new and it still seems so uh pointless to upgrade for me personally I agree like and I'm not usually one of those people I'm usually one of the people that are quick to upgrade but it's just like yeah I don't really see a huge difference that it will make going from this machine to an M3 not really no yeah probably not like I know so my brother has a Intel 2017 MacBook Pro sorry sorry you ain't H them up yet what is that's what I was thinking I was like I got to get this guy like a M2 MacBook Air is the 13inch ones they're like 800 bucks right now you got your brother using an Intel Mac and and it was a hand me- down too from a from my middle brother so he's the youngest one and he was he was telling me yesterday yesterday he's like dude I want to go open up like Outlook cuz he uses Outlook it took 5 minutes for it to open and I was like yeah it's time what are you doing man like we got we got to hook the kid up we got to hook the kid up maybe we'll do something we'll do something for him oh man but uh New Siri in iOS 18.1 but let's turn it back to to iOS 18.1 and iPad OS what what are what are your thoughts on on the update I know it's kind of limited and how they released it and the feature set but what do you think I mean it's it's cool like Siri got the upgrade to the the visual upgrade finally and it is weird um that only the iPhone 15 Pro gets that yeah um so it's like kind of odd but I do I think the like the visual the visual look of it is pretty cool and the fact I like that you can tap the home indicator and start typing to Siri and vice versa MH um Siri's got a nice nice little upgrade there so you can also it's able to understand like when you have like when you're you're talking and you're asking Siri something you kind of mess up and you're trying to correct yourself previously Siri would go with the last thing you said or the first thing you said and not kind of just ignore everything else when you try to correct it now in uh 18.1 it actually is kind of it knows when you're you're trying to correct what you are saying so it's it's more forgiving and it's it's detection of your voice now like I saw the example you said it was uh was it that the temperature thing where like you ask the weather from one city and then you're like oh wait never mind what's the temperature in this city and then it gave you the the right one yeah which is cool so it's be getting it's getting a little bit more uh conversational organic I guess maybe it's able to understand what's going on and then obviously there's context rules now or context cues I can take and understand that's still a little iffy for me I I know I don't I don't get that because Siri could have contextual support before right like it it's not yeah it was pretty basic but yeah yeah I guess improved yeah but even then I think the most for series specifically we'll get into like the the writing tools a little bit later but for series specifically aside from maybe like the the catalog of how-tos that Apple kind of put on device or something like that yeah it it really hasn't changed at all compared to 1 it's got the sick animation very cool and if you notice with the animation cuz previously when you pull up Siri on your phone the little ball show shows up and it basically BL like you can't interact with the rest of the phone until you leave that but if you notice with the new animation you can still interact with the phone's UI behind it dude I did not notice that I was able to like like a YouTube video that I was watching while I was asking Siri something and I did that an accident I was like oh wait I can still interact with everything huh so that is true like you can swipe I'm swiping on the home screen and wow that's a good operation Siri still yeah with Siri still talking or listening see that's the type of thing the old Jeff would have recognized would up like it's stuff like little details like that I feel like my brain is just not sharp yeah like I would have definitely picked that up if it was like four years ago I would have been like I would have been own that that would have been like one of the things I highlighted oh we could still interact with it now I'm like oh you do that it's just like the cognitive you can just slowly see the slow decline that's why we need this new Siri you know keep us on our toes yeah but yeah but I thought that little piece was cool but functionally Siri right now is the same so I got an email from somebody asking if they should update to 18.1 for right now hold off it's really not worth it uh unless you really want to see re animation um but yeah for right now I would say hold off uh I mean if you're already running the beta you think they should hold off I guess yeah if they're already on 18.0 beta then I guess just jump in cuz you've already made your decision yeah but if you're if you're like oh I really want to try Apple intelligence early cuz 18.1 won't release until like October probably you know maybe hold off still 17 yeah it's missing everything yeah in my opinion yeah like the the Siri is it's the same assistant that was on 17 it's same functionally right uh it's just you got a new coat of paint pretty much and a little bit of different features you you could still uh because I do like the double tap on the little home bar to be able to text Siri but you you were able to text Siri before right if I'm not mistaken you could tap type to Siri but you would have to just actually enable it in accessibility settings and then it was like either or like you you either typed a Siri or you talked a Siri like it wasn't I don't think you can enter change between the two weird thing to me though is that that the whole tapping the home indicator it's so hidden like how would any normal person know to do that yeah no and they didn't even talk about it it was just kind of like a feature that started happening I will say it it was it's easy like once you know that you can do it it's easy to like find it even though it's not visible I thought it'd be a little harder from like a thumb placement standpoint but it knows pretty much every single time that you want to double tap it which is cool but like I said it's so hidden like you don't you don't know it's a feature until you do it cuz I mean Siri is cool man people's phones are going to just be going crazy in this episode hey we're not we're not saying the greeting oh I guess you can you don't need to do the greeting rightor everybody going going nuts um so so the other things other features in 18.1 one of the big ones was Apple Intelligence Writing Tools the writing tools mhm what did you think about that uh I thought it was cool I think it's going to get better over time I'm I'm a big uh I was already using chat GPT to help proof read stuff and kind of help things sound more professional when sending an email or or like the friendly aspect of it so I was already doing that so in my opinion it is a positive thing because it's reducing steps for me to be able to do that I don't have to like leave it go to a different application copy paste whatever so I kind of like it I do think it's going to get better over time because right now the outputs uh I guess they aren't great they're getting right maybe I'm mistaken or depending on what I'm kind of summarizing and things like that but overall I like it they're they're decent yeah they're decent is so is what model is it using do you know is that using I have no idea yeah I'm kind of I don't I wonder what it's trained on apparently it's TR on YouTube videos no but I mean there's still as of right now there's no chat GPT integration right so it's got to be doing is it its own model is it its own maybe intelligence version of it I don't know I don't know answer here that question if you know let us know in the comments because I don't please do um so that that is cool it's nice that you can access that from basically anywhere uh even third party apps it's in the copy paste it's it too is a little hidden though like to me yeah it's like there should be a better way to do this but I don't know if there is I think if you if you're in a native Apple app and this could have been something that was just again 18.1 if you highlight a certain paragraph or text or whatever on the toolbar of the keyboard you know like right above the keyboard a little apple AI logo pops up dude why why did I do the you should be doing my I'm I'm I'm done and this is this is on iPad Fernando is now the emperor call me call me Fern Benjamin yeah call him Fernando Benjamin because this dude is you're cooking man what why am I missing all these things so you're saying that there is a I think so let me double check on that yep you're right you're right you're hold on no yeah you're right there's like oh I did not even notice that wow miss that it says proofread rewrite and then there's Apple intelligence icon yeah yeah that's what it was there we go so I wasn't going crazy yeah I was like summarizing some something I was summarizing something like random and then I just like highlighted it all and it worked and I was like oh okay cool I need to start watching Fernando's videos more because yeah subscribe to the channel you know yeah really this is pathetic man so I I I think I did see that Apple intelligence icon but for some reason excuse me for some reason I just thought oh that's just an emoji like Emoji suggestion oh yeah I just ignored it but yeah duh um so that's a much better way to do that yeah so now again I think it only works in Native applications so if you go off into like something else I could be wrong no but here's the thing I was in Native applications when I was testing this so there's that's funny but yeah that's one way to get it going but then if you're just highlighting something and your keyboard isn't up then you do have to do the you have to like press a little right button pass the formatting it's like it is hard to find you know yeah well we have a a title for this episode Fernando Benjamin that's the title just just the I'm writing that down right now morph into one that's funny but uh but you know I think the proof the proofread part of it is my in my opinion the best one because it does proofread it nicely from like it fixes all your grammatical errors yeah and then the other like the friendly professional all the other ones I think still need a little bit of work definitely yeah it was weird especially professional it just used it just Tred to use big words yeah like big polite words and it repeated the same words and it was just weird so but again very much work in progress this is obviously a beta and I think it's a very good first step but there are other things that Mail and Messages summaries this this beta brought to the table that I thought was really cool one of my favorite things are the summaries that you get in mail and especially messages I don't know that is the messages summaries are awesome because have you ever got like a yeah like in your iMessage yeah you don't get that like on the lock screen so when someone sends you a barrage of text messages it summarizes them in one little box on the home on the lock screen right okay so it's like someone's set send you just a whole bunch of random things it'll summarize that in one like paragraph for you oh see I didn't even notice that one I did notice a little the new little icon I guess that little reply reply looking thing or forward looking thing but I didn't know suiz I guess people aren't sending me long messages like that quite yet yeah yeah that could be what it is because like I got a barrage of messages from somebody and it was like it was like a sentence and it basically just outlined everything in that message and I'm like oh I just quickly look at it that is so clutch yeah uh that's and the the thing the same thing in email uh in the preview of the email previously it would just show the first four lines of the whatever the email was but now it summarizes is that so that's super super handy see see you're back dude you're back cuz I didn't even notice that I I didn't know I didn't know that it was a I'm looking at an email right now in the mail app and yeah I'm get I get this like newsletter about like finances whatever whatever and yeah it's summarizes it in one one line like what this person is talking about I thought it was just I thought it was still showing the preview but no this is a su a summarized sentence which is much more handy than the preview right cuz they like a lot of times it'll they'll be like I hope this message is finding you well blah blah blah blah blah I'm like dude just tell me what you want and and that's what this does it'll just I'm not trying to be rude I do like when people say that actually it makes me feel good I hope this message find you well it makes me feel good like I am not well but thank you U but yeah so so that's a really that's a clutch feature to me like both of those the summaries and you can also invoke the summary of the entire email in the mail app uh within the email as well so that's cool Using Apple's iCloud Plus custom e-mail domain feature are you a native Apple Mail app user interesting you asked that because um well I am a native Apple Mail user and I am also recently a native iCloud domain user so I moved my two domains over from Google workspace over to iCloud and I do need to do a post and video on that because last time I did that it was pretty people liked it so and I also need to do a post on my experience with it like what is it like so you have a like an at me or whatever or a do me no it's using it's using my actual domain remember you can in iCloud plus you can now move your own domains over to iCloud so it'll be hosted and the benefit of that is that you get push email which you didn't get before so you get instant emails to your domain so you what is your I mean is it Jeff Benjamin uh Jeff atbn jm. org okay okay so now that instead of living like you said on Google it's not living on iCloud yep and then interesting the nice thing is that you like if somebody emails you previously you would just it would just fetch right so it would be like every 10 minutes because go there's no push support there there used to be a workaround of that there's no longer a workaround for that I don't believe using Microsoft exchange for some weird little thing but now so when I get an email it's instantly I get instantly notified because it's push it's real push so that's the only way to get real push notifications from Apple Mail is if you're using an iCloud email or if you have your domain on the iCloud or no I there may be some like active sync workarounds with Microsoft Exchange it's been so long since that there used to be a way to do that but to my knowledge I don't think so I think it's always fetch uh unless you're using like um what is Microsoft's exchange yeah and I don't even know if that still does that it may but I'm just don't know but yeah that's the only way to get like a Gmail uh or a a Google or not Google the only way to get get like if you were using a a Google account or a if you had your stuff hosted on Google workspace man the zpack is yeah the zpack is King if you have to have hosted on Google workspace uh you wouldn't it would just be fetch basically so now since I moved everything over I get those emails instantly which I mean it's not a big deal but it's kind of nice to just know like when receive an email I get it you know yeah yeah so definitely make a video on that cuz that sounds like it's super beneficial cuz I'm I'm not a native Apple Mail user I download I've redownloaded it just to play with the summarized stuff but I use Gmail like the app well well the benefit of Gmail is you get instant emails right yeah that's that's the benefit like you wouldn't get that if you had those in the mail app um like I switched to the mail app very briefly when 18.0 beta came out because I wanted the dark icon and Gmail hadn't done it yet but then the moment beta 2 came out Gmail had the dark icon and I went right back to Gmail because I I just it was too and and it to even go farther into this update this the mail update hasn't come out yet like the prioritized email like the PRI inboxes which is something they promis with 18 so the pr email I do have um oh you do have it yeah like I like it's it's there like I don't really want to show all my stuff on the screen I do have a little box at the top says priority and then it outlines the priority emails okay interesting I don't have that I wonder may maybe I just don't get enough important emails and most of them are all like let me tell you who they are actually um bills bills uh Etsy um ni that's pretty much it Photos app AI-assisted memory videos so what else was there in in 18.1 I mean it was pretty AI focused but again not much of it there was the memories thing the memories thing where you could uh in the photo app you could put in like a and that is sort of aiish I mean where you could type a string and it would create a video for you based off that string using your content because that's also something again I tried it early but I couldn't get it to work it kept saying like it was processing my photo library of like 30,000 images which is crazy that's another thing iCloud like Photo management that's something else we should probably touch on it's it's so hard to manage D I I I I think I mentioned this in a earlier episode but my goal is to get rid of like I want to basically download all my photos actually I did but I never got to it and then put them on a Blu-ray or something and just CU I'm my my storage is like almost at two terabytes but yeah like I want to migrate off the um the iCloud photos yeah it just takes up so much storage it ends up being like so much redundant content because like I'll take a picture on my iPhone but then I'll airdrop it to my iPad but then Photo Stream uploads like 10 minutes later so I have two versions of it on my iPad and it ends up being a mess you know know so like being able to manage all that leave a I mean I want people to leave a comment down below if they've been able to like perfect the iCloud management because that's something that I think it's still so complicated for no reason is there was there anything else nothing crazy on 18.1 again it was just getting the Apple intelligence animations going with Siri kind of starting with the with the writing tools which was the writing tools was like the one big thing that came out but in terms of on device contextual awareness like being able to read into third party apps and all that stuff it's still not available you know it won't pick it won't pick stuff up like that yet one Phone call recording thing we did Miss recording phone calls that's interesting tell us about it tell us about it h you just I mean it does what it says it does you press the button it it says hey this call will be recorded So everyone on the call knows it and it records it and it transcribes it and actually it's really cool because it will in the text transcription it'll break up the conversation so it says local speaker and then remote speaker and then local speaker like it it knows who's speaking you could of course tap that and jump right to those those those conversations I think it's weird though that it puts it in the notes app like I feel like it's just kind of weird ends up yeah so like when you start a call recording it like gives you a notification a Notes app notification huh and it's just like huh like I get why they're doing it because of the transcription aspect but just seemed like that would live within either the voicemail tab or you you know like yeah own the phone app somewhere that that part's weird to me I can't wrap my brain around that decision yeah no they they definitely should have created like a like a transcription tab in the phone app for sure yeah similar to how even even though math notes kind of intertwines with the regular notes app like the calculator has like a math notes section you know yeah exactly and it's and it's saved on the calculator app so on that r or I could have just missed it and it's there and I I'm like I said the cognitive decline yeah um so that's that's 18.1 in a nutshell folks um so again I will say my uh my phone gets pretty hot now 18.1 definitely pushes it to its limits battery life on my phone I'm not going to say it's taking a huge hit but it's a little worse as expected so again this this a beta one for a reason everybody install it at your own risk if you don't want to put it on your main device don't do it but you will you will be getting some cool animations the writing tools and some of the stuff that we mentioned nice for sure what else we have this week yeah so I'm looking at our show notes The state of Apple Arcade and Apple Vision Pro development this this article from Benjamin Mayo just kind of it was just interesting to me it's Apple arcade developers frustrated by long delays in getting paid and no incentives to make Vision Pro games interesting that's a great headline the leading complaints revolved around payment and poor communication Channels with their apple Representatives so apparently um some one developer says they have not been paid for 6 months with other Studios chasing month loan delays and getting their bonus pool royalty payments from Apple uh so these are of course Apple arcade first of all do you use apple arcade at all uh I use it I use it pretty heavily last year to play NBA 2K and then but I haven't played NBA 2K on my iPad in a while and then retro bow which is my favorite iOS game is on Apple arcade now okay but if I if I wasn't paying for apple one I would not have gone out of my way to pay $5 for Apple arcade if that makes any sense no that totally makes sense it's literally only two games that I play or even one right now what about you I do not um the only time I really use apple arcad is when I'm demonstrating something for a video like that's and I would not pay for it um I was very bullish on it when it was first announced but it's just been a big disappointment it's really not that bad I've tried a few of the games and they're okay but it's not like may maybe I'm just not the right demo for it like I'm not a big mobile gamer to begin with even if it is casual gaming again Retro Bowl is the only game that I play because a it I it doesn't require Internet to play it it's a football game like I kind of like it it's very easy but outside of there's a bunch of like cool looking games and well-rated games I'm just not somebody that gravitates towards them to begin with yeah I I can't put my finger on it either I don't think it's necessarily inherently an apple arcade issue I think it's just like you said I'm not a first of all I'm just not a big gamer period which you know I used to be back in the day but I just I don't know man it's like I just it's different now you know yeah like I feel like there's better things I could be doing right now every time I game I feel guilty like I'm like why am I I could be doing something prod like this game yeah I get to level two okay what does that mean like what tangible like benefit is that giving me and I know life isn't all about like optimizing yeah it's not all about that but gaming in particular feels like it just feel I feel guilty especially like on your phone you know if I'm like at my desk when I should be working and for some reason I pull out my phone and start playing like mobile game for like 30 minutes then yeah basically I'm like what am I doing yeah uh but I will say again I'm not a big gamer either like the last probably two or three years I've rarely gamed but college football coming out on the Xbox and Playstation the last two weeks I've been playing like two hours a night at least really see I can't even do that dude like it's just but that's that's more so for the Nostalgia and like I'm ready for football season and the game hasn't been out for 11 years I'm sure it'll dwindle you know it'll dwindle and then I'll stop playing it but that is my my uh foray into the game into the game but again if you are enjoying if that's like what you want to do to pass your time go for it you know yeah that's not a knock against Gamers at all it's just for me personally like I used to be one of the biggest Gamers like I even work for like a gaming Publications and you know covered them for work but it's just now it's like I like even I have a Nintendo switch that's the only console I have yeah mainly well there's a lot of reasons why that is but I won't go into that right now um but even that like I don't play it nearly as much as I thought I would and yeah so I don't that's what that's a long way to say I don't think it's an apple arcade thing I just think it's just me in that way but another thing that was interesting in this article was The Vision Pro comment yeah it says one developer with Vision Pro was surprised to learn that even Apple's engineer don't seem to know how the device works the technical support is awful the worst I've seen anywhere they said they're unable to offer any insights into how the hardware and software it runs on works or how essential middleware is meant to work with it wow that's a big statement that is that that's crazy that's crazy and I know it's just one dude off the Record but yeah like the like Apple's Apple should make this as easy as possible to incentivize developers to make anything for the Vision Pro you know as as much technical support as many you know hands and eyes and whatever to to like help people out in terms of how everything communicates together cuz without the games without the apps without the the network of applications The Vision Pro is just going to continue to stay where it is you know that statement makes me want to actually put my Vision Pro on eBay like because if that's the if that's the case then I mean if Apple isn't even they don't even have a clear like road map and it's clear that there's something off there because it's just like like we talked about last episode it just kind of hit and miss these random releases and stuff it just doesn't feel like there's a strategy there at all um maybe there is and we're just not seeing it but it doesn't I don't get a lot of confidence from from that statement maybe maybe they're they're taking the uh I feel like the the approach to this I mean hopefully this ends up happening is kind of like iphony where it's like they made this revolutionary product right that uh was kind of hard to understand by a lot of people especially in the beginning and developers and everything that goes along with it and then eventually it was kind of like we'll throw the iPhone and see where it goes see what happens see who ends up picking it up see Who develops for it and then eventually it Finds Its path and it's and figures out what to do maybe that's what's going to happen but I don't know it's a pretty optimistic take man pretty optimistic take I don't see way doubt yeah I don't see it that way at all like I agree that the iPhone started off slower than a lot of people remember yeah but when we saw that device it was completely clear that this was an absolute game Cher for for I mean I don't think anyone denied that aspect of it now whether but I just don't see the Vision Pro in that same I guess you're right like I would never say as cool as the experience of using the Vision Pro is I would not categorize it as like a game changer because as right now it's just like a very cool tech toy like you said Tech demo and we we've spoken about that in the past you know it's not because if it was a game changer then I would be using it every day yeah I I would be using it I wouldn't let it go weeks without use so that to me that is not a gameer at all and then the fact that there were statements like this out there that's SC it worries people yeah and I'm just like okay what's the future of this thing like yeah we have the little 4K expansion display I want to try that but at this point I'm like um I might want to just get out while the getting's good yeah we need to have we should get on a we need to find like a true day-to-day Vision Pro user that has like no affiliation with apple and get them on the podcast and talk to them I would love to see what their use cases are and also like what industry they're in what vertical they're in like how they use it for work and personal cuz I kind of want to see I want to see how people are benefiting from it if they are and what kind of demo it's benefiting yeah I I don't think this is ever going to be a mass product like I don't even think the VR headsets in general I mean is there any VR headset that you could say has Mass Appeal I don't think there's any I mean I can only name two AR VR headsets right now and it's Vision Pro and whatever meta's making I couldn't even give you the name the Oculus is it still the Oculus I don't know and even then it's not like Mass Appeal it's just like it's like a lesser game console especially on the meta side yeah and to be fair it's not like you can see the people that are using it so I'm just like if you're people have it's like saying how how prolific are VCRs or DVD players or whatever when those were popular right like you could kind of see because in hotels they were there and things like that and I guess even the VCR was more of an obvious thing because they were in places that weren't just homes but with division Pro and any headset it's just like we don't really know who's using these things they're they're all behind Clos doors and it just doesn't seem like this is ever going to be like this there's too much stigma with this big things attached to your head and the social aspect I don't think Apple has solved that they tried to with the little eyesight thing that's obviously was a failure um and I just don't think this is ever going to be a mass Market device until they look like this yeah that's what it's got to be it's got to be so easy and so uh they just got to break down the barrier and as of right now like as cool as the tech is right now it's a not socially ready and like you said maybe we'll get to the point where it is cuz even back you know 15 years ago we weren't ready for everybody to be walking with their head down on their phone like you should try walking around New York City nowadays man it's crazy everybody's just walking with their with their head down I know it's for such a loud City it's quiet out there it's sad man but yeah so I don't know I I might actually get rid of this thing dude like and I hate to do that because there are some things that are cool about it but again I just don't have a lot of confidence in it and every every week that goes by that I don't use it it's less and less confidence it's just like why am I letting this this multi thousand device just sit there yeah you get you can get N3 Max for that price yeah you know yeah yeah so anyway um what else do we have on the thing that you want to talk about anything else uh I guess we can quickly bring up The Dumb Phone app I've wrote an article this week about the Dum phone app if did you hear about that or no I did yeah yeah I thought it was a cool I thought it was a cool concept so I figured let me write about it and if have you have you have you ever heard of the Light phone like that company I actually had did a review on it 95 toys yeah and it was actually there's a ton of which version their very first one okay uh let me so now that they're I think they're going on to the third one now I've always been intrigued by the Light phone you know in like a perfect world like maybe I would I would use one right yeah um but that's essentially what this dumb phone app does to your iPhone right at least it kind of like masks it and it uses a cool combination of uh shortcuts and widgets to kind of map it and then also color matching wallpapers and essentially you download the app I think it's free to download it comes with like a 7-Day free trial and there's like a subscription service for it but you create you pick out your favorite one through six applications that you use that you use on a daily basis so I have like my phone my messages Google Maps Spotify uh even though it's supposed to help with distraction I still put X on there cuz I use it a lot but those are the apps that I had on there and then that's the only thing that's going to be on your home screen I have it the way that I personally have it set up is so I have it on a weekend Focus mode so on the weekend it does set up like that and I will say like it because it's monochrome because you don't have all the applications thrown in your face there's like a couple extra steps if I want to get to like the YouTube app or something like that it does make me use my phone less which I think is the goal of an application like that but I think that's everything for this week right we got some more stuff coming uh new iPhones or we're kind of almost an iPhone season basically we're like a month and a half away from them being announced yep uh so definitely stay tuned for we'll talk about that probably in the next episode for sure kind of hone in on some of the rumors we've seen but uh yeah round us off take us home man subscribe to the channel subscribe to our membership subscribe to our podcast but when only one of those cost so anyway but uh it was good talking to you man good catching up and we will see you guys next week let's do it peace everybody [Music]