506: The Sun Did Not Shine in Favor of Me

From Relay FM, this is Connected, Episode 506. Today's show is brought to you by Ecam, ad block pro and express VPN. I am your Ricky Benjamin, Mike Hurley, and I am introducing to you. And I am introduced to me. Hi, Federica. Hi, that's that English language took a turn for sure. We're also joined by Mr. Steven Hackett, hello, Steven. Hello, Federico, hello, Mike. Yes, it's Friday, Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday. Okay, he's

really good. He's got a squirrel on Friday. That's the energy. That's the energy today. I love it. Can we remind people about this introduction, Mike, what happened in those first few seconds? Well, I am now being officially referred to as Ricky Benjamin, because I currently hold both the keynote and annual chairmanship. So my combined title is now Benjamin, because if you have two chairs and you put them together, they become a bench.

So I am the Benjamin. And I got too excited about that. I have to say the word introducing. Okay. Yeah, Benjamin. Benjamin. Sounds like Hinds. Yeah. There's also a website for this madness. Connect at Inter.com. That is the new website where people can go to and it's actually quite a fool. Okay. Okay. Okay. You know, doing a good job of the history. Yeah. You're not doing a good. This site has been around for a long time. I never used

it. I know I put these in the show. No, it's each week. But it has been updated with our title. Now, wow. Yeah. There it is. James Thompson. There's a bunch of people on this list in the connected interest scoreboard. Currently, as of June 12, 2024, Federica has introduced the show 43 times. Mike has introduced it 216. And I've introduced it 244 times. So think about that. Boys. What is what? What am I thinking about? Just how how you're living

in my shadow once again, I met somebody at a at WBC. And the first they said to me, they introduced themselves. And they said, you're taller than I expected. Huh. They must respect you. And I said, well, you know, I'm taller than Mike. So that's all the matters. You're actually not though, but you weren't there to defend yourself. But I'm defending myself in front of everyone. Hmm. But only there was some way to know. There is a way to know.

I'm told them, okay, Federica, can you tell our listeners what you discovered? I discovered that the weird fish, a deep part, you know, like a very important part and a very deep connected lore and piece of trivia found its way in the official hero image, as well as in multiple slides of a WWDC session about the new translate API, which is actually a pretty cool technology

this year. But the thing is weird fish. Obviously the micro emoji that many years ago I mistook for, well, a weird fish is one of the characters, one of the fictional characters in this demo app that Apple put together for this session. And weird fish is a typing in this screenshot. I believe it's Japanese and the translate API is translating the text back to English. So there's not, but there's not only it's not just the the weird fish reference and

an acknowledgement. It's also the text in the translated text, weird fish wrote. The hike was great, but it was so difficult that I had to pause the podcast. And I was an experienced hiker and hiked all over Rome, London and Memphis. So obviously the person, the Apple engineer put together this session is quite the connected superfan to have this kind of reference and mention of our series. So thank you. I couldn't believe it when I saw it.

And the fact that it's like actually shown multiple times throughout the video is pretty amazing. And you know, it's a pretty pretty pretty incredible sort of nerd badge upon her if you ask me to have this sort of thing in a WWDC session. So thank you. Yeah, whoever this person is that made this, this is amazing. And we really appreciate you. And thank you for immortalizing us once again, you know. Once again, yes, that's right. So weird fish. There you go.

Do you know the episode where you came up with weird fish wasn't actually called weird fish? No, it was what was it called? The episode was called nano hippo. Yeah, episode two hundred and twelve from October 3rd, 2018 was one of this was before the game was called the Jeremy's and it was every new emoji in iOS 12.1. Whoa. And that was where the micro emoji was included there, a K a the weird fish emoji. But what I found particularly interesting about this is I googled connected relay FM weird

fish. And this was the first result. And I don't know how Google knows that. That was interesting to me. Because it's not weird fish is not referenced in the show notes or the links at all. But yet it knew that this one was the one to go for Google's. Yeah, thanks to Google too. Again, thanks. Shout out to Google. Shout out to Google from the feedback for this. Yes. So a fern of ours who remain nameless who clearly doesn't listen to our show.

First time I'd seen this person since 2019 and they wanted to see my additional tattoos. I'm like, they're like, oh, you've got a COVID tattoo. And just like, I just was like, I just kind of moved on. But clearly not listener. I do not listen to but I'm on blast. I don't want to do that because they have fans. So it was a. Oh, John come on. See, this is why he's not the true John. He is a lesser John. These are the reasons. This is one of the reasons.

But I said next to him at dinner. It was great to see everybody. Disappointing. Disappointing. Disappointed. You know that meme. The disappoint me. No. So we're at the end of WDC week. How did we watch the keynote? Steven, did you watch it with new eyes as a developer now? Like, how was that experience for you watching the keynote and like, waiting for the segment that was going to make your life more difficult or not?

It was interesting. I definitely noticed as I was taking it in like, oh gosh, there are things that I pay attention to now that maybe I didn't pay such close attention to. Like when they were talking about home screen customization, I was laser focused on what was happening and and looking through the state of the union and some other stuff later. That's where I've been focusing is some of the customization stuff. Some of the other things that that may impact the underscore family of apps.

So yeah, I definitely I didn't think about that much going into it. But definitely noticed it was happening to me. What is your what is your feeling about the stuff that was announced like the widget stuff and the theming stuff like how does it make you feel as part of the widget Smith organization? It's super exciting. Anytime Apple gives people the ability to customize their devices, it's a good thing. And like, there's a bunch of people in

masks that are like, oh, these, oh, this is all look terrible. Like it's, no, they do all look terrible. I'm one of those people that all of every single example of tinting that I've seen looks bad. Like they can think that I believe genuinely they will tweak out over the course of the day. I think so. And it might look better. But right now, I have yet to see an option that I think looks good with that. And less use something. What's sent me one?

If you put the app icons in folders, they can look good. But I think the tinting, I just, I'm not convinced on it. And it makes me wonder why because Google did a better job. And I don't know if you either of you know this. Does Apple not do like a image analysis and recommend a tint? Or is it you just always choose the color? No, they do analyze the wallpaper. I think by default. It can. And so it will suggest something you can pick from the color picker. Or there's

an eyedropper. And you can pick a color directly from your wallpaper. So there are a couple of options there. And yeah, I agree with you. Like some of them, like, it's a little rough. I think it will get better. But overall, giving people more options to customize is good. And there's lots of opportunities for developers like being able to put a control widget on the lock screen is awesome. That I mean, it's great for apps like widgets. It's also great for apps like

Obscura by our friend Ben, right? They're their camera application. Super cool stuff. They tie to the action button. They're in control center. Lots of great stuff. So yeah, I am pumped about customization and control widgets. The thing is, like, look, if you want to make your lock screen look a certain way, even if other people let me think it's ugly, that's like totally fine. Like I'm not saying that like people, look, I know how my home screen looks. I know people don't

like it, but I love it. And so like if you want all your icons to be like piercing blue, like go for it, I just hoped Apple were going to do better. Like I want to be able to not have to tint all of the icons, right? And like, so I think things might improve, especially the way Apple's done dark mode icons is a little aggressive. Like they're just going to everything that's white is black, which is like pure black. It's like, okay, we can kind of like we can maybe

dial that back a bit, you know, but hey, we'll see. They're still early. We all remember iOS 7, you know? So they changed things over the beta period. What about you, Mike? How was how was your WBC? Yeah, it was fine. We didn't record upgrade on Monday because the scheduling just didn't work out with Jason in California or me here. So I watched at home, which was fine. You know, I like watching them at home or other

and then just being at the studio. And I would say the week has it's been like a weird week, but not like a bad week, if that makes sense. Like some, you know, in the past when I've missed these things, it's been really rough. Maybe my experience in 2022 means that any WWE DCI miss will never feel as bad as that one. So like, maybe I'm scoring on like a different scale here, you know? Like being in the city where it's happening and not being able to leave your room is

like a very different experience than being at home. You did hit rock bottom with that. Yeah, I think. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's also helped by the fact that like this time of year, I am reminded of that. Like I get my photo widgets pop up and I see what was going on. Gosh, no, but when I look back at it now, there's two feelings of like one, oh boy, everything's better and two, I think it's funny now. I think the whole thing is actually a funny story. And like, is a good story to have?

Like I have a good story. I think we just don't like it's an excellent story. It's a great story. And like even now, like I get to sometimes I don't meet people at Apple PR and like, you know, we're talking and I reference it. Some people are like, wow, some people are like, oh, I know you. So, you know, it's an interesting thing that happened to me. So I guess now no matter whatever happens at WWE, it's never going to be as bad as that one. Well, no, I mean, you could still die at

WWE, WWE, but I mean, that's not a problem. Yeah, but that's not a problem to me. I got back on my death and be like, oh, no, that was a good one. Because it's already done. That's that's that makes your WWE see worse. If you die at WBC, do you die in real life? Definitely, definitely, because I got COVID in real life. So I carried that for months. So I know that if something happens

at WWE, it will continue. But I didn't get it at WWE, but I had it, I tested positive during WWE, but yeah, so that, you know, really as well this week, it looked fun, but I think it helped for me that like, a bunch of people weren't there, right? So like, Federico isn't there too. So, you know, if I was home and then like you two were together, it would have made me feel sadder, you know, because then I'd feel left out. Steven, you were left out. You should have come and stayed

with us or something. I know. No press invite for me, which was a bummer. I got him. Yeah, since 2019, but not this time. The sun did not shine and favor upon me. That's a beautiful way to say to your wife. No, no, I felt it first, but I've come around to it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was a different choice. Well, choices, I think. I believe it was a slightly different tone, but it was disappointing. You can pull anything I am seeing now. It's not

shine upon the eye. You spent a couple days in California, everything feels better. That's true. Avocado. Did you all hear what happened to Dan Morn? Yes. Okay. So if listeners aren't familiar with this, you haven't heard them. Maybe I think you talked about in the Six Colors podcast. He was taking a photo during the keynote and dropped his phone on his MacBook Air and destroyed the screen of his laptop. And I was in my hotel room

in Cupertino, all my friends were out keynoting together. And I got a lot of text messages, like a bunch of group threads, a bunch of slack stuff. Like you won't believe it happened to Dan. So rest in peace. But this feels like a very Dan Morn thing to have happened. It kind of does. This really does. This really feels like something that would have like if somebody told me this story and was like, who did that happen to Dan would be very high. Are we sure this was not staged?

Are we absolutely sure? If you do it for the tips of the likes. Yeah. I mean, it's talked about it on the podcast and people are talking about Dan. Are we sure it's not staged? He's like Mike got so much mileage out of getting COVID that year. Maybe I should destroy my laptop. You know, yeah, why not? Maybe we need to look into this. We need to look into this. Jason in the discord says Casey would be the top of that list. Yes. Casey would be number one.

I yes, if somebody said me that Casey would be number one down would probably be number two. But yeah, I would immediately think that Casey did that. Yeah. It's all Casey too. It's great. We had a company dinner. It was very nice without y'all. The which was sad. Yeah. What beta is over you running? If any? All of them. I'm running an iPad OS on my iPad mini because it's not being used. I figured why not. And I put Vision OS to my vision, bro. Same. It feels like your theory would be

the riskiest. But I think it's actually probably the most stable would be my assumption because they didn't do lots of changes. And I'm loving it. Vision OS 2 is fantastic because there's I love the new ingestures. They're really grateful. I access and the home screen and control center and stuff. You can say they're fantastic. I could I wouldn't. I wouldn't say why? But I could have said that.

I like the new environment. The beach environment is really good. Uh, Boro Boro and they've added profiles to Safari, which means I can use Safari, which is always good to be able to effectively use your web browser. I only took a year. I only took a year from when Safari profiles were announced. But now I can finally use my web browser effectively. But yeah, I think overall it's it's it's actually very solid. I mean, I said this in other shows, but like it's not

like what you think of as a vision OS 2. But it is a lot of really good quality of life improvements for vision OS. So it's nice. It's very nice. Yeah, I have, uh, I guess all the betas accept for TV OS and macOS. I put watch watch watch 11 on my watch, iOS on my phone, iPadOS on my iPad Pro, and uh, yeah, and visual as my vision, uh, vision as to my vision pro. Uh, it must be in your experience so far with iOS and iPadOS. Uh, pretty stable on, uh, on overall, we just a couple of things

that I want to point out on the iPhone. Um, spotlight doesn't work quite well. Like sometimes it just doesn't find apps or it gets stuck. Um, it's missing its intelligence. It's missing things that spotlight a lobotomy. And you got a lot for a few months. Let me put the thing back in. Spotlight doesn't know what to do at the moment. Um, or literally, uh, I'm going to talk about this on app stories literally every single one, like all of them of my things shortcuts and automations,

all of them broke because of some, um, so that was like my reaction. Oh no. And then I realized, well, the way I designed these shortcuts, I can actually just swap the things actions with the reminders actions. And I'm going to have a functional task manager again. So that's what I did. Um, do you know why this happened? Have they like changed something in shortcuts? Like, I think it's a, um, I don't know. I don't know. Uh, this thing's actions. It's not the first

time they break in shortcuts. It also happened a couple of months, a month ago in 17 point something. So I don't know. But yeah, um, I wanted to test reminders anyway because of my review and the calendar integration plus the fact that all of my shortcuts broke, you know, pretty good excuse to do so. And on the iPad, um, which I'm using right now, at the moment, the external monitor support

is using all the wrong size classes for, uh, sidebar based apps. So for example, right now, files, which has implemented the new top bar design in iPad OS 18, um, and it actually implemented that design better than, for example, the books app, uh, in the new files, you have the top bar at the top. But if you don't want to use it, you can press a button and you switch back to a sidebar like an iPad S 17. And that works well on the iPad display on an external monitor, uh, basically

iPad OS is always convinced that the window is too small. And so it doesn't show me the sidebar and the contents of the window at the same time anymore. When you show the sidebar, it, uh, it like it takes, so it becomes like, it becomes like a model thing. And, uh, yeah. So the size doesn't even understand how that could happen. I have a, like, such a weird thing to happen. So yeah, external monitor support on the iPad is kind of glitchy right now, but overall,

pretty okay, I would say. And you know, this beta is, they have, Apple I think has done a pretty good job over the years making beta one relatively functional overall. Yeah. You know, like it used to be much worse. It used to be so bad. It used to be very bad. Bad. Like some of them, like, you know, obviously, obviously the classic was iOS 7, right? Like for many reasons that one will always be the worst one. The best thing is I think Stephen put out

on his iPhone. We're at WWE DC. And I remember him losing like 1% of battery life a minute on his phone. It was incredible. When it was just doing nothing. I was seven, baby. That was the best. That was the best one. There'll never be a better one for the little wrong reasons. But like, you know, I think now they know people are going to use it. And I think it's beneficial for everyone if they can kind of just get it to a point where it's runable. And I think that's why

we see fewer features in beta one, right? But like, not everything is in beta one. And that tends to be the way that they do things, right? Because they're giving some stuff a little bit more time in the album before they put it in. Maybe. So for me, beta wise, I have iOS and watch OS on my underscore devices. What are they? What devices are they? Well, funny. You asked that. I got a slap underscore's credit card right on the Apple store table this week. So because the only watch

I had floating around was a series five. And that got kicked out this year from system requirements. Because my other watches have gone to family members or sold or whatever. And so I've got a series nine Apple watch. And my data phone was an iPhone 12. And so also have an iPhone 15 pro. Isn't my beta. So you pour an Apple watch series nine and an iPhone 15 pro with David's money. Yeah, it was awesome. With widget bugs. Widget bugs. Yeah. That's pretty great. That's pretty great.

So my plan this afternoon is to install Vision OS 2. Mike, everything you said is what I've heard from everybody. Like the features are great. It's really stable. And so I will do that. And I want to at some point get on a call with somebody because apparently the spatial personas can interact more, like this bump in high five more easily. Yeah. Me and Jason had a call the other day. And it the hands and more like there's more going on in hands. Like it looks more realistic.

People's hands and arms. Just an update that I'm sure you all want to know. My mouth still does not move. Oh, no. But you can customize glasses now. So you know, we're getting there piece by piece where glasses now my persona, do they have temples or they still like the matrix glasses? I think they have I think they have temples. I think so. Because they used to not and they they were doing that. Thanks some of them. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that they have.

Did I tell you all this? Okay. I'm going to be. It's not important. I was in a meeting with somebody and they pulled some reading glasses out and they were matrix glasses. Just like clipped on the nose. No temples. Oh, wow. No, wait. Hang on a second. So you were meeting with someone. Yes. You should tell her who that is. You're going to keep that trend going today. You want to know that they they put glasses just like and they were just resting on their nose.

Yes. They were like the glasses that Morpheus wears where they just like clip on the nose. No, that is think it's possible that this person would just they forgot their real glasses and they would just put in their clip ons on. I don't know. I'm going to keep an eye out next time I see them with reading glasses on. Interesting. Why would you have these if you didn't want them? I mean, you know, maybe they were from the 1830s or something. They were from the

it was Casey. No, it wasn't. No one on the internet. They still can't they still can't deal with bits and the stars. But they're they've made some improvements to the to the person. So yeah, I will I'll do vision of us to here soon. I have not played with iPad OS that I'll probably do that just some point later in the summer. What about so cool? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Why have they done this again? Why did they why did they just keep picking things

that are impossible to spell? See, I know. I know. Already. Why does everybody think it's difficult? It's so easy. So yeah. So cool. Yeah. It's so cool. Yeah. No, to spell not to say to spell. You remember you can just like no problem. Remember the order of the use the O's. Absolutely. Absolutely. Wow. Then look, I'm the one who's wrong. All right, but I can't I can't do it. I don't know what order they go in. Okay. There's every vowel in this word though. Just fun. Yeah.

Yeah. I know it because it's a toy to SUV. So I know that context. Federica, why do you note just like no? Is that is it like that? They tell you the Italian word is literally the same with it. Obviously, the different pronunciation. Sequoia. It's more open. Do you have Sequoia trees in Italy? No, but no, we don't. But it's pretty easy. The O always go after the always goes after the U. So you know, it's how to spell cool, right? And then I A at the end and it becomes really easy

once you know that. Sequoia. Sequoia. So what you're saying is once you've definitely learned the order of the letters, it's easy to remember. Yes. See, that's my problem. That's the buzz. Once you know it, you have no brain. Yeah. Once you know it. Well, yeah. That's where I'm following down. I guess. Yeah. Mike's looking at all those letters and like they're not where you think. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

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The keynote Rikis winner is named the keynote chairman. The position is held until the next keynote. Host should be introduced at the top of each episode according to their current titles. We did that today. We did do that today. It felt good. This is actual legislation. It is. And then it goes into a media effect. Yeah. It needs Congress and we have the three of us. In the event that a host has both positions, they shall be introduced as the Ricky Binchman.

Also happen today. See effective legislation. Really that's the thing you can take away from from this show is that we're good at legislation. We should rule the entire world. You after the Rikis, the host then play a game called the flexis. These two games are separate but related. Please stand for the reading of the rules. Correct regular picks are awarded one point. The language used for regular picks must be finalized

and agreed upon during recording and no partial points may be awarded. Correct risky picks are worth two points but wrong ones will cause a point to be deducted from that host total. Picks must have been approved as risky by the two other hosts before the start of the game. Picks made for keynote rikis cannot be reused by the host who made them for the next keynote. The annual rikis have their own set of rules but they don't matter today.

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In the case of a three-way tie, host all make their calls at the same time with flipping continuing until a winner is named. Now, speaking of flipping coins, Jason Snow has a life time ban on flipping any coins in relation to the rikis. Coin flips by Jason on other podcasts are allowed but are frowned upon and subject to public shaming. The order of picks is set by previous performance. The winner of the previous associated game goes first, the previous loser goes last.

Winners will be recognized during the closing ceremonies. As a reminder, might currently hold both titles, annual and keynote. Past results can be seen at rikis.co and rikis.net. These sites also have pages about managing your own scorekeeping at home. You may be seated. Somebody wrote in, I can get the name in a moment, and they were saying, considering last time, we spoke about some of the lore behind the rikis and we've done a little bit of it on this one

with the weird fish. They wanted to know this is Ben. Why is Jason ban from flipping coins? That's a good story. So this was the 2018. We were doing a live show as we do. I think we're in the hammer theater in San Jose and we knew the day of that we were going to be going to a three-way tie for the game. I think it might have been 2019, the chance, but nevertheless. We kind of came to realize that we were going to tie and we wanted to resolve it for there to be

a winner. This is when the game was still relatively early. So we decided there are a couple of ways that we thought we could do it. The way that I thought would be the most stupid was a coin flip knockout competition, which is actually different to how we do this now. That was the way we wanted to do it then. We wanted somebody to help us who was independent to flip the coin. So during rehearsals, we asked Jason if he would do it, which is when we learned, Jason

cannot, cannot flip a coin. Like, can't do it. There is footage of this in the podcast of the last year because we asked Jason to flip coins so people could see it. Jason doesn't really flip a coin as much as he throws a coin into the air. And so we ended up... He doesn't catch it. He tries, but usually fails. And so what Jason did do was I believe he came on to stage an R-serie to flip coins, which is then how we started doing that for a while until James Thompson

built the coin flipping. And I will be putting into the show notes, Steve, I just made these. A couple of gifts of Jason and the podcast that's on last year when we asked him to flip coins. So if you want to see why Jason has been banned for flipping coins in related to podcast games, then you can go to the show notes and find out why. Yeah. Okay. Round one, Mike, you're up. More flexibility for app icon placement on the iPhone home screen.

No, we're not doing that anymore. Just make a ding sound. You can just ding us. You know, ding us off. Okay. So this happened. Federico, have you done anything fun with your home screen? Yeah. Yeah. So I was praying around with it. And the only thing I could think of was like maybe I'm going to leave an empty spot in the upper right corner of my home screen. Because like I mostly use my iPhone left-handed, I discovered. And so the upper right is where my thumb cannot reach.

So I thought, well, the area I usually don't reach with my thumb might as well try and put it empty. But I gotta say, I don't think this feature is for me. Because like now I'm looking at the empty spot. And I'm thinking, well, that could just be filled with the widget or with icons. I don't know. I think I just got so used to an information dense home screen. And also like I am not the type of person who goes for like the home screen aesthetic. I'm more

utilitarian. And so I don't think I like I'm happy that they have done this. They should have done it years ago. I'm glad this feature now exists on the iPad as well. Maybe it'll be more useful on the iPad. We'll see. But it's not for me. I think it's going to be more interesting on the iPad in some ways to have empty spots. Or I make because I'm kind of like you Federica, like I want the density. And I use a pretty plain iPhone wallpaper on the home screen. My lock screen is a photo of my

wife, but the home screen is like a kind of a gray background. And so it's not like I'm framing them around a picture. I know a lot of people do that. And so for a lot of people, it will be very good. But I'm kind of like you like on the iPhone. I've been playing with it. And it's like, yeah, I already had widgets at the top of the screen to move the icons down. And I like having that

data there. So we'll see. Yeah, I think it might take time. Like I remember when they had widgets at first, like when they brought the new widget style in, I was very much like, but I like all my app icons. Yeah. And over time, I realized that no, some widgets are better than so. My thing is like, I'm going to give it time. But I am in the same boat as you Federica where it's like, why would I have empty space? Because we've been used to this for like 50 years or whatever it's

been now, not having empty spaces. So, but you know, this is I think a fantastic feature for the people that will use it. Like and it should have been this way for a long time. So I'm pleased that it's there. Even if I'm not completely sure how I'm going to, going to use it yet. Yeah. And speaking of widgets, I just wanted to point out, I believe this used to be a prediction of mine last year or two years ago. But in iOS 18, it finally came true. Legacy widgets

have been discontinued. Oh, yep. In like the peak arch widget, for example, some people still had, I believe the homerun widgets, I think. Anyway, those widgets in the today page are no more. Does that page still exist? It does exist. But it's only for native modern widgets. I feel like we should get rid of that. You know what I mean? Like, what's the point of that page anymore? I like having, I like having, I like it having widgets just like nearby, you know,

but you could just swipe over right and get widgets. Yeah. I'm which can go anywhere. So why did it kind of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a yeah, because I don't know. It is nice to have it. I don't know. There's something about going to the right side. Like I'm not the type of person who has many home screens. And I don't know, I kind of prefer having widgets like I try to have one home screen

at going all the time, just one page. And I kind of like the idea of widgets on the left, up library on the right, you know, if you have a single page like I do. But yeah, I get your point like, yeah, my prediction. This is a long term prediction, which obviously unscored. The introduction of control center and the work like the changes to control center is going to kill off that page. I reckon next year that page is gone because people will migrate a lot of their

like quick actions that they think that that go on that page to control center actions. It's possible. So you're swiping left on the today view is what you're doing. Yeah, here's the fun thing. I don't know what you do. You swipe left. I don't know whether left or right is the good one. Swipe left meaning. We're very old. We, we, we're none of us needed, like, need a tender in our lives. Swipe left means to reject. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I am swiping left on it then. Okay,

because I don't want anymore. I've cleared that up. Wow, that was bad for a rough. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Can we move on? Let's move on. Federico round one. I said there are some design and navigation updates to the settings app across multiple platforms. Ding. Yeah. So we did not get a major settings revamp on macOS, I think, but there are changes on iOS and I'm iOS for sure. Yeah. The main thing they've done is as we predicted, they copied Vision OS.

And so now all of your apps settings are into an apps sub page of settings, which has made the main settings page shorter. And you know, if you want to change something for app for an app, you know, that you got to go into the apps section. There are also some new like headings for sections. The iCloud settings page has been redesigned with some new colors, some new icons. Obviously passwords has been been moved out of settings and into a standalone app. So

there's a bunch of things like that. Apple account, right? So the app will account. Apple account is Apple ID is no Apple account. Yeah. Now it's your Apple account, which is a good thing. I think that's a good just a good branding change. I like it. It's a good name. I like Apple ID. Now when you say it's like, what does that even mean? Yeah. What are we getting at here? Yeah. Apple account is a much better. So yeah, it's not like a drastic redesign. It's more of a reorganization of sorts.

Yeah. And I think it's at least from what I've seen on iOS and iPad OS, they've done a pretty good job, I think. It doesn't seem like they've actually really done what everybody wanted, which is a big change on the Mac though, which is a shame. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. My round one pick was there is no new hardware announced or released. Ding. Ding. Yeah. This one seemed a bit tentative for a little bit, right? Because it took the store down. I was like, oh, there we go. There we go. Hopefully

you're going to get some phone case or something. But now you made it out. I did. I was nervous when the store went down. Like, what are you doing, Apple? Don't do it to me. But escaped, escaped without any, without any hardware software only show for almost what was the final time? Mike, a little over two hours or write it two hours. It was about an hour and 45 something like that. Okay. Okay. So yeah, no, no new hardware. So at the end of round one, we are tied.

Okay. The question for you, both, they talked about the runtime. Maybe densest feeling WWDC. Probably. Yeah. Cause I really, this was David two WWDC's like, I imagine a world where if they just did everything that was in the first half, it would have been fine, right? We would have come away and been like, a good stuff. I suppose you're like, you're thinking back to like, Was it 13 where they introduced Swift and basically had nothing else? Do you remember that year?

24th. 24th. 24th. 24th. 24th. 24th. 24th. IOS 8. Think about that now. That was a time. And I remember it was just like, there just wasn't really much to talk about if I'm remembering it correctly. But so, but it definitely wasn't that, right? Like they, they really, they really had their stuff together. They, yeah, yeah, it, they were hinting the whole first half, right? They kept mentioning like

the machine learning intelligence. And I felt like, okay, we know what's coming. But yeah, really, it was the platforms WNBC that we've come to know over the last, you know, 10 or 15 years. And then all the intelligent stuff, it kind of dropping back into the platforms as they went. I still think and kind of hope for a day where the keynote is arranged around features and not platforms, but that's a pretty inside baseball. And I think they like highlighting that they're moving all

their platforms forward, even if it's uneven. So it's probably how it's going to be. That's an interesting thought. I want to think about that a little bit. Like what would that look like and what would the ramifications of that be? Like in a different year, like if it's very normal, there would be like things coming to the iPhone that aren't on the iPads. Like what do you do in that scenario? Do you think if you're doing a features one? Sure.

I mean, that could have happened this year. We didn't really talk about it. But the home screen stuff is on both the iPhone iPad at the same time. And that's a first with widgets on the home screen. Like then they were like stuck in the weird sidebar on the iPad. Like that was a weird year. They weren't on the lock screen. This year they're in step. But to your point, more often than not, they're out of step. So yeah, I guess that does throw a wrench and a feature-based keynote.

Feels like that could have, like that to me could have been like a very easy somebody made that as their first round pick. You know, because like we would just naturally assume that the iPad would not get it. But luckily nobody made that that pick this time. Okay. So round two, micro up again. Notification summaries. A powered by a new AI system. Dean? I mean, yes. No, why? No, sorry, sorry. Sorry, no, I shouldn't have question.

I shouldn't have questioned the thing. You have the point. Never question the thing. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But I don't, I was kind of surprised at how fast this went. Like, I don't know if I have my hands around what this actually looks like yet. Oh, this is like my favorite thing. Like there's a couple of things going on here.

I'm Federico, you can correct me from wrong about any of it. So point one is like, if you have loads of notifications, Apple Intelligence is going to bring forward to the top of the list, the things that it believes are the most important for you to look at. Yeah. Yeah. If there is a group chat, which is pop enough, and my hope would be that it would also do this for stuff for like third party apps too, but I don't know about that yet.

It will actually look at the contents of the message and summarize what's going on in those messages. So like, you know, Bob and Mary and Jim are talking about this update to the latest house rules or whatever, you know, like it's going to look at the content and like, sum it up for you. And then also there is a new focus mode, which is called something that I'll reduce interruptions. Thank you, Federico, reduce interruptions. And that one, you just turn that on.

And if the system believes there is something you need to see, it will tell you. Yeah. So I think this is all really good. Clearly notifications are a problem. They're always going to be a problem. Maybe we should just have the AI manager for us. Yeah. Yeah. I do think it's interesting because it's like the summarization tools, like in mail or other places, but kind of across different things. I don't know. Something about that is

interesting. There's a lot of summarization. And that is like overall my favorite of all of the AI features is just anywhere they're summarizing anything like the email thing where they summarize what's in the email for in that like little preview line. So if you get a long email and they give you a TLDR like all of that stuff is like fantastic. Like summarize or like the stuff that's in Safari, which isn't Apple intelligence. It's just available in Safari. But it feels like

that kind of thing where you can go to a web page and reader. And the first thing it will show you before it shows you the reader view is here's what's on this web page. So I think all of that stuff is great to be honest. Like do the you guys know me? I don't like to read. Do the reading for me computer, you know, I want to read this computer is love reading. Yeah. Yeah. I have mixed feelings about the summarization in the browser. But we'll talk about that in a bit. I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's look. The feature and how the feature is possible. Different things. Right? Like Can you separate the art from the artist? No, no, but that's not that's not actually what I'm saying. When I'm sitting like there is a feature, right? And that but like if they would have gotten to that feature by not scraping the open web, then you would be okay with it, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So that's what I'm saying that what it's doing is one thing. How it got there is another

thing important, but there I believe there is a distinction between it. So round two, my pick was there is a new system for changing the colors of icons on the home screen. Ding. Ding. Yes. And they're protecting. Yeah. No, look, look. Okay. I think I also think this is not for me. I think some people will manage to make it look nice. I don't think my personal taste, okay? Just my personal opinion, my personal taste. I don't I don't even think Apple's own marketing images look good. Like no.

I just think even the good ones are horrible. Like the one they showed in the keynote with the dog and its yellow. It's like that just to me. And there was and there were some parts of it. Yeah. I thought I was losing my mind. Like I thought I was like like I should have looked around for cameras pointing at me so they're like, okay, I mean I'm the joke. Like, okay, I get it. Now we're all like convinced that this is looking nice. Sure. No, I don't think it looks nice.

I think it's also like you know me. I love customization. Put in the power in the hands of consumers like I'm all in favor of it. But I think there could should maybe have been a better developer story other than hey, when you sign the updated developer agreement, you're also agreeing that users will be able to change the colors of your icons. And I think maybe there could have been an API or something better to say, hey developers, people will be able to do this.

Here's a few ways for you to properly optimize your icons or you know, maybe there could have been a way to say maybe the icon could be of a certain color but like multiple shades of the same color. Like I just think that applying a blue filter or red filter on top of icons and just color the day while easy, right? As a concept and as an implementation, I also think it leads to some

very, very questionable visual results. Yeah. Like I think I think that they came to the conclusion that I think we were talking about maybe last week of big brands aren't going to let, but they're not going to allow this if they give them the choice, right? That if it's like a thing where you have to provide us with a certain icon so people can do this, they're not going to do it. So this is like the only way they could do it. It's just they apply it,

broadly and you have no choice in the matter. But I believe like you that the actual implementation that Apple has gone with leads to not good results. And I think that it would be better if people could actually choose different colors. Yes. Yes. And I don't know if they're going to do this, but I hope that they do. And like I don't even think Apple sometimes this happens with Apple when they listen to feedback. And I think they misunderstood what a lot of people were asking for.

In fact, Matt Bertler was posting about this on Masternone a few days ago. I think if you look at any, literally any of the most popular aesthetic home screen icon packs or tutorials on places like Etsy, Gamroud, YouTube or TikTok. And if you sample, say the top 20 of those aesthetic home screens, none of them are based on this style. All of them are based on maybe all pastel color icons or maybe beige icons or maybe pure black icons and white color glyphs. Like

they're not going for this style. And I think if you wanted to make those people happy, rather than doing this, you would have done something different, which is let me customize the icon by choosing from a photo or by choosing from a file right there from the home screen instead of having to make a shortcut for it. And so I think this is a case of Apple misunderstanding what the market wanted and making a feature that in theory like power to the people. I mean sure like the

principle is based on a strong foundation of users should be able to do what they want. But the implementation, it's a let's face it. It's a little ugly. I wonder if it would be better if you could choose because every time you do this, they turn the icons black. I don't know why, but that's what they do. Like it's black and then the color you've chosen. Maybe it would be better if you could just choose two colors. Maybe, maybe, yes. Like maybe that would produce maybe the like my

actual problem is the black color of the icons. I just think like even if you look at that example, you just paste it into this code the second one with the photo of the person walking on the sand dunes and the icons around the photo like the contrast between those black icons and the rest of the picture is so ugly to me. I can't believe this is a marketing material from Apple. Those are from the which I'll put in the show notes. The IOS 18 preview page. They're the two examples.

Yeah, the nice thing. Okay. All right. So yeah, you can change. Anyway, once again, I get the point. Yeah. Steven. Apple mentions that it's created its own LLM. Ding, ding, ding, yeah, ding. No, no, ding, ding, ding, ding. In this economy, yes. So Apple has its own large language models. Apple's collectively calling these models the foundation models. It's kind of how they refer to them.

And we have some links in the show notes to Apple's machine learning blog. But this I think is, you know, we touched on a second ago, but Federico, do you want to talk about the training a little bit? Yeah. So they almost offhandedly mentioned in one of the first one of the Q&As that they did at Apple Park moderated by I just seen. I believe correct for the Ricky first mentioned that they also used crawling using Applebot on the open web, which is also something that they confirmed

on the machine learning website. Yeah. And the talk show. It came up in the talk show. Okay. I personally am very offended by this and I found it very insulting to to publishers and to creators on the web. Not just because of the technique being used, obviously scraping the web to use the data as training for AI that would be in a commercial product. But to add insult to the injury is the fact that we were told after the fact. And we were given instructions on how to block

Applebot extended. Now that the training has been done. So yeah, thank you for that. Now I can block it now. But you've been you've been scraping websites for months at this point. And the reason I'm so upset is that of all companies that do this and literally every AI company does this. Save for like I think one exception. I think I did some research. I only was able to find one LLM based on like all licensed and open source content. I believe LLM 360

is the only one that does this. But of our companies. As zones made up. I trust trust me trust me. Trust me. It's not. But of our companies that were expecting more from Apple. And to just say this in a blog post like yeah, we also use data from the open web like I'm I am not okay with it. And I think it's pretty disgusting. I would be disappointed. Yes. Yes. It's disappointing. And I think it is another of the symptoms of how recently they started this project that they felt like they needed to

be on this quickly. And it did not give them the opportunity to do it better. That's what I believe is the case. I hope that's the case. And I hope it's not instead a case of thinking. I see this misconception. And it's what's part of the responses that I got after I posted about this on Macedon that anything that is on the open web. You should be okay with AI crawlers ingesting that content. And I think that is so wrong as an assumption to make.

That it's okay. This is the excuse people will tell themselves and tell others after they've done it to excuse the fact that they're. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if it was okay, we wouldn't see these instances of companies suing other AI companies like for example the New York Times, suing open AI and then making a deal like an official deal with open AI. Vox media. I don't think similar. There are come. I don't think New York Times is on the deal. Oh, they haven't made one.

Okay. New York Times is suing open AI. Okay. They're holding out. They're holding out. But Vox media has cut a deal with open AI. Yeah. And a bunch of others like business insider maybe. There are lots of deals that are being done. But no, the times it is like they want to win. Right. And yeah. So, so look, if if if opening I knew that what they were doing was morally and legally acceptable, right, that anything that is on the open web, it's fair, it used to appropriate it and use it for

training. They wouldn't cut deals now. Would they? If it was okay. I think this is. Well, I think they think it's okay, but they also don't want to lose in court. I think that's the thing. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just trying to protect themselves. But I do believe that these people

think that it's fine. And that to me is the affront of it all. Yes. And and what I find even more concerning is the fact that for example, in a bunch of interviews that, you know, as an aside, Apple has been, you know, has been on a bunch of different interviews with YouTubers this week. You can find Tim Cook and Craig Federegi on a lot of everywhere on YouTube. Full-court press this post week. And it seems like Craig, for example,

generally loves image generation in Apple intelligence. To the point where he actually went on an interview and said, Oh, I love sending generated images of other people to my friends. And I felt like, like, I don't know. I will just point people to your accent discussion with Jason on AppGrate. Mike, where you both summed up a lot of my feelings on the situation very well. So instead of rehashing that here, people should go listen to that. If you want to see how emotional I

get, we also clip that part on YouTube. I'll put both in it. I am very upset about the image stuff. Like we haven't even gotten to that yet. But can we, before we get to that, which I don't know if we have somewhere that we will naturally get to that in this show. So maybe we'll just squeeze it in after this. But you have made decisions, Federico, that I think I would like to unpack a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. For now, we have this allowed all AI crawlers from Mac stories.

Over the weekend, we are going to go one step beyond right now. We're just telling crawlers not to crawl our website for AI using the robots.txt file, which is just like putting up a warning sign that anybody can ignore. But over the weekend, we are actually going to roll out a server-side change that will actively block those crawlers, including Applebot Extended from accessing Mac stories

period. Because I am done with these things. I am not okay with it. It's a fundamentally, I believe, it's a technology that will kill the web as we know it and will hurt people and their businesses for years to come. And these companies and we collectively will come to regret it. We're just

on see it now because we are collectively blinded by the shininess of it all. But we will come to regret it once we realize that in order to power these fancy features, we have killed dozens and hundreds, maybe, of websites and web-based businesses that got their content stolen from them just to power these fancy new functionalities. So that's my opinion. Yeah. Stephen, what's your thoughts on all this? The tech stuff, the AI training stuff, all of that?

Yeah, I don't know if I've had enough time to think it through as thoroughly as Federico has, but on first blush, I don't like that content is being sucked into these things without a return to the maker of that content. I saw somebody on social media arguing like, well, how is it different from Google search, but I was like, well, I'm getting a page view out of it. This and not. And you know, on one hand, I want these chatbots to be really knowledgeable about the Macintosh

Performa. And so they have my content to make that possible. But I'm not seeing any return from that and they are and that's that's pretty gross. Or maybe at least you would never, at least, you were never given the option. That's I think the biggest thing is that Apple did this and then talked about it after the fact and a little at least in the talk show, my impression of it when

they gave the answer was they they were kind of sheepish about it. Like one of my kids is something wrong and like we both know they did it and I asked them if they did it, you know, kind of kind of that vibe. And I just I wanted them to be better than that. It is particularly interesting

in a situation like, you know, an interview like that. And I'm sure it's going to be interesting going forward where Apple is participating in these journalistic endeavors because they want people to hear about their products while at the same time devaluing the work of the same people. Yeah. I am intrigued to see what that relationship adapts to over time for people that produce

content like this. Like for me with the content that I make, it doesn't bother me. Like I am very sure that my voice is a part of any voice transcription model that exists because I produce hundreds of I've produced hundreds of hours of free podcasts, right? Like if you're building something like Whisper, right? Like OpenA has Whisper. The easiest data set in the world is the podcast directory. It's already there. Like you can just point something at it and go for it.

For me, it doesn't just like because what podcasts are, it doesn't really bother me. Like page views or what you know what I mean? Like I feel like for written. But it's not okay for them to use your voice. Like it's not sure. It's not okay. Yeah, because we didn't agree to it. Right. And so like I'm just saying like for me, passing the lay, like it it doesn't bother me for me. It bothers me for you. If you know what I mean, I am I am more upset

about the idea of them taking texts that's on the web than audio does on the web. I don't know why it's just my emotions. Like but I because just because like also it's like the business models of it all, right? So like podcasts don't make money based on how many people at least the way we do it. Listen to the episode, right? Because it's all done before. So that like me losing, yeah, I don't know. It's just my it's hard to explain your emotional reaction to something.

But I am upset at the fact that they did this to websites. That's what it bothers me. And I have bigger problems for me than this. But like I am I'm very disappointed in them. Um, that they did it and they didn't tell anyone they would do in it. And now they just want us to accept it and forget about it. And I think that that is it's a shame. It's a it's a great shame in my opinion. And let me say because I've seen this happen as well on social media, it's okay for

people to have complicated and potentially conflicting feelings about these things. Right. We can be excited about the technology and disappointed about how the technology was formed. We can be excited about the creative tools at things like image generation unlocked, but also be worried about things like bullying or deepfakes. Right. Those things can all exist in the same person.

And so when you hear us or other people or even as you think about this yourself, it's okay to be conflicted or have complicated feelings because this is a complicated and honestly pretty new thing to consider. I mean, I felt myself really struggling with that at the talk show, like listen to this interview and kind of like rapidly going from excitement, sort of horror, like all like kind of back and forth. And I just I've come to the place to like, you know what? This is just

big and complicated and it's okay if my feelings aren't completely sorted out yet. And it's okay if our feelings change over time. Right. So this is we all just need some grace in this because I think that it's it's a new world for so many people and we're going to feel different about it as content creators than a regular consumer. I'm going to think about differently as a parent, potentially, as is someone who doesn't have kids with iPhones. Right. It's there's a lot of stuff

here. So I would just keep that in mind when we're having these conversations when you're listening to us have these conversations that we're figuring this out as we go and it's okay if that changes over time. Hmm. Feelings. Yeah. Who knew? It is a very feelings heavy WBC. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, you can't get away from it. Like it's I think for a lot of people their conception of Apple is changing further. And I think that that is very complicated for a lot of people to be able to

handle. I feel like I can handle it because I for a long time have had complicated feelings with the way that they manage their business endeavors. But ultimately I am a fan of technology and exciting technology and I think that there is exciting technology here even if I don't agree with all the ways that it's been done. But I think there is a whole new way for people that are trying to work out how to navigate their emotions and the realities of

situation. And I think that's just going to play out for a little while and we've all just kind of got a strapping and deal with it. You know. Oh yeah, everybody will deal with it the wrong way. Yes. Yeah. Let's move on on to funnier things maybe. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This episode of Connected is brought to you by ad block pro ad block pro gives you a smoother experience while using Safari. Those infuriating auto play videos, deceptive little close buttons

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Our thanks to ad block pro for sponsoring the show and relay FM. So we're going to circle back to image generation and then we'll get to the risky picks. This is something that I was a little surprised to see. It feels like this is the riskiest thing. Apple has introduced and even though they have a lot of, something like a lot of boundaries around what this technology can do, there are some things in here that are a bit surprising. So for example,

there's only three styles of artwork and lifelike or realistic is not one of them. They're going to look cartoony or hand sketched or animated, but they they're clearly trying to steer clear of deep fakes, but you can create an image of anybody in your photo library. And that feels not great to me. I think about this in the context of my two, well now high school students in my house and like, that can be pretty hurtful if someone makes an image that is making fun of somebody.

And I said this on Mac Power users, but image generation doesn't feel new to us because we've been playing with these tools for a couple of years, right? We've all played with Dolly and the other things, but this is going to be now in the pockets or on the desks of a whole bunch of people who are experiencing it for the first time. And I just kind of wish Apple hadn't gone so far down the road of the image generation stuff. Yeah. Yeah, this is the in addition to this web scraping.

I just find this so sad. And I think they shouldn't have done it. I was hoping they wouldn't do it. And this is where unfortunately I can feel a for the first time in maybe years that I've been doing what I do for a living. I can feel a disconnect between my opinions and my thoughts and what this company is pushing forward. And for me, seeing Federigi in interviews being so wildly excited for image generation, a feature that I personally find so gross and potentially dangerous.

I'm like, how like it makes me worried about future features that this company will make because I strongly, strongly dislike this one so much. And I think it's so sad that they, I'm sure they felt almost obligated to do it. And I hate like, I'm gonna do something that I don't think I've done in years because I think it's such a silly argument. But I've been thinking about it and I'm just gonna say it. And I hate being that person, but I'll take the responsibility.

Yes. Do it. Oh, do it. I wonder if Steve Jobs would have done it. Yeah, you go. Like, and you know, I agree with you. I hate using this card isn't this argument. But it's because it's a terrible argument, right? But it's everything I've been thinking about. Yeah, literally. Um, so I think that this move lacks taste. Yeah, right. And I think that's what you're getting it. Right. Yeah. And so, and I think it's an

easier thing to say than the Steve Jobs thing, right? But I actually do completely agree with you. I had not thought of that, but I agree with you completely. Like, as I said, as we were saying earlier, everyone has their own emotions. This is the thing that upsets me the most. Because I don't, I don't think that they, this did not even cross my mind as a thing that they would do because honestly, I don't think you, I don't even think they need to. Like, I don't,

I don't think people are particularly calling for this type of stuff. I know. Like, this felt like the thing that's that that happened and is mostly gone away because I think in general, people don't like AI art. Like I feel like if you spend any time on Instagram right now and you see like any, any brand that posts anything that looks like it was animated,

people think it's AI art and they're so. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I feel bad for artists because there are a bunch of brands where I see it as an I'm like, I'm convinced that this company is not using AI art, but everybody thinks they are because it's not a photo. And I don't really understand why they've done this. I think it's particularly bad that it's of other people as you said, Steven, that that is the part where I'm like, all right, you've decided to go in this complete different

direction and nobody else has done. And like, what's the path here? Like at what point are these images photo realistic? Like, why would you and they not do that too in like three years time? Why is it always going to be a cartoon? Like, I think there's only a cartoon right now because it's all they can do. And they can't even do that well. That's the thing that annoys me the most. They look terrible. They want to ease you into that. So obviously, they're not going to do

realistic now. But can you be sure that they never will? No, no, you can't. Yeah. You can't be sure. And I really think that they just can't right now, which is why one of the reasons. There's also that. There's also that. Yes. So I just this part to me is just like, you didn't need to do it and you did it and you didn't even do it very well. So what is the point? Yeah. The emoji. Fine. The emoji. You know what? That's good. Fun. Right. I like that. Even I will, it's a thin line,

but the fact that you can make an emoji that looks like a me emoji. It looks like someone else. I still don't love that. But that's okay. Ish, I guess, right? Like when it's actually like the, sorry, not the emoji, you can make an emoji character somewhat visually represent someone else.

Right. This is in the like emoji creation thing. I still don't love that. But like that is as far as I think they should have gone, rather than the create a me emoji, which is more on the life like is going to actually take more of somebody's facial features and try and cross something that looks like them. But like the emoji, Gen Moji terrible name, but you know, fine, right? That I can not just have a pizza. I can create an emoji, which is pineapple on a pizza. That feels like a fun

thing to do with your friends and they're going to look like a emoji. That would have been, you know what? A great feature that everyone would have been excited about. But this now lives in the shadow of what is the image playground, which is just out and out for me distasteful, bad feature. Even the ones where it's like making an animal object again, it's like, it just doesn't look very good gang like I don't. I'm not sure that you really got out of this what you wanted. The AI,

like, sorry, the UI that you've built looks great. The result, I don't think it does. And like, maybe your model is going to get better over time, but like maybe you should have faked it for the presentation then because if this is your best foot forward, I'm not really sure that this that the juice was worth the squeeze on this one. Yeah. It felt like this is the most we have to catch up part of all that they're doing. And I don't like that feeling either.

Like I can tell you from being there for a few days, I've never been to a WBC and I've been since 2013 every year except the two COVID years. I've never been to one of these things where when you ask somebody like, Hey, what are your thoughts on the keynote? The first thing out of their mouth is, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it all came down to this. And the feeling that Apple is doing something because they think that they have to not because they think that they should or that it's best for

their customers. And that's weird, y'all. Like it's it's weird to see Apple doing features and adding technology to their platforms because they think the world has a leg up on them, which is very individual. Not something I've seen very much in my in my career covering this company. Yeah. And I'm seriously debating with myself right now what to do with these features in my iOS review. Oh my god. I had an even thought of that. Yeah. I gotta say right now I am leaning toward

not reviewing parts of it because I just refuse to touch them. But I could be swayed, you know, in different directions. I know that it's objectively in a way my duty to review them. But also should I review and shine a spotlight on a technology that I find disgusting and potentially dangerous? Probably not. I guess what I will say, this is your choice. I would say you should do it and then say how you feel about it because like it's not like these features don't

exist, right? They do exist. But yeah, very complex. You need to decide that for yourself. Well, see, we'll see when it when come when the day comes. Let's move on to the risky peaks, which is another sad moment, but in a different way. My risky pick was Vision OS 2 has keyboard pass through when in an environment and it works with any keyboard, not just the ones that Apple makes. This is the closest. I think I've gone to a risky pick in a long time. I'm like so close, so close.

If only you removed the part after the comma. Yeah, but I don't think you would have let me do it. No. And you said with any Apple keyboard, like, yeah, but we probably wouldn't have let you. I don't think you would have let me. I thought about it. Like if I would have said that they have a keyboard pass through in an environment, I don't think you would have let me pick that. No, probably not. Some people have gotten this to kind of work with their part of

keyboards, but it seems accidental. Apple says I've not been able to do it. Okay. Yeah, I think someone at the bird said like it works occasionally, but this is something that Apple says is for their keyboards. That's what they've trained. I guess their models on to let you see the keyboard when you're fully immersed in an environment, which is a good change because if you

if you can't see what you're typing, that can be problematic. Yeah, it's a very good. It's very good change, but I wish that they would have taken it one step further than this, but it is a good. It's a good feature. It's another good quality of life feature for VisionOS, but it does not get me a point. Yeah, sorry, but. Yeah. I said Apple shows a Siri camera. Not a feature name featured that lets you point the iPhone at something and use AI to understand what you're looking at.

It'll use AI to determine various types of information such as such as objects or text in real time. It may not shape this year. Obviously, I did not get this. And I mean, they couldn't get their little AI figurines. Look right. Imagine real time information on the camera. So. Yeah, I did not get this. I like AI figurines, by the way. It's like as a way to reference these little characters that they've done. They're not art. They're not art. Art is something else. Little figurines. I like that.

It's good. I did not get my related risky pick. Apple previews a new VisionOS feature that puts overlays over the camera pass through with information about objects and view. Which to be fair, I think collectively, these three sort of AI based features would have been better AI features than whatever they announced. Well, I get. Look, where we've gone into the upset spiral. I think the like system features for Apple intelligence look really good. And I'm very excited about them.

I'm excited about the notification stuff. I am excited about my phone remembering things for me that I can say. Like I had this today where I know I'd taken a picture of some notes. But I don't remember when they were. And search wasn't helping me. And I feel like if I asked my phone, I was like, I took pictures of the nose after a meet and a way. I counted it. Can you help me? Like all of that kind of stuff looks incredible. And I can't wait. Like better Siri. Fantastic.

Like give me it. Like there's so much of the operating system features. Like the mail stuff. Like prioritizing email messages for me. The automatic sorting, which is happening anyway. But like all of this stuff, like anything where it's the device helping me do stuff. Love it. It's anything generation like create new that I don't like. Right. I can draw a line for me where I'm happy with the idea of take my text and rewrite it for me. Like I can accept that because I do

these features. Like I do this stuff with chat GPT. Like I write stuff out and I'm like help me fix the grammar here. Make this read better. And it does it for me. Like I'm fine with that. It's the the image stuff is is my biggest bug bear. Right. I even like the way that they've integrated chat GPT. I think of all the ways you could have done that. They chose the best way of doing it. Where like open AI is not in the OS. Like we thought it was going to be like powering something.

No, it's just replacing Google essentially. Like instead of Google searching, which is what Siri currently does, it will chat GPT search for you instead. Well, they don't they don't are not sending user data to chat GPT, but they do that with Google. So you know, there are some differences. They send user data with Google. I mean, right? Like Google knows what you're searching

and where you are and all that stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, I understand what I don't know that if I ask a thing and a series like a Thanos on the web for you, I don't know if that's being fair attached to me. Right. Fair. I don't know. Yeah. And open AI is not getting the big money from Google that Apple gets. No gang. Anything. No one's paying anything apparently. Do it for exposure. Yep. Well, yep. And yeah. So I want to say, I think that Apple Intelligence

has a lot of features that I'm interested about. But I just don't think that they nailed it. I don't think that they landed the plane on this one very well. And I think that there are a lot of holes in this and it's awkward and upsetting and frustrating. But I, you know, I'm just saying like, I don't want to throw all of this out as like I hate it and it's bad. Personally, everyone can feel free to do whatever they want. But that's where I'm coming from.

So we're tied once again. Yeah. Yeah. We got closer though. Like I think we're we're getting there, right? Like if the if the goal is get the get the risk you pick. I think we're closer to that being a thing. So we're just going to keep working hard. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Which means we got a flip coins. Yep. I'm going to say heads. I'm also going to say heads. I will also say it. No, I'm just kidding. I will details. I mean, this could be a quick one then.

Oh. I found it. Tails. Boom. That's how it happens. That's it. There we go. No. No. Go by Benchman. Stephen Wins. I'm the keynote chairman. Congratulations, Stephen. Okay. You all welcome. Welcome to Chairman Club, Stephen. It's nice. That's so good. Welcome. Welcome to chairmanship. The air is fresher. The water is cleaner. Welcome on board to chairman. Oh, the chairman ship. Like that's where we are. We're on the ship. Aha. Me and you. Okay. Me and you. You're flying, Stephen. Okay.

Where? You know. Okay. You have to go for the loser. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. I forgot about that. I'm going to pick. I don't know. Head to Tails. Heads. Okay. The sound didn't work, but it is heads. So you are second and I do lose. Oh, okay. Unless you think this is a conspiracy, is your want to think in these things? Are you happy with this scenario? No, no. It's only a conspiracy when I lose. Ah, good to know. So I mean, it's just good to hear you say it. Yeah.

Look at me some honest. You know, so many qualities. Let me update my trophy. I better. I guess in the break, I'm going to go update my trophy. This episode of Connected is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is a bit like not having a case for your phone. Most of the time, you'll probably find. But all it takes is one drop and take it for me. I know. And you'll wish that you spent those extra few dollars on a case when you connect

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connected. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of the show and relay FM. The flexis is a game held after each edition of the rickies. It consists of a series of additional picks and relation to the upcoming Apple event or year. Scoring is completed separately from the main game, but like the rickies, the order of picks is set by the results of the previous game and ties will be broken by using dice by peak elk. Please lie down as the rules are read.

Host must make a minimum of five flexi picks. Each correct pick is awarded with one point. Wrong picks do not remove any points and no partial points may be awarded. The winner is determined by comparing the percentage of correct flexis made by each host. The winner can use their chosen title as long as they are the winner. Federico shall be named Prince Flexi and is known as King Flexi when having won both the keynote and annual games.

Myc has chosen Duke of Flexington and used the name Arch Duke Flexington when applicable. Steven, which is me, I just read my name out, is the attorney general Flexi and uses the title Secretary of DeFlex when necessary. Loser of the flexis must compensate the winner of the flexis by donating to a charity of the winner's choice. The amount of the donation is $25 per wrong flexi made by the loser and the money of course must be donated on air. I am currently the winner

of both the keynote and annual flexis making me the Secretary of DeFlex. We'll see if that holds up after today. If someone holds all four titles, so in the regular game and the flexis, their allowed to choose their own nickname, you may be seated. All right. Okay, I was first and, well, let's just start at the top. We do not see Sam Altman's face in the presentation. Ding. Although he was in attendance. There's a very funny picture of him and Eddie Q.

It's very good. It goes downhill from there. Some AI features on the Mac require an M2 or later. M1. M1. Which is good. It's much more brutal on the iPhone side where you need an A17 pro. So the 15 pro or pro max. That's rough. Okay. My third pick, again, still not good. At least two of Apple's first party apps escape iPad compatibility mode on Vision OS to become full-blown native apps. I don't think any got updated. I haven't seen any. Not good.

Improvements to stage manager are announced. No. So Corey got tiling. I think that personally would be kind of cool on the iPad, but not there. So I'm not sure if this is true. I've tried to verify this myself in some places say it's true and I'm not 100% sure. But this was patented by Microsoft as part of Vista and that patent expired. I don't think that's true. I checked. I did some googling and found that there was a patent that expired, but I don't know.

Right. It's what I'm saying. I've not been able to find it definitively. But I like that story if it's true. You know, it's a man Vista anytime we talk about Vista is exciting. Really. That's some weird ideas in there. Something in iOS 18 picks up the UI used in the iOS 17 picker and messages. Nothing. It's still weirdest. One of the weirdest picks, not UI. Yeah. Yeah. Journal app comes to iPad OS. It's not. Let's get searched though. That's good. Right.

The next version of macOS is named Tahoe. More like Tahno. Okay. Yeah. Good job. What's that? That's one out of seven or 14.2%. 14.2% sounds better than one out of seven. Yeah. Okay. So I start with RCS has not spoken allowed in the keynote. It was I was close to where it was going to fit on the bento board. It was like one spot over from the bottom left, which is was my just verbal pick, which is not committed.

It's a stand by mode for iPad OS did not happen. I'm really sad about that. Three, at least one of the coming soon environments in vision OS 2 is removed. Technically, one of them was replaced with the actual thing. So there is one less coming soon insta TV to us to. No, that's not what you meant. No. Sorry. Well, I mean, it depends on what you think I meant. But unbelievably, the one that says coming the other one is still there and says coming soon, which is I kind of can't

believe that that's the case. Point four, Apple announced system new immersive video content coming to vision pro. Ding. Thank you. Apple announced as an a ideal with Google. They want it, but they really want it. They want it, but they've not gotten it because they Google want cash and Apple doesn't want to give them that. Vision pro international availability is mentioned. Ding. It was actually announced. So it was rolling out in a couple of phases.

But if I do in July, a lot of Asian countries to sell in and then some Europe. Yep. And finally, chatbot features from AI partners are available only to iCloud plus subscribers after a free trial. Nope, it's free. Free? Well, unless you pay a church, you pay a church, you get a little bit more. Yeah. So that's two out seven or 28.5%, which is even more impressive than 14%. Okay. All right. So it's my turn now. And spoiler, I'm very happy with my results.

Number one, some AI features will be region locked. Are they? Well, it's US English only. But you can set your device in any region to US English and they'll work. Well, but technically, if you need to put your region in the US, it is region locked. I think we give it to him, but I think it's close. You know, yeah, I think it's cool. But I don't consider region locked as like, it's also not going to change the results much. But I know, I know. But hey, look, if we can't

debate the answers, then what is this game? Sure. Sure. Because I would, what I would think of as region locked is like the DMA stuff. Like I can change my region to whatever I want. And I'm not going to be a down there. They're they're sending the chat their language locked, not region locked. So I'm happy to give this away. It's not regional locked. No, let's give you the point because like whatever, let's make Stephen Pay more money. But like, you know,

I'm glad for that on that reason. But yeah, this doesn't feel like region locked to me. Which is good, by the way, like I'm super happy. Yeah. And Apple is just saying it like in in briefings. I'm proud of this. Like, you can just change your language so you can use it. It's like, great. Thank you. Yeah. Number two, some new IUS 18 features will be exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro line. Yeah. Yeah. And all the Apple intelligence. Yes. Wild. Right. Like, look, I understand it,

but it's like, it's a rough boy. Yeah. Like if you bought an iPhone 15, it's like, oh, well, I hope you enjoyed iPhone 16 next year. Can we go down conspiracy lane for a second? Yeah, man. Well, I should not conspiracy lane. I don't think this is so they can just sell new iPhone. Just not what I mean. But when they were putting the iPhone 15 on sale, did they know

this was going to be the case? No. I genuinely don't think so. Probably not. Or at least, okay, let me on sale, maybe when they when they made the plan for this phone, I don't think they did. Okay. Can you guys do me a favor? Can you please not give me the first point? Because otherwise, you know, some folks will be upset that it's marked as correct and it's technically not. And also, my way, the rules around here. No, my point is not. No, please, I'm asking you. My points do not

affect Stephen's money anyway. Stephen donates based on how many peaks of your point. Good point. I still think that the precedent should be that we make the decisions. But if you want to, if you want to change it, Federico, you can. I feel better knowing that everything is objectively correct. Okay. Thank you. Number three, notes gets new features such as math calculations and

voice recording. Yes. Nailed it. I think it's very interesting to start seeing this. One of the trends, smaller trends, maybe this year is this two way app communication that is happening in iOS and iOS like like math notes in calculator and inside notes and also reminders in reminders and in the calendar. Like this two way thing. I want to see more of it. I think it's interesting. Yeah, reminders kind of comes home. It wasn't calendar. It used to be an I call many, many years ago.

Really? Yeah. Wow. I remember that. It was a sidebar and I'll see if I can take a screenshot. Incredible. Photo library. Yeah. I just want to say math notes is the best. I love math notes. They crushed it. Like this is just like, oh man, I love it so much. It's so great. Did you see that? That they're even suggested like anywhere in the quick type keyboard. So like if you type out like in a message on I message, if you type out two plus two plus 27 and you press the equal sign

then above the keyboard, you will see you will see the result suggested. Yeah, it's very cool. I love it. You know what's so good? That computer just do all my math for me because you know what, I don't want to do math. So I love that the computer will now just do it all the time. So that's great for me. Number four, now please, please allow me to go for this moment. Number four, the next version of macOS is called Sequoia. It was a risky and we were given you a,

where did this come from in your bones, Federico? Like why sequoia? I gave up on the idea that they were going to use skyline and I thought of all the names. This sounded the coolest, you know, it's a Sequoia like like the huge tree. I don't know, it just sounded cool. That was my reasoning for it. It's a good name. It's a good name. Yeah, I think so. Number five, Apple shows off the ability for Siri to control apps, but it's not launching this year. Yeah, they showed it off

and it's not coming into 2024. It's a next year feature based on app intents. It's going to be a new API, a new developer story, but for next year, not in this cycle in 24. Number six, the calculator app comes to iPad. Yep, it did. They found a way to make it all fancy and like to productize the calculator with math notes, which is clever. Number seven, this is the sad moment for me. The next version of stage manager supports more than four Windows at once on some iPad

models. Oh, because this was also if you got this, you got your annual risky, right? Yeah, yeah, there was my two in one, so to speak, and I did not get it, which is sad. But that means, that means I got five out of seven correct for a 71.4% winning ratio. That's more than 14. That's more than 14, more than 28. So please, you know, salute, prince, flexi, coming back where we rightfully belongs. Yeah, congratulations, prince. It's a fantastic comeback. Fantastic

. Oh, thank you. Steven, you as a loser, I was thinking about the charity. I had a bunch of unfortunately, I wanted you to donate to some Italian charities, but it seems like they're not going to accept a US address. Unfortunately, they were both dog shelters. In Italy, the closest I can get is the world wildlife fund. So the WF, you can just go to worldwildlife.org and make a donation there. Okay. And that donation will be for $150. That's a pretty high one. That's a pretty high one.

That's a pretty high one. Do it for all the creatures. I am. I am. Thank you, donation. Donate. It's someone's name. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to donate in your name. Mike, do you want to do the closing while I donate? This is where I had to think what is closing. What is that? What is the closing? The closing is now closing time. It's time to end the show. Go to master dawn and threads to find us. Federico is Vittici at MacStore is not now on master dawn. And I'm Mike Steven is ISM

AJ is six on all of them. Federico is fatigued. This is terrible. I don't like the way that you're doing it. You're doing it. I'm starting again. This is how I would do it. This is how I would do it. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Connected. You can find us online in a variety of places. If you want to buy a Federico online, go to macstories.net and he is at fatigue on social media. Federico is on a selection of podcasts all over MacStore is because you're

a podcast network now. Congratulations. I'm doing that. I like it. Where is NPC though? Where is it? On Tuesday, episode two with all the details of the surprise that I prepared for John and Brandon. Yes. Excellent. By the way, I shouldn't have mentioned this at the top. If you want more of me in Federico, I did my annual tradition of crashing an episode of App Stories during the mid-April season. I've never told you this Federico. If I'm at my desk during WWDC week and I see

that you are live in Discord, I just join and expect that you will call upon me. I moved to my recording desk because I thought that you might bring me in. It always happens. It's a pretty accurate prediction. Because John got lost. I got to join for a bit, which is fun. If you want to find Stephen online, you got to find px.net. Stephen is also the host of Mac Power Users and I don't know what the job title would be at Widget Smith and various underscrapers.

You have the job title, Stephen. Managing director. Managing director. That makes it sound like your David's boss, which I like. I like the thought of that. He manages and is apt directs over Widget Smith and put on OnePlus and other applications. Stephen is at ISMH86. You can find me online here on Relay FM where I host many shows. I also produce products over at Cortex Brand and I am at I'm Mike. I am YKEL. I would like to thank again our sponsors for this week's episode.

That is ExpressVPN, ECAM and adblock pro. And most of all, I'd like to thank you for listening and for the people that support us directly and get longer ad free episodes of connected every week. We call it connected pro and you can go and find out more at getconnectipro.co. Thanks so much for listening and until next time, say goodbye guys. I'll see you there. Cheerio. Bye.