Father's Day, Again

Every great business starts as a dream, but turning that dream into reality, that's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is proud to power many sources of UK e-commerce from brands like Mattel and Gymshark to new entrepreneurs. Worried about building a website? Shopify's ready-to-use templates help bring your brand to life. Need a hand with content? Shopify's AI tools generate product descriptions, headlines, and even enhance your images.

Struggling to get noticed? Shopify's marketing tools let you launch email and social campaigns with ease. And if you ever get stuck, Shopify's award-winning 24-7 support is always there to help. Turn those what-ifs into why nots. Turn those dreams into... And give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your £1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk slash try. Go to shopify.co.uk slash try. A factual data creation facility production.

Recorded live at the studios of the Factual Data Creation Facility, it's the OFNT Podcast. Here's your host, the man who doesn't know which microphone he'll use until it's almost too late, Jim Schaefer.

Welcome to the OFNT podcast episode 273, which I'm calling Father's Day again. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. It's sort of anticlimactic when you compare it to Mother's Day, isn't it? Yes. Anyway, speaking of anticlimactic, the giant fruit company held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference last week, and it was one of the more quieter ones in recent memory. I'll run down what I found interesting about it.

The tech news section this week will be all well. The overwhelming majority will be Apple-related. Have a wee bit of tech I'm using, entertainment news, and finish up with a loaded podcast news section. Alrighty then, let's get this episode going. Okay. Three, two, one. Tech news. Before I get into the Apple stuff, here's a head up for Android users.

especially Google Pixel phone users. Android version 16 has begun rolling out to Pixel phones last week. This update brings some of the new UI Material 3 expressive elements. The rest of it will follow later this year. But this release does bring the live updates feature, which displays ongoing activities and progress-orientated notifications.

Google is also working with other phone manufacturers to include this feature into their own Android skins. A new set of tablet productivity features, which were designed in collaboration with Samsung, also made its debut. Hopefully this will improve the state of Android-based tablets and get app developers to finally optimize their apps for tablet-based computing. A Samsung Dex-inspired desktop mode for tablets is also included in this release.

Reading various comment sections residing on the intertubes, many users didn't notice much difference from Android 15, with some saying that's a good thing while others are kind of disappointed. I guess you can say that this release is good news for Pixel phone users while the rest of the Android world remains at the mercy of their phone's manufacturer.

I think those that have phones from OnePlus and nothing will see Android 16 fairly quickly, with Samsung owners having a shorter weight than others. You know, that's the thing I disliked about Android the most. Having to wait until the maker of my phone decided to release their version of the current operating system. But then again most consumers probably don't care as long as their phone is functioning properly.

Yeah, only nerds like you really care about things like this. A hundred percent. You've got that right for sure. And now for my rundown of things announced at this year's WWDC that I found interesting. No comprehensive rundown for this kid. Thank you. Well, the rumors were correct.

All of Apple's operating systems will now be named with the last two digits of the year they're meant for. Like iOS 26, for example. No more confusing OS version numbers. Besides that, all operating systems' user interfaces will have a unified look, which is called liquid glass. Wow. I don't know. Liquid glass sounds more like the name of a psychedelic drug or band to me. Hey, don't knock it until you try it, man. Huh. Been there and done that.

You do realize I spent the latter part of the 1970s in the United Kingdom, don't you? My humble apology, sir. Eh, don't sweat it. As far as the looks of liquid glass go, I really don't know if I like it or not. What I do know is that unlike previous OS releases, I won't be signing up for the public beta releases of them this time. You say that every year, but you always can't hold out. That's true, but I'm serious this time.

I've no time to be fiddling around with beta software these days. Guess I'm getting old. Okay, sure. As you always like saying, time will tell. Indeed it will. Think of liquid glass as Samsung's One UI under a magnifying lens. A lot of the presenters at Apple were bandying around the word gorgeous when talking about liquid glass.

Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the cool kids like to say these days. No. I think the jury is still out on this one. Apple didn't go the full Vision OS route as many thought they would. If they had, then I would compare it to Android under a magnifying glass. On iOS 26, live translations of voice and video calls and messages was added and will be helpful.

That is if the language you wish to be translated is included. Tagalog gets no love here as usual. Messages will allow you to set custom backgrounds now, which is a nice touch. Besides light and dark mode, Clearview lets the icons on your home screen become translucent, which to me looks kind of weird. But hey, that's just me. Guess I'll...

be having to update my eyeglasses subscription in order to use this feature. Well, that about sums up iOS 26, at least what I found to be interesting. So what you're saying is that iOS has finally gotten... some of the features that Android users have enjoyed for years now. Yep, that's basically it. Oh, in order to upgrade to iOS 26, you'll need an iPhone 11 or a later model.

And what iPad users have been hoping for for years now, iPadOS 26 delivered. Somewhat. iPad Airs and Pros are powerful tablets but have been hobbled by their operating system. Some iPad users want Mac OS running on their devices. What iPad OS brings is adjustable windowing, a menu bar, and a real pointer, not a circle pretending to be a pointer, to the iPad.

The new windowing feature will improve multitasking while the taskbar will function like it does on a Mac. The pointer will make the trackpad easier to use. The journaling app will be available on the iPad which might get more people to actually use it. Currently, it's a pain to type in at length on your iPhone. At least it is for me. It wasn't a complete Mac-like overhaul that was expected, and it certainly won't satisfy power users.

Live advice for power users. Get over the touchscreen and just buy yourself a MacBook. How dare you! CarPlay. Apple gave us new widgets, live activity tracking and a new incoming phone call notification that doesn't take up the whole display. And that was about it. And now for Mac OS 26 or Tahoe, whatever you prefer to call it. The phone app will finally be available on Mac OS, which will make life much easier for many.

And it also will include live translation, just like iOS. A revamped Spotlight app will make it easier to find things on your Mac, which is sort of a pain to do currently. You have to use Finder and Spotlight in combination sometimes. Like the iPad, Apple's journaling app is also being brought to the Mac. After this update, Intel Macs won't be getting any more OS updates.

Watch OS 26 is getting an AI-based app called Workout Buddy. Workout Buddy will access all of your fitness data and deliver personalized dynamic audio coaching. That's only if you're using the Apple Fitness app, though. Then again, who really wants that? The rest of the new features were cosmetic, though the Notes app makes it to the Apple Watch for the first time. Vision OS 26. Does anyone really care about the Vision Pro at this particular time?

What is this Vision Pro you speak of? Exactly. TV OS 26. Nothing to see here. Keep moving along. Okay, I will. Yeah, I left a lot of stuff out that to me was kind of boring. Overall, it was a subdued WWDC, despite the gorgeous word being overused to describe things. There were no hardware announcements or previews, surprises, or any unexpected happenings. It was all about liquid glass. There were only low-key murmurings about AI and Siri, which apparently still isn't ready for primetime.

None of the features announced last year for Siri have yet to see the light of day. Another thing not announced was Home OS, which I thought would make an appearance. The developers' betas of iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, VisionOS, and tvOS26 are available now. The public betas will follow sometime in July. A few interesting things came to light after this year's WWDC was over. Mac OS is dropping support for AirPort Slash Time Capsule Time Machine backups next year.

This feature was available to users of Apple routers, which Apple discontinued back in 2018. I had an Airport Extreme router and attached a 1GB hard drive to it in order to back my system up. Some Apple routers had a built-in disk drive which served the same purpose. With iCloud becoming a thing, a less dependable thing in my opinion, Apple will finally stop supporting Time Machine.

Another thing was AirPods. You know, they're great, but updating them to the latest beta firmware isn't. You had to have them connected to a Mac and screw around with Xcode in order to update. With iOS 26 Beta, the AirPod screen within settings has a tab to opt in for beta firmware. Only if Apple would allow for updating non-beta firmware using this method.

CarPlay will now allow users to stream videos to their car screens as long as you're not driving. Interesting. I wonder how long it will take for someone to figure out how to do this while driving. And finally, Apple Intelligence will be open up to all developers using its Foundation Models Framework. This should quicken the development of AI apps for the ecosystem for sure.

And also decrease consumer privacy. Yes. Oh, yes. Tech I'm using. I must apologize. This is another week with nothing new to talk about.

My main non-computer related piece of tech that I'm using is of course my Peloton indoor cycle. I've been using it a lot more than I have in the past lately as I pick up my exercise routine. I've noticed a difference in my level of fitness and so has my Oura Ring along with Apple Health. My resting heart rate has dropped by 10% and my clothing is becoming loose fitting on me. Imagine that.

I just hope I can keep up the increased workload. My doctor also told me that my cholesterol numbers are down. And because my blood pressure has also lowered, I'm off the medication that controls it. I'd like to be able to stop taking the cholesterol medication eventually too. So, good news all around in regards to my health. I did buy myself some new cycling shoes as a gift for myself in...

Honor of Father's Day. Is this really a topic worthy of inclusion in the tech I'm using section? Well, I know. I guess it isn't. But I feel compelled to talk about something. Gotcha. My expensive Peloton shoes that came with the bike are a bit too tight mid-foot. These new shoes I just ordered promise to be better fitting, lighter, and better ventilated. All for half the price of the Peloton branded shoes I'm using now.

Moving along, I'm enjoying my new iPad Pro, mostly for consuming content and editing manuscripts. Perhaps when iPad OS 26 releases, I'll use it more for general computing. But that remains to be seen. The new Mac-like windowing update could prove to be a game changer for me. All in all, I'm still within a tech I'm using satisfaction period. As far as I can recall.

This is the longest such period I've ever experienced. There really isn't any new tech that I'm lusting after lately. Maybe you should switch to Android and its ecosystem. That would reinvigorate that lust you speak of. Yeah, that would probably do the trick, but I don't know if I could handle the frustrations that would come along with a switch to Android and its ecosystem. I am tempted, though.

Every great business starts as a dream, but turning that dream into reality, that's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is proud to power many sources of UK e-commerce from brands like Mattel and Gymshark to new entrepreneurs. Worried about building a website? Shopify's ready-to-use templates help bring your brand to life. Need a hand with content?

Shopify's AI tools generate product descriptions, headlines, and even enhance your images. Struggling to get noticed? Shopify's marketing tools let you launch email and social campaigns with ease. Shopify's award-winning 24-7 support is always there to help. Turn those what-ifs into why-nots. Turn those dreams into... And give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your £1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk slash try. Go to shopify.co.uk slash try.

Every great business starts as a dream, but turning that dream into reality, that's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is proud to power many sources of UK e-commerce from brands like Mattel and Gymshark to new entrepreneurs. Worried about building a website? Shopify's ready-to-use templates help bring your brand to life. Need a hand with content? Shopify's AI tools generate product descriptions, headlines and even enhance your images.

And if you ever get stuck, Shopify's award-winning 24-7 support is always there to help. Turn those what-ifs into why-nots. Turn those dreams into... And give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your £1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk slash try. Go to shopify.co.uk slash try. Entertainment news. Last year, Amazon added advertisements to its paid Prime video service. Oh no, why?

While the ads aren't as intrusive as I'd thought they'd be, perhaps these ads will become so if an article from Android Police proves to be true. According to the article, Adweek reports that ads have since doubled on Prime Video from 3 minutes per hour to 6 minutes per hour. What? The article further states that if this trend continues, Amazon will find out that they're inserting too many ads for paying customers to stick around. I pay for Prime mainly for the two-day delivery service.

Prime Video is just like icing on the cake to me. While I used to watch many of the original programming on Prime Video when it first started out, those shows are all gone now with Bosch being the last of those original shows. and it just completed its last season. There's not much I watch on Prime these days, and because of where I live, that two-day delivery service has turned into three or more days, if I'm lucky.

I'm seriously debating whether or not to keep paying for Amazon Prime. Especially when I can get same-day delivery from Walmart if the item I want is in stock. What in the world is going on over at Warner Brothers Discovery? First, it was announced last week that the former HBO Max streaming service, which had just become Max, is to again be called HBO Max.

Now Warner Brothers Discovery, which was created when Warner Brothers and Discovery merged a few years ago, announced that they are splitting up again, with each taking their respective programming along with them. which had been consolidated within the Mac service. Being that Macs will be losing most of the discovery programming they carry, will this mean the price of a subscription to Macs will be cheaper going forward? No. Of course it won't.

You know that's not the way it's done. Unfortunately, I do know. But why? Less programming should translate to less costly pricing, shouldn't it? Welcome to capitalism, bud. Oh no, not you too. To be honest, I don't watch much of Discovery programming, which consists of mainly reality shows, but it's nice to have them available to me if I choose to watch it.

Turner Sports, TNT, and TBS are part of Discovery. And those channels carry Major League Baseball games, including playoff games, which the MLB app doesn't carry. I guess I'll be missing those channels. Yes. The cause of these now constant splits is the $37 billion of debt Warner Brothers Discovery carries. I assume Discovery programming will become available within a new Discovery streaming service. Hopefully this new service will be much cheaper than the Max service. No!

Podcast news. You know, I was supposed to have a guest on the show this week. What? Whoa. Yeah, I've never had a guest on this podcast before. The reason why it didn't happen can be blamed on my Kinect 6 audio interface. The Kinect 6 features many inputs and outputs and one of them is a mobile phone input.

You're supposed to be able to plug in a mobile phone via a USB-C cable and after fiddling around with some software for a bit, be able to record the output from your device. When first setting this all up, All was working well for a few minutes, then I heard a loud click and the phone disconnected from my interface. No matter how many attempts I made to get this working, I came up with the same results.

All would be well for a while and then the dreaded click would be heard and the phone would disconnect from the interface again. It was as if something was polling, if you know what I mean. This polling would cause the mobile phone to disconnect. The thing is, it wasn't a constant time. Sometimes it would work for minutes and sometimes just mere seconds.

I tried messing with the settings using a different digital audio workstation and anything I could think of, all to no avail. The internet held no answer to my problem either. So I emailed Lewitt's customer service and, as of today, haven't gotten a response from them. If this problem can't be resolved, I foresee a Rode-Rodecaster duo in my future. I'll keep you posted on this. Pod News is reporting that Spotify has lost another show. What now with Trevor Noah has left for Sirius XM?

Two years ago, this podcast was the first of Spotify's new strategy of not being exclusive to the platform. Previously, all shows signed by Spotify could only be listened to on Spotify. Mr. Noah, a former late-night television host who had been fired for low audience numbers, did what most washed-up celebrities do, and that was start a podcast.

Spotify paid Noah four million bucks to host this show. It's good work if you can get it. It sure is. I find Trevor Noah unfunny and he's supposedly a comedian. I'm sure Spotify was glad to see him go because I can't imagine his new podcast having much of an audience.

I'm sure Noah's audience numbers are a lot better than this podcast's minuscule numbers. I'm sure you're correct, but in my defense, I'm no celebrity and certainly don't have an army of producers behind me like he does. You know, $4 million buys a lot of people. In my opinion, Spotify saves themselves some money. They were probably happy about Mr. Noah and his podcast leaving Spotify. Again from Pod News concerning Spotify.

The company has adopted a feature of the Podcasting 2.0 standard by adding the transcript provided by the host feature, which is carried by the humble and open-source RSS feed. Though I baby step, this gives me hope for the Podcasting 2.0 standard to become widely adopted. Pod News also had an article touting local podcasting and said it could be the next big leap for the industry. The author says, quote,

Your neighborhood pizza shop isn't sponsoring The Daily Podcast, but they would support a show which listens in their delivery zone, unquote. Gee, where have we heard this before? Oh, that's right. From the podfather himself. Mr. Adam Curry. Exactly. He's been saying that hyperlocal podcasts are the future on the No Agenda podcast for ages now. Mr. Curry will even assist you on starting such a podcast if you contact him.

You know he might already have such information on the show's website, which is www.noagendashow.net. I haven't checked it out yet. Who knows, I might just launch a hyper-local podcast in the future. From website SignalHillInsights.com comes the following headline. YouTube isn't dominating podcasting, unquote. This despite the constant barrage from Podcasting Incorporated, telling podcasters new and old that they have to have a video component added to their podcast.

Well, according to Signal Hill, YouTube is growing for podcasts. The platform currently has 39% of listeners claiming to use YouTube as their primary source for listening to podcasts. However... A majority, some 61% of consumers, use other platforms for consumption. The author of the article also points out that even those 39% of listeners, or in this case, watchers of podcasts on YouTube,

Also use other apps and platforms for consuming podcasts. For example, what about audio drama podcasts? How would they translate over to video? You'd either have to hire actors to portray the characters on video, or you could have a video of each voice actor performing their respective parts. Some audio drama podcasts have voice actors from around the world.

Like one of my favorites, which is The Strata from Mark R. Healy. He's based in Australia. All the show's voice actors are based in Australia, the United Kingdom, United States, and even other countries. It would be hard to be able to coordinate them to be available all at the same time. Many of these voice actors most likely don't have video capability or perhaps don't want to appear on a video.

Plus the edit expense of having that video capability. And forget about the editing process. Also, the size of the video files and the time it takes to render these files dwarfs those of... You know, there's a readily available remedy for the problems you have outlined here, though I admit it's not quite ready for use yet. You know what I'm referring to, don't you?

Yeah, that would be AI. But while the audio component is almost there, an affordable AI video component isn't. We'll have to see where this all goes, won't we? Yes. Another thing. Audio-only podcast listening is still growing. To sum this all up, don't believe all the hype about video podcasting, at least for now. Until an affordable video AI becomes more widely available,

audio dramas will remain, well, audio. As far as other types of podcasts, why just watch someone speaking into a microphone when you can listen and actually retain more information just about anywhere you are?

The music is playing on this Father's Day here in Tennessee as this episode slowly slips away. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I enjoyed making it for you. If you like what you heard, you can make a donation using the link in the show notes. Any and all donations will be greatly appreciated. You can always reach me at OFNTpodcast at gmail.com and that's only if you're so inclined. I'd enjoy hearing from you. Remember, don't listen to what they say.

Watch what they do. It's been raining off and on around here today, and you can't be that comfortable, so do yourself a favor and get off my lawn. Stay skeptical. See ya. Happy Father's Day. On an LNER train, you can go on a big day out, or you can just hang out. You can read a book, or you can write one. You can BLT, or you can G&T. You can zombie apocalypse. or rom-com marathon. You can clear your inbox or think outside the box. You're free to do all this or absolutely nothing.

With food and drink served to your seat and space to stretch your legs on an LNER train, it's freedom all the way. Every great business starts as a dream, but turning that dream into reality, that's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is proud to power many sources of UK e-commerce from brands like Mattel and Gymshark to new entrepreneurs.

Worried about building a website? Shopify's ready-to-use templates help bring your brand to life. Need a hand with content? Shopify's AI tools generate product descriptions, headlines, and even enhance your images. Struggling to get noticed? Shopify's marketing tools let you launch email and social campaigns with ease. And if you ever get stuck, Shopify's award-winning 24-7 support is always there to help. Turn those what-ifs into why nots. Turn those dreams into...

And give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your £1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk slash try. Go to shopify.co.uk slash try.